12 22 11 Christmas Blog

I am actually writing this on the very day of the winter solstice—the shortest day of the year. Writers often depict winter as a symbol for life when it is bleak, cold and hopeless. And why not? Local food crops simply cannot grow in an Alaskan winter. At our house, down in one of the deep valleys created by the Chugach Mountains, the sun does not even make it above the mountain peaks for another month. It is cold, it is dark and, apparently, desolate.

Yet, winter really should be the season for hope, not hopelessness. People who live with the land have always known this. Winter is the season for making plans for the spring. Farmers are gathering seed. Builders are designing the homes they will build in the not-so-distant future. Hunters and gatherers are restoring their tools and getting ready. This is a season of waiting, but waiting in a way that prepares for a wonderful tomorrow.

It is easy to lose track of hope. We live in a moment of history where people seem to have three choices. They can see the magnitude of the problems facing

our existence and fall into a wintry despair. They can see the magnitude of the problems and either deny that they are real, maybe as claiming it all as a part of God’s plan and therefore deny that we need to take action, or they can join together in faithfully living into the change God is bringing, the future that is coming.

This, of course, is the heart of a Christian understanding of faithfulness. We build it into

our common life as a community of faith. Beginning four Sundays before Christmas, as the darkness and cold of winter descends, we celebrate the season of Advent. In this season, we recognize that the problems of the world are real, and we must face them with a mature (or at least maturing) faith.

The problems of the world are real. In fact, there are any number that deserve attention: overpopulation, economic bubbles, carbon emissions, addiction and strife—among others. If that is not enough to get our attention, what is? We are living in a time of either wintry despair, blind denial, or something else.

Christians are called to live out of that something else—something called hope. Christians have always insisted that hope is real. In the birth of Jesus Christ, a real human being, God got involved in history. Knowing that this is who God is—the One who is with us and is engaged with us in the face of it all—empowers a whole different life than that of denial or despair.

Because of Jesus, we know that real and effective hope is always available to us. Hope calls to us from the future to take hope and be active in the present. In fact, the Christian witness is that we nearly always go through all three of these realities.

• We go astray, but insist for a while that we are OK: denial.
• Our eyes are then opened, and we realize that we are not only off-track, but probably incapable of solving it.
• We hear God’s call from the future, and realize that something bigger than ourselves is at work, and that we can be a part of it.
  
  

Winter is that season of recognizing that God is with us now, and then of hearing the possibilities of the future. It is a time of rethinking what we thought the plan was. It is a time of allowing God to capture us, and to reshape our imagination. It is a time of becoming ready to join-in on the new thin

g that will be born.

Yet, if this winter-hope is to be real hope, it requires that we become ready to move and take action when the time is right. God does make changes, but the biblical account describes the changes as taking place when God gets involved in history with real people and real events.

If Advent is about waiting with expectation for the birth of the Savior—and it is—then faithful living now, two millennia after that birth, is about joining-in

on what God has been doing since and will be doing into the future. Faithful living that has real hope means that we, the people who are alive now, will listen for God’s call from the future and join together in living for that future.

Yes, we are in winter right now. Good or bad, this is where we are. I hope that we will

choose to understand winter as a time of hope. I hope we will look at the problems listed above choose to live for a future that has seen these problems addressed. The problems are big, but God is bigger. There is a lot of inertia behind the status quo, but God can bring us all together to put our combined weight behind the call for change.

The question is where to start. We will all have to work together to bring change. On the other hand, starting is a very personal thing. As for me, I am starting with winter. This is a season for examining my own heart, recognizing that I am as much a part of the problem as the rest of my generation. This is a season for asking God to change my heart. All future action will have to come from there.

[Pictures: Flying over Nuiqsut Alaska, Dec. 6, 2011 at noon.

Presbyterian Chapel, Nuiqsut, Alaska

11 23 11 Discipleship

How do church leaders guide their congregations into the changes that will open ministry in new ways? How do we raise up a new generation of disciples for future ministry that God has not yet shown us? What are some practical things we can do today that will lead to a better ministry tomorrow?

The latest training for the Acts 16:5 Initiative was held last weekend (Nov 18-19) at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Anchorage. The content and style of the presentation were very compelling and have opened discussions that we pray will bear fruit. We offer many thanks to the Rev. Stan Ott of the Vital Church Institute for traveling to Alaska and making this event possible.

Although not all the presbytery’s congregations have signed-on to The Acts 16:5 Initiative, enough are involved to bring the Missional Church perspective to the whole presbytery. We are now at a point of thinking about how to begin sharing the learning in appropriate ways beyond those congregations that originally signed-on.

This possibility is important because our whole society is in a time of such monumental change, that the church absolutely must move into an adaptive, responsive mode if it is to share the salvation and love of Jesus Christ effectively to an anxious world. If we are not adaptive and responsive, then the Good News will not be presented in ways that can be heard, and the people will suffer now and into the future.

With this in mind, this latest Acts 16:5 Training focused on a couple of key themes. Among these were the following:

1. Leading into change, and
2. Raising up disciples and a disciple faith community to bear God’s Good News into the world.
   
   

Part of this training included some practical guides for drawing people into intentional learning and growth as individuals and as a faith-community. Disciples need to be well grounded in three ways:

1. Doxological – a relationship with God that includes praise and worship,
2. Koinonial – a relationship with God through God’s people that stokes our spiritual fires, and
3. Missional – a relationship with God that sends us out to make a difference in the world that God loves.
   
   

One experimental new approach to this class was connecting Dave Moody from Fairbanks via the internet. Dave said it went fairly well, though there are some things we can do to improve the experience for distance learners. Also, some of the churches that would normally have participated in the training were unable to come to the Nov 18-19 training, and so plans are under way to hold a second training sometime soon. Because this training is paid for both by congregations and by the presbytery, those congregations that have not participated in the past are still welcome to be a part of this event. Pastors or elders wanting more information should contact the presbytery office.

November is Make a Missional Move Month for PbYukon

At least this seems to be the case as I look at the activity this month across the presbytery. Two moves in particular need to be mentioned.

On Oct 22 the Rev. Tosu Sinkaman arrived in Anchorage from our partner, the Tayal Presbytery in Taiwan. His arrival was an answer to prayer. Originally scheduled to arrive in mid-August, Rev. Tosu was turned back at the border when he landed in Seattle! After a gueling 13-hour flight, he had to re-board the airplane immediately and go home. Although the customs service never admitted a mistake, Rev. Tosu arrived in October with the same credentials and the same stated mission as before. VERY FRUSTRATING.

What made the difference was some guidance from the PC(USA) office in Louisville, helping us explain our side of the story, and preparing the Seattle customs service in advance. Many thanks to Julia Thorne from the Immigrant Ministries office in Louisville!

Rev. Tosu has been a missionary in Japan and a previous presbytery moderator. We are honored to have a pastor of such stature among us. He will be traveling throughout our presbytery until Dec. 19, visiting many of our village churches and telling the story of God's work among the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Hearing of the struggles and the acts of God among other Native peoples may prove particularly helpful for us as we are thinking about vision and mission in the villages of our presbytery.

The second major movement is the next Acts 16:5 training, taking place this weekend, Nov. 18-19 at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Anchorage. Once again, Stann Ott will be with us to lead the training. Those churches that chose to participate in the Acts 16:5 initiative are sending members of their leadership teams to Trinity to participate in the workshops. The participants are also discussing the possibility of meeting regularly by internet to share ideas and encouragement.

Because the presbytery is helping to fund the training, we will receive DVDs and extra training books to share with any other interested congregations in our presbytery. If the pastor or session from any church in the presbytery is interested in receiving any of these resources, or of learning more about the regular “internet Stan Ott

meetings,” they can contact the presbytery office.

11 10 11 Bearing Witness to The Wholeness of Ministry

Each meeting of a presbytery has its own character. Some are celebratory and glad. Others are weighty and deliberative. Lately, our meetings have been rather more weighty than usual, mostly due to the rather dramatic changes underway in church and culture. It was therefore a great joy at our last meeting of the Presbytery of Yukon to spend an evening with the Rev. Cobbe Palm, one of our PC(USA) Mission Co-workers from The Philippines.

There were several things that made Rev. Palm’s presentation memorable. His winsome and joyous presence was just what was needed in an otherwise heavy meeting. The wonderful Power Point slides added color and visual images to his talk. But what struck me most was the fabulous history of consistent, ongoing ministry of the Presbyterian Church in the Philippines.

The thing from his talk that really stood out for me was the very
Rev. Cobbe Palm

wholistic nature of Presbyterian mission at its best. Rev. Palm pointed out that from the beginning the Presbyterians’ mission strategy was to care for the whole person in its ministry: mind, body and soul. In the 1800’s the Presbyterians built the mind, body and soul institutions of schools, hospitals and churches. Since then times have changed. Now, the church has added to that list by engaging in a very troublesome issue worldwide, and especially in the Philippines, the issue of sex trafficking.

Traffickers are lying to parents and young people, promising them good work in a far-away place that will help support their families. The truth is that these young people are spirited away to the sex trade. The Presbyterians and others have entered into this situation to provide intervention, healing and training to help get people out of these situations. Further, the Presbyterians have been very involved in advocating for societal changes so this can’t go on. The churches, themselves, are lifting up disciples of Jesus Christ as people who build ministries that continue to care for people—mind, body and soul.

This, of course, is a hallmark of the Reformed branch of Christianity. We have always believed that saving the soul is important, but have understood that God cares for the whole person, and that Christians and Christian ministry must also care for the whole person. It was a pleasure to be reminded of that and to witness some of the good work that God continues to do through the Presbyterian Church. It was a great gift to have the Rev. Cobbe Palm among us to share the story.

On Protestants, Right Relationships and Earthcare

This is the text of a talk I was gave on January 30, 2011 as part of the Anchorage Interfaith Council’s Earthcare Forum. There were seven religious groups with speakers on the panel. Each chose passages from their sacred texts and had 8 minutes to for comments based on those texts, followed by an hour of questions from the audience.

The panel included speakers from a Muslim group, two different sects of Buddhism, a Jewish Rabbi, a Roman Catholic professor of religion, an independent Christian Pentecostal, and a Presbyterian (me).

Basically, we all agreed that the world’s situation is dire and that the religious communities have much to say on the subject. Our beginning points certainly differed, as one might expect from such varied traditions. One person even quoted a 1960s vintage book that criticized Western Culture's version of Protestant teaching for contributing to the lack of Earthcare through the ages. This blog begins with my initial comments which, coincidentally, call on Protestants to repent for not taking their own stance seriously enough, and end with one point from the Q & A period that I thought was particularly important.]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am Curt Karns, executive presbyter for the Presbytery of Yukon. I am also a member of an organization called Yukon Presbyterians for Earthcare, so I was especially glad to be invited to participate in an interfaith conference with that very title: Earthcare! I was also very happy to see that some of the other speakers are basing their talks on those passages of the Bible which make it clear that Earthcare is an imperative for those of us from the Judeo-Christian tradition. This sets me free as one of the Christian Protestant voices here today to speak specifically from the Protestant point of view.

In my opinion, one of the Scripture that sums up much of the Protestant stance on faith is found in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 2, verses 8-10:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— ⁹not the result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

This passage is about faith-life in general, but also has the potential to greatly add to any faith-based conversation on Earthcare, whether that be an interfaith conversation or an intra-Christian conversation. This passage asks us to wrestle with the question of what gives ultimate meaning to human existence. Ultimate meaning is one part of what salvation is about. This passage then goes further and challenges us regarding how we are to understand what we are to do—our works—in the world.

It is precisely our works that are at issue in the struggles for Earthcare. So much of what we human beings have collectively done in the world have not turned out to be good for our planet, or even for the long-range well-being of human beings. And part of the problem for Protestants has been that we have not taken the guidance that our own favorite Scripture passages, like this one from Ephesians, would give us.

According to this passage from Ephesians, we can stop fretting about whether we can achieve a good relationship with God—that part is given. We have no need to prove to the universe, or even to ourselves, that we are “good enough.” Instead we have been given an ongoing covenantal relationship with God.

For us, covenants signal relationships in which the parties involved agree to be in relationship with each other, and understand their own identities differently because of that relationship. Indeed, all covenantal relationships—marriage, parenthood, etc—call one to live differently in the world than if one were not a part of that relationship. According to Ephesians, once we know that we are persons-in-relationship with God, the way we live should reflect this new reality. We must now know ourselves as people whose way of life is the doing of good works.

Unfortunately too many people in America, including many Protestants, I’m sorry to say, live as if they had this Scripture backwards. They live as if they were still trying to earn proper praise for their existence, and do that through a strange definition of worthiness actions. Americans try to gain wealth to prove that we are successful; we seek prestige to prove our place in the human pecking order; we seek power to show the world our importance. And we seek subdue land and sea to prove that we are the masters and not the servants.

These are hardly the good works that the Scripture calls for. In the Christian tradition there are two parts to our ministry. Our ministry is to celebrate the gifts God has given each one to bring. And our ministry is to be a ministry of reconciliation.

Reconciliation is about being reconciled to God, but also to others. We are to work for reconciliation between one another in the faith community, between one another in our cultures and societies, and between ourselves and all creation. Our good works are about establishing right relationships such that everyone thrives. And because of who we are—members of this whole creation that God so loves—we absolutely must work for right reconciliation between human beings and the planet Earth.

These Scriptures, then, call people of faith to reframe our thinking of what a successful human being is from the secular cultural model to a biblical, faith-based model. Unfortunately, Scripture has often been interpreted through the lens of Western culture rather than the other way around. Genesis 1 through Genesis 2:4 tells about the seven days of creation. To hear Western culture interpret that passage, we are created in the image of God and God created everything in six days—which proves God’s lordship. Humans, too, need to be working to prove their worth. But a more consistent reading would note that the pinnacle of God’s creation was not the sixth day, in which humans (and animals, though we usually don’t mention the animals) were created. A more consistent reading shows that the seventh day, when God rested from work and just stopped to celebrate being in relationship with this whole of creation, was the pinnacle of creation and the proper model for us to emulate as the image of God.

Being made in God’s image, then, should be to celebrate the wonder of all creation, to enjoy being a part of creation and to love and tend it just as God does. This, of course, also includes celebrating families and friends and the fullness of human potential, as well.

Somehow we have turned this teaching on its head. Instead of knowing that we are already worthy of relationship with God, and turning our lives to standing for the restoration of damaged relationships, we seem bound to work hard to for our own prestige and make excuses for standing by and watching as the world suffers the consequences.

Reconciliation with creation means first recognizing how badly we have been in caring for our relationship with the ecosystem and repenting. Reconciliation means exploring how much damage has been done and knowing that we are responsible. Reconciliation means then reshaping our own lives in such a way as to participate in different ways of life that might lead to a better future for all.

My thesis, then is that we need to call people back to delve deeply into their faith traditions. There is old wisdom there, inspired by God. By letting culture define our faith and our very selves, rather than allowing the our faith-values to guide us as God’s ambassadors to our culture, we have been complicit in producing the consequences the world now faces. By going back to our roots in the face of this crisis, we can be essential in the needed movement for change.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[An opportunity for another comment came up during the Q & A that seem particularly significant. Someone asked how we all understood our relationship to the environment as it relates to Earthcare. My response was that there is a changing view among some of us, which can be summarized by a minority view on how to understand Genesis 2:1. When translated literally, that verse uses the same terminology as the geneologies that show up later in Genesis--"These are the GENERATIONS of the creation of heaven and earth when they were made." Some of us are taking this as a true genealogy to say that we are related to the whole of creation, and the different members (species) have varied responsibilities to one another. Earthcare is something humans must take seriously as a part of the family of creation. It is about living in right relationships.]

Future of Ministry in Alaska

This year (2011) I will primarily blog about important considerations for the Presbytery of Yukon as they are thinking about the future of ministry. Some of the topics will not be on customary ministry topics. For instance, in the previous post (January 31) I spoke of the potential effects of higher fuel prices.

Actually, I wanted to write about the confluence of a number of factors that will lead to the changes I wrote about, but decided that was too complicated for a blog post--I will blog about some of the other factors in later posts.

Strangely, today I cannot get any graphs to upload. So, tomorrow I will try to upload the graphs that went with the previous post.

Curt

The Future: Alaskan Ministry in an Expensive Energy World

One of the big ministry questions facing the church of today is how to minister to a society that will be forced to deal with extremely rapid and sustained increases in energy costs.[1] See below for a brief analysis and some graphs.[2]

This is a huge consideration for us in Alaska. Over 98 percent of our food is flown to Alaska from the Lower 48 states, along with nearly all of our consumer goods. The projected scale of increase in transportation costs means that life will have to change dramatically very soon. I therefore want to offer a few initial thoughts on what this might mean for the church.

1. Future economics will make transportation so costly that locally self-sustaining economies will have to be developed (or redeveloped as in the past).

1. Families and small communities will have to be more self sufficient and self-sustaining. This means learning to do for ourselves will become a trend. Cooperative groups will be more self-sufficient than solo individuals or families, which means building communities and neighborhoods that can work together will be essential.
   
   
2. Christians have a long history of building community around various ministry causes. Yet, as a whole our society has lost much of that ability. Is this part of the gospel we have to offer the world? If so, how do we begin preparing to meet that ministry need, how do we recapture our ability to build community around specific needs? The awareness of this need is only beginning to rise up in the larger society just now but will expand rapidly in the near future. Can the church connect its ability to build cooperative community around Christian mission with the world’s emerging need to build cooperative community around sustainable skills?
   
   

2. Mission is most effective when it recognizes real needs and organizes to meet those needs. There are a number of needs that go along with the future economy. Here are a few that come to mind as I brainstorm about the future:

1. Food: Organizing neighborhoods to garden effectively. Note that by the end of WWII New York City was producing nearly 25% of its food from rooftop and balcony gardens within the city.
   
   
2. Helping neighborhoods organize to share gardening crops, or to share equipment or expertise (not just gardening, also maybe maintenance, etc) would help them reduce costs.
   
   
3. Forming community together is hard work, because of the personalities involved and the natural conflicts that appear. Processes of reconciliation are available through so many Christian resources and would be of service in building the new reality.
   
   
4. The level of transition needed from current lifestyle (expanding consumer economies and a consumer mentality) to the Post Peak Oil lifestyle will be huge. Helping people cope with that level of change will be an important ministry.
   
   
5. To deal with ongoing relationships over distance will require continued improvement of high tech communications. How can we use current high tech communication today, and how do we help shape future ministry through technological means?
   
   
6. Cross-cultural communication is always challenging, and cross-cultural partnering and visioning is even more challenging. How can we continue as a connected “body of Christ” faith community with much more expansive travel and less face-to-face time?
   
   
7. Connecting these ministries of necessity both with an awareness of the adventure of new life in the Holy Spirit, and with the basics of the Christian gospel and life will be essential for the spiritual grounding of the emerging new society.
   
   
8. In this cosmopolitan world, we need to ask God to guide us in our relationships with other peoples of faith who are not Presbyterian…and also how to shape relationships with peoples of faith who are not Christian.
   
   

3. Most young people are less interested in maintaining old religious structures than they are interested in living authentically for God and discovering the adventure of how the Spirit will lead them and form them for the future. They are therefore connecting through social media, and forming local small groups to explore these possibilities.

1. Can we help such groups to be more effective in raising up disciples of Jesus Christ?
   
   
2. Can we help such groups as they develop missionally, impacting their communities with the love of God?
   
   
3. How can these intentional faith communities fit in with the Post-Peak Oil emerging society?
   
   

Recommended Reading: Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines, by Richard Heinberg, New Society Publishers, 2010.

---

[1] So many of our world oil fields are in decline that we are facing a rather dramatic decrease in world oil supply for the foreseeable future, at the same time we are facing a rather dramatic increase in world demand for oil (especially from India and China). This is because there have been no large new oil discoveries since the late 1970s, and older sources (like Prudhoe Bay) eventually decline. The world appears to have peaked in production in 2006-2008. Further projections (Heinberg, Richard: Peak Everything; See the Preface) show that we are too late in developing alternative energy sources fast enough to be able to avoid a very large impact on our economy and lifestyle.

[2] Note: There have been no large discoveries worldwide since this graph was made.