Tag Archives: beloved community

Thirty Five Years

26 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by in LGBTQ, Reflections

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Today is the 35thanniversary of the day I was ordained to the pastoral ministry. Thirty-five years ago on this day my friend Kendra and I were ordained in my home church in Aurora, Illinois. The denomination in which we grew up – the Advent Christian Church – was a loose affiliation of churches with a congregational form of governance dating back to the 1860s. Because of the biblical literalism in the DNA of the church from its earliest days when William Miller combed through the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation to determine a date for Christ’s return, there was also a tendency to read scripture through patriarchal lenses. The denomination had ordained some women across its history, but generally women were not viewed as pastoral leadership material. So Kendra and I enjoyed that Sunday afternoon sharing the spotlight and demonstrating for our local church at least that women and men are equal in bringing leadership gifts to the ministry of the church. She was the Minister of Education and I was the Minister of Parish Life. We worked with a Senior Pastor to create the programs and ministries for a 550-member college-affiliated congregation. We had several good years of working side by side before Kendra’s life was cut tragically short by a brain tumor.

As I reflect on this anniversary, I can’t imagine my sentimental journey holding much significance for anyone else. I simply feel an inner need to mark this date as a way of honoring the work I do. It is so amazing to me that I have spent 35 years caring for congregations and communities with love, hope and a passion infused by the Holy Spirit. Although I did not remain in my inherited denomination in spite of the fact that both my grandfather and great grandfather were ordained Advent Christian ministers. I knew that I needed to spread my wings and grow into a larger vision of God’s work in the world. I even talked with my grandfather about my exploration of the United Methodist Church before getting serious about connecting with those who would open that door for me. He gave me his blessing without hesitation, something I have always cherished. If he were still alive today though, I doubt that he would fully understand some of the personal choices I have made or the theological/moral/ethical positions I have taken on social and political issues of our day. However, he would respect and love me still, of that I am confident.

Over these years of ministry I am aware of many personal failures, and in my private reflections I confess these to God. Times of insincerity, timidity, laziness! Times of pride, uncaring, impatience! Whenever I have transitioned from one place of ministry to another I have made sure to incorporate the liturgy for parting from our Book of Worship that allows pastor and people to celebrate the gifts that have been shared freely with one another and to acknowledge mistakes and ask for forgiveness. I have been helped in each ministry setting by being able to admit my sins to the Christ who reconciles all things so that I am free to move on to new adventures by the grace of God.

So today I remember some ministries I have launched over these 35 years in various places. I’ve served in suburban, urban and rural settings. I’ve served in Californian desert and coastal communities, Hawaiian tropics, and the good ole Midwest. I’ve done local church ministry, campus ministry, and military chaplaincy. As I look back, it’s been a fun, meaningful, challenging, rewarding, and fascinating ride! God is a God of amazing surprises, and perhaps foremost among them is being called to ministry myself! If I had ever doubted that God called me into ministry, I would have immediately stopped and found something else to do. I am not naturally gregarious, extroverted, erudite or talkative. I work deliberately and thoughtfully at everything I do. I have to stretch myself and risk a great deal to simply get in the pulpit on Sunday mornings and speak the truth God has placed on my heart. But the Gospel keeps drawing me in and I can do no other than proclaim the grace, mercy and acceptance of the one I call Savior and Lord!

Among the ministries I’ve helped start in various places over the years: Evergreen Outreach (a social and spiritual gathering for elderly homebound), PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter, an ecumenical housing option for houseless persons near Chicago), a young adult ministry at a San Diego church, a one-room Sunday School with more than a dozen children at a small rural church (where my 1-year-old son was the only child when we arrived), Messy Church (for children and families), CROP Hunger Walks (raising tens of thousands to alleviate hunger through Church World Service), People of Faith for Justice (an interfaith group in San Luis Obispo County), an ecumenical centering prayer group, Showers of Blessing (providing showers, toiletries and other supplies for houseless persons), summer outdoor worship at a local state park, and Easter sunrise services for the community at a local nature preserve. I’ve maintained a public witness through speaking, writing, and organizing for the common good, and have especially appreciated the shared community work with persons of other faith traditions and all persons of good will.

In my current pastoral appointment, what brings me the most joy is the process our congregation has gone through to become a Reconciling Congregation, giving testimony to our commitment to welcome all people into the community of faith regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. We’ve participated in the annual Pride Celebrations in Santa Barbara the last several years and have hosted a PFLAG group in our church facility, as well as Fratelli (a Men’s Chorus for gay men and straight allies, providing rehearsal and performance space). Through our hospitality and active engagement we are announcing that God’s unconditional agape love embraces our LGBTQI siblings just as they are!

My heart is full. I feel privileged to have been given the position to be able to offer something of value to the Kin-dom of God! As have so many others in the great cloud of witnesses! It is a blessing, a joy, and an honor to be among the followers of the One who came that all may have life, and have it abundantly!

Thanks be to God who can use even me – to contribute to the common good, the beloved community, the Kin-dom of all creation! I am deeply blessed!

Mark Richardson, June 26, 2018

Before Heading for the Exit

05 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by in Reflections, Uncategorized

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Photo credit: Dallis Day Richardson

Photo credit: Dallis Day Richardson

Here’s a topic most pastors don’t want to talk about – what to do when someone leaves your congregation. I don’t mean because they are moving out of the area or being relocated by their employer. We have rituals for saying goodbye to people as they make these life transitions, especially if they have been intimately involved in the life of the church. We acknowledge the pain in farewell and pray God’s blessing upon them. We celebrate the gifts and graces they have brought to our faith community and express our thanks. More often than not there is cake and ice cream! Grief, grace and gratitude mingle in such moments.

I am not referring to these expected partings when people are simply living their lives and for a time we are blessed to be in beloved community with one another and then their life circumstances change. I am referring instead to those occasions when people make a conscious choice to leave a church because they no longer feel in sync with the direction the church is moving.

It’s never easy. Maybe that seems obvious, but I just want to acknowledge the pain. For everyone involved. For those choosing to leave. For those being left. For those charged with spiritual leadership of a congregation. Even for those who are only minimally aware of what has happened. The sudden unexpected loss hurts. There’s no way around it.

You may have guessed by now. This happened recently in the church I currently serve. A couple who had been involved in many dimensions of church life for years informed us one Monday morning that they were withdrawing their membership, effective immediately. It is not an understatement to say that most church members who knew them were left in stunned disbelief when they heard the news. No one, not even close friends, saw it coming.

To their credit, this couple had fulfilled their annual giving, completed various assignments on committees, and tied up loose ends. They did not leave angry or maliciously. Over a period of some time they had simply determined that their spiritual path no longer lined up with the theological emphases they were hearing from their pastors or their denomination. It was not a decision they made lightly, and I have no trouble affirming them as a sister and brother in Christ.

Every pastor who has been at this work of shepherding congregations for more than a year or two has experienced this kind of significant loss. We each have our own ways of walking through the aftermath with those we are called to serve. My own pastoral response involved first going to visit this couple in their home, listening as carefully and lovingly as possible, praying with them, telling them they are loved and will be missed, and asking God to bless and keep them. Then of course, I needed to leave, not wanting to prolong the new reality that I was no longer their pastor.

I was troubled by one thing though, and I heard myself verbalize it in their home that day, saying something like, “One thing I am struggling with is my belief that a community that follows Christ is going to be diverse and have many gifts and viewpoints. There is room for all of us at the table of grace. We don’t have to be in agreement on everything to have community. In fact, an important part of our church’s role is listening and caring for one another in our differences so that the world knows it’s possible.”

My pastoral default position will always be to bless people as they choose other paths. However, that morning in their home I wish I had gone beyond blessing and been bold and alert enough to venture, “I think you may be making a mistake. I think Christ calls us to something more than finding like-minded people to be our community. It would be better if you didn’t leave because of differences of opinion. It would be better if you stayed and continued the hard work of being in community with people who don’t always agree on everything, because honestly, that is what you are going to find wherever you go.” Those are the thoughts that were left unsaid because they were not yet clearly formed in my mind.

Creating genuine Christian community is never going to be easy, but a good place to begin is with the shared commitment to talk things through before heading for the exit in search of greener pastures!

Words (c) 2015 Mark Lloyd Richardson

Inhabiting a Common and Precious Space

31 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Justice, LGBTQ, Reflections

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"Reach" Photo credit: Dallis Day Richardson

“Reach” Photo credit: Dallis Day Richardson

Methodists have a way of envisioning and living out our faith that is expressed in three simple rules:

  1. Do no harm
  2. Do good
  3. Stay in love with God

Bishop Reuben P. Job describes the first rule in such a way that we can see its potential to change the world one relationship at a time. We live in a time of intense culture wars, political battles, religious squabbling, and international tensions. We see the huge scale of harm being done in the world through both careless and deliberate acts, too often by people of faith and religious institutions. So it helps to hear Bishop Job describe the first simple rule as an “act of disarming, laying aside our weapons and our desire to do harm.” Healing the world requires change from within the human heart as well as outward behavioral change.

For years now the United Methodist Church has been doing considerable harm to our LGBTQ neighbors, family members, and friends. We have had language in our guiding document The Book of Discipline that marginalizes a whole community among us. A day will come when the language will be removed and the church will repent of all of the harm it has knowingly or unknowingly done to peoples’ lives. Especially painful is the legacy of young people who have felt rejected by the very church that exists to nurture love for God and one another.

Bishop Job writes that the act of disarming and seeking to do no harm is revealing in other ways: “We discover that we stand on common ground, inhabit a common and precious space, share a common faith, feast at a common table, and have an equal measure of God’s unlimited love. When I am determined to do no harm to you, I lose my fear of you; and I am able to see you and hear you more clearly. Disarmed of the possibility to do harm, we find that good and solid place to stand where together we can seek the way forward in faithfulness to God” (Reuben P. Job, Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living, Nashville: Abingdon Press, © 2007, pages 23-24).

We, the people of the United Methodist Church, need to remove language from our Discipline that continues to harm individual lives as well as the heart of our spiritual community. We need to listen deeply and intently to the stories of our LGBTQ neighbors, family members, and friends, about how the gospel is being misrepresented in our broken institutional life. We need to look deeply and intently into our own hearts for the places we are armed with weapons of fear, mistrust, and judgment, and seek God’s help in laying those weapons down. We need most of all to repent of the harm the church has already done to persons of sacred worth and commit ourselves anew to manifesting the beloved community where God’s justice and righteousness reign!

We inhabit a common and precious space. Let us begin to act like it.

God, in your grace that exceeds our imaginations and confronts our complacency, hear our prayer.

Words © 2014 Mark Lloyd Richardson
Photo © 2014 Dallis Day Richardson

Let Us Claim this Day for Love

26 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by in Peace with justice, Reflections

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scotus-domaTwo historic and significant rulings came out of the United States Supreme Court today – one striking down key provisions in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and giving legally married gay and lesbian couples a pathway to receive federal rights and benefits already enjoyed by straight couples, and the other one ruling that California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state, could not be defended on appeal. It is a wonderful day for fairness and equality under the law! It is a day to celebrate that human rights must exist equally for all people regardless of sexual orientation! It is a day to acknowledge that marriage is at its core a covenantal relationship of love between two human beings!

Episcopal Bishop Steven Charleston writes of this historic day: “Let us claim this day for love. You and I, all of us who share in the witness of faith, let us stake our claim on the next twenty-four hours as a sacred space. Let it be a time of freedom. A time of peace. A time of healing for all people, without distinction, without restriction, a time set aside for those who need a place of safety in which they can recover, hope and be filled with the strength of dignity. Let us announce to the world: this is our time and these, all of these, are members of our beloved family.”

From a Christian point of view, I affirm the following:

1)    All of us are members of God’s beloved community;

2)    There is no distinction in God’s eyes between us;

3)    Each of us is free and empowered by God’s abundant grace to become the person we are intended to be;

4)    Each of us learns what it means to be fully human through the most trusting and intimate relationships we are able to fashion with another;

5)    Marriage is about love, and we love because God first loved us, not because we are so naturally good at it;

6)    Marriage is a covenantal relationship in which persons seek God’s blessing as they give themselves to one another for a lifetime;

7)    Marriage is about the deepening of love and commitment, not gender;

8)    It is far more important to the success of a marriage to have the qualities of integrity, honesty, compassion, forgiveness, humility, humor, and mutual respect, than it is to have one man and one woman.

There is so much more work to be done for equality and justice for all of God’s children, both in society and in the church. My own church, the United Methodist Church, is trailing behind other mainstream progressive denominations in this regard. I wish I did not have to say that – on the other hand, there are hopeful and courageous signs that we are becoming more inclusive and may eventually get it right. In the meantime though, “ecclesial disobedience” and “biblical obedience” will only increase. It is not possible for us to do otherwise!

More to come.

Words (c) 2013 Mark Lloyd Richardson

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Showers of Blessing

23 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Reflections

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Showers of Blessing signWhen we dream of a better world, we take one small step after another toward creating it. The church I serve partnered with two other congregations last summer to get a ministry off the ground to help our neighbors in need. As is always true of ministry that we do in the name of Christ, it creates a sense of beloved community that transcends categories of those serving and those being served. Everyone involved learns the lessons of our shared humanity!

Here’s an article in this morning’s local newspaper about the “Showers of Blessing” ministry.

Free showers, haircuts for needy.

To Build the Beloved Community

17 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Poems, Prayers, Reflections

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mlkpeacehands“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. You may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. You may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate, nor establish love. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Here is a prayer poem that I wrote for the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a few years ago for an interfaith peace and justice meeting:

Pray to whomever you kneel in awe before.
Pray to Being, to Sacred Mystery, to the Breath of Life.
Pray to Divine Love, to Ultimate Meaning, to the Author of Peace.
Pray so as to open your humanity to the humanity in others.
Pray through tears dripping with the world’s suffering.
Pray without forgetting
that we are bound together
on a path that touches all of our lives,
all of our worlds,
whether we live in Haiti or Iraq or China
or Afghanistan or Yemen or Palestine
or on the central coast of California.
On this day we thank you, Holy One, for Martin Luther King Jr.
We thank you for all who have the vision and the courage
to build the beloved community
where everyone is valued,
power is shared,
privilege is set aside,
and all creation knows your healing Presence and Peace.
In your many names we pray. Amen.

Words (c) 2013 Mark Lloyd Richardson