Can No One Tame Facebook?

As many of you know, I am a big advocate of Facebook. I use it daily to connect with friends and family, and many in our church family. In fact, just last night I was able to help a friend from high school with a problem because we’re connected on Facebook. She found my number on Facebook and called me. It has the potential for such positivity in drawing individuals together. But, like anything, it also has the tendency to divide us as well.

Our American culture today is extremely divisive. People seem more vocal about their opinions than ever, and they use Facebook as that platform. To be completely honest, I am guilty of posting my thoughts and opinions on various subjects on Facebook and getting significant pushback from folks who disagree with me. Read more

More Practical Ways to Love & Abide

Last Sunday, I preached about the deeply theological, but sometimes difficult ways to do two things Jesus tells us to do: to love and to abide. This morning, during my prayers, I read these two passages from Scripture: Leviticus 19:1-18 and 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28 which give us even more practical examples of how to do these things.

First, in Leviticus, as the Lord is giving the people of Israel more instruction on how to be holy, through Moses the Lord lays out a few practical examples: Read more

Let Holy Week Interrupt Your Life, April 1-6

As you read this, Holy Week is upon us. For those who may not have grown up with Holy Week as a part of your life, this is the week before Easter, and is without a doubt the most important week in the church year. It is marked by a number of services that lead to the cross on Good Friday. Different churches celebrate Holy Week in different ways. Some, like St. Nicholas, do services every day of Holy Week because it sets that week apart from all other weeks. We hear the events that lead to Jesus’ crucifixion and death. Many would say that without experiencing these services, we have no frame of reference for what Easter really means.

However, the attendance at these services tends to be extremely low. If this is the most important week of the church year, why don’t people participate? Read more

The Hiking/Walking Priest

“Are you still hiking, Fr. Jeff?”

Confession time. The answer is “not as much.” While I certainly love to get up on the Pine Mountain Trail, I’ve allowed my calendar to overtake my hiking time. I used to start my Monday mornings with a 2-3 hour hike, but since adding Grey to the family, adding Bronwyn to school, and adding Katie to the staff, these hikes have become few and far between. Having an administrative assistant has been a tremendous help, so I find that having her allows more time in visiting people, and sometimes Monday mornings work better for folks. That’s not a complaint by any means, as this has only enhanced my ministry at St. Nicholas, but it does change my frequency of hiking. Read more

Morning Prayer Broadcasts Mondays & Wednesdays

My experiment was successful and I had about 10 listeners who joined me last week for Morning Prayer over at mixlr.com.

I received such positive feedback that I’ve decided to broadcast Morning Prayer every Monday and Wednesday morning at 8:45am starting February 20 and 22. You can listen live, or you can go back and listen later in the day. You can tune in by going here: http://mixlr.com/frjeffjackson/live

We’ll try this for Lent, and see how it goes. If it’s well-received, I’ll keep it going, but if not, that’s OK too. Like I said in my earlier post, I’m doing MP anyway, so if folks want to join me from the comfort of their own homes, it’s no sweat off my back.

Morning Prayer Live Stream with Fr. Jeff

Tomorrow morning, February 14, 2012, at 8:45am ET, I will be conducting a little experiment.

After I take the kids to school, and go for a brief walk, I usually come home and say Morning Prayer. Many of you have indicated how much you like our daily devotions on the St. Nicholas website. So putting the two together, plus my hobby of podcasting, I thought it might be easy to say Morning Prayer together in the comfort of our own homes. Plus, I find praying with others either in person or online can make my prayer time even richer.

So tomorrow, I’m going to experiment with this using an app called Mixlr. You should be able to listen in to the live stream on your PC or Mac computers, or even your iPad, iPhone, or iPod. You can listen to the live stream tomorrow at 8:45am by going to this address:

http://mixlr.com/frjeffjackson

During the broadcast, there’s also a chat feature, so you can interact during the broadcast with me and other listeners. If you can’t tune in at 8:45, you can still go to the site later and listen and comment.

Morning Prayer is a brief liturgy (15-20 min.), and I’ll be using the form from the Mission of St. Clare website if you wish to follow along. I could use any feedback that you can give and if it works well, I may start doing this weekly or a couple of times during the week. It’s something I’m doing anyway, so why not do it together?

War of the Surplice

If you look around the inside of an Episcopal Church, you can easily glance over some things for which people have bled and died over. Everything from placements of the altar, to the candles on the altar, to the garb of the clergy, there have been some interesting battles fought in the Christian church.

Take the surplice.

Read more

Governor Perry & Being The Church

There’s been a lot of discussion on the internet and in the news about Governor Rick Perry’s latest television ad. Some of you may agree or disagree with Gov. Perry, and I’m not really interested in bashing the guy over his opinions about homosexuals in the military or prayer in school (although he did tackle quite a few things in such a few sentences!). He certainly has a right to those opinions, and I imagine he has lots of support and lots of opponents.

Besides all the issues he tried to address in his ad, the thing that struck me was in his first words: “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know…” Here is a politician who is both making a religious stand and at the same time giving permission to not be in church. Read more

Parable of the Hiking Father & Children

One of the things I love about living here is having the opportunity to hike. But something that makes life even grander is when my kids express that they want to hike with me.

While the last couple of weeks have been quite hectic, with tornados and all, I did find time to go hiking with my kids on two separate occasions. First, a few weeks ago, Liam and I were itching for some alone time together, so when I mentioned that I was going hiking Monday morning, he asked in his 2-year-old voice, “Can I go hiking with you, Da?” How could I resist?

Liam and I parked at the Overlook Parking Lot, and hiked about a mile up the PMT and back. He did really well for a 2-year-old, and I only had to pick him up and carry him about a half a mile back. Hiking with a 2-year-old on your shoulders is no small feat, so I got quite a workout. He and I ended our trip with a picnic. The benefit of doing this is that when I got him home, he was exhausted and slept for 2 hours! Read more

St. Nicholas is a _______-Driven Church

At the beginning of our Vestry meetings, we spend 20 to 30 minutes at the beginning on formation. I will lead a devotion, or throw out some discussion questions. At our October meeting last week, I read a reading from a book called Beyond Business As Usual by Neal O. Michell. In the reading, Michell talks about Rick Warren’s popular book The Purpose-Driven Church, which many church leaders are using these days to inspire spiritual growth in their congregations. Michell talks about using this book with his own Vestry and, drawing on Warren’s work, asked the Vestry to reflect and discuss on what drives their church. In other words, he asked them to fill in the blank: “Our church is a _____-driven church.”

He talked about how one person on the Vestry claimed that the church was “crisis-driven,” based on their rocky history. This was a turning point for his Vestry and his congregation, as they moved from “crisis-driven” to something more positive.

So at our Vestry meeting, I decided to ask the same question of our Vestry. I asked them to reflect on the last few month in the congregation, our last few Vestry meetings, and be honest about what was driving our church today. I gave them all index cards to write on and some time to think about it. After watching them write for a few minutes, I collected the cards and read them aloud. I’m not sure what I expected, but here were their answers: Read more

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