A Christmas Prayer

Dear Beloved Community,

On this Christmas Eve, it is my prayer that you find yourself in the presence of those with whom you find life, love, happiness, and fulfillment. It is also my prayer that at some point in the coming week, we all reach beyond ourselves to extend radical hospitality and pursuing justice for the common good in hopes of bringing about transformation. Let us all join together in praying for peace where there is war, hope where there is cynicism, and healing where there has been disaster. On this night where we remember the birth of the Christ child and God became like one of us, let us remember the powerful effect that our love and care for one another can have one the people around us. Let us also pray for those who are grieving, and may be experiencing an incredibly difficult time this year.

Remember that there are no Christmas Eve services at Crossroads (St. Luke's), but you are invited to join us at Metropolitan Memorial (3401 Nebraska Ave. NW) four Christmas Eve (5 PM, 7:30 with communion, and 11:00 PM with prelude music beginning at 10:30). Come and join us as we celebrate the birth of Jesus.

December 26: We will NOT gather for worship on December 26. We will meet again on Sunday, January 2 at 5 PM.

Small Group: The Thursday group will NOT meet this week but will resume in early January.

May God grant you peace on this most joyful day.

Merry Christmas,

Jimmy Sherrod

This Week - Fourth Sunday in Advent

The Other Side of the Door

New and unseen things reside on the opposite sides of doors. This is both a blessing – offering new life and possibility – and also a source of anxiety, because we really never know what is there. Isaiah’s prophecy to Ahaz came amidst a time of great anxiety, when Jerusalem was being besieged by the apparently invincible armies of Assyria; and the prophet calls on the king to trust that God is still working. Matthew also tells a story of great uncertainty, an unwed mother prepares for the birth of her child; a man betrothed to a pregnant woman wonders how to respond. How to we address the anxieties of our lives and prepare to trust. The sermon will explore where the trust comes from, and how we live into it.

Join us Sunday at 5 PM for worship!

A 'just' Christmas

alternative way of giving the Christmas
by Rev. Kate Murphey

We are about to celebrate God’s gift of eternal truth and love made tangible in the person of Jesus Christ. As a way of honoring and passing on the hope and joy of such a gift, we, in turn, give one another gifts. It’s a practice meant to ripple out God’s love across our communities and world, drawing all of us closer to one another. Unfortunately, there are some things impeding those ripples. The rampant consumerism coupled with a drive for maximizing profit has led to slave labor, unsafe working conditions, and the depletion of natural resources. We have focused on what we want for ourselves, making sure the right people have our lists. However, Christmas is not about us. It is not our birthday. And in honor of that, I invite all of us to focus on what we want for others, for our communities and for our world.

Give life-giving gifts

So that not only is the gift-receiver blessed, but the gift-maker and the natural resources used to create are as well. Here are names of fair trade organizations to Google where you will find such good gifts:

General Gifts

Global Exchange
Fair Trade Federation
Ten Thousand Villages
Women Thrive Worldwide
Global Stewards

Baby & Kids Gifts

Taraluna
Tiny Birds
Peapods

Food/Drink Gifts
Women’s Bean Project
Garudain
Equal Exchange
Alter Eco

Clothing

Avatar
Market Place India
Maggie’s
Marigold
Global Mamas

Give Empowerment

www.kiva.org is a micro-loan site. Choose an entreprenuer; lend that pesron money; read about how they're doing; receive payment on the loan, and lend the money again to someone else. Give a gift certificate for someone else to do the same.

I saw the transformation such micro-loans can bring first-hand in Nicaragua in 2008: I met a woman, Berta, who received a $300 loan to buy a cow. She went on to establish her own brand and now has eight cows to supply cheese and milk for her family and to sell. Her husband and children have also started helping her with household chores so that she can travel to workshops. She described the experience by saying, “It was like before I was asleep, without courage.” That one $300 micro-loan and one cow changed her world.

As we give this Christmas, I hope that we can look for life-sustaining opportunities that will bless the maker, giver, and receiver.

Peace,

Rev. Kate

A Life of Praise

In a conversation with a friend the other day, I was reminded of the phrase "rhythms of life." All sorts of images flooded my mind. The everyday, normal and routine things that we do that define our life. There are certain rhythms that we have individually, with our family, our work, and our faith community. There are rituals that move us throughout the days, weeks and years. In the rituals of our faith community, we are reminded that a central theme to our life as a community together is worship.

I'm not talking just about the one hour we gather to sing and hear preaching, but rather worship that is woven throughout the rhythms of our lives. This week, we explore the fourth in our series on rethinking church as we seek to have a "life of praise."It is most appropriate to do this on All Saint's Sunday when we are reminded of those who are now a part of the eternal communion of saints but who remain a part of our rhythms of life in memory and through what we learned from them.

As we are preparing to gather again this Sunday, I wonder what a life of praise really means? How does it become a part of our rhythm of life, and more importantly, how are we transformed through the art of praise?

Jimmy

Living to tell the story: Rethinking Evangelism

In general, mainline church people shun evangelism. The reason is multi-faceted and complex. For some, it's because of the negative connotations that come with evangelism (think street preachers and tele-evangelists). For others, it's uncomfortable to share something so personal as one's faith. And then even for others, there's vulnerability and risk involved when we share our faith story. We might even add that some of us do not share because we are not even sure what we believe.

Certainly, there are obstacles to sharing our faith. It's increasingly difficult to share in the postmodern world that doesn't buy into any one truth. Yet, we sometimes forget that the Christian faith is about transformation. If our lives are being transformed, then often that is enough to tell the story. We can share about what we DO know. One parishioner recently sent me a note about why she tells people about her church (which she is clear to identify as the Metropolitan Memorial Cooperative Parish). It was a heartfelt, meaningful, and excellent description of evangelism. It was a combination of action and words. In that note, she said, "Talking about my church is something I can do. I talk about what I do for the church, and other things going on in the church. I talk about my pastors and other leaders who are willing to advocate for the marginalized at their own risk. I talk about leading students on a gleaning trip for Bread for the City. I talk about a hope that I have of hosting residents of the Methodist home for Thanksgiving dinner. I talk about my cool, fun pastors. So, maybe it isn't evangelism per se, but hopefully it will improve some people's views of "church" enough to get one of those "I have faith, but I don't like church" people back to church."

How do we tell our story? How do we rethink church and this thing called evangelism? I invite you into a dialogue rich with dramatic storytelling that weaves together our story of faith with the local church in hopes of changing the world.

The gospel story can and should shape our lives. In his book, Live to Tell, Brad Kallenberg writes, "I cannot judge or confess that a story that involves me is true unless the story shapes my life." Really, sharing our faith story is sharing how it has shaped our lives. That shouldn't be too difficult, right?

Below is a video created from the Rethink Church campaign from the United Methodist Church. It is a great way to get us thinking about rethinking evangelism. What if we could share what we are doing with others?

Jimmy

New Small Groups Forming

As we seek to learn and grown together, we are creating two new opportunities for us to gather in small groups to worship, pray, reflect, discuss and connect. Here are the opportunities:

Thursdays Together: This Thursday night October 28, we will kick off a small group bible study from 7 PM-8:30 in the St. Luke's Sanctuary (at least for the first week). This is a casual, drop-in study, but if you know you are coming, give us a heads up!

Sunday prayer group: A small group will meet for prayer on Sundays at 4:30 just prior to worship at 5 PM. We will meet in the Wesley Room at St. Lukes.

Find out more: www.metrocrossroads.org

Homeless Walk and Pumpkin Fair this Sunday!

Join us for the Walk for the Homeless to benefit the St. Luke's shelter housed in the mission center. We will have two walks: one at 1:30 and the other at 4 PM just prior to worship! Also, a pumpkin fair will be going on beginning at noon! Come and join us -- 3655 Calvert St. NW. More info at www.metrocrossroads.org.

Rethinking Church

So, last week we began our series on Rethinking Church. We talked about service as being the new entry point. Nowadays, it is not a given that everyone is going to come to worship. People long to serve, though. They long to give their time to something meaningful. Many times, serving others is a way to the church. We explored this idea in the context of rethinking church -- what if church was a verb. What if we didn't use it to speak of a building, or a denomination, or location. What if we used it to specify a body of people - a living organism -- moving together in diversity to transform the world. Do you think people would join that movement? I do. Check out this video that expresses some of what we are talking about.

Alternative Community

What's the point of the church? It's sentimental. It can be fake, right? Do you ever want to be saved from Christianity? Jesus called his disciples into something radically different than what was being taught or lived during the day. As a lead in to our five week series on Making Church a Verb, we'll explore the concept of church as truly an alternative community. What would that mean? What would that look like? I want to hear from you? Let's challenge one another to live into God's way of life! We'll begin exploring this on Sunday night at 5 PM at Crossroads. The five weeks after, we'll be exploring specifically how we live into this as a community of faith in the postmodern world. We'll break down one of the five pillars of our parish each week: serving, learning, sharing, caring, praising. All this leading up to our commitment celebration service on November 22.

What are your thoughts to the questions above. Comment here or on Facebook. Also, go to our website for more thoughts at www.metrocrossroads.org.

Peace!

Extending hospitality

Last week, I was thinking about putting things off. You know, "I'll fold those towels tomorrow, or I will put those sheets on the bed later" (maybe that's not the case for some who read this -- you know, deadline oriented people). Nonetheless, it started me thinking about how would we be changed if we were always ready to extend hospitality? How would that affect how we live our lives, and how would it impact others? Just fodder for conversation. I posed the question on Facebook, and I wanted to share a few responses here. I have removed names, but these are comments from my Facebook page:

* "The other half of that thought is how would it change others. The world would have to be a better place."

* "If I was always ready to extend hospitality, I wouldn't be so self-centered. Unfortunately, it is a hard thing to not think about how things relate to me. I strive to have a more Christ-centered life."

* "I always used to get a good feeling putting up my fellow swing dancers for an evening after a dance in Baltimore so they didn't have to drive to DC that night...and then feeding them a full breakfast w/eggs, toast and coffee. Though I (we) can't do that very much anymore with kinder in the house, I still have the hospitality chip in my brain. May I never lose it."

* "Yes, the hospitality chip for home is in my brain. Imagine if everyone was polite and followed the golden rules. As someone else wrote, it would make "the world a better place" if we had world hospitality, kind of like the movie "Pay it Forward". Great movie if you haven't seen it.

* "An amazingly profound question!"

What would you add to this? How would your life be changed if you lived in such a way that you were always ready to extend hospitality? How do we respond to hospitality shown to us?

Jimmy

One day til relaunch

Well, we are one day away from relaunching Crossroads on Sunday evenings! We are excited to share our vision as we seek to build community with each other and communion with God. I hope you can join us at 5 PM tomorrow at the St. Luke's Mission Center (3655 Calvert St. NW). If you can't make it, then please pray for us! metrocrossroads.org.

Changes coming to Crossroads

After much prayer and discussion, we have decided to move Crossroads from Saturdays to Sundays at 5 PM. We hope that this will better serve the Glover Park as we seek to engage our community to extend radical hospitality, transform lives, and pursue justice. We will switch to Sundays beginning Sunday, September 12. We will NOT have worship on Saturday, September 4. Also, after worship on September 12, we will gather in the courtyard for dinner. For more information, visit our website at www.metrocrossroads.org

Figuring It Out

Where do we see God? In what ways do we encounter the divine? What is the struggle that we have with God? Is it in the tension between the evil in this world and the divine goodness? Is it in how one community interprets scripture versus another? The prophet Elijah was face to face with his own struggle --- that God had abandoned him and he was going to die at the hands of his enemies. In this moment, Elijah struggles to figure out what he's supposed to do next. Elijah goes through a struggle at Mt. Horeb, where he meets God...not in the earthquake...not in the fire...but in the silence. The point here is not that one only meets God in silence. Even though Elijah hears God, he comes out of this encounter unchanged. Yet, in his struggle he goes to great depths of faith.

So we may ask: What am I doing? What is the point? What is my purpose? The point here is that God was doing something special. Even in the midst of struggle and in the midst of figuring it out...God was using Elijah. In the midst of this, Elijah chooses to engage God rather than disengage. He wasn't changed immediately. His hopeless disposition remained for the moment, but God uses Elijah.

How do we engage God? How do we open ourselves up to be used by God to care and love for our neighbors? How do we figure it out?

Change the World

Sounds unrealistic, huh? Well, maybe. Maybe God is the one who can really change the world. Yet, maybe not. God uses us to do great things. During the weekend of April 23-25, you are invited to do something in the name of Jesus. You are invited to step out into your community and be the hands and feet of Jesus. In our parish, you are invited to join us for Rebuilding Together on April 24. Whatever it may be, step out and be a part of Changing the World. Watch this video!

Crossroads in Mission: Rebuilding Together

April 24 is the annual "Rebuilding Together" day (formerly Christmas in April). We are putting together service teams who will help repair a home in the DC area. We need people who are willing to help prep on April 17 and work on April 24. There are two shifts available on April 24. The service team needs folks for three work crews that will do the following: Dining Room painting crew - 3-4 people;Upstairs Bedroom painting crew - 3-4 people; and bathroom painting and caulking, 2 people. Given this, we probably need the most people early Saturday a.m. to clean out the rooms, prep for painting, and then prime. If we could get that done by lunch, that gives us the afternoon for the finish coat. The house is located in Northeast DC near Bladensburg Rd. If you think you would like to be a part of these teams, please contact Lee Crockett (leecrockett@verizon.net) or Rev. Kate Murphey (kmurphey@mmumc-dc.org).

The very FIRST Easter Service

After Holy Thursday and Good Friday but before Easter morning, there is Holy Saturday. On this day, at Crossroads, we celebrate the FIRST Easter service of the weekend. We walk from darkness into light. We remember God's deliverance, covenant and promise of salvation. We hear the glorious Easter story of resurrection. We proclaim the Good News once again that God loves us so much. We remember our baptism and that we are raised to newness of life through the power of the Holy Spirit. Join us at Crossroads on Saturday, April 3 as we will share and participate together in the ancient ritual of the Easter Vigil. Through word, song, and Communion, we will share this time together. I hope we will see you at 5 PM at Crossroads this week.

Signs of Life

As beautiful as a fresh fallen snow can be, it is easy to tire of a huge snowstorm on about the third or fourth day. Once the plows have made their way up and down the streets, what we are left with is a huge mess of dirty snow. And then you have to walk over it, around it, and, sometimes, through it. Sometimes the mild winters leaving us wanting more, but not this year (at least in the Washington, DC area). We've seen plenty. After days and days of cold weather and snow on the ground its seems as though the landscape has been encapsulated in a endless black and white photo. It's an image where any sign of color or life is a welcome one. In the past week, I have begun to notice signs of spring. I can see little green sprigs coming up from the ground (they even started poking up through the snow!).

Today, I was walking my dog in the neighborhood, I glanced down and was stopped in my tracks. There is a space that is brown with mud where two very small purple flowers were blooming. Between those two flowers and the green sprigs pushing up through the snow, I was once again reminded of life in the midst of death. I was refreshed with God's invigorating Spirit and subsequent message of life. I am reminded of those moments of darkness (or even blandness) in our lives where hope is scarce and we are not capable of seeing the possibility of an abundant life. Two purple flowers and a couple of green springs poking through the snow reminded that God's love and God's grace is more powerful than any darkness. I am reminded that as recipient's of that love, we, too, are invited to be light in the dark and life in the midst of death.

I love winter. I really do. But I thank God for the promise of spring, new life and hope in the resurrection!

Celebrating a year in ministry

Starting a new church or even a new worshiping community in an already existing church is a challenge. There is the challenge of the unknown. What should we expect? What will it be like? The challenge of fear. What if we can't make it? How long will we last? What if no one comes? There is also the challenge of societies view towards religion, particularly Christianity (of which, some of the criticism is deserved). It is daunting, challenging and overwhelming.

Yet, here we stand one year into our Crossroads ministry. The worshiping community is powerful. It is exciting. It is dynamic. It is deeply spiritual. It connects our life to the ever flowing life-giving baptismal waters that God touches us with. Each week, we are strengthened by God's grace through Holy Communion. Each week, our community reaches out to those who have gathered and say, "you are loved."

There is much to celebrate since we started one year ago. But like our spiritual journey, we are not where we want to be. We should be engaged in further mission to the community and larger city. We desire to go deeper in our Bible Study. We are challenged to think critically about our faith and the role of the church (in a society that increasingly has no use for it). So, we celebrate for a day the past year while we pray and sing about the future.

I hope you will join us for Crossroads this week. We will continue our Lenten journey, we will celebrate, we will worhsip, we will be in community, and we will hope.

See you at 5 PM this Saturday.

Jimmy

Do all the good you can...

Crossroads is participating in a food drive for Bread for the City. Through March 20, you are invited to bring items to Crossroads or our main office at Metropolitan (3401 Nebraska Ave.) to be delivered to Bread for the City.

Seeking to provide healthy food to their clients, Bread for the City suggest donations of the following items:

Canned Tuna, Chicken, or Salmon
Canned Fruit, preferably in its own juice
1 lb packages of Dried Beans
1 lb packages of Brown Rice
Whole Grain Pasta
Canned Vegetables, low-sodium preferred
Canned Tomato Sauce or Spaghetti Sauce, low sodium
Boxed Cereal
Oatmeal

Other non-perishable food items will be accepted as well. We’ve set an ambitious goal of collecting 2010 items. So please contribute generously! Volunteers are welcome to help with the sorting and delivery on Saturday, March 20 from 9 – noon in the Great Hall at Metropolitan Memorial.

We listen to hear...what is our response?

Last week at Crossroads, we explored what it means to really listen to hear God's voice. We listen to hear in the midst of the craziness of life. We listen to hear in the midst of turmoil. We listen to hear in the midst of struggles. We listen to hear when times are good. So what? What if we do listen? What if we don't like what we've heard? How do we respond? When Jesus taught in the synagogue in Luke 4, when he mentioned that he has come not only for the Jewish people but for others as well, they got ticked at him. They were so upset that they tried to throw him off a cliff. How do we respond?

Haiti Emergency

This past Tuesday, a massive 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti. Port-au-Prince was hit very hard, and thousands are feared dead, missing, and injured. People are without homes, food and water are scarce, and many are searching for loved ones. The United Methodist Church, and the Crossroads faith community is calling all people to be in prayer for the people of Haiti. We pray that rescuers will be able to do their jobs, that supplies will reach the needed areas, and that comfort will come to those affected in and outside the country.

In addition to our prayers, you are invited to give to the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). UMCOR is an outstanding United Methodist organization that provides relief across the world. 100% of what you give goes directly to the need. You are invited to give online at http://secure.gbgm-umc.org/donations/umcor/donate.cfm?code=418325&id=3018760

We will receiving a special offering for the relief effort in Haiti this Saturday night at Crossroads. We will also join together as a community of faith to pray for the people affected.

Bokamoso Youth Choir this Saturday

The Bokamoso Youth Choir from South Africa will be joining us for worship this Saturday, January 9 at 5 PM.