My refuge

Urban Village has become my refuge; a place where I refresh my spirit, fuel my soul, challenge my thought process about how I walk through life and affect others; it inspires me to inspire others, and has become my home, away from home.

-Mark D

The Voice

March 7, 2012

Have you seen that new TV show “The Voice?” The first episode came on right after the Superbowl and so my friends and I casually watched it while we talked. I have actually never seen American Idol, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I was immediately drawn to the people who were singing. Some of the voices were so good that I stopped our conversation to listen in. And of course some of the voices sounded more like how I might sing when on national TV. Those voices too caused me to stop what I was doing.

I only ended up seeing the first episode of the show because I decided to give up TV for Lent. Just as “The Voice” distracted me from my conversations with friends, I had begun to notice that I was allowing TV to distract me from my relationship with God. At the end of a long day, I desired to come home and sit in the presence of my TV. It is how I was unwinding. It is how I would distract myself. Distraction isn’t always a bad thing, and I am looking forward to post-Lenten TV watching but I realized I was so distracted that I did not make enough time to listen to God’s voice. I needed more time to sit in the presence of God and unwind by examining my day. I needed more time to pay attention to God’s voice, which is way more captivating that any sort of TV show I can dream up.

If you gave up something for Lent, I’d love to hear how its going. Have you replaced it with anything that is drawing you closer to God? Are you hearing God’s voice? Send me an email and let me know.

Peace,

Brittany

 

Our understanding of Baptism

February 29, 2012

Who tells you who you are?

We receive our identity from others, from the expectations of friends and colleagues, from the labels society puts upon us, and from the influence of family.

To become Christian is to receive a new identity. You no longer allow others to tell you who you are. Christ now claims you and instructs you. A Christian is one who has “put on Christ.”

Baptism celebrates becoming that new person. That is why the church’s ritual begins with putting off the old, renouncing sin and the evil powers of the world, and pledging our loyalty to Christ.

God Initiates the Covenant

We also believe that in baptism God initiates a covenant with us, announced with the words, “The Holy Spirit works within you, that being born through water and the Spirit, you may be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.” This is followed by the sign-act of laying hands on the head, or the signing of the cross on the forehead with oil. The word covenant is a biblical word describing God’s initiative in choosing Israel to be a people with a special mission in the world, and Israel’s response in a life of faithfulness. The baptismal covenant calls us to a similar vocation.

God Has Chosen Us

Christians have also understood the baptismal covenant in light of Jesus’ baptism. At Jesus’ baptism, God said: “This is my son.” While Jesus’ relation to God as Son is unique, for Christians baptism means that God has also chosen us as daughters and sons, and knows us intimately as a parent.

So the most important things about us, our true identity, is that we are now sons and daughters of God. That is why the introduction to the United Methodist Baptismal Covenant states, “We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through water and the Spirit.”

The introduction also says, “Through the Sacrament of Baptism, we are initiated into Christ’s holy church.”

Baptism Is the Door

From the beginning, baptism has been the door through which one enters the church. It was inconceivable to many that one could respond to God’s grace by reciting the renunciations, affirming one’s faith in Christ and loyalty to the Kingdom, without joining the fellowship of those who are committed to mature in that faith. As the “Body of Christ” in the world, baptism commissions us to use our gifts to strengthen the church and to transform the world.

Why Baptize Babies?

From the earliest times, children and infants were baptized and included in the church. As scriptural authority for this ancient tradition, some scholars cite Jesus’ words, “Let the little children come to me…for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs” (Mark 10:14). However, a more consistent argument is that baptism, as a means of grace, signifies God’s initiative in the process of salvation. John Wesley preached “prevenient grace,” the grace that works in our lives before we are aware of it, bringing us to faith. The baptism of children and their inclusion in the church before they can respond with their own confirmation of faith is a vivid and compelling witness to prevenient grace.

Baptism Is Forever

Because baptism is a sacrament of God’s grace and a covenant that God has initiated, it should not be repeated. However, God’s continuing and patient forgiveness, God’s prevenient grace, will prompt us to renew the commitment first made at our baptism. At such a time, instead of rebaptism, we offer the ritual for the reaffirmation of baptismal vows, which implies that, while God remains faithful to God’s half of the covenant, we are not always faithful to our promises. Our half of the covenant is to confess Christ as our Savior, trust in his grace, serve him as Lord in the church, and carry out his mission against evil, injustice, and oppression.

Baptism Is the Beginning, Not the End

You have heard people say, “I was baptized Methodist,” or “I was baptized Catholic,” which could mean that in baptism they got their identity papers and that was the end of it. But baptism is not the end. It is the beginning of a lifelong journey of faith. It makes no difference whether you were baptized as an adult or as a child; we all start on that journey at baptism. For the child, the journey begins in the nurturing community of the church, where he or she learns what it means that God loves you. At the appropriate time, the child will make his or her first confession of faith in the ritual the church traditionally calls confirmation. Most often, this is at adolescence or at the time when the person begins to take responsibility for his or her own decisions.

If you experienced God’s grace and were baptized as an adult or received baptism as a child and desire to reaffirm your baptismal vows, baptism still marks the beginning of a journey in the nurturing fellowship of the caring, learning, worshipping, serving congregation.

What Is a Sacrament?

The word sacrament is the Latin translation of the Greek word mysterion. From the early days of the church, baptism was associated with the mystery that surrounds God’s action in our lives. That means that at best our words can only circumscribe what happens, but not define it. We cannot rationally explain why God would love us “while we were yet sinners” and give his only begotten Son that we should not perish but have eternal life. That is the most sacred and unfathomable mystery of all. We can experience God’s grace at any time and in any place, but in the sacrament of baptism we routinely experience that amazing grace.

—Mark C. Trotter

 

Being Bold

February 15, 2012

Sometimes trying to be bold is very uncomfortable and sometimes it  is unbelievably awesome. Last year about this time folks at UVC were preparing to hit the streets on Ash Wednesday to give ashes out to strangers and friends. I was hesitant to participate. In my previous years in a church, I had greatly enjoyed Ash Wednesday as a time to mark the beginning of Lent and remind me to turn around to God and live more fully into the Gospel. It was just that I was hesitant to hit the streets with this message. I liked the concept from a theoretical point of view but wasn’t sure if I would be the best person to offer ashes to people. Would I be able to correctly explain what the ashes meant? Would people be angry with me for pushing my beliefs on them? Would people take us seriously? Would they ask other questions that I didn’t have the answers for?

Ultimately my excitement for the ministry of UVC and my desire to be bold won out over my fears and concerns. A group of us ended up spending an hour in the morning in Wicker Park. That evening I spent another hour with some folks in Edgewater. It was a bit uncomfortable at times. There were people that said no and they weren’t nice about it. But there were also these beautiful moments. I got to stand at the train stop and offer people the opportunity to turn around toward God by receiving ashes. And people took us up on the offer. Some were thankful because the ritual was a rich part of their tradition but their schedule would not allow them to stop by a church on that day. Others were not familiar with the ritual and they asked what it was about. I got to tell them it was about remembering where they came from. Marking their forehead with ashes was about marking the beginning of time when they would be more intentional about their walk with God. “Yes! I want to do that,” they would say.

Would you like to join in our bold venture this year? We will again be dispensing ashes all over the city. No experience necessary. Just bring a desire to be bold. Click here to sign up for next Wednesday.

Peace,

Brittany

 

Church Without Walls

February 1, 2012

CHURCH WITHOUT WALLS :: Urban Village Church’s calling to deepen our inclusion and to seek justice — particularly to become a diverse, multicultural church and to serve the urban family.

In Mark 12:29-31, Jesus shared the most important commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.

After months of congregational conversation and discernment beginning in Summer 2011, Urban Village Church collectively felt called by God to deepen our inclusion and to serve the urban family – and to do so in a bold and relevant way. After all, God consistently and repeatedly challenges us throughout the Bible to broaden our understanding of who our neighbors are.

• Micah 6:8: “God has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
• Galatians 3:8: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” 

WHERE WE’VE BEEN

We knew that much would be required from all of us in this challenging, intentional, audaciously divine project: listening and speaking, unlearning and learning, prayer and action, radical dependence on God, and Christ’s love for each other in the process.

We also recognized the all-encompassing, challenging work of inclusion. While our goal is to live out and constantly improve radical, Christ-like inclusion at every level (heart > church > city > world), we first sought candid conversation, reflection and prayer with Urban Village’s leaders. The intentionally diverse Strategy Team deeply discussed and amended our thoughts, seeking affirmation and input from the Rev. Candace Lewis and the Rev. Paul Nixon (both church planting strategists), Urban Village Staff, and Site Teams for conversation, feedback, and amending.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

After five months of conversation and exploration, the Strategy Team offers this foundation on which to move forward:

• This collective calling of Urban Village Church is not a one-year “program” but the emergence of a total new way of being and doing as a congregational culture/church planting movement for the future.  Our plans cannot be solely programmatic but must be extensive and sustainable.
• This calling is so important, so messy and hard and right and good, that we can’t walk naively into it — we don’t want to do harm to anyone as we seek good for everyone. Similarly, this calling is so important, so messy and hard and right and good, that we must actually start it—we can’t fall into the trap of talking ourselves into not moving.
• A crucial undergirding of this project of transformation requires us to address and overcome the inherent barriers and injustice in us, our church, and the world — which are expressions of the deeper and underlying condition traditionally called “sin.”
• A life dedicated to inclusion could begin its transformation at many places. After much discussion, the Urban Village Leadership, Staff and Strategy Team  recommend beginning our calling with an exploration of race, ethnic and cultural inclusion and our current personal and societal barriers to such inclusion.
  • America’s journey with racial diversity and struggle against racism are still relevant today, in ways perhaps unique to other national contexts. Given the stark visibility of this condition, we felt first called to bring all together to share, reflect, pray, and act to dismantle racism (both individually and systemically) as a keystone of our broader inclusion calling.

Even with all that conversation and hard work, we realize that we are still only at the beginning. We have sought to be very intentional, honest, and open to diverse perspectives, and yet we know that with seismic callings like this one, there is never a “good enough”—we can always do better but we can never be perfect.

OUR BOLD, INCLUSIVE & RELEVANT CALLING

We are called by God to be a church—both nurturing home and challenging spiritual launch pad—that includes people diverse in race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual and gender orientation, socioeconomic background, politics, theology, and life experience.

We are called to love God with all of our being and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Our neighbors include people who are different from us.  This love is not theoretical but practical.

We are called to a life-long commitment—not a one-time initiative. We invite all people to join this challenging salvation journey and to take proactive responsibility for the process. Everyone is responsible.

We are called to hold together the belief that all people are created in the image of God with the commitment to overcome the inherent barriers to fully living out that image. While there are many barriers (again, individual and systemic expressions of the underlying condition traditionally called “sin”), we believe that addressing the particular problems of racism and economic injustice will be a means toward the goal of a total congregational culture fueled by grace/inclusion/action/change for all people, in every sphere of life: heart > church > city > society.

WHERE WE’RE GOING

The true life force of this calling to build a church without walls is you, the Urban Village Church community, with the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit. Your participation and feedback are essential to understanding and identifying issues and opportunities to further infuse inclusivity into our culture and all that we do. We are committed to bold, inclusive, relevant courses of study and action beginning this Winter.

As such we invite all of you to join us on Sunday, February 12^th, following worship at every site for an All-Community Gathering. We will discuss in more detail our approach and some exciting opportunities and things we have planned through the year, including retreats, sermon series, small groups and personal reflection programs.

We are excited to begin this transformative work and know changes will happen most fully with all of us in this together. For none of us is as good as all of us. We are the body of Christ.

If you have questions or dreams, we hope that you will join us on February 12th to share them! You can also email us at info@urbanvillagechurch.org before then. After Feb 12th, there will be more information on our website, including programmatic details, opportunities for continued questioning and ideation, point people and feedback loops, and more.

In the name of Jesus, who makes us one,

Christian Coon & Trey Hall, Lead Pastors

The Urban Village Church Strategy Team

The Urban Village Church Staff

 

 

Children’s ministry job openings

Urban Village Church is seeking creative, organized, and energetic individuals who have a passion for children’s faith formation to apply to become one of our Directors of Children’s Ministries.

The successful applicant will have a heart for God, a heart for children and families, and a heart for being a part of a staff team that’s leading a new and exciting church in Chicago.

The position requires skills in volunteer recruitment and training, curriculum development and selection, and administrative oversight. The Director of Children’s Ministries for our Downtown location is 15 hours a week and will also include some attention to our Wicker Park worship location. The Director of Children’s Ministries for our Andersonville location is 10 hours a week. Salary is based on individual’s experience.

For more information and/or to apply for the position, contact Christian Coon, chris@urbanvillagechurch.org. Applicants are encouraged to send a resume and reflections on your approach to children’s ministries.  Ethnic minorities are strongly encouraged to apply.

What Urban Village Church is for

**Digested from our 8/14/11 All-Community Gathering, a snapshot of our community’s commitments, culture, and passions.

WHAT URBAN VILLAGE CHURCH IS ABOUT
1. Core values
• Bold: rooted in the main thing—the Gospel
• Inclusive: bringing down the walls
• Relevant: faith is about living differently/doing something

2. Multi-site, and here’s why:
• Evangelical: sharing the gift that we’ve received/are receiving
• Flexible/reinventing: attentive to cultural change and the subsequent need to reshape our strategy
• Equipping: raises up, equips, and sends forth new lay and pastoral leaders

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE PART OF URBAN VILLAGE?
All are invited to be a companion on the journey, regardless of starting place or pace. At Urban Village, these practices/experiences (the 3Gs) are signposts of commitment:
1. GATHER: commit to gather regularly in worship
2. GROW: commit to grow spiritually through small groups & to build relationships with others
3. GIVE : commit to offer your gifts, passions, and financial resources (we are all challenged to move toward a tithe, or 10% of our financial income) to serve the world

HOW IS URBAN VILLAGE CHURCH ORGANIZED/HOW DO WE HOLD TOGETHER
1. Site teams: responsible for local/indigenous ministries at each site, including invitation and neighborhood outreach, the nuts and bolts of worship (greeting, hospitality, set-up, etc.), congregational care (reaching out to those who may need emotional or spiritual support), and social/community life.
2. Strategy teams: responsible for total culture ministry, including administrative tasks, big-picture visioning, and checking in to see how we’re doing.

EMERGING PASSIONS AND MESSAGES THAT GOD IS GIVING URBAN VILLAGE
1. We are a community of diverse people seeking to be more racially and generationally diverse.
2. We are community that wants to serve the urban family (in the many senses of “family”).

March with Urban Village Church in the Pride Parade!

UVC seeks worship/band leader for Andersonville site

Urban Village Church—a bold, inclusive, new multi-site congregation in Chicago—seeks a band leader/worship leader for our third site, to launch Sunday mornings in Chicago’s Andersonville/Edgewater neighborhood on October 16, 2011.

S/he will be someone who can pull together a band from nothing, loves playing and singing with others (volunteers), and has organizational skills to manage lots of loose threads.

Urban Village Church is very committed to diversity. We strongly encourage all qualified applicants, especially people from racial/ethnic minority groups, to apply.

Our ethos is bold, experiential, fun, welcoming, and eclectic. We are not looking for a rock star or diva but for a very talented someone who enjoys leading people in the countercultural joy of singing *together*.

Basic responsibilities (12-15 hours a week, with potential for more as the church grows):

1) recruiting and overseeing a great *volunteer* band (instruments and vocalists) for each diverse service;

2) choosing, preparing, rehearsing and leading all music;

3) organizing all related stuff (a/v, set-up, rehearsal scheduling, charting, publicity, etc.)

The ideal candidate will lead strongly on guitar and vocals (if you play something else, too, let us know) with a broad musical range:

• folky/bluegrass/acoustic updates of traditional Christian hymns (think Sufjan Stevens);
• contemporary worship music (think Robbie Seay, Chris Tomlin) that gets at both personal connection with God and the community call to make the world a better, more loving, more just place.
• contemporary Black Gospel, R&B
• pop/rock from U2 to Indigo Girls to Ron Sexsmith
• ability to put down the guitar and teach people to sing an old spiritual a cappella, maybe even with different vocal parts.

Interested or know someone who might be? Send an email to info@urbanvillagechurch.org with ALL of the following: (1) a description of your style, repertoire, and experience; (2) a short resume including 3 references and their contact information; and (3) three-five audio or video links to samples of your music/music leading.

The Spiritual Gift of Texting

There are close to 20 spiritual gifts listed in the Bible, but, as much as we keep searching, we haven’t found one that includes texting.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t need (and appreciate) folks who like to text!  We’re looking for folks who’d be interested in sending brief texts to people who visit Urban Village for the first time.  Interested in being on our text team?  Contact Christian at chris@urbanvillagechurch.org