It was the kind of email that makes me wonder if the work we do even matters. The pastor of a small church asked that we cancel their standing order for Illuminate Friends Bible study material. Here at Barclay Press we get this kind of email from time to time. Sometimes it's because the class is being laid down. Sometimes it's because the local church isn't sure it can afford the expense of Sunday school materials. Sometimes it's because class members are unhappy with the message of a particular lesson or unit.
I thought about how best to respond. After all, Barclay Press can't survive without the support of local churches. I can't afford to ignore these emails. So I asked this pastor for help. Tell me more "about what you are looking for in Sunday school material," I wrote. "This is important feedback for us as we consider how best to move forward, especially since there is no other publisher creating this kind of material for Friends churches." The very next day, I received an email in response, and I realized that this pastor needs our help almost as much as we need hers: "It has always been so convenient to order from Barclay Press."
We're not in this work alone. We do this work best when we find ways to do it together.
Over the week, we emailed back and forth, and we came up with a plan. This morning, I shipped out brand new copies of Adult Friend curriculum from winter 1990/1991 - stories of God's love, stories of faith and faithfulness, stories of Christian living and service. Old material, yes. But also, at least for the members of this Sunday school class, it's a reminder that their continuing commitment to one another matters; and that there are people at Barclay Press in Newberg, Oregon, who want to help.
Eric Muhr
Love God and love people
In a 32-page booklet released in 2004, Meet the Friends, Paul Anderson includes a short essay on worship in which he identifies a "double priority" in the early Friends' "attempt to recover 'basic Christianity.'" That double priority? "Love God and love people (Matthew 22:37-40)." Paul writes that "Friends minimize all else for the sake of throwing all energies in these two directions: worship and ministry."
What happens in worship, according to Paul, is that God's love for us disarms us, changes us, magnifies our own ability to love. "This love is powerful enough to embrace the unlovely, and this oneness of mind often transcends differences of opinion." I think it's this result of worship that makes worship, for Friends, "the means and end of all we do."
As far as I can tell, that also is why we need worship. Paul writes that "worship is the loving interaction between God and the people of God who are the Church." And Paul offers this quotation from The Richmond Declaration of Faith: "Worship is the adoring response of the heart and mind to the influence of the Spirit of God. It stands neither in forms nor in the formal disuse of forms . . . it must be in spirit and in truth (John 4:24)."
It's that phrase from Paul's essay, though, "Love God and love people," that has been turning in me for more than a week now. It might keep turning for awhile. It sounds simple. But my experience suggests it is not, and I'm not sure what to do with that. For now, I am praying that God might help me to love him better and that more of my love for God might leak into my interactions with people. And I am praying that God might help us here at Barclay Press to invest our resources and our "energies in these two directions."
Eric Muhr
Your will be done
In this morning's Fruit of the Vine, Nancy Almquist offers a reflection on Matthew 26:39-42, a reflection in which she considers what it has meant to celebrate the marriages of her two oldest sons and "send them across the country to settle into their new homes." It is, in Nancy's words, "completely new territory. . . . The truth is, I was afraid I was going to lose them; afraid that because we weren't in each other's space at least once a week we would grow distant."
Nancy writes of her pride in what her children have accomplished, of where they are going, of the choices they've made. She also writes of her fear.
In the passage from Matthew, Jesus prays in the face of his grief that "if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done."
Nancy offers a different prayer: "Lord, in what ways have I allowed fear and anxiety to cripple my journey or the journey of another?"
For much of our history as Friends of Jesus, we have used questions or series of questions to guide our worship together, to prompt personal reflection, as spiritual challenge. We call these questions queries. In Nancy's prayer, this morning, I recognize a query. And over the course of these next few days, I'll be asking God to reveal to me the ways in which my fears are obstacles to this journey to which he has called me, this journey that we're on together.
For "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
Eric Muhr