INDEX:

RURAL ISSUES

● A Challenge to Rural Churches

RURAL MINISTRY (life and work)

● Old Message for New Age

● To Hear The Pain

● To Help Life the Pain

● Spiritual Needs for Retirees and Beyond

● Making Peace With Your Parents

● Widowhood

● About Accepting Death

● Out Side Looking In

● The Gift of Years

WORSHIP RESOURCES

● Praying With Seniors

● Suffi Story - About Living Gently

● Listening With Your Heart

● Lay Your Burdens Down

● Softening What is Rigid Within

● Letters in the Night

INFORMATION EXCHANGE

● Congregational Stewardship Best Practises Begin in Worship

● From CRCN Chairperson Catherine Christie

RURAL ISSUES

A Challenge to Rural Churches

A major thrust for rural churches in the immediate future is to provide adequate pastoral care for Senior Citizens (65 years plus).

Alberta's Cabinet Minister for Seniors and Community Support announced recently that the number of seniors in the Province is expected to increase by approximately 40% in the next 10 years, and to double by 2026.  Similar statistics can be repeated in other regions.

Because of the Baby Boom Bulge, longer life-expectancy, and the tendency for seniors to retire from urban areas in search of cheaper costs of living, I expect similar statistics can be noted across the country.

At present, churches seem content to visit the sick, comfort the grieving and lead worship services at seniors' lodges and nursing homes.  But there are very few pastoral care committees and fewer clergy and lay people learning how to address the spiritual needs of Seniors.

Gerontologists tell us, according to spiritual care specialist Joan Chittister, that there are three stages of 'old' in our society: the young old (65-74 years), the old old (75-84 years) and the oldest old (85+).  People in each of these stages face specific issues.

●    What are rural congregations doing now to address this important question?

●    What are possibilities for thinking into the future?

●    Would an exchange through the Rural Church Network be helpful?

RURAL MINISTRY (life and faith)

Old Message For a New Age

To Hear the Pain

Fiona works in a coffee shop in a city hospital in Ireland in Mauve Binchy's Novel Evening Class ('96)

Binchy writes about her caring sensitivity.  "She saw the pale, anxious faces of people waiting for appointments, the visitor who had come to see someone who was not getting better, the children knowing something was wrong but not sure what it was ..."

"People had to pay for tea, coffee and biscuits.  But Fiona knew that you never pressed for payment if someone was upset.  In fact, you pressed hot sweet tea into the hands of someone suffering from shock ..."

People like Fiona offer an essential ministry in a world full of hurts.

To Help Lift the Pain

"One of the major tasks of the churches" Oblate theologian and teacher Ron Rolheiser writes, "is to console the world and comfort its people."

He passes on the words of an old priest who was asked what he might have done different if he could repeat his vocation.

"I would be gentler with the people next time.  I would console more and challenge more carefully."  He spoke of how hard he had worked "to set the truth free", to keep challenging the people.  "But I regret that sometimes I was too hard on them."

"If I was just beginning as a priest, I would be gentler; I would spend my energies trying to lift pain from people.  People are in a lot of pain.  They need us first of all to help them with that."

"Comfort, comfort my people" was the commission Isaiah heard.  "Comfort", Rolheiser reminds us has to do with "help in lifting and understanding life's priorities, its wounds, its anxieties, its raging restlessness, its temptations and infidelities, and its sin."

"That comfort we offer must be the product of what we ourselves feel when we come to know ourselves the ineffable, all-empathetic, all-embracing, all forgiving heart of God."

(Prairie Messenger, Sept 3 / 08)

Spiritual Needs for Retirees and Beyond

By the time we approach retirement, we entre the process of coming out of one part of life and going into another.  Some do not willingly let go of what they have known or what they planned for that will probably never come to be.

Life is really a series of lives.  Each has its own tasks, its own glories and despairs, its own barriers and possibilities.  As the end looms closer, Spiritual questions grow every bigger.

We are not alone as we move through our Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and Nineties.  Peers journey alongside, care-givers tend to our physical needs, but who is there to help us look at the spiritual dimensions?

"Spiritual" is a term that is over-looked in contemporary society, and isn't part of the vocabulary of grass-roots people.  But grappling with our spiritual questions, whether we call them that or not, can help all of us grow old gracefully.

Following are a few spiritual issues faced by people around us, issues that may even hang heavy in our own lives.

Making Peace with Your Parents

90% of the population carry burdens of pain and resentment about their parent(s) from childhood, according to Harvard psychiatrist Harold Bloomfield.  These burdens are often so heavy they can stagnate one's development as an adult.

Instead of feeling you are a powerless victim, Bloomfield suggests, you can learn how to make peace not necessarily with your parent(s) but with yourself.

In his book "Making Peace With Your Parents", he provides a process that helps enquirers examine their perceptions and feelings.

Whether one follows the prescribed formula of the book, or is fortunate enough to have a good mentor, the process is not painless - but seeking the freedom from that burden is priceless.

Widowhood

"Suddenly I feel invisible" the widow of 12 months confessed.  "It has taken a long time for me to realize I've always been 'invisible' as I walked in my husband's shadow."

How wonderful to be able to say these things out loud to a gentle listener.  It can be the first step in a healing journey.

About Accepting Death

My elderly aunt was angry with my mother "because she didn't do more to try to make herself better".

"Maybe she's not going to get better," I quarried.

"But then what can anyone do for her?  I can't tolerate feeling helpless."

"Mom's always telling me about the little things you do for her - the two stamped envelopes you brought, the little toy 'exercise machine' that she can work with her finger, and news from out on the ranch ..."  Each of those things gives her something to talk about when others come to visit.  Her joy as the story-teller is in finding something which, in turn, she can pass on to others.

Out Side Looking In

Every congregation has folks who "Drop Out".  In smaller communities many know who they are and maybe even why they dropped out of the fellowship.  But Gordon Bruce Turner contends "The church needs to recognize that dropouts do not leave voluntarily, but crying and screaming."  However "Church dropouts can also be helped to drop back in."

If concerned individuals can approach these persons and "listen to what their pain-filled journey has been about", we can learn a great deal about what the mission of our church should be, and possibly help those persons find some spiritual fulfillment.

The 5 categories for the Canadian Church drop-out that Turner noted in his 1987 book Out Side Looking In

●    Inadequate ministry in crisis times

●    A church not meeting personal needs

●    Changes in life style

●     Conflict with the pastor or a church member

●    A crisis of faith.

The Gift of Years

In The Gift of Years Joan Chittister looks at the many dimensions of the aging process, "its purpose and its challenges, its struggles and its surprises, its problems and its potential, its pain and its joys.  It deals with the sense of rejection that comes from feeling out of touch with the rest of life.  It examines that difference between doing and being, and argues that both are important dimensions of life...  It looks at the temptation to isolate ourselves from the changes occurring all around us.  It looks at what happens to us as our old relationships end and shift, change and disappear in favor of the many new people and challenges that come to take their place.  It talks about the fear of tomorrow and the mystery of forever. It talks about how to cope with it all.  It is a panoply of life issues that emerge with age to bring us to fullness of life, to make us new again."

WORSHIP RESOURCES

Praying with Seniors - Joyce Sasse

O Lord, help us to live our days with dignity and pride.

   May we be like vine-ripened tomatoes

      that store up the summer sun,  turn it to sweetness,

         and thus become ripe and red and tangy.

Thank you for the life you have given.  Amen

Suffi Story - About Living Gently

One day a man decided to start a flower-garden.  He prepared the soil and planted the seeds of many beautiful flowers.  But when they came up, his garden was filled not just with his chosen flowers, but was also over-run with dandelions.  He sought out advice from gardeners all over and tried every method known to get rid of them, but to no avail.

Finally he walked all the way to the Capital to speak to the royal gardener at the sheik's palace.  The wise old man had counseled many gardeners before and suggested a variety of remedies to expel the dandelions ... but the man had tried them all.

They sat together in silence for sometime, and finally the royal gardener looked at the man and said "Well, then I suggest you learn to love them."

Listening With Your Heart - Joyce Sasse

The Advent season is such a tender time - especially for any who face pain or grief.  An excellent tonic for such times is the soul-filled music of Deanna Edwards.  It is about both the pleasant and the painful sides of life's experiences.

Take the grumpy old gentleman she tried to visit in a nursing home.  He turned his back on her and grumbled "folks don't kiss old people anymore!"  Edwards returned the next day with her guitar and words that put his pain to music.  "... I still need the loving arms you put around me long ago / when you were just a child of four. / I still need your happy laughter and your kiss upon my brow, / but folks don't kiss old people anymore ..." He smiled as she kissed his cheek.

To spend time in Edward's presence, or with her music, is to laugh and cry and look for the moments of blessing in one's own life.

There is little music to support those who suffer from prolonged illness.  But one who understands sings "... Teach me to die.  Hold onto my hand. / I have so many questions, / Things I don't understand ... / If you teach me of dying, I will teach you how to live ..." Thus we are able to talk about not being "afraid to say good-bye".

Edwards' deep faith, her joy in life, and her insightfulness as she listens for each person's soul are infectious.  Her gift is a godly gift.

"Let me wrap your heart in music for a moment. / Just forget the worries weighing on your mind. / Let me share with you the song I have to give, / for gifts of love are hard to find." 

(For details see www.deannaedwards.com )

Lay Your Burdens Down - Joyce Sasse

As we approach festive times we are most reminded of our aloneness, for the whole world seems to be celebrating with loved ones and there is an abundance of good cheer.

But the reading of a few pages from Joan Chittister's book "The Gift of Years" has given me a fresh mindset.

In reflecting on "Solitude" this Benedictine spiritual advisor talks about the gifts we have as we approach retirement, and as we move into what lies beyond.  Now we have the liberty to think through what has gone before and what might come after.

For many aloneness is often "thrust upon us" because we are "too sick, too lame, too shy, too angry, or too far away from people to have any kind of social life."  We have the choice of clinging to our misfortunes, or of rising beyond them.

If we are willing to embrace our thoughts about aloneness, this can be the time when we "sort through those feelings, air them, get over them, and go on without the burden of yesterday".  We stop excusing ourselves and look for the rainbows reflecting off our tears.

Each year my Christmas card list grows shorter, and I'm reminded how many loved ones are no longer alive.  Chittister's words comfort me.  "All the people we've ever known, still very much alive in us, come back again (in our memory) to see where we have been, to understand what we have become, to help us chart what it will take to make our final years our best years."

In a powerful funeral narration delivered in Classical Greece after the siege of Athens, Pericles comforted those who grieved by saying "Their soul's live on in the stuff of other men's lives"!

And about "regrets", Chittister writes "there is nothing we can change about what was - except the way we look at it."

Softening What is Rigid Within - Joyce Sasse

"Blessed are the meek" is a Scriptural passage whose meaning has eluded me until recently.  What do "the meek" have to do with inheriting the earth?

But I was touched by the depth of wisdom in this Beatitude after reading Neil Douglas-Klotz's "Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus".

"Healthy are those who have softened what is rigid within", is the way his translation begins, "for they shall receive physical vigor and strength from the universe".

The Wisdom of the Orient has always taught that rigidity is a curse that will result in brokenness.  Like the bamboo, we need to find ways to stay well-grounded but remain flexible so we can move with the forces that threaten us.  The Aramaic words ascribed to Jesus imply this fluid way of thinking.

Some of our rigidities are so implanted in us we fail to recognize their hazardous nature.  Regardless what others may suggest, we close our ears and shout "My way or the highway!"  "Why change?"  "You can't teach an old dog ...?"

The passage suggests the softening comes from within.  In its gentle way it suggests we have a God-given responsibility to seek healing and health.

Then, in almost the same breath, it reminds us we are surrounded by resources that give us physical vigour and strength.  Gifts of God for the People of God.

By watching the rhythm of the seasons, we better understand how death gives birth to new life.

When we feel trapped in the cavernous darkness of night, it is reassuring to know the dawn will bring new light and new perspective.

When we feel isolated and abandoned, look at how the variety of prairie plants protect each other from parching winds, deep cold, and raging fire.  So, too, God gave us each other.

By softening what is rigid within, we can find health and wholeness.

Letters in the Night - Joyce Sasse

Paul speaks about "sighs too deep for words" and reassures his readers that God hears even our most "inarticulate groans".

Such thoughts bring comfort when we face moments of despair.  I believe there are ways we can assist this process by gifting people with words to help them get through the long, dark nights.

By writing prayerful phrases that reflect the groaning person's fears, or feelings of helplessness, or the things that have brought joy, we can provide a means by which they can find focus and feel comforted.

"Letters in the Night" can be just that.  Short epistles, written boldly so they can be easily read, with ink that tears cannot smudge can become an envelope of comfort.

For the 90-year old whose deafness suddenly became total - "O God, I feel abandoned and alone.  I long to hear the sound of another voice.  Others do not realize how frightening it is to be locked into one's self.  In the night I cry out to you.  At the break of dawn the sound has not yet returned.  How will I know when you speak?  Do not be deaf to my voice..."

For the person ready to "go home".  "Lord you have been my companion for so long.  My trust is in you.  When you are ready, take my hand and lead me beyond this place and this time.  I thank you for family and loved ones ... and for this place where I feel safe and cared for.

"Let the silence enfold me, reassure me, and comfort me.  Be ever with me so that I may walk through the rest of my days with dignity and grace ... and be ready to entre the rest that you have promised.  Amen."

"Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.  They shall mount up with wings like eagles ..."

INFORMATION EXCHANGE

Congregational Stewardship Best Practices Begin in Worship

What do we know about stewardship best practices? That is a question I asked several years ago as I began work on a Doctor of Ministry project in which I analyzed giving trends in The United Church of Canada over a six year period. Though our denominational membership is declining in an ever-changing context, total giving to local congregations - urban, rural, and suburban - increased, on average, across the United Church. Dollars given for local congregations increased because per capita giving was increasing - people were giving more generously. I wanted to know whether there were particular stewardship strategies that may have influenced these trends. I discovered a number of clues.

Emphasizing stewardship in worship every Sunday was an important correlation. In sixty congregations that regularly lift up stewardship in worship, per capita giving increased seven per cent more than in churches that did not. These were churches that used Minutes for Mission, "Stewardship Links" (which were in Gathering until recently), stewardship bulletin inserts (see united-church.ca/planning/theme/inserts), and stewardship worship resources such as those offered online at united-church.ca/planning/theme#stewardship. In these churches, preachers used our online sermon starters (at united-church.ca/planning/theme/sermonstarters) to find stewardship implications in the texts for each Sunday, and an explicit Offering Invitation was issued (such as those at united-church.ca/planning/theme/invitededicate). When no other variables were considered, churches that reported regular stewardship preaching - combined with use of our online stewardship sermon starters - reported per capita giving that increased twelve percent more than the average United Church over the period studied.

Consider implementing those things in your worship and see what happens. Identify which things you are doing now, as well as new areas to be tried. Make a plan that incorporates one new stewardship piece in worship every six months. If you are not currently doing explicit offering invitations, that is the easiest place to start.

Stay tuned for future stewardship articles in this newsletter, in which I will share other variables that correlated with increased giving. There were best practices related to educational opportunities and involvement in community social justice concerns, as well as a number of congregational operational strategies. Meanwhile, start with worship. Lift up the stewardship implications in each week's stories. When someone asks when Stewardship Sunday is this year, you can respond - every week! 

Barbara Fullerton is program coordinator for Stewardship Development in the

United Church  General Council.

From CRCN Chairperson Catherine Christie

Hi, Joyce, and others of CRCN - met with a group at Jackson's Point Conference Centre with the Alex Sim Symposium.  It was a great time, and I saw so many who return each year.  It is very neat.

Eric (Skillings) and I held a CRCN meeting on Tuesday evening.  In my mind it was just an information meeting, until that night in bed, I woke up at 2 a.m. and it was very clear to me.  Just like at IRCA Conferences, the duly authorized meeting is the one held with the folks who are there, so all rural churches in Canada are members of CRCN, and those who are at a meeting make a meeting.  This is, of course, not what the bylaws say, but I think it makes sense.  It means that CRCN can meet each year as long as conferences are organized, i.e. the Queens one in the even years, and a western one in the odd years.  (CiRCLe-M at the Saskatoon Theological Union is planning one for 2009 somewhere in the west.)

Eric Skillings is just writing up the minutes from the meeting.

In my 2 a.m. reflection time, I also thought that the Executve of CRCN should be more of a steering committee than a solid Executive, and we can have some come on at each conference (and therefore some can go off).  We have two names of those who want to come onto CRCN Steering Committee - Paul Thoms, an Anglican from Newfoundland, and Steve Spicer, United from Ontario.  Both of them are very dynamic and interested.