Conversion in the Wesleyan Tradition

This is the book that I am currently reading. It is a series of essays about conversion (duh). The sections are Historical Perspectives, Biblical Perspectives, and Theological Perspectives. I'm just two chapters into it right now, but it is interesting so far. I suspect that the authors are all from the conservative side of the United Methodist Church, but so far that's OK. The first chapter is a discussion of Wesley's Aldersgate experience. The first and second chapters discuss in detail the tension between gradual or incremental conversion and instantaneous conversion. Also, the discussion of Wesley's categories of faith of a servant vs faith of a son is interesting. Click on the photo to go to a link for the book.

Palm Sunday

This Sunday in the church year is actually called Palm/Passion Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary. You can find readings for each Sunday here. The reason the Sunday before Easter was changed to Palm/Passion Sunday is that a lot of churches stopped doing a full-blown Good Friday service. So, you went straight from the Triumphal Entry (Palm Sunday) to the Resurrection (Easter) and the Cross event in between was ignored. To fix this, a liturgy for palms and a liturgy for the passion were both placed on the Sunday before Easter. Thus endeth the lesson.
You can check out our worship bulletin for Sunday, April 1 here. It doesn't have a lot (or actually any) sermon notes, but there is some interesting stuff if you want to get a sneak peek. Our emphasis in our "Starting Over" series this week is "Being Forgiven". I will look at both the palm and the passion narratives and ask the question: What happened to cause the crowd in Jerusalem to go from "Hosanna!" at the Triumphal Entry to "Crucify Him!" a couple of days later? Think about this and come to worship on Sunday. By the way, we assembled all of our "Refuge" signs and they should be in place Sunday!

I got cut...

Yep, I went under the knife at the dermatologist's office yesterday. I had some moles, etc. that didn't look right, so I went to the derm. He cut one off my arm and one off my shoulder. He also cut the wart off my eyelid. You were wondering about that weren't you? It didn't hurt much at all. The doc sent the stuff to the lab but he said he doubted there was anything wrong with any of it. Of course, he gave the lecture about staying out of the sun (this is Arizona and I am fair-skinned and have always been prone to sunburn) and he said something very profound: "Everyone's free to wear sunscreen." OK, he didn't really say that.

The other signs

These are other signs we will be using. The two beige signs will go up front on the stage (that's the plan right now). The white signs are two proofs of the same sign. I believe we are using the bottom one. This is the sign that will hang on the A Building (office building) facing First Street.

The Refuge at Catalina

As I said Sunday, I think our services are awesome! But we do suffer from a lack of identity and a lack of visibility. I have actually been working on (OK, thinking about) these issues for a long time. We batted around some name ideas at a brainstorming session a couple of years ago, but nothing ever came of it. Well, I finally got motivated and around the same time, came in contact with people who could help. Accent Banners and Signs made our pumpkin patch banner for us. They did a great job, had reasonable prices, and were very easy to work with (communicate via email, pick up and deliver, etc.). So, I took the opportunity to get things moving. Worship in the hall will now be…The Refuge. I add “at Catalina” on a lot of the signs because I want people to know that we are clearly a part of Catalina UMC, we are not a separate group renting space. The Refuge stuck out to me for two reasons. I think it says what we want to be: a safe place where people can feel at home and be themselves. I think it also expresses our theology. “God is our refuge and strength, a ever-present help in trouble” (Psalm 46.10). I say “alternative” worship instead of contemporary. I say this because we are an alternative to the traditional worship service, but also because we may use methods or practices that have their roots in the ancient church—hardly contemporary, but not the traditional worship either. Hence, alternative. We will have 3 sandwich board signs out around campus announcing that there is another worship service on campus. I think most of the time new folks coming to Catalina are only aware of the sanctuary services. Lets educate them! We will have a couple of large banners/signs up on the stage (“up front signs”) announcing who we are. And we will have a banner hanging on the front of the A Building (office building) that will announce to all the folks who drive down First Street, who play in Himmel Park, who jog around the park, and to all the day school parents, that there is a casual, come-as-you-are service on Sundays in the hall. For people who want to give church a try, we want them to know where we are. I will also put announcements in the religion section of the newspaper, and when the traditional service does their ad for the third Sunday music emphasis, I will occasionally add an announcement about us also.

We all probably have ideas about how we can “tweak” our worship to make it even better. Feel free to share those. Leave them as comments to this post.

You folks do so much to make our worship what it is. We want to share you and our message and our worship with everyone around.