Spirit of Christ Community and eating and drinking into mission and community!

Jonny Baker speaking on ways into small missional communities talked about eating and drinking together as one way into community among other ways:

“Interesting things can happen when people eat and drink together.”

Each week we gather  to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ as spiritual nourishment to strengthen us for the week ahead.  When I named this blog “Let us break bread together” I  had no idea how much food would play in  my ministry. At Sojourner Truth Ministries we called it Truth Café. Now at Spirit of Christ Catholic Community we gather once a month for a potluck after worship. if someone is not able to bring a dish to share at our potluck, we welcome them to help prepare and we all participate in this setup ,eating, conversation and cleaning up of the area.

Last  Sunday we gathered at Corrina Bakery to talk about what our church means to us and how do we share that message with others.  We discussed the roles that each of us will take on to build our missional community here in Tacoma. We learn about the diverse gifts that our members have to share in the life of our church. We believe that we live a community where there is openness to “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord” in Tacoma

I know that some of our people are not only spiritually hungry, but sometimes physically hungry, we have members for whom the food bank is a necessary safety net. Despite this our community gathers food to donate to My Sister’s Pantry a local food bank.  We take seriously that all can serve and give to worship, learn and serve Christ!
Eating together helps builds community and a strong sense of church as the Body of Christ. We gather to break bread together over laughter, discussions on church and community and our mission. We are exploring the idea of  having a monthly Café on a week night with art, music, prayer and  community as a extension of our communion table.  The greatest blessing is that after a liturgy focused on the presence of Christ in bread and wine, we don’t rush away from worship back to our isolated lives,  but spend time basking in the presence of Christ among us.

 

We know that our community is called to be a multi-racial, spirit-filled, radically inclusive, sacramental church here in Tacoma and that we seek to that in a ecumenical manner influence by the World Council of Churches document on Baptism,Eucharist and Ministry. Discerning how our presence might sustain people with spiritual and physical nourishment in a time when so many people live in social isolation.  We are creating a missional community, in which we invite people  who have been been made to feel out of places in other churches to find room at the Table for them at Spirit of Christ Catholic Community.

As you read Jonny’s ways into missional community,know it does not require lots of money  or people to break bread together ,but it does take willingness to get out of the building and be Church in the community.!

Behold I'm Doing A New Thing!

We know that something happens every week when we celebrate the Holy Eucharist(Mass) that the Holy Spirit descends on the elements to make Christ present in the Eucharist and in us and that whole prayer consecrates. Those who are descendants of  catholic tradition hold this as a core teaching of our faith. It is also important that a community of priest and people are present to celebrate this communal spiritual practice.
I'm  one who loves Eucharistic worship with the core of my being, this love was instill by some amazing priests , nuns, and lay people. It was also taught to me in a particular way by Father Dean Braun,(RIP) who love to bring the solemnity of the Eucharist to bear in the community with incense, proper gestures and posture, traditional elements  of the liturgy and as many boys who showed up on Sunday morning could march in the procession. He wore biretta and cassock, he was thoroughly committed to II Vatican Council worship and principles. He also taught me that charismatic expression and African-American culture could be incorporated into the liturgy. He also taught me that the mass is the school for ministry and that what we do in worship needs to be carried to the community. From visiting the sick, helping the needy, and speaking up against injustice.
For this I will forever be grateful and have seen God move in a powerful way in the many liturgies that I have celebrated since being ordained to priesthood in 1992. I bring all of this as I seek to engage people  with the eucharist, community and justice.
One my greatest frustration with the Independent Catholic Movement that cause me to leave it, was that many people seem satisfied with just being able to say Mass and wear the vestments. There is no effort to build community and ministry and certainly not a lot of effort to reach beyond comfort zones.  I think everyone should have a home chapel for private devotion and common prayer, but ministry must be outside where people are waiting for a word, relationship or  opportunity to began a new journey in Christ.
 While I may not agree with every conclusion that he writes, Robert Caruso offers a good grounding in Theology of the Church in his book, The Old Catholic Church, understanding the Orgin, Essence  Theology of a church that is misunderstood. if we applied the Eucharistic Ecclessiology it would change most of our churches and ministries.  It has been on this journey that I sought ministry outside of the IC/OC movement. I joined a denomination the International Christian Community Churches and founded another denomination the Christian United Church that observed weekly communion and sought to plant congregations.
In this journey I embraced a emphasis on good liturgy, powerful, passionate preaching and having the best music, we could provide without a choir and often with  recorded music. I spent the last five years studying small church ministry, evangelism and congregational development from some great Protestant resources in mainline churches and some non-denominational churches. I sought to apply these principles to a Eucharistic-centered church.
I believe passionately that the first mission of the Church is making disciples of Christ, and all the other things grow out of that mission, justice, community. That mission is accomplished by seeking spiritual practices that will transform the lives of those encountering Christ in the Church. I have experience this in the small but fruitful communities that I have pastored since 2003.
In this journey with the CUC, even though we have this Wesleyan emphasis, it has been interesting that the majority of people who have joined us are Ex-Roman Catholics and people who want to move on from fighting for acceptance in their prior churches, to just wanting to be in relationship with Christ in the eucharist and community.  There has been a new found liberation in the new community.  In the last year, I have experience first hand the renewal of the Independent/Old Catholic movement and have been blowed away how the Holy Spirit moved to build groups that are service about mission and ministry. The Ecumenical Catholic Communion, Apostolic Catholic Church and Old Catholic Church, Province of the United States just to name a few.
In the end, Archbishop Joris Vercammen of the historical Old Catholic Church of Utrecht says that our unity comes from our baptism in Christ. I think that it is more important that we engage in ministry and mission and planting new  communities. Our movement has not grown because we don't plant churches, we don't invite people to become a part of Christ's body.  We engage in internal arguments over jurisdiction, validity and vestments.
 We promote people to the office of bishop,  who have not been called by people  to serve, but often to make our small jurisdiction seem larger. Since I  founded the CUC, many of those who approach me about ministry, first comment is you need more bishops to share the work. Well that is why we have laypeople and priests and many of those duties can be shared. I'm sure that should I take or die, the clergy and people can come together to elect one of the priests to be bishop.
 I know that many of our clergy want to do the right thing and are personally frustrated by their inability to do ministry.  Formation and training whether in seminary or a strong formation program is necessary.  Once you are ordained you still need to continue formation.  We need to learn from our evangelical friends how to plant churches and grow communities, many have more in common with us, bivocational, and some seminary trained and others are not. They have to build congregations from the ground up with no financial support for outside of the community. Many of those principles apply to our movement.
 The most important thing to remember that Scripture says: "Behold I am doing a new thing"  Understanding Catholic Christianity tradition, what new thing can we do in God to serve people in this tradition?  Bishop Stephen Cottrell of the Church of England has written about in Abundance of the Heart: Catholic Evangelism for All Christians and many others.
 
My reason for writing this is to offer a word of hope for those in the  Independent/Old Catholic community and a challenge for us to not be limited by the history of the past, but to move forward not recreating the Roman Catholic Church or letting the focus of our efforts to getting recognition by  Utrecht, Canterbury or Rome, but to gather recognition from the mission and ministry offer to our local communities  which include laity and clergy. It is say that I'm Catholic, not Roman, not Old, not Anglican, but one who believes in the Catholic faith and worship  as practiced by those who left their church of orgin and seeking a new identity in what it means to be a Catholic Christian outside of the traditional churches.
 
I believe that we can build real communities that makes disciples of Christ who change the world.  It  has taken me a journey outside of the Independent Catholic Community to realize the we can and must have the same mission and ministry  as other denominations.
Bishops should be resource people on a diocesan level who empower and offer resources to local communities  to engage in their baptismal ministry and clergy should be equippers of the ministry of all. Laity should know that they are called to active participation in the mission and ministry of the Church.
I'm forever grateful to Father Dean Braun, who started me on this journey of mission and ministry, to the people who have served me and allowed me to serve them to best of my ability. I look forward to meeting and sharing ministry with the Renewed, Refreshed vision of the Independent/Old Catholic Community.
This past Sunday as I gathered my small community in Tacoma, around the altar, my 81 year member raise his hands at the Sursum Corda and throughout the eucharistic prayer, it was beautiful and moving and  a reminder  that as a I serve as the sacramental leader of this community as Presider, I share  a common ministry in which we lift up the Lord. I love my community, my ministry and the priesthood. Now let us renew and refresh to do this new thing in Christ.