Focus on Core Values Part 3

 

This week we are playfully and prayerfully exploring our Core Values of Worship, Caring, Welcome, Belonging, Justice, and Faithfulness.  Yesterday, I offered you my descriptions and definitions of these words.  Then, I invited you to share your ideas and insights with me.  I meant this.  What we are doing here is moving from the “my story” space to the “our story” space.  Where does your definition and description fit with what I wrote?  Where do we have some distance or difference or dissonance?  Note, this doesn’t have to be a “bad” thing.  Think of music, where there is dissonance that makes the music more interesting and engaging, catches your attention.  I encourage you to keep excavating examples of our Core Values from your life and from shared experiences.  When has worship moved you?  When has Sunday morning caused you to yawn?  Both can be informative and have something to say.  When have you felt most deeply loved and cared for, when have you felt pushed to the fringe and fray?  This might also say something about welcome and belonging in your life.  Where do you feel can you be most fully yourself and where do you feel the need to wear a mask?  The truth is that I can feel both at the same time.  I feel like I can be myself as your pastor AND that this role has expectations that people project ~ both consciously and unconsciously.  I long for a world where I can be salt and light.  And at the same time realize and recognize that one grain of salt, one flashlight is not as powerful as a handful of salt and twelve flashlights.  Justice is not an isolated, individual sport.  I love the saying that “individual Christian” is an oxymoron and a contradiction.  Justice longs for connection in its expression.  Justice is built on a foundation of belonging, trying to expand that space for all to find welcome and caring.  Finally, I believe faith is a verb, longing for endless exploration.  Faith is not something that can be captured in a single Creed, although words can be helpful in giving directions.  Faith is evolving and expanding and elastic ~ sometimes I need faith to stretch in new directions and sometimes I need faith to contract for comfort.  For example, I love singing new songs and I love the classic hymns I’ve sung for years.  Both give expressions to what is in my soul.  I pray these words above have sparked and stirred your soul to find some conversation partners and start talking AND listening to each other ~ I pray you will let loose places where “your story” finds an “our story” can feed each other in these days.  Amen.