A Publication of the Turner Ministry Resource Center January 2009 In This Issue Care and Community Call and Response Upcoming Events Quick Links... More About Us Pastoral Institute Calendar Past Bridge Issues Sometimes transitions can become transform-ative. With this issue of The Bridge we enter into a period of transition. Only time will tell if it becomes transformative for our lives of faith and more particularly for your faith-filled leadership. However, that is part of our goal. Today we move from a printed hard copy edition of The Bridge, published four times per year, to a new edition each month on-line. The old format was not only costly, but also very limiting. We had to squeeze most items into four pages. Color and/or photos and graphics also added greatly to the expense.      However, technology now allows this new Bridge to offer an opportunity for the Turner Ministry Resource Center to become more of a quality resource for pastors, church staff and laypersons. We will be able to address topics more thoroughly and receive feedback more quickly regarding our offerings. And we want your feedback! A significant part of our mission is to open and encourage dialogue. As you are moved, stimulated or challenged by an article we would like to hear from you. We also want to know when clarification or correction might be appropriate. Please stay in touch... For the professional clergy-person time is at a premium. We promise not to ramble or share lengthy articles more suited for academic journals. Yet we do want to be thorough enough for you to trust the material for quality.  We solicit your suggestions and ideas. We want to serve you. We also want you to keep us abreast of changes in your data (particularly email addresses), and share with others this new opportunity and resource. We would be happy to add anyone to our list for future editions.    Welcome again to a New Year and a new Bridge.       Shalom. John B. Adams, M.Div.     Co-Director, Turner Ministry Resource Center jadams@pilink.org                      2009 Distinguished Lecture Event Dr. Gerald Durley and Dr. Larry McSwain    BEYOND SUNDAY: Encouraging Dialogue and Action February 26, 2009 8:30 a.m.- 3:30 p.m. Elizabeth Bradley Turner Center at Columbus State University corner of College Dr. and East Lindsey Dr. Cost - $80 To register, contact Judy Talley at 706-649-6400, ext. 1204 or jtalley@pilink.org   Hotel Accommodations: Fairfield Inn & Suites - 706-317-3600 4510 Armour Rd. - Columbus, GA $97/night for King or two Double beds Care and Community by John B. Adams  On a monthly basis we will share articles and resources for clergy and congregations under the title Care & Community. We trust that you will find reason to watch for these regular items in the new Bridge. We would also appreciate hearing from you regarding topics or concerns you would like for us to address. The Pastoral Institute is part of a large group of counseling centers across America known as the Samaritan Center network. We are independently owned and operated, some larger than others. Our center is the most diverse in programming and one of the larger centers in this network.  We have been invited to take part in a three year project to address more thoroughly Clergy and Congregational Care. We will be in meetings regularly with other centers from around the country. Many of the items you will find in this new Bridge format will be initiated or enhanced by our involvement with this program. The following is an overview of topics we might be addressing in the months to come: Multi-Staff Teams - Working Together as Servant Leaders Pastoral Skills in Support of Church Education Ministries Making Church Tradition Work to Meet Today's Mission Resources for Small Congregations and Pastor Addressing Social Justice Issues from the Pulpit Spiritual Direction: Gift for Effective Ministry Nurturing Dialogue between Different Faith Traditions Clergy Coaching as Asset for the Solo Pastor Tools for Lectionary Preaching The Turner Ministry Resource Center is also initiating "Seminary 101 Today." These offerings will serve as additional resources beyond our Annual Distinguished Lecture. The goal will be to reinvigorate pastoral ministries through one day meetings on a quarterly basis. Topics will include but not limited too: Bible, Pastoral Care, Church Administration and Preaching. Watch for details in The Bridge.   Looking forward to sharing the journey with you. Shalom.   Contact John Adams at jadams@pilink.org  Call and Response The Unbroken Circle of Worship and Love by Stephen Muse, Ph.D. Co-Director, Turner Ministry Resource Center      Ministry always begins with a call and a crisis arises when there is no response or one that seems to bring the call itself into question. Liturgy, from the Greek  Litourgia, literally means "the work of the people." Worship is a call and response between God and the community carried out by the pastor and the people in the presence of God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed that Christ always stands "between me and others" or as Paul Ricoeur noted from a different perspective, "The shortest path to the self is through the other." Eastern Orthodox Christians have a Liturgical call and response in which the priest says "Christ is in our midst" and the community responds "He is now and ever shall be." This is a way of saying in effect, "The shortest way to Christ is through encountering my brothers and sisters." This is why worship and love are inextricably intertwined. St. John Chrysostomos in the 4th century observed, "When I leave the altar of the Divine Liturgy I go to the altar of my brother."  Can I get an "Amen!" I learned from my friend Rabbi Max Roth recently that in Judaism, prayers are rarely ended with "Amen" by the one praying, but only by those who are listening to the prayer and assenting at the end to making it their own. Take away either of these active initiatives and the circle of worship and love is indeed broken. Every call of love yearns for a response from the beloved including the call to ministry. Martin Buber held that all real life is "meeting" and that monologue is Lucifer, the very essence of pride which breaks the first commandment to have no other gods before God.  As a Christian, this takes on very particular meaning for me because to have no other God means to be in relationship with God who is three persons in one community of love. From the standpoint of my work as a pastoral counselor and caregiver, I view this as the cure for human existential alienation that underlies all psychological and spiritual sickness. The spiritual pain of loneliness that does not call out to God in faith, hope and love becomes a wound which attracts all sorts of viruses. Results of this are rampant in our time, disguised under the advancing frenzy in the squirrel cage of workaholism, consumption and stimulation that numb us to our true human depth from which genuine prayer arises. Silence and Sabbath are trampled underfoot and we become more and more alienated from true life and thus more and more vulnerable to the sickness of narcissism and self-will which refuse in the depths to bear the weight of our brothers and sisters, who become a threat to our private indulgences.    Call without a response does not bear fruit. According to the Book of Genesis, in the beginning was God's call that all creation came into being out of nothing. The void responded to God's creative Word and in the 'between' of Creation and God, stands Christ who appears at the intersection between Spirit and dust. Our Amen! as the royal priesthood of believers to this Divine Call is to become Passion bearers who willingly accept our place at the intersection where the meeting between God and humanity cross in Christ and through Christ at every moment of our lives in each of the specific circumstances of life in which we find ourselves. If our Christianity is a mere 'belief' and not a path in life, a Way of living, of entering each moment with presence and continual repentance and prayer, then we are fooling ourselves about being Christians. The Way according to Christ himself is narrow and few find it. Fewer still enter in. The impossible, we learn from the saints and witnesses, in Christ, becomes possible through relationship. But we must learn to cry out and ask. It is the Father's good pleasure to answer our call and give us the Kingdom. But how can I call out with sincerity except by discovering my own dividedness, my emptiness and powerlessness to obey the commandments of Christ? How can I find the will to struggle unless I begin to taste the joy of the Lord? Why would I yearn to obey unless Christ has first come into my heart with his great love and mercy, to call me into relationship? This relational mystery is the arena of pastoral care and counseling. I hope to speak of things that pertain to our Way in Christ in this quarterly column entitled "Call and Response" as we introduce a new fuller version of The Bridge which will be offered electronically on a monthly basis. At times I will offer a call and at other times a response (if you the readers will respond to the dialogue by sending in questions that are important to you or observations that you want to make). But most of all, wherever we enter into the circle of the Liturgy of love and worship, I hope that there will be a response of meeting the Lord who is forever in our midst!      Contact Stephen Muse at smuse@pilink.org Upcoming Events January 28-30, 2009 Servant Leadership Coaching - Pastoral Institute Community Room February 25, 2009 Denominational Executives Retreat - Pastoral Institute 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.   February 26, 2009 Distinguished Lecture Series Event - Dr. Gerald Durley and Dr. Larry McSwain will co-present Columbus State University - 8:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. In February's issue of The Bridge - Dr. Larry McSwain and Dr. Gerald Durley will share their thoughts on Bridging the Racial Divide. Email Marketing by Pastoral Institute | 2022 Fifteenth Avenue | Columbus | GA | 31901