Circuit Writer

My column for the March 20 – March 26, 2011 edition of The Tahlequah Christian.

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It turns out that this late Lenten Season is making for a very busy time of the year – and busy can mean a lot of excitement. This year we are definitely living up to that billing, and I want to take a moment to fill you in on what’s going on.

Aside from our Lenten outreach campaign to raise money for our local ministry partners (a campaign that is right on track, by the way – we’ll be giving you a full update this coming Sunday!) continue reading…

My column for the March 6 – March 19, 2011 edition of The Tahlequah Christian.

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As we move forward with a proposed community gardening project here at First Christian, composting is a term we might become a little more familiar with along the way. The composting process involves the decomposition of plant matter and other organic materials into a form of fertilizer useful for gardens, lawns, and other growing projects.  In essence, it’s a kind of recycling continue reading…

My column for the February 28 – March 5, 2011 edition of The Tahlequah Christian.

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It’s not quite yet the Lenten season, but it’s close! Next week, on Wednesday, March 9, we will being the season of Lent with our Ash Wednesday service at 7:00 p.m. We will gather to share a contemplative service of ashes and begin our Lenten journey toward Jerusalem and the cross. I hope that you will join us continue reading…

My column for the February 20 – February 27, 2011 edition of The Tahlequah Christian.

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This is a big week in the mission life of our congregation! Unfortunately, if you weren’t in worship with us this past Sunday, by the time you read this, it will already be half completed – but don’t let that stop you from taking part for just a couple of days. While we’re preparing for an offering to Week of Compassion and discerning the possibility of partnering with Project Osiyo in a community garden, we need to engage in a week of prayer.

In worship, our children helped us pass out a pair of colored stones to take home with us during the week. These are our reminders to pray for the work of Week of Compassion and consider the gift we might offer to continue its mission. Some ideas from the Week of Compassion website suggest praying for the 17.5 million children under the age of 18 who have at least one parent dying of AIDS (mostly in Africa). Or looking closer to home, pray for the 400,000 residents of Chicago that live in “food deserts” where there are no nearby grocery stores and children grow up eating convenience store food, putting them at higher risk for obesity and diabetes. These are just two of many prayers for people in distress we should remember during this Week of Compassion.

Yet even closer to home, we need to remember to pray for those who are hungry right here among us in Cherokee County. Families are regularly making the choice between a much-needed winter coat or a couple of weeks with three meals instead of only two. This is why we must pray for discernment in partnering with Project Osiyo in a community garden mission – it can be a first step in helping to alleviate the hunger experience right here in our own neighborhoods. If we decide to take on this mission, we will have some challenges to overcome and some questions that yet need to be answered, so we need to ask for wisdom as we move forward as to what our part in God’s work here in the world might look like.

It’s a lot of prayer, it’s a lot of discernment, and it’s a lot of need. But it’s also a lot of opportunity to be disciples of Jesus, and we ought to take that seriously!

Seeking God’s justice in a new year,
Clint

P.S. – Don’t forget to bring back one of your two colored stones for worship this Sunday! (Don’t worry if you didn’t receive one – we’ll have more available.)

My column for the December 19 – January 1, 2011 edition of The Tahlequah Christian.

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It’s been an exciting year for our community! As Christmas draws ever closer and we get ready to turn the final page on 2010, there is a lot of storytelling to do – and I’m not sure I’ll get it all done in this one letter, but I want to make sure it arrives in your mailbox before Christmas sneaks past us! So let’s share some of the highlights.

Things picked up and got busy early this past year. After a bit of a vacation from the holiday season, we jumped into Lent with both feet and shared an amazing journey. Six weeks and over $2,000 later, we had helped provide for two new water pumps in drought-prone areas through our partners in Church World Service. And a couple of months later we would send another offering to Global Ministries to help provide safe water in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well. It’s all been very exciting!

Around town, we’ve continued to financially support local agencies, but we also put our hands in. A food drive for CARE Food Pantry, towels and toiletries for Help-In-Crisis and Hope House, other necessaries for Project Osiyo, and paper towels and garbage bags for the Humane Society of Cherokee County – all of this made for a busy year in the life of the church outside of the church. Add to that providing a dozen meals to families at Thanksgiving and another dozen here at Christmas, and we’ve been busy indeed.

However, we’ve been pretty involved inside the church as well. After a grand celebration of Ordination to ministry during the summer, we did some redecorating: new tables in the fellowship hall and new carpet in the sanctuary. It’s been so much fun to see a church at work both inside and out!

Well, I know this doesn’t even begin to cover everything, but I hope it shares a little bit of our very exciting year. I’m looking forward to beginning another year of great things – it’ll be here before we know it! May the peace of the season be with you all, and may God bless our transition into another year of faith, hope, and love.

Merry Christmas,
Clint

My column for the December 12 – December 18 edition of The Tahlequah Christian.

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As the evening was wrapping itself up after our Christmas Program and Tasting Party, I was excited – and it wasn’t just a sugar high from all of the great treats! We had shared a really wonderful evening together and that alone was worth being thrilled about, but I’m even more excited to share that we had a really successful night for the Advent Conspiracy – our struggle against the consumerism of the Christmas season. Between our two outreach operations, we worked to help make a difference in the world around us!

Our first ever Offering of Letters, supported by Bread for the World (www.bread.org) was successful beyond my greatest hopes. We have mailed over 50 letters to the offices of Senators Inhofe and Coburn and Representative Boren requesting that they not overlook the working poor in this season of tax cuts and credits. Our letters will remind them that the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit make a real difference in Oklahoma and our nation, and we feel that it is not only important, but also our gospel calling, to support those who are in need. This was a great outreach of our congregation – and we didn’t ask anyone to spend even a dollar to do it!

Of course, we did go ahead and pull out our wallets to share a few dollars in our first ever donation exchange. Instead of giving gifts in a “secret Santa” fashion, we exchanged charity names with one another and asked our fellow participants to make an offering of $10 (or more!) to the charity that one of our fellow church-goers had submitted. I’m looking forward to hearing back from everyone who has participated by anonymously returning the portion of the form with the name of charity and the amount of the gift given. After Christmas, we will share a list of all of the charities that were blessed by our generosity this year!

I have to say, the generosity and spirit that has been on display around our congregation has brought great joy to me this Advent. I hope that our efforts to make a difference have been life-giving for you as well – I already know that they are life-giving for those in need.

Your fellow conspirator in the Gospel of Jesus,
Clint

My column for the December 5 – December 11 edition of The Tahlequah Christian.

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This week we bring the church budget process to a conclusion with the congregational meeting that will follow our worship service Sunday. This is good news – we have a budget ready for the new year that continues to support our ministries within our congregation and beyond! While this is worth celebrating, I hope you’ll grant me the opportunity to talk about another budget concern – the one that is going on in our nation’s capital.

With the midterm elections creating a shift in power in the House of Representatives in January, we have heard a lot about taxes for the past few weeks – probably more than we ever cared to hear! But in all of the debates over whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for everyone or just the middle class, a couple of key provisions in the tax code that are set to expire have been all too conveniently forgotten: the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC).

Bread for the World (www.bread.org), a Christian organization that works with Congress to promote policies to end hunger and eliminate poverty, promotes an “Offering of Letters.” The offering of letters is a call to Christians to write their senators and representatives and urge them support programs that will work to provide opportunity to low income and impoverished families that often times find it difficult to put food on the table – and this year they are working to support the continuation of the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits.

Why does this matter? In 2006 alone, 309,747 Oklahoma households claimed the EITC and received an average of $1,974 per household in tax breaks. In that same year, 192,848 Oklahoma households claimed the CTC for an average break of $1,028 per family unit. For low-income families that live below the national poverty line, $3,000 a year can mean the difference between basic nutrition or a diet of processed foods high in sugars, salts, and other unhealthy additives. Proper diet for a child can mean the difference between a chance at a healthy life or one lived with recurring illness and disease, a problem we see time and again in the poverty of Cherokee County alone.

So you are invited to conspire to make a difference. The Outreach Committee will be sponsoring a letter writing campaign to our senators and representative, encouraging them to support the renewal of the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits. We will set up a computer and printer at the Tasting Party next Sunday evening to allow you to sign a personalized form letter to our elected officials. Or if you would rather give it a truly personal touch – feel free to write your own letters and bring them to the Tasting Party and we will mail them as a collection to our respective officials. But all you have to do is show up and sign your name to make a difference.

I hope you’ll join me and the Outreach Committee in supporting this important tax credit for fighting hunger and poverty!

Your fellow conspirator in the Gospel of Jesus,
Clint

My column for the November 28 – December 4 edition of The Tahlequah Christian.

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Last Sunday we opened up the Advent season with our Hanging of the Greens service and took our first steps down the path of becoming conspirators in the Gospel of hope taught by Jesus the Christ. In this week’s newsletter, you’ll receive some guidance about how you can move from interested observer to active participant. So let’s get started.

In the sermon, I issued the challenge to take part in our own version of the “Secret Santa.” However, instead of giving white elephant gifts to one another that none of us really want, we’re going to give gifts in one another’s honor – and we get to select the gift! The challenge of our “Sacred Service” gift-giving is to pick a deserving charity or organization for a minimum gift of $10. Included in your newsletter this week you’ll find a worksheet with two forms on it. Simply cut off one half of the form, fill out the necessary information (an organization name and mailing address to send the gift to are required!) and bring it with you to our Christmas Tasting Party on Sunday, December 12. Be sure to leave the line entitled “Donation Amount” blank – that’s for the person who will be giving the gift.

Now the twist to our gift giving celebration is that we won’t know who we’re making the donation for, just the name of the organization that we’re making it to. So instead of making the gift in honor of a specific person, make it in honor of our community, First Christian Church. And, after you’ve made the gift, if you will fill out the line entitled “Donation Amount,” and then place the completed form in the offering plate the following Sunday, we’ll be able to collect a list of all the charities that received gifts in honor our community, and present a total amount for all the gifts made (individual donation amounts will not be made public).

Participation in our “Sacred Service” gift exchange is purely up to you – nobody is required to take part. But considering what even $10 might do to make a difference in the lives of others, I certainly hope you’ll choose to get involved. Of course, this only works if everyone who submits a charity also draws one back out of the hat. So let’s make a difference this year as we celebrate the Advent season!

Your fellow conspirator in the Gospel of Jesus,
Clint

My column for the November 7 – November 13 edition of The Tahlequah Christian.

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I found the following definition from Wikipedia helpful:

Historically, stewardship was the responsibility given to household servants to bring food and drinks to a castle dining hall. The term was then expanded to indicate a household employee’s responsibility for managing household or domestic affairs. Stewardship later became the responsibility for taking care of passengers’ domestic needs on a ship, train and airplane, or managing the service provided to diners in a restaurant. The term continues to be used in these specific ways, but it is also used in a more general way to refer to a responsibility to take care of something owned by someone else.

After reading that, it made me think about just how narrow the term “stewardship” has become when we use it in church. I can speak from my own experience – it came to mean the Sunday we had to talk about pledging money to support the next year’s budget. Yet we can see, over the course of time, it has meant much more than just that.

So why not take a minute to think about what it means for us? How about our collection of box tops and soup labels? Although it’s not really “money” in the strictest sense, the opportunity to provide resources for deserving ministries and schools makes these simple things a resource that we have been entrusted with. Instead of simply allowing them to pass from our pantries to the trash, we can offer a few pennies to support the greater good in classrooms, food pantries, animal shelters, and more.

And what of one another? Are we not stewards of the community which we share together? It’s not very often that we think of our congregation as a resource, but if we look at the ways we have supported one another across the years, maybe it’s fair to think of ourselves of stewards of a community. We are responsible for the relationships we share with one another – so we are actually called to tend to the community which nurtures them.

Unfortunately, that is a discussion that encompasses so much more than what I can tell you in this newsletter. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to continue this conversation Sunday around worship and a meal! So I hope you’ll come join me and the rest of our great community this weekend as we talk about stewardship and share a thanksgiving meal. See you there!

Seeking the path of God’s justice,
Clint

My column for the October 24 – October 30 edition of The Tahlequah Christian.

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This week I was proud to announce in worship that thanks to our outreach collections, we have gathered over one hundred Campbell’s soup Labels for Education. With your help clipping labels, I have already had reason to write a letter to Woodhaven, a program dedicated to providing services to adults with developmental disabilities, sending them our prayers and support – and a hundred labels. I’m hopeful this will be the first of many letters to our friends with the Woodhaven program.

But I think it’s important that we know what transforms the seemingly simple act of clipping labels into an act of peacemaking. continue reading…