CE stands for Christian Exploration

"CE", in the vernacular of Christian churches, stands for Christian education. I don't know, but this term appeared some time over the decades I wasn't paying attention. It used to be called sunday school. I was in sunday school as a kid, but I remember my parents attending adult sunday school, also. So, for as long as I've known, sunday school is church school for kids and adults. I guess Christian education displaced the term "Sunday school" because it sounds more serious or more grown up, or maybe more to the point; and CE is what you say if your life is so busy you don't have time to say "Christian education," which is true for most people.

I'm a big fan of education. I hope I'm learning my entire life. I love learning about many things, and Christianity is a big focus area for me. However, I get hung up on the term "Christian education" because Christianity is not a subject in which you school yourself like you can for Spanish, math or biology. Although I accept that there can be some uncertainties in school subjects, generally you can expect to be taught the facts of Spanish, math, and biology the same as anyone else would learn studying the same thing in another school.

Christianity, however, is not a science, or even a study of facts. Christianity is a faith, and faith is a personal thing. Faith is not something everyone can be taught to practice like everyone else. It is not like learning to ride a bike, or to conjugate verbs, or how to do long division. To me, it's bothersome to think I should be educated in what my faith should be. I can't imagine sitting through a class that aims to teach me what I must do or think to be a Christian. Yet, that is exactly what Sunday school, or Christian education, has long aimed to do. Fine, if you're six years old; but as an adult I know life and God and my spirituality are anything but simple, and they do not lend themselves to textbook rendering or classroom instruction.

I prefer to use the term "Christian exploration" for "CE". I don't have to get the whole of Christendom to accept a yet newer term for the old "Suday school." I just keep using "CE", but change what is stands for to "Christian exploration."  To me, that is what CE is. It is an exploration of faith, of my spirituality, the Bible, God, Jesus, the stories, and the Christian life. It is from this exploration (and, yes, an education of things new to me) that I draw my faith. It is not, however, where I am taught, like naming the bones of the human skeleton, how to be a Christian.

I know for some this may be splitting hairs, as they say. Education is a form of exploration, and vice-versa. It's just that I cannot accept the notion of being taught what to think or believe or in what I must have faith. My faith is not mine and it is not faith if it does not derive from my own heart and soul and mind. My faith is from me, from my relationship with God and my connection with Jesus. These are, by definition, personal. I'm all open to learning new things, especially in the area of how to live my life more fully and happily and meaningfully. Just let me take from what I learn and determine for myself what I believe.

I am a Christian. You may be, too. We are probably, however, not at the same place on our respective journeys of faith, thinking and believing and understanding things exactly the same. I know I don't think and believe and understand the same as I did five years ago. My faith is always an evolution. It is a journey. It is an exploration. Happy learning!

in God's love,
Eric

Bring a Salad or Dessert to Church on Sunday!

Homecoming Lunch Sunday September 8

We are having lasagna and garlic bread for lunch, courtesy of the Activities Committee. YUM!

But what's lunch without dessert? For that matter what is lasagna without a salad? Bring your favorite salad or dessert to round out the meal. If you have any questions, call or email Jamie Strong.

Christian Education classes are cancelled for the day and we will eat at 11:00. I'll see you there.

--Julia

This sounds like an interesting church...

I missed the story on NPR, but I listened to it online. You can too.

Kentucky Church Allows Pooches As Parishioners

--Julia

Worth Reading

Jonathan Merrit, of RNS, the Religious News Service, recently interviewed Lillian Daniel.
Lilian Daniel is a UCC minister and a frequent author of the Daily Devotional. She is also the author of
When "Spiritual but Not Religious" Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church. The Seekers read and discussed this book earlier this summer.

You can read the interview here. It's worth reading. Rev. Daniels can be thought provoking but abrasive. In the interview she says


"Any idiot can find God alone in the sunset. It takes a certain maturity to find God in the person sitting next to you who not only voted for the wrong political party but has a baby who is crying while you’re trying to listen to the sermon. Community is where the religious rubber meets the road. People challenge us, ask hard questions, disagree, need things from us, require our forgiveness. It’s where we get to practice all the things we preach."


- See more at: http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/08/13/answering-the-spiritual-but-religious-an-interview-with-lillian-daniel/?ref=leaderboard#sthash.ExsToKaV.dpuf


After you read the interview, you might want to read the discussion in the comments. There is even a response by David Hayward on the NakedPastor blog.  He says

"The SBNR [Spiritual But Not Religious] people I know are not a homogeneous whole but a diverse diaspora. For the most part, the ones I know are humble but confident. They are unusually deep and find ingenious ways of dealing with difficult situations. They are spiritually complex and fascinating. They hunger for a community they’ve concluded the church cannot seem to provide. They are fiercely and even defiantly independent. And they quit the church because they felt restricted, controlled or even harmed by the system, its ideology and the people who govern and administer them."

Read the blog posts. See what you think. And comment here or on one of those blogs.

--Julia

Sunday Service for August 18 Also: Last Play Date of the Summer

"We're on a mission from God!" If you remember the Blues Brothers from 1980's Saturday Night Live, you will remember that famous quote. I never figured out what mission the Blues Brothers were on but I think they may have been onto something. The reality is that if we profess to be a church, we are "on a mission from God" because we are all called to the work of carrying the light of God's love into the dark corners of life. As we near the conclusion of our summer series on the long range plan for FCC, we come to the place where we put into action all the values, purpose and vision statements that we have been learning about over the past two months. The question now is "what is our mission" and "are ready to accept it?" This Sunday's worship experience puts those questions before us. Are we really "on a mission from God?" Each one of us has to answer that question, for ourselves and for our church.


This Sunday, David Nussmann will be sharing two favorite hymns both with words by Erena Murray. The Anthem will be Sing a Happy Alleluia by Tracy Shirk, and the offering will be For the Music of Creation sung to the tune Ode to Joy by Ludwig van Beethoven. Organist, Gavin Craig, will play Paraphrase sur une mélodie de Beethoven by Marcel Dupré and Nun lob mein Seel de Herrn by Johann Christoph Bach. Our congregational hymns will be O God of Every Nation (LLANGLOFFAN); God of Grace and God of Glory (CWM RHONDDA); and By Gracious Powers (BONHOEFFER).

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Our last FCC Play Date will be Monday, August 19. Parents will need to bring a lunch for themselves and their kiddos if you want to eat. Plenty of water is encouraged as well. This is a great chance to get our kids together, but also to hang out with other parents! Contact Rev. Katelin Warren at katelin@fcc-houston.org with questions. Hope to see you there!!

  

Please Note:  This is not a "love 'em and leave 'em play date." You are responsible for the care and feeding of your children while they are here.  Please do not plan on dropping them off and leaving.  We want to get to know our parents as much as our kids want to play together.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

This Sunday's Service

Okay, we've spent the previous two weeks discussing how hard it is to love strangers and those closest to us.  For this last week of consideration of how we share God's love (our purpose), we take on loving the one person that usually gets left out of the mix, ourselves.  Maybe that's because we feel giving our own selves any attention is being conceited or narcissistic.  So, how do we reconcile Jesus words to "love our neighbor as ourselves." Maybe the real catch is that it's impossible to love others until we can truly love ourselves.  Come and join in the conversation this Sunday at 10:00 a.m.

This Sunday ensemble singers will present If Ye Love Me by Thomas Tallis. Organist Gavin Craig will play Matines, Op. 58, no. 1 by Louis Vierne; Vater unser im Himmelreich, BWV 636 by Johann Sebastian Bach; and Postlude in C Minor by William T. Best.  Our congregational hymns will be Seek Ye First (SEEK YE FIRST); O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee (MARYTON); and God of Our Life, Through All the Circling Years (SANDON).

Seeker’s Invitation: Join us in August as we start a new book

We eat, but we are not a dinner group;  we read books, but we are not a book group;  we study, but we are not a class;  we  discuss, but we are not a discussion group;  we pray, but we are not a prayer group.  We are a group of spiritual seekers who share our lives with each other and are committed to be present as much as we are able.  We seek to deepen our relationship with God, and our experience of the sacred.  We seek to expand our vision of how we might contribute to peace and love in the world.

The Seekers meet on Wednesdays.  On August 7th we will be starting a new book called The Raft is Not the Shore.  It is an account of conversations about Buddhist-Christian awareness between Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist Monk, and Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest.

We meet for brown-bag supper in the assembly room at 6:00, then go to the sanctuary room for the rest of our activities at 6:30, concluding about 8:00.

We rotate leadership by the week or section of the book.  Sometimes we just discuss topics.  We occasionally go on retreats.  Everyone is invited.  If you are interested and/or have questions, call Sylvia. Her number is in the church directory, or you can leave a message for her at the church office.