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From the Pastor’s Study:Dec. Newsletter

  • Written by Nathan Willowby
  • Published: 11 January 2011

Sisters and Brothers,

 

The Christmas season and the end of the year are upon us. Hopefully you will find yourself with opportunities to celebrate the gift from God of entering the human condition. We proclaim that this entails a redemption of humanity and also shows that life on earth is good, not something to be avoided or abandoned. My hope is that you will experience God as you participate in office parties, family gatherings, gift exchanges, our Live Nativity, and other expressions of service, celebration, and giving.

 

At this time of year, I often think of so many people who have made my life what it is. Just this week I emailed a former professor about the positive role he played in my development as a pastor. I also look at the picture hanging on our refrigerator from my nephew and am filled with joy that he took the time to draw and send it to me. Our expressions of thanks and appreciation can be some of the most meaningful gifts we give at this time of year—don’t miss the opportunities! Christmas can be a wonderful time of reflection upon what we’ve been given, how we’ve done well, and what we should improve. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of reflection. I hope you will take the chance to reflect upon and thank someone for his or her positive influence in your life. A second aspect of reflection is that it helps us to orient our goals for the future.

 

This is also the close of 2010. Looking forward to 2011, what do you hope to do and be? I want to remind us all that Christianity is more than your mental belief and assent to certain statements about God and Christ. If you are one to make a New Year’s resolution, may I encourage you to consider a way that your faith might be deepened this year—either through knowledge and understanding or practice. Don’t accept the story so often told in our society that your religious faith is something private and personal, not to affect the rest of life. Instead, allow your core experience of God’s love to overflow in your use of time, money, opportunities, and challenges. We have a source of life and encouragement in Christ and the gathered community each week. We each go back and forth between being people who need to give and needing to receive. The wonderful thing is that when we live together as a committed community, it almost always balances out.

 

Merry Christmas as you celebrate the gift of Christ!

 

In His Peace,

 

Pastor Nathan

Too Busy Not to Worship

  • Written by Nathan Willowby
  • Published: 08 November 2010

When I was a student at Anderson University we had twice a week Chapel services. Attendance was taken, using your student ID number—probably the reason I still know that number today. We were “allowed” approximately 10 absences per semester. Then when I began Seminary, Chapel attendance was optional—presumably because we would all “choose” to be present in worship. Not everyone however in Seminary chose to attend worship regularly. Often people would explain why with words like, “I’m just too busy.” “I have too much to do.” “I have to finish up the assignment for class.”

One of the memorable messages from my Seminary orientation at Duke Divinity was about those times when we would think we were too busy to go to the midday worship services. The Dean reminded us that especially then…especially when we felt overwhelmed, we would be wise to take the time (one hour) to gather together and worship.

As the leaves disappear from the trees, the frost shows up each morning, and the Milwaukee winter begins to set in, we will all undoubtedly begin our literal or mental checklists. Most of us will become extremely busy with preparation for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Many of our lives will be consumed with shopping, decorating, travelling, wrapping, cooking, and managing end of year tasks at work, school, or home. But we are wise to remember…especially when we feel overwhelmed, worship forms us and orients our lives in a way that transforms us and our understanding of everything else we do. We as people living in our society are too busy not to worship. Too busy not to pray. Too busy to forget Who makes our lives possible and meaningful.

In Christ’s Peace,

Pastor Nathan

What's Our Mission?

  • Written by Nathan Willowby
  • Published: 29 July 2010

 

Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

 

Well the Sermon series is coming to a close. This month we will focus throughout the entire month on what it means to be a church in mission. You will also hear me talk about being a missional church—a name that has come into use recently to talk about a particular view of how churches view their identities, purpose, and activity. My hope for us this month is that a new idea will emerge among us for what we can add to our influence for Christ. In July I challenged us to spend time praying about where God is sending us to be the Kingdom. I hope that your prayers, study, and conversations with each other has resulted in some clarity on what God is calling you to be and do in this place and at this time.

 

One of my favorite writers Wendell Berry emphasizes ‘place’ a lot in his novels about Port William. He talks about the various ways that each ‘place’ has its own history and is deeply interconnected with the rest of the world around it. People in his novels take great care to preserve and nurture their ‘places’ both respecting the past and preparing them for the future. We also have a ‘place’. It happens to be this corner and neighborhood within Milwaukee. Some of us live close and others live further away but where we live is also a ‘place’. What should we do to respect the long history of Crossroads and also follow God’s leading into the future? By the end of this August, I hope that we have a vision for how we are going to be a Bible, Born-again, Gospel, Holy, Unified, Kingdom, and Mission church for the next period of time in our history.

 

I certainly have a variety of experiences in different church congregations where missional activity was happening and I could try to recreate one of those different places here. However, this is about us doing what God has called Crossroads to do and being who God has called us to be. This means for you that I want you to share your insights from prayer and study with me and other members of this body. You can email them to me (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), call me on Fridays in the church office, drop them in my mailbox, or slip them under the office door. You should also take the opportunity to bounce your ideas off other people and see if God is speaking similar ideas to more than one of us. We will look for a time to gather for a meal and have a town-hall type of conversation about how we can extend our witness of God’s Kingdom into our ‘places’.

 

God has given each of us something to do to advance the Kingdom and it’s time for us to expand our ministry influence. Remember, our first task as the church is to witness to the truth of Jesus and his life, death, and resurrection—How can you witness to that truth today?

 

In Christ’s Peace,

 

Pastor Nathan

 

Meaningful Quotations

  • Written by Nathan Willowby
  • Published: 05 November 2010

 

I'm going to begin adding some quotations from those things that I read and hear in my study for sermons and writing.


"The time has come for Christians to extend hands of fellowship and recognition to each other and to find ways of working together for building up the church of God in human society. The walls of sectarianism that tend to divide and separate the people of God must be destroyed, for they are incompatible with the Christian gospel and the Christian concept of life."

--Reed, W. E.: A Story to Tell.

 

“I don’t know how many books are in your library dealing with scripture but whoever wrote them their work will reflect their faith and their worship or their lack of it. It will reflect how they questioned the scriptures and the answers they found from them. Their work will show how they were addressed by scripture and how they answered and responded. Always behind the book is the writer. There is something being shown of the writer’s life. …this is true about any sermon we preach. They will reflect something about the scriptures… The greatest thing anyone can say to you after you preach is ‘thank God I see that text more clearly than I saw it.’”

 

James Earl Massey,

2010 Gardner C. Taylor Lectures--Duke Divinity School

 

‎"Whoever hears the message of the resurrection of Christ in such a way that in it the cry of the crucified has become inaudible, hears not the Gospel but a myth of the victors."

--Johann Baptist Metz in "The Church after Auschwitz"