eSign Gender Reveal Invitation Made Easy

E sign gender reveal invitation

[Music] welcome everyone we are so grateful that you joined us this sunday morning i'm excited to share the theme for today we're going to be reflecting and exploring this idea of being gathered in and to commitment on the one hand as individuals we can expect a certain commitment from the community right that we are truly welcome beloved that we have a freedom to be ourselves and to show up and be accepted and on the other hand what does it mean for individuals to commit to the community as a whole in our own personal lives but also here at church how do we be a people of god who are committed to one another's journeys as we collectively seek out god's will and live out values so once again welcome and let us worship this next song is called in memoriam by the oh hellos and this song is all about grace every day god chooses us and that is quite the commitment if you ask me and all we need to do is to show up as we are and and choose choose god back well it's a long way out to reach the [Music] in the middle of the room and you hold me like you'll never let me go and besides salty water i pray to hold you close but you are far too beautiful [Music] know the treasure that [Music] is [Music] do [Music] uh it's been a long road [Music] beautiful [Music] well as we gather together in this space let's all just take a breath wherever you are will you breathe in with me let's do it again the hebrew word for the holy spirit is rua which means breath that's why every sunday when we gather we want to begin in that space of breath and of life helping to ground ourselves in this space to set apart aside just you know a little bit of time for us to just pause and reflect so as we do that i'm going to light this candle and let us breathe together inviting the spirit and inviting ourselves to listen anew to what it means to be gathered in and to community as we are this morning will you pray with me god of breath breathe in us that as we breathe deeply we might connect with the parts of our brains that remind us that we all throughout this entire world are your children and that all of creation is alive meet us this morning in this light and in this breath amen our theme for today is gathered in and to community you know sometimes when i think about the sense of covenant which is what as a congregational church we mean when we talk about community we are gathered people who we don't come together because we all think the same things or because we have to sign the dotted line to give away our first born children no we come together as a people who say we want to do life together we want to journey together with god and with one another now the reality is as many of you have actually known as i've known in my own story that sometimes when we gather together for community it's been a really painful thing and a painful place where you're supposed to shut your mind off don't ask any questions don't be too much of a problem because if we're going to be in community we better all be easy to get along with and better say you know whatever jeff lindsay says is absolutely the right thing all of the time of course right i hear jeff saying amen somewhere but that's not it when we say we gather together when we covenant to do life with god and with one another we do that bringing ourselves and our stories we do that asking each other to be our best versions and to be good grown-ups so when i think about covenant when i think about community it isn't the sense of like please get into conformity it's an invitation to show up renee brown sociologist social worker psychologist who some of you know of and her book daring greatly references this very idea that the call to be in relationship in community with each other is the invitation to show up as teddy roosevelt once penned let us not be a people who sit on the sidelines but one who enter the arena who emerged from it at times bloodied but we've been willing to risk ourselves and so when we think about what it means to gather in and to community i want us to think about this [Music] what does it mean to show up what might it mean for you and for me to be willing to risk ourselves to be willing to be vulnerable to be willing to let each other see our scars to be willing to turn towards one another this is the invitation to gather in and to community what might it look like for you to covenant to show say it's here where our pieces fall in place [Music] any rain softly kisses us on the face anywhere [Music] singing where we pray cause our hearts are strong enough we can bow cause our music's warmer than blood where we see enough to follow we can hear when we are hollow to where we keep the light we're given we can lose [Music] knows how long it's supposed to last [Music] for the time of our lives is all we've had and we get the chance to say [Music] before we ease away for all the love you've left behind [Music] say it's here where our pieces fall in place [Music] we can feel cause the feeling's fine to betray where our water is [Music] is [Music] before [Music] behind you [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome beloved welcome beloved that is one of the core values of our community here at colonial church it's meant to convey that everyone is welcome period in the fullness of who you are you're welcome as sarah talked about last week in her message everyone has a seat at the table everyone is welcome now this is uh this is a hard one aspiration as i'm sure you can probably imagine particularly for a religious community i know when i first heard that that was one of the central core values and really if you kind of look at all of our core values that's sort of at the very center of it i was a little bit skeptical to be honest part of that skepticism for me was rooted in my own history my own experience when i was growing up as a child i wound up having to go to nine different schools over my 12 years and i constantly experienced what it meant to be an outsider i struggled to belong to know where i to to find or know where i fit and of course not just school experiences right i've been in other church settings and and religious settings where you're welcome if you're willing to toe a certain line if you're willing to agree on a certain political stance or theological doctrine so when i hear welcome beloved i have a deep skepticism and i know i'm not alone some of the people who are closest to me in my life have experienced ostracism because of some position or other that they took that wasn't in total concord with the group that they were a part of the religious community that they were a part of so if there are or folks who are watching today if you are watching today and you or you've been watching over the last you know year or many weeks and you've heard us say welcome beloved and you're skeptical i hear you i know where you're coming from you know one of the things that i've learned over uh the year that i've been here is actually how seriously my colleagues and the people that i have been able to minister with really do take that saying welcome beloved i can remember actually having a conversation with a couple of my colleagues as i was trying to figure out something i was trying to make a decision and and they they said to me essentially when you try to figure out what it means for you to follow jesus you need to follow your conscience you need to be free and you need to feel free to follow your conscience to be yourself now as someone who as i said grew up never knowing if i belonged that was like cool water on a hot day and it really told me that though we're not perfect by any means we really do mean that we really are trying to be a community that welcomes others now you you may be aware um that over these last few weeks and over the weeks that are coming up um we are going to be engaging uh some of the key themes and practices and maybe we might call them hallmarks of our tradition our tradition is is what's called the congregational tradition or a congregational church and we've heard about being gathered around christ and being gathered in the spirit and being gathered at the table well one of the other key hallmarks that that i've discovered for myself when i was doing some uh some reading about our tradition is the idea of a people who is bound together in freedom and fellowship and the the freedom side of that kind of dialectic i guess we could say of that pairing has to do with the notion of freedom of conscience this tradition congregationalism was born in a sense as a protest the early congregationalists who were living in england they uh they didn't agree with the state church and and they didn't agree deep in their bones and they felt that they should follow their conscience and so they separated or they left and sought to to do church in a different way well that idea of freedom of conscience right translated into now means that you and i are free to bring our whole selves to the table to be ourselves to listen to the spirit to discern what is it going to mean for us to follow jesus the other side of that poll though is also important because the freedom that god gives and the freedom that our tradition cherishes cherishes and the freedom that our church and community tries to uh cherish is not just a freedom from not just a freedom from being coerced or being forced or being made to stick into a box you know a round peg into a square hole um it's also a freedom four right and and what is it free for it's for us to be free for each other for fellowship that's the other side of that dialectic freedom and fellowship now when when congregationalists talked about being in fellowship being together being knit together in a sense like any community might want to talk about they like to use the concept that they drew out of the bible of the covenant now covenant obviously if that word sounds strange to you or if it sounds old it's because it is it's very old in fact the congregationalists took it out of the old testament as a way of talking about how they understood their their unity well to kind of boil it down without getting kind of lost in all the details a covenant is just a way of talking about how people make promises to one another in god's presence if you look in the bible you'll find a lot of examples of covenants military agreements can be covenants people can make covenants about how they're going to share a certain plot of land for agricultural purposes but some of the most intimate relationships that people have like friendships and marriage those are also described with the concept of covenant and i think one of the reasons why early congregationalists were especially drawn to this is precisely the sense of intimacy of that last notion right that you make a covenant to be in relationship with one another our covenant the one that uh is the one that we recite if you become a member and every now and then in church we will we will return to this and say it again and again is uh it's pretty old actually it goes back to 1629 and it's called the salem covenant of 1629 and it reads as follows it says we covenant with the lord and one with another and to bind ourselves in the presence of god to walk together in all god's ways according as god is pleased to reveal god's self unto us in god's blessed word of truth so what is this it's promise it's it's a promise that says that we are going to stick together what binds us together is not where we live it's not our backgrounds it's not our race our our ethnicity our gender it's not even that we have a sort of intricate religious doctrinal statement it's that we've made a promise we've made a promise to be in relationship with one another as we seek god as we seek the spirit as we seek jesus that's what it means to have a covenant that is a huge promise in fact uh it's probably fair to say given the the world that we live in uh which is so deeply divided that it to say that what sticks us together is a covenant i'm not sure that that even answers some of the skepticism we might have but the good news is that a covenant is not just a promise that people make to one another it's a promise that they make to one another in god's presence and what that means is that we are not alone in being together it's not uh we we pull up our bootstraps and we just forge ahead being one with one another on our own steam no no it's god who works in us drawing us and knitting us together one of the passages that i was drawn to as i was thinking about this message today and this idea of faith and and and freedom and fellowship comes out of first peter and it reads come to christ a living stone rejected by mortals but approved nonetheless chosen and precious in god's eyes and you are living stones as well you are being built as an edifice of spirit to become a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices to god through jesus christ you are a chosen people a royal priesthood a consecrated nation a people set apart to sing the praises of the one who called you out of the darkness into the wonderful divine life now that that is a that passage there is is uh addressed to the church i mean this is some pretty amazing language that's being used for this small community to whom peter's writing that they're going to be a chosen people that they're a royal priesthood right it's rather remarkable frankly but the most i think remarkable thing or the key thing in that passage that to me seems to shed light on what we've been talking about is that it's god who's the primary actor god is the one who's building them together god is the one who's gathered them god is the one who's knitting them together god is the one who's going to keep the covenant we're going to fail i'm going to fail you're going to fail we're not always going to keep our promise but that doesn't mean that there's not a god who will pick us back up embrace us dust us off and send us together on the journey that we've been called into so my prayer for you and for us is that we will continue to grow into a community that truly is welcoming of all god bless you as we go into the week and reflect on this idea of commitment there's a lot of people and groups of people we've made commitments to i think about my wedding vows and committing to my spouse marine to be a sanctuary of peace to seek the best in her to build towards love and kindness i think about the staff we have here at church and uh the leadership team we we worked on a staff covenant to one another and how we promised to address problems directly and appropriately to really embrace our diversity of opinion and perspective and to speak well of each other whenever we can and this church community as a whole we have our we have our covenant right anyone who becomes a member uh adopts his covenant to walk alongside one another um to live out agape love to share burdens to pray for each other in need right to work together to bring in the kingdom so as you think about all those commitments you've made whether to people in your family friends work your church community your neighbors where do you need to lean in where do you need to recalibrate where do you need to assess how how well you've been living up to that commitment those promises and and this isn't an exercise to shame ourselves this is exercise to to make sure we're living out our lives in the ways that we want to with the people that we care about so this week let's lean into our commitments all right this next song is called sun and it's by sleeping at last the very first line in this song is with golden string our universe was clothed in light and it sets the tone of this piece by piece clothing our universe in intentionality everything was on purpose and then it goes on to say that we may fall in love every time we open up our eyes and that doesn't just happen automatically we have to choose to do that every time we open our eyes we have to choose to fall in love with this earth that is around us with the people that surround us it is a conscious choice to be in that space so i'm going to invite you right now to be in that space with us as we sing this song [Music] [Music] our universe was closed in life [Music] that we may fall every time we open up [Music] [Music] is [Music] infinity times infinity infinity times infinity times infinity [Music] infinity times infinity times [Music] let me be [Music] down [Music] inside [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow [Music] [Applause] is [Music] me [Music] so [Music] was [Music] every time we up we're glad that you were with us today as we have been continuing our theme of gathered in community we're thankful for a christian who's reminded us that we are a covenant people that we gather in and through commitment to one another we'd like for you to experience more of the community by being involved with a variety of other things that are happening in life this church go to our website that outlines all the things that are happening throughout the week and the things that are coming up missionally bible studies all kinds of things find ways to be even more involved in this community following this service we want you to stay tuned because the blessing initiative many of you know that a couple years ago we voted to set aside a million dollars from our foundation to inspire our congregation of ways that we can better serve the community and the world because we are called to grow in christ and serve the world and that blessing initiative committee has done a great job of looking at proposals looking at ideas and now they have some exciting things to share with us of what that has become so stay tuned be a part of that and as you do that pray that god would inspire you to ways that you might already think of being involved with how god's leading us through this blessing initiative then i want you to stay tuned and be a part of christian wins class on congregationalism it's a few weeks in but i think you can catch up and you can learn about our history and what it means for us to be of the heritage of congregationalism he's doing a great job and we want you to be a part of it we also encourage you as a part of this community that you might not only share your gifts and abilities and talents but your financial resources that will help us to continue to do this good work part of being in community is us sharing together for the better good of the work that god's calling us to so you can give online you can do it by your cell phone you can send us a check there's lots of ways to do that so we encourage you to invest in the life of this church as you are able as many of you know we have been in the process of of listening and discerning the spirit in regards to this idea of changing the name of our church some of you might remember that during my candidate for the position of senior minister i i shared a vision in that i believe that god was doing a new thing and so we began pursuing this vision of god doing anything trying to listen well to what god wanted us to be a part of and how god wanted to lead us it became clear to the staff and leaders that one of the hurdles to us pursuing this new thing was our name and so over the last six months we've we've offered town hall meetings we've offered a position paper and several listening sessions and many many many conversations with individuals throughout our congregation well through that process as some of you may know the results of the congregational vote is now in and the proposal to change our name did not meet the two-thirds or 67 percent threshold the vote was 61.5 percent of members in favor of name change and 38 0.5 against well we recognize the disappointment this is for so many of you many members of council staff lay leadership and fellow congress are feeling some form of sadness and discouragement wondering what this means about our vision going forward elective leadership and staff were unanimous in favor of this proposal as a way to look towards the future as a congregational church we are going to abide by our polity and not move forward at this time with the next steps of choosing a new name but through this process we have learned that is a matter of great importance to our community of how we relate to each other and how we relate to the world around us we believe that this is a conversation that needs to continue since listening to the spirit is an ongoing process but recognizing the diversity of perspectives in our own congregation we've been led to put together an idea a plan for leading well going forward so we'll be putting together a survey followed by some town hall meetings for the congregation so that we can find ways to improve our process and and best lead as we believe god is showing a vision for the future this survey these town hall meetings will help us discern if the no to name change was due to process not being together or timing or maybe just an actual no in changing the name of our church in all this one thing that the whole staff and leadership want you to know is that we love you we care for you and the future of this church and we are committed to following jesus and serving the world bless your week to come [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so hi jeff lindsay senior minister i want to update you about what's happening with the blessing initiative you know the blessing initiative where a million dollars was set aside to empower some of our own congregational members ideas that they had about doing good for christ's sake a million dollars set aside how did all that start maybe you can't quite remember you know that this is happening and you probably have been praying about it but how'd that start well two years ago we embarked on a process of reformation we went through a process of reforming who we were and out of that reforming process came five core values we gathered the congregation together we said hey this is what we believe are the core values going forward if that's so what should we be doing with those how can we best represent them in our life as a church and you gave us some great feedback some great ideas and one of the things you said is let's do something good with that money that's in our foundation let's do good for christ's sake and that launched a group of lay people who have literally spent months and months and months hours and hours and hours gifted accomplished generous people who have helped us put together a process develop a list of candidates sing you know figure out how we can whittle that down to those initiatives and those blessings that will help us move forward initially in the life of this church you're going to find out who those people are those ministries are and then i hope that you will prayerfully consider how you will invest your time and energy how you'll get involved in helping us to further the work of this church and to do good for christ's sake so bless you as you think about that pray for that as we go forward as a church [Music] hi colonial church say sarah asked me to talk a little bit about what the vision and dream was for the blessing initiative when we originally decided to do it and it was after reforming and we were looking for an idea to engage the gener and energize the congregation and we knew that innovae had done that and we wanted to give away some of the money from the waters so we decided to use a similar structure to innovate but what we wanted was one that wasn't necessarily for outside social entrepreneurial ideas but for congregational members to share their passions with the church so we developed a similar process to that of innovae only we had champions and people who were passionate about their ideas within colonial we wanted those organic ideas to come up and and then decide on which ones we felt hit the five core values and which ones would engage the church and we've done that we're at the final point where we're going to unveil them here and we are just really excited we had some really great ideas and we feel like that we really whittled it down to things that will engage the church which is what we wanted in the first place was high engagement in these passions of colonial and we wanted them to be things that colonial was about and i think we we did that so i hope you'll be as excited as we are and we'll get engaged in these ideas thanks [Music] after having spent months dreaming and planning and praying the blessing nutrition initiative was ready to launch and then covet hit all of a sudden everybody was on lockdown you remember what it was like last spring trying to figure out how to work and go to school remotely wondering if we needed to disinfect our groceries downloading something called zoom it became clear that just living our lives was going to take everything we had it became clear that people simply were not going to have the bandwidth to be able to complete blessing initiative applications so reluctantly we postponed with a new timeline applications opened in mid-september shortly after kickoff sunday covet also changed the way that we communicated with you about the blessing initiative so many of the ways that our community has traditionally shared news simply were not available there was no bulletin to put an announcement in no in-person information sessions or meetings about an idea you couldn't even share your excitement over coffee in a bagel in the common so we used what was available a combination of old school and new we mailed you a brochure last fall and jeff became a remarkably realistic and surprisingly funny jay leno in a kickoff video welcome to the tonight show here's your host jay leno [Music] we put information on the website and in the e-news and answered questions by phone and email even now our plan was to host a big community event to celebrate these amazing ministries instead you'll soon receive a packet in the mail about these blessings that we hope will excite and inspire you as well as a ballot members can use to approve and affirm them and give a bonus to their favorite next month you'll receive information about the larger initiatives for your approval and affirmation [Music] hello everyone as you all know through the winter months the blessing initiative team has been developing a process that we plan to unveil this spring at the beginning of march the health and economic crisis our nation and the world faced was becoming more intense and by the final week of march unemployment claims had reached 3.3 million i went to our weekly meeting carrying a deep burden of sorrow for all the suffering in our community i felt a strong call to do something it was clear to me that our team needed to respond but i wasn't sure how i decided to see what the temperature in our group was before saying anything we started with a time of checking in for each of us when it was my turn i felt that sense of call once again and i spoke out i told everyone about the sorrow i was carrying the world was different now we couldn't continue to move forward as if nothing had changed we needed to act with more urgency and boldness we are a blessed people we have so much to give we could do something although i didn't know exactly what it turned out that everyone else was feeling the same need so we discussed the difficulty people might have applying for grants in this time we also talked about the initiative from the ministry action team for missions and the staff to dedicate one hundred thousand dollars for immediate needs in our community and then the idea came why not double that amount and give an additional two hundred thousand to the same ministry partners we took this idea to paul bernelson and his team and asked if they thought these same organizations had the capacity to accept a larger gift paul talked with each one of them and he came back with a beautiful proposal this was exactly what i had imagined [Music] hi everyone this is wendy senior i'm spending some time with you today just reflecting on the moments of the blessings initiatives and we had so many great ideas to be doing it face to face and we had so many great plans and then covered and the and the restrictions that we were under had we had to change course so we came to you with our first moment where we taped the late night with jay leno and jeff lindsay was our star and it was so much fun putting that together but what was more fun was at kickoff sunday shortly thereafter so many of you watched it and said it was fun and you had questions and so we felt like we reached you even though we weren't face to face and here we are it's moment number two and this is where we're unveiling our blessings and here we are it's moment number two and this is where you are going to be learning more about our blessings and you'll be getting information in the mail our third moment is february 21st and that's where we will unveil all of the initiatives but the fourth moment is going to be the best and that's when we're going to be all together here in person and we're gonna have a celebration about everything of blessings initiatives everything about this community and everything about this church and that is the one i can't wait for the most so i can't wait to see you then [Music] [Music] i'm steve anderson i was the leader of the screener team the screeners were the the first wave of review after the applications came in our idea was to have as many different uh looks at the applications to then reach a consensus so after the applications closed the screener group which included me plus 10 others looked at the documents submitted we were had required significantly detailed applications so the 11 of us individually and by that i mean separately reviewed them and rank them according to some criteria we had agreed upon previously so we had agreed on written criteria we had three broad categories a compelling idea a church fit or engaging the church and then feasibility is just something that could be done so each person individually uh ranked on a scale of one to five five being the best and then came up with an ultimate number for his or her review then when we're all done the program averaged the scores of all the screeners and then gave each application one number we then of course rank the projects according to those numbers and as it turned out there was a logical gap after the top nine and then the following 20. so we decided nine would be the appropriate number to send on to the next step we hadn't been given any instructions we just thought all of us collectively thought this was a good group so then we passed it on to the researchers and our work was essentially done and the researchers engaged in in-depth consideration that really wasn't possible for us to do using another set of set of eyes so that's where we ended up and that was how we started the process hello i'm jason phillips i was part of the researcher team for the blessing initiative it was our task to take the pool of finalists that were put together by the screening team and do a really deep dive and do due diligence on each of those potential partners to to really evaluate their their fit with our congregation the feasibility of the projects they were putting forward and most importantly the ways for for us to engage with them on an ongoing basis as partners and so our team was able to get to know each of those of each of these organizations we we had detailed applications and plans that they put together with budgets and timelines but most importantly we got to hear from the colonial members that were sponsoring these these organizations and we got to talk to the people the leadership of the organizations as well to really understand their passions and their plans and their and their vision for for making us a part of the work that they're doing and we are so excited to share them with you what you'll find with each of these organizations they're all doing different things in our community but they're all really good things um and most importantly they're doing really good things for people that need it a lot um particularly now during during covent and so what you'll you'll see is that these folks have hearts for jesus and there is just good work that we can partner with i think you're going to be really proud of them some of them you know and will have have seen around as mission partners in the past and some are going to be brand new um but but all of them all of them are doing good work work that we can be proud of and work that we want to be part of and that will engage the world around us and outside of our doors thank you hey everybody i'm terese reiling and i'm here to talk about moment two of the blessing initiative process and i've been involved in this and have had the privilege of being involved in this since it started almost two years ago and i just wanted to let you know that already we've had over 75 members of our church have an opportunity to participate and contribute their skills and time to this process over hundreds and hundreds of hours so i'm super excited to let you know today that you're going to be receiving some time in this mail in our mail this week information on moment two of the process and that's where out of the nine candidates who rose to the top through our vetting process five of them are going to be highlighted in the information that you get this week so take a look at that and see which one out of the five you think after you read through all the information would be worth getting an extra bonus which is 5 000 extra dollars towards their specific initiative so check your mail this week make sure you look for what's coming from colonial church on the blessing initiative and take time to let us know who you think should be the special recipient of this extra money thanks so much for your participation hi everybody my name is john seberg i'm your moderator you know on this whole blessing initiative council's role has really been to stay in touch with what that great team has been doing we've been fortunate to have a couple of few different council members who have been part of that team so it's not been a stranger to us but our ultimate role has been to approve and affirm the outcomes of that team the process and the outcomes i'm i'm delighted to say that we've now done that we have approved and affirmed both the process that they used as well as the slate of award ease that came out of that process and you know those those words really don't do justice to it we are so proud of that team and so grateful to that team for not just all the hours which were many going back over two years but also for the skill sets that they brought the heart that they brought and they totally embraced the the goal of of not only doing good for christ's sake but creating pathways of engagement for every one of us in the congregation in one way shape or form for uh for those awardees so we're delighted can't wait for you to see the roll out on it and once again i want to thank the team very much hi i'm david englebert a member at colonial we are so excited to culminate this long process of the blessing initiatives with really exciting news watch your mailboxes next week you'll be receiving um the blessings which are so important and these are going to be fantastic additions to these organizations and then next month we've got the big initiatives coming so get ready for that thank you for being a part of this and we really look forward to you supporting and helping us in these endeavors thank you [Music] so [Music] you