Tonight we’re going to talk about the next of our values: Formation: Always trying to be more like Jesus and how that is lived out in the portion of our model called Skill Share. We’re also going to talk about some of the details about our participation in Pride!

As for Pride: We got a very generous donation of $500 which allowed us to book a booth at the festival. I wanted to give you a run down of where we’re at with finances and talk a little bit about planning.

I am really excited about the opportunity to do this. It gets us in front of people at a very pivotal time, right before our first preview gathering. Pride should also be incredibly jubilant this year because of marriage equality and so that should help as well. Here’s where we’re at:

*We have enough money to get the booth, banner, social statements, wristbands, and some of the postcards.
* We have four boxes of glow in the dark rosaries donated. I’d like to see us have at least three more to donate. $30 buys a box of 100.
* We also purchased some silly rings in bulk to hand out to anyone and everyone.

We still need some more money for handbills and for stickers.

Now let’s turn to our value for the week: Formation: Always trying to be more like Jesus.

The Formation value is one that is both a community value and a value that we hope individuals in the community will hold on a personal level. This is a value about discipleship, of deepening one’s personal spiritual life as well as being more like Jesus in community with other people.

In this value all of us will be encouraged to find spiritual practices that work for us and that deepen our faith. This will look different for every person. Some people feel close to God when they can get outside and hike and camp. Others prefer praying in quiet chapels. The idea with having this as a value is realizing that there is always more to learn and new ways to grow. We want to always be learning and growing.

Formation happens both on an individual level and together. We can help one another to find new ways to experience God. We can teach one another, point out areas where growth is needed, and strengthen one another for the journey. This idea of formation recognizes that none of us is perfect, that we all need to grow, and that the life of faith is a continual journey.

Formation happens in lots of different ways: through personal prayer practices and reading of the Bible, through conversations with friends, through spiritual direction, through attending Mass and through listening to sermons.

One of the ways that formation will happen on a programatic level is in the portion of our model called “Skill Share”. Think of this as our “Sunday School” or educational component. Skill Share won’t be an ongoing thing, nor will it be the same thing every time. One time it might be a workshop on a particular theological question or passage, one time it might be a 4 week course on a particular book of the Bible. A skill share might be something that someone in the community wants to teach (everything from bike repair, to community organizing, to how to sing in harmony!)

These skill shares will often come out of community needs: Are you wanting to know about different ways to read the Bible? Then we can do a workshop or class. Are you really passionate about something and want to teach it to others? Then we’ll set up a workshop.

The other part of this is allowing people to name areas where they could use some more information or need to grow. Are you struggling to pray and want to explore different types of prayer? Then let’s do that together!

Some announcements as we close:
*If you want to contribute to any portion of Pride, let me know. If you want to sign up for a shift for the table, please do. We need two people there for each shift.

Next week we’re going to be talking about our overall model and our measures.

This week I want you to start thinking about who you will invite to our preview gatherings.

Thank you all for coming. Please feel free to stick around for a while and talk, drink more coffee, etc.

We all know how much damage has been done to LGBTQ people in the name of religion. We also know how many LGBTQ people have wanted to be a part of a church but felt rejected. This will be an amazing opportunity to let folks know that there is a new, Catholic church in town that will welcome and celebrate them just as they are.

Since Saturday I received an anonymous donation to be put toward our Pride presence this year, which is so exciting! I booked our spot at the festival today. With the donation we were able to book our spot, order a church banner, order some giveaways, and we’ll have a bit of money toward printing materials.

But we’re going to need help! Here are several ways to get involved!

* Sign up for a slot to person the table! This will be a fun way to meet new folks, share conversations, and let people know about our new church. You can sign up for a slot here.

* If you want to rock your very own House of the Transfiguration tshirt while hosting the Pride table, you can buy one here.

* I thought it would be fun to give away glow in the dark rosaries at our table. We can get them in boxes of 100 for $30. If you want to donate a box (or more) of rosaries, click the donate button in the sidebar.

* Donate towards printing costs. If we get stickers printed with the House of the Transfiguration logo and website it will cost between $200 and $500 (depending on the number of stickers). Stickers are wildly popular and will increase our visibility.

* To get postcards made inviting people to our Preview Gathering services we will need $220. These materials are a very important way to get the word out about our services. You can donate to cover a portion of the printing costs!

This is going to be an incredibly fun event and a wonderful way to build community and get the word out! I do hope that you’ll sign up to be at the table and chip in to cover some of the costs of making this a great event.

Tonight we’re going to talk about the next of our values: Foment: Stirring up a holy discontent with the way things are and how that is lived out in the portion of our model called Guerilla Movement. But first let’s open with a prayer. This prayer comes from the Celtic Northumbria community:

Lord, You have always given

bread for the coming day;

and though I am poor,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always given

strength for the coming day;

and though I am weak,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always given

peace for the coming day;

and though of anxious heart,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always kept

me safe in trials;

and now, tried as I am,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always marked

the road for the coming day;

and though it may be hidden,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always lightened

this darkness of mine;

and though the night is here,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always spoken

when time was ripe;

and though you be silent now,

today I believe.

Amen

So we’re about halfway through our launch group meetings. The next two weeks we’ll finish up talking about our values and our model, then we’ll take one week off (may 25) because I’ll be at the camp that I direct, and then we’ll be back the first Saturday in June and start to shift our focus to our first preview gathering. In that light, I want to give an update on a couple of things:

It looks like we might be close to having a space to worship come July. We are working out some details, but we are hopeful that this space will be a good fit.

In light of thinking of moving into a new space (and thinking about our first preview gathering) we need to think more seriously about finances and supplies. Right now we are in need of either purchasing or having someone donate a projector and a screen. We are also trying to come up with some money to have a presence at Pride this year. We have some funds toward that endeavor but could still use some more. If you want to contribute, you can use the donate button in the sidebar.

The dictionary definition of Foment is to promote the growth or development of something; in our case it’s to promote the growth and development of a holy discontent.

As we look around the world it is easy to say that things are not as they should be. We can see wars and violence happening every day and say this should not be so. We can look at the disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor, look at poor conditions for workers all over the world, see how broken health care is.

But at the same time it is often easy to forget that things are not as they should be. If you have a job and a place to live, if you have some kind of health insurance (even if it’s not great), if you have the ability to eat regularly. It can be easy to focus on those things and become complacent.

And even if we’re not feeling complacent, the next phase might be to feel hopeless: To look around, see that things are not as they should be and feel like there is not a single thing you can do about it.

The idea of Foment is stirring up that first feeling: Keeping that feeling that all is not as it should be at the forefront of our minds as we walk through our daily lives. We want to notice when things in our neighborhood or our city are broken. We want to notice when the people we see as move through our week need something. We want to always be feeling as if something isn’t quite right because it’s only when those feelings are stirred up that we can act.

You might have noticed the tagline on the Vision Frame: House of the Transfiguration is a base community for resistance, following in the way of Jesus.

The idea of a Base community is a term that comes from Liberation Theology. The idea is that small groups of people form together to both tell people of the good news of God’s love and to do something about the plight of oppressed people, particularly people who are poor. In a North American context churches should be base communities that strengthen their people for resistance.

What do we mean by resistance? I mean, how are we strengthening and equipping one another to resist the dominant ideology of the nation? How are we helping one another to have a prophetic imagination? How are we actively resisting violence, consumption, and greed?

But church is more than just an activist collective. We’re meant to do more than just social justice or to be nice to each other; we are rooted in a study of Scripture and a deep personal faith. We come together because we believe that God is concerned about all people and wants Christians to help make things new. It’s this tension of living in the Kingdom of God; a Kingdom that we believe is both here already and is yet to come.

The life that we live together, the communal practices we share such as: singing and the sacraments are what help us to live out our faith in this tension.

When we think about Foment; about the idea of being stirred up, of having a holy discontent in our lives, the challenge is to face that discontent with hope. We don’t want to be a people that feels helpless in the face of all that is not right in the world. And that is where the Guerilla Movement portion of our model comes in.

The idea of a guerilla movement is a small band of people who can react quickly when a situation arises. In our case this will be our service component. We want to be able to react when needs in our neighborhoods and cities come up. If there is a family who desperately needs food, if there is a fire that burns a community center, if there are people that need comfort or help, we’ll be there. If there are things that we can do to make the places we live better, we want to do them.

But in order to meet those needs we need to be aware of them. This is how Foment and the Guerilla Movement go hand in hand. We pay attention to what is happening in our city and then figure out how we can offer help.

From a programatic standpoint, these guerilla movements are also meant to be short term. A need arises, we help to meet that need and then we move on. That might seem contradictory to the vision of the church, but it serves a specific function:
We want PEOPLE to get involved in things long term, but we want to keep THE CHURCH freed up to react quickly. This means that the church runs lean: Not a lot of programs. We’re a small group of people without a lot of financial resources at this point: We don’t want to spend all of our time and resources on a long term projects.

Long term projects can quickly slide into what’s known as “mission drift”. How often have you been in a place where a program has been running for years and years, no one remembers why it was started, and it’s barely meeting any needs, but no one can bring themselves to end it?

If there is a long term project that an individual is passionate about, they will be empowered to get involved and to commit to that project; but as a church we will run very few programs. In fact, our model encompasses all of the programs that we’ll have for probably the first several years. And any new program will be held up against the values. This means that there are a lot of really good things that we won’t do or get involved in. It’s not because they aren’t important but it’s because they don’t fit our mission. Everything, everything, everything has to fit the mission.

We also don’t want people’s lives to be so consumed with “church” stuff that they don’t have time to get out into the community. We want to encourage people to be involved and active outside of church programs.

• Next week we’re going to be talking about the Value of Formation and how it is lived out in our model through Skill Shares. We’ll be meeting at 6pm on Saturday evening at The Exchange (3405 Chicago Ave. S Minneapolis)

Welcome again to House of the Transfiguration and our launch group meetings! We are so happy to have you here. I’m Fr. Shay Kearns and throughout this Launch group process we’re spending some time digging in to the values and vision of our community as well as how that will play out in our model.

I don’t know about all of you, but for me this week has been really heavy. With all that happened in Boston, with the explosion in Texas, with one more snowstorm; it has all seemed a little bit too much. Tonight as we get started I’d just like us to take a couple of minutes to be silent and offer our prayers to anyone who might need them.
After a few minutes of silence, I’ll close with a prayer attributed to Saint Francis.

SILENCE

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury,pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

Today we’re going to talk about two things: Our value of Friction and the portion of the model that will most often carry out Friction: Cells.

Last week I shared a lot of statistics about what people think of the church and how many of them are leaving because they aren’t finding what they need. One of the things that I think people aren’t finding can’t be quantified by statistics. I think that people both want to be challenged in ways that our churches haven’t been good at, and they want to be known and seen.

Here’s what I mean by both of those things:

They want to be challenged:

I think all of us want to feel like we are a part of something that matters. We want to feel like the things that we are getting involved in make a difference in our lives and in the world. And we also want to be challenged to be and do more than we are right now.

I think the call to being a Christian is one that requires a lot of us. Not in the way that it is often expressed: that being a Christian means you don’t do drugs or smoke or drink or dance or play cards. It’s not about rules and regulations but about changed hearts and lives.

A Christian should be showing the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

A Christian should have an allegiance to God, shown in the example of Jesus, above all else. This means working against Empire wherever it exists, not only to oppose it but to actively stand in the way of it. For me this means living as a citizen of the Kingdom of God and that often stands in opposition to how we’re expected to live as a citizen of the United States.

I believe that God has (and therefore Christians should have) a preferential option for the poor and the oppressed. Christians should be working to eliminate poverty, taking care of the poor, and opposing anything that takes advantage of or further harms those living in poverty. Being a Christian means thinking carefully and critically about money.

I believe that Christians should work against any system that is unjust, fight against systemic injustice of all kinds, and work for peace and the end to war. They should be working for the dignity and health of all people, especially those who are oppressed.

I think that, especially in the United States, to be a Christian does mean that you will look different than those around you. I think that following God in the way of Jesus cannot help but be counter-cultural.

This life is hard. It’s not a checklist of things we need to do in order to win God’s favor, this stuff is a response to the Good News of Jesus’ incarnation. It’s the message the world can be redeemed, that new life can spring from death. It’s the message that the Kingdom of God can be here now if only we would work for it; and the message that the Kingdom of God is here now in spite of us.

To live as a citizen of a Kingdom that is both here and yet to come is complicated. It’s messy. It certainly can’t be reduced to a checklist of things to do or things not to do. But it’s more than just a vague “do good things” and “love other people”; it’s a deep understanding that these empires should not feel comfortable to us. That the pursuit of the “American Dream” is in opposition to the dream of God.

This is a call to a difficult life: A call to consider the cost, to take up the cross, to stand in opposition to the Empire wherever it is found. It is a call to live dangerously; to know that when you question power and privilege that you make people angry, but that you need to do it anyway.

And it’s not just radical acts: it’s radical acts rooted in a deep love of God, in the way of Jesus, and love of people. It’s action fueled by contemplation; it’s serious action and serious faith. It is not perfection but striving. It’s knowing that you won’t get it right all of the time, but that it’s still worth it to try.

To me, all of this is a much more compelling vision than “no drinking, no swearing, no sex.” It’s something I want to be involved in more than “show up to church, give money to the church, make all your neighbors believe in Jesus.” This is the good news, there is more to life than money and fame and power and privilege and success; there is joy and love, community and friendship, peace and sharing, incarnation and resurrection.

But living life in this way; with this deep sense about injustice is really, really hard.

I don’t think being a follower of Jesus can be done alone. We need people to walk with us and to challenge us.

From the very beginning following Jesus was about being in community: It was about the way you treated the people around you. And it was also about worshipping together. The earliest communities met in people’s houses, over a meal. They prayed and shared their joys and burdens. They took care of one another and called each other out when they were behaving in ways that contradicted their faith.

And then there are the monastics and the new monastics who share things in common and devote their lives to communal living as a way to grow more into the people they think God wants them to be.

In order to follow Jesus we need:

Encouragement:

We need people who can lift us up when things are hard. We need people who can pray for us and cry with us. And we also need people who can rejoice with us!

Support:

We need to know that we have people who have our back. That there are people we can reach out to who know us and who love us.

Accountability:

We need people who can call us out when we’re not living in the way that we should be. And I don’t mean this in a punitive or shaming way. I just mean that there are often times when we fail to live in the way that we should. Sometimes we need to be reminded of our values. Sometimes we need to be told when we’re acting out of anger or when we’re saying or doing something hurtful. We need someone there who can say, you’re going about this the wrong way and call us back to Jesus.

This idea of Friction: That we create a spark that ignites change by being in community is both a personal change and a change on a larger scale. By being in community with one another we realize where our rough edges are. We realize the things that push our buttons, the areas where we might be more selfish or impatient than we should be. We realize the ways in which we don’t love well or the ways in which we fail to follow Jesus. That realization should lead us to a deep change in our lives and lead us into being more like Jesus.

But then that change doesn’t just stay on the personal level. When we get a bunch of people together who are changing; who are seeing their lives being transformed, those people want to go out and share that change with others. This ripple effect is what will then transform our city.

 This idea of Friction will be most often lived out in the piece of the model of our community called: Cells.

First a word about why they are called Cells: I have been really influenced by the liberation theology movement. You’ll see a lot of language from that movement sprinkled throughout our vision frame. In countries where Liberation theology is being lived out, often there are small groups of people who are working for liberation from oppressive regimes. As people who live in the United States in places of privilege and power our situation is different. In our context we should also be working for liberation but that means working against the part we play in oppressive systems. A cell is a small group. It’s a group that is meant to be able to react to situations quickly.

Here’s what that looks like in our context:

Cells will be zip code based home groups. You will be meeting with people you live near so that you can be in one another’s lives and so that if anyone needs anything people are close by and can offer it.

They will meet weekly or bi weekly. I know that everyone has busy schedules, but it’s also important for these groups to be consistent and for people to establish relationships built on trust.

They will meet around food. Something powerful happens when we eat together and so these groups will have a meal together. Groups can decide how they want to make that happen: Potluck, rotating hosts who cook, etc.

And these groups are intended to grow and then split. These groups aren’t meant to be closed support groups or secret clubs or cliques that don’t allow anyone else in. Our hope is that people will be so profoundly impacted by being in community together that others will wonder what’s going on and want to be a part of it. When a Cell gets too big it will split into two to allow for more people to join.

These groups are designed to be places of care for the people in them, but they are also of service. These groups are a launching point to start changing neighborhoods and communities. The idea is that, as a group, you begin to get involved in the things that are already happening in your community, that you begin to see needs that you, as a group, can meet, that you begin to be woven into the fabric of your neighborhood.

One of the things this community is about is being “relentlessly local” which means that everything we do is focused on where we live. I think it’s often easy for churches to meet needs in other places (and I also think it’s GOOD that we meet needs in other places), but I also think that it can be too easy to give money to another country or state, too easy to go on a mission trip to somewhere far away, and much harder to see injustice and inequality right where you live. And even when you see it, it’s even harder to do something about it. I think we get scared or feel like we need some kind of emotional distance. The task seems too great. But I think we do a disservice to ourselves and our neighborhoods when we distance ourselves.

Someone asked Mother Theresa how you manage to feed a thousand people. Her response, well, you start with one. That’s the idea here. But first you need to be able to see the one. So by being relentlessly focused on our own communities we can begin to see and meet the needs of those around us and transform our neighborhoods and our city.

Cells will be something that will probably launch slightly later in our model. We need to have a core group of people coming to the Gathering and enough people to warrant splitting into Cells.

These groups won’t be mandatory, but our goal is to get as many people as possible into a Cell group.

There will be some kind of structure in these groups; either a book or Bible study. Specific things so that all of the cell groups are working through some of the same material. But these groups will also be able to take on some of the personality of the people involved.

Let’s begin with prayer:

God,

May everything we do begin with your inspiration and continue with your saving help. Let our work always find its origin in you and through you reach completion. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Today we’re going to talk about two things: Our value of Fusion and the portion of the model that will most often carry out Fusion: The Gathering.

But before we get in to talking about some of the nitty gritty of this value and portion of our model, I want to spend some time talking about the why of all of this.

There are tons of churches in the Twin Cities, why start a new one? There are even tons of Catholic churches, even several independent Catholic churches, so why?

In starting a new church we are not passing judgment on any of the other churches in the area and we’re not competing, but we are saying that there is still something missing. These other churches have provided spiritual homes for a lot of people, done important work in the city, and helped people connect with God and with each other. But for every person that has found a home in one of these churches, there are even more that have not. People who have felt pushed out of church, people who have felt unwelcome, or people who, simply, have not found what they are looking for. Our church exists for those people; the ones who have yet to find a spiritual home. Which is why you’ll hear me asking you to invite people every single week; find the people who long for community but haven’t been able to find it and invite them in.

A lot of people who would be interested in finding a Christian community don’t look for one because of the impression they have of what churches are like.

Recently a book came out called “Unchristian”, which is a reflection on poll data about people’s opinions about the church.  The summary report is fascinating and also pretty damning.

According to the report, “the three most common perceptions of present-day Christianity are antihomosexual (an image held by 91 percent of young outsiders), judgmental (87 percent), and hypocritical (85 percent). Out of the top 12 perceptions of Christianity, nine of the dozen views were negative. (Unchristian Pg 27)”

They went on to say, “many young Christians harbor significant concerns about the Christian faith as well. For instance, four out of five young churchgoers say that Christianity is antihomosexual; half describe it as judgmental, too involved in politics, hypocritical, and confusing; one-third believe their faith is old fashioned and out of touch with reality; and one-quarter of young Christians believe it is boring and insensitive to others. (Unchristian Pg 33)”

These reports tell us a couple of very important things: 1: We haven’t been communicating very well. For each one of those impressions that people have of the church we could point to five or six or more church IN THIS CITY that prove their point wrong. The problem is that no one knows about those churches! But, #2, and this is even more important, the churches that they know that, say, are supportive of queer and/or trans* people are boring or old-fashioned.

When we talk about the value of Fusion, it’s this piece that we’re getting at: A church that fuses together ancient ritual with modern practice. We’ll go into that more in depth in a couple of minutes, but I want to turn to one other piece of this puzzle.

Why start a Catholic church? If people consider church boring, then shouldn’t we be doing something more exciting than a Catholic Mass? Let’s take a look at some of the research about the Catholic church:

According to a Pew Research study: Approximately 1/3 of those who say they were raised catholic say they no longer are. 10% of Americans are former Catholics. Almost all Christian denominations are losing members, but Catholics are by far the worst with the Mainline church a close second. Why are people leaving in droves? The research said that the people leaving aren’t describing themselves as less religious, nor has their belief in God changed, but they couldn’t deal with the politics of the church.

That political divide is striking.

98% of Catholic women use birth control. 64% of US catholics support women’s ordination and 69% support married priests. And only 30% of Catholics believe that being gay should be discouraged.

There has been a lot of talk lately, in the news, and online, about the rise of the “NONES”: These are the people who, when asked their religious affiliation would mark “none”. These are people who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious”, people who say they don’t want anything to do with organized religion. But here’s the thing, there are a lot of people who are leaving the church not because they don’t believe in God anymore, or even because they don’t want community, but because they feel like the church as it exists right now has nothing to offer them. This isn’t how it should be.

Before we go any further I want us to take a moment to reflect. I’m going to play a song by David Crowder Band (a song that highlights some of what we’re going to do musically as a church), and while this song plays, there will be some slides on the tv that ask a question: In this time I want you to picture the people in your life, people in your past or present, that have left the church because of some of the things that we’ve talked about in these statistics.

(Who do you know who has left the church because it’s anti-gay? Because it’s boring or old-fashioned? Because it’s judgmental? Because it’s out of touch with reality? Because it’s too political?)

This idea isn’t about the statistics, it’s not about numbers and percentages, it’s about the people we know that have been turned away or who have chosen to leave because the church didn’t offer them anything any more. House of the Transfiguration is designed with those people in mind. It’s a very specific vision to reach those people.

I believe that following in the way of Jesus matters; that it makes a real difference in people’s lives and in the way they live their lives in the world. And I also believe that as of late the church has done a terrible job of both explaining that and of living that out in the world.

I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in the evangelical church and there is so much I love about the Evangelical church: I love the music and the sense of connecting with emotion during worship. I love the emphasis on personal spiritual growth, accountability in community, and respect for the Bible. I love the way that most of the folks in those churches believe that their faith really, really matters. I also love the way the Evangelical church uses social media, the way they use videos and nice websites to make sure that people know what they are about. But the theology of the Evangelical church; the emphasis on personal salvation instead of social justice, and the condemnation of women and queer people kept me from staying.

After I left that church I trekked through many denominations mostly in the mainline tradition. In those churches I found a theology that was often intellectual and robust, a care for the world and for issues of justice, and worship services that bored me to tears, music that was either mediocre or out of touch, and a lack of anything sensory. There was also little concern with personal spiritual practices. I found myself thinking deeply, but not feeling much of anything at all. I was challenged to change my behaviour but not my heart.

Then I found myself being ordained as a Catholic priest and I started to find a tradition that resonated with me. My first introduction to the Catholic church came through the life and witness of Philip and Daniel Berrigan. They were both Priests who were also peace activists, most famous for their burning of draft files during the Vietnam war. But what I appreciated about them is that their actions were deeply theological, their work was influenced by a deep personal spirituality and a contemplative heart.

And then there is the life and witness of Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic worker; a woman who worked hard but was also a voracious reader. She made sure people got fed and also made time each day to attend Mass and to pray the rosary. It’s this combination; radical politics and action fueled by a deep contemplative life. And it’s not just the radical Catholic left, it’s also all of the monks who show how much prayer matters, it’s the nuns who work for the poor, it’s the ritual and beauty of the mass.

One of the things that I love about the Catholic tradition is that it is so sensory. Worship involves moving your body: kneeling, standing, sitting. It involves the taste of the wafer and the wine. And personal spiritual practice involves tactile experiences like lighting candles, and the feel of rosary beads.

But there were two major problems. 1: There isn’t a place for me in the RC church. I could attend one of the liberal churches but I couldn’t serve as a priest. I want a place where I can serve. A place where I can be all of who I am and still have all of the ritual that I crave. And I know I’m not the only one. There have been a flood of books recently about people converting or re-converting to Catholicism. And some of them have deep reservations about being a part of the church. What if there was a place they could attend that they didn’t have to do mental gymnastics to feel good about? A place where they could both worship and know their money wasn’t being used to fund political causes they disagree with?

And 2: Many of the independent Catholic communities I found didn’t resonate stylistically. They said the Mass, but the music didn’t inspire, or the community didn’t reflect anyone even close to my age, or there was an emphasis on the Mass each week and then nothing else outside of that.

So what if there were a place that takes the best of both worlds? That takes the ritual of the Mass without the social teachings and political action that is alienating to people? What if we take the music, the accountability, the dedication of evangelical churches and let go of the shallow theology? What if there were a church that valued BOTH personal spiritual practice, formation, and heart change ALONG WITH social justice and care for the community? What if there were a church that cared about accountability both within the church and within the larger community?

This is what House of the Transfiguration is about. This is what Fusion means.

We need worship that is:

Accessible:

I once went to Mass at a church here in the cities. It was a place I had never been before and I was still really new to the Mass. I walked in there were no orders of worship, no Bibles, no missals. The church had screens and so I thought, well they’ll just project the responses on the screen. They didn’t. I spent the entire service being worried about not knowing what was going on. I didn’t know when to stand or when to sit. I didn’t know any of the responses. I was left feeling like an outsider.

If the worship service isn’t accessible, then people can’t worship. If they are worried about looking stupid, they can’t experience God.

Relevant:

Worship has to connect to something in our daily lives. It has to be more than just something we do once a week and then go home and forget.

Meaningful:

Worship should touch people, it should move people. It shouldn’t be “boring” or “out of touch with reality”.

Sacramental:

At its best worship is a time that connects us to the holy. It is a place where our imaginations are shaped so that we can envision a new world. It is an exercise in dreaming. When we think about what the liturgy of the Mass means this is where we begin to see the connection: The idea of the Eucharist, of being one community, one body. When we do this in the liturgy we are training ourselves to do it outside of the liturgy: To see other people as part of our body, to see how we are connected. This shaping of our minds and our imagination is what helps us to go outside of the church and do the work of justice.

So how does this play out in the Gathering:

Our weekly worship Gathering is only one small piece of our model, but it is the part of the model that will get the most attention from people who are considering joining our community. When you are looking for a new church often the make or break thing is the weekly worship service: It’s often your first point of contact with the new church and it’s in that space that you decide whether or not you’re going to check the church out further. We want our Gathering to be an experience that invites people not only into the community, but further into their relationship with God; something that inspires them to follow more closely in the way of Jesus. In order to do that our worship needs to be something that people can engage with.

Our worship services will be a mix of the ancient and the contemporary. A mix of the traditional Mass with inclusive language. Music that both celebrates the traditions of the church (Gregorian chant, hymns, etc.) and fuses with music that is more accessible and easier to sing. A really good example of some of what we’re trying to do musically is the album “Give Us Rest” by David Crowder Band. In it they re-envision the Requiem Mass and combine elements of high church music, contemporary pop and rock, and even some bluegrass! It’s this fusion that we’re going for.

And this is very intentional; there are a lot of churches that are excellent with traditional worship. They can bust out the organ and the high church stuff with vigor. Then, on the other side, there are churches that pull off the big rock band worship service, but leave out all of the liturgy. No one is doing quite what we’re going to be doing; pulling in different styles to make something new.

There is also something very powerful that happens when you fuse different styles together. They begin to play off of, inform, and reinterpret each other. Think of cover songs: The best cover songs aren’t when a new band plays the song exactly as it was originally done, the best cover songs are the ones that both honor the original and change it into something new.

And it’s not just the music; it’s also about interpreting the tradition and rituals of the church and making them accessible to people who might have either never experienced them before or who walked away from them. Why would someone pray the rosary or use prayer beads? What is the meaning of celebrating feast days? Why do we participate in Lent or fast? Why do we pray the hours? How does all of this translate to a world that doesn’t understand or value these things any more? How do these rituals shape our lives and our imaginations so that we are following Jesus more closely and changing the world into a more just place? These are the things we’ll be exploring in our worship and our community.

We’ll also be working to explain and walk people through the Mass. Depending on the technology we have available, motions and responses will be either thoroughly printed in a worship booklet or will be projected for all to see. Either way our service will be easy to follow so that if someone walks in for the first time they will know exactly what is happening and what they should be doing. We want people to feel like they can participate even if they have never been to Mass before.

I mentioned before my love of the sensory nature of the Mass: We’ll keep that nature and we’ll also expand on it by bringing in other elements: Visual arts, drama, etc. as ways to engage all of the senses. All of these practices remind us that our spirituality isn’t something that only happens in our heads and our hearts, but should be bodily as well. This reminder of our bodies then spreads out from personal piety into the way we interact with other people.

I believe that following Jesus happens best in community. We need to practice living into the Kingdom of God. We need to practice treating each other with respect, offering each other welcome, making sure that everyone is fed. We need to be reminded of the times when we screw up, apologize for them, and learn to do better. We need to be accountable to one another:

I also believe that people want to experience worship: They want to experience a place where they can be moved, where they can sing together, where they can learn, where they can pray and share each other’s burdens. And they shouldn’t have to cringe through a worship service: They shouldn’t have to be afraid of messing up or doing the wrong thing. They should be able to be comfortable; to wear clothing that makes them feel good, to not be judged for what they are wearing. They should be able to engage with worship in ways that feel right to them, engage with music they enjoy.

This is often an entry point: A place for people to reengage with religious community. It’s a place where we can begin to overturn some of the negative attitudes toward Christianity; like the ones that say church is boring, old fashioned, or out of touch with reality. But the Gathering is only a part of the work we do. It’s our work in the community that will convince people that we’re not hypocritical, judgmental, or anti-gay.

The Gathering space is a place to be refreshed, to be re-inspired, to be encouraged. And then to be sent out to do the work of following Jesus. The Gathering isn’t the only place where we encounter God. The Gathering is really where the practice happens. In our liturgy we practice the Kingdom of God and then we go back into our neighborhoods and our communities and we do the real work of bringing about that Kingdom.

The tension we live in is that this church is both for us and not for us: It’s about us in that we are meant to be community to one another, we are meant to be being formed to be more like Jesus in this place; but it’s also not about us: the community can never be closed, it always needs to exist for the people who aren’t here yet.

Having accessible worship will draw people in and hopefully encourage them to make a commitment to following more closely in the way of Jesus. This is what we’re all about: Moving people to a deeper commitment and helping them to connect with who God is and what God asks of us as Christians.

Some announcements as we close:

• On the table near the donation box there are some cards with the HOTT logo on them. I’d encourage you to either fill out a card tonight, or take one home and think about what kind of commitment you might want to make to HOTT.
• Think about what kind of financial commitment you might want to make. We have the box in the back where you can drop one time donations. We also have the square reader if you want to make a donation by credit card, if you need a demonstration on how to use it, let me know and I can walk you through it.  But I’d also encourage you to think about setting up a recurring donation via paypal. You can do that by going on the church website and hitting the “donate” button at the top.
• Next week we’re going to be talking about the Value of Friction and how it is lived out in our model through Cells.
• This week I want you to really consider who you can invite to come with you next week. Studies show that the most effective way to get someone to try out a church is by personal invitation. Who do you know who is longing for community? Will you invite them to come with you next week? Remember, we have these Launch invite cards, you can write a note or a reminder on the back and give them to your friends.
• Another easy thing to do is “like” the church Facebook page and invite others to “like” it as well. Then people will see events, recaps on the blog, photos of the church, and more.

Thank you all for coming.

For our first evening together we looked at one of our values: Feast: All are welcome at the table and all are fed. (You can see the entire vision for the community by downloading the Vision Frame pdf at the end of this post)

We started with introductions: Name and preferred gender pronoun. Because we are a trans* inclusive community it’s important that we make sure we are being respectful of one another. It’s easy to assume that you know what pronoun a person uses, but that might not always be accurate. We want to make sure that people have a chance to say what pronoun they want used for themselves, and then we want to make sure that we are respecting them by using that pronoun.

I walked us through the Launch Process: 10 to 12 weeks of weekly meetings to dig into the vision of House of the Transfiguration. Meeting at The Exchange. These evenings will include conversations about the Vision and Model, get to know you activities. These nights are designed as in introduction to the church we’re building.

After the weekly meetings we’ll hold three preview gatherings: One in July, one in August, and one in September. These will be a full service that allows us to invite people to come and check us out. These preview gatherings will hopefully be in our worship space.

Then we’ll launch our weekly gatherings the first week of October.

This whole process is designed to create some momentum and grow the community so that when we launch the weekly services in October we have a group of folks who are committed to the vision of the community and we can grow from there.

Digging into the vision: Take a look at the vision frame. This explains the way that all of the various pieces of the values and model come together. Over the next several weeks we’ll take this apart and talk about things one by one. We’ll look at how the pieces intersect and how they’ll show up in the lived reality of our community.

The first piece of the Vision of House of the Transfiguration is the value of Feast: A place where all are welcome and all are fed.

As I’ve met with some of you over the past couple of months there were many shared connections between you: Some of you have been in church communities where you have felt incredibly unwelcome. You’ve been told you weren’t welcome at the Communion table, or in the community. Painful stories.

For others, you spoke of your commitment to issues of justice. You are concerned that the church be a place that works to make sure that people have what they need.

These two threads are what bind the value of Feast together.

We are committed to being a generous church: Generous in our welcome of all people, generous in our hospitality, generous the way we give of our time, talents, and resources.

All people are welcome here at House of the Transfiguration. Welcome in the community, welcome to take part in the Eucharist. We want to be generous in extending that welcome to other people. We want to be sharing this message with people who need to hear it: That God is a God of generous welcome.

We know that we are so loved and so welcomed by God that we want to share that love and welcome with others.

But this idea of welcome isn’t just about the people inside of the church: We want to work with the larger community on issues of justice making sure that people in our city have the resources they need to live healthy and whole lives. This means working on issues around food and housing.

As a part of our commitment to being a generous people; a portion of all our offerings will go back into the community. We’re going to be relentlessly local with our giving putting money back into the community in which we reside, making sure that we’re making a difference.

We want people to know that House of the Transfiguration is committed to being a transforming force in the city. We want to be such that people would miss us if we were gone! That we are creating real, concrete benefits for people in our city.

So what will it mean to live out the value of Feast?

*Invite people to this launch group and to be a part of the community.
*Get involved in community initiatives that work on bring justice to our community.
*Give generously.
* Partake of the Feast

Community Building: Break up in groups of 2 or 3 and talk about: What is the best meal that you’ve ever had (and don’t just think about food, think about the entire experience of the meal/situation)? What was it that made the meal so special?

We read Luke 5: 27-39 as a group and spent a bit of time talking about what stood out to us about the passage and how it related to the value of “Feast”.

One of the things that I want to stress about forming this new community is that this community isn’t a reaction to other churches: We’re not about being reactionary, but about creating something completely new. Creating a space for people who haven’t been able to find spaces before. Instead of putting new wine in old wine skins we want to create something that is completely new.

Download the Vision Frame

Here are answers to some questions you might be asking:

What is a Launch Group?

A launch group is a group of people who meeting weekly for a certain period of time to learn more about the vision and values of House of the Transfiguration.

Who is the Launch Group for?

These meetings are open to anyone and everyone who has an interest in learning more about the church.

What can I expect if I come to a Launch Group meeting?

Launch group meetings will last for about an hour and a half. We’ll spend some time looking at part of the vision plan for House of the Transfiguration, part of the time doing some get to know you/discussion stuff, and part of the time learning more about (and trying out) a piece of what the worship experience will be like.

This is a time to get to know some of the other people, find out ways you might be involved, and experience a taste of what worship will be like.

Why a Launch Group?

A Launch Group allows us to start to gather people who are interested in being a part of a new church. It allows us to learn more about the vision and gives people the chance to see if House of the Transfiguration is something they want to get involved in and commit to. It allows folks to come and check it out without feeling the pressure of walking into a new worship service.

Two of the biggest reasons are: One: it allows us to grow before we launch a public worship service. As we move through the Launch Group process, our group will hopefully expand each week allowing us to launch our services with enough people to make everyone feel comfortable in the space. Two: It allows us to make sure everyone is one the same page and is really excited about the vision for the church.

How long will the Launch Groups last?

Launch group meetings will be every Saturday evening at 6pm at the Exchange from April 6 until June 22.

What happens after the Launch Groups?

After the Launch Groups we will have three, monthly worship gatherings. These worship experiences will allow us to put the different elements together (music, liturgy, etc.). These will be gatherings for folks to invite friends to, to get the word out about the community, and to make sure everything is in place and good to go.

After those three monthly services (July, August, and September) we’ll launch our weekly worshipping community in October.

This all seems kinda slow?

We prefer to think of it as being intentional. We want to make sure that when we launch the church we have things in place to provide a positive experience for people. We want to make sure that people understand and are excited about the vision. We want to build community and learn together.

If you have more questions, feel free to send Fr. Shay an email: hott@houseofthetransfiguration.com

Once again, pictured here is a visual representation of our model (you can click on it to see it larger):

The final piece of the model is what we’re calling “Guerrilla Movement”. This is our service component. Picture a group (or groups) of people able to react quickly to needs in the community.

I’ve been a part of a lot of churches where two things happened when it came to projects in the community: Either the structure of the church was so complicated that responding quickly to needs in the community was impossible OR the church would start a project and it would go on forever sapping the energy and resources of the congregation long past the time when it was effective.

We want to be able to respond quickly to needs in the community. If a disaster happens, if a family is in need, if a project needs doing right now we want to be able to help. But we also want to make sure that our resources of time, money, and energy are used effectively. Whole church projects will be mostly short-term and with a specific end date.

We realize that, as a church, we can better serve our community’s long term needs by investing in the people already doing the work. We’ll get our people plugged into places making a difference in the community, but we don’t need to reinvent the wheel! We’ll partner with community service organizations and spend money in the local community.

This structure will allow us to be nimble in our responses. Our people will be freed up to invest in the projects that matter to them long term, but also be able to serve in community on short term projects with people from the church.

I’ve had many folks reach out to me about their interest in House of the Transfiguration. There will be new information up very, very soon about ways you can get involved as well as more about our vision and mission.

It has become ever more clear to me that there is a desire and a need for a place that celebrates tradition and ritual where all are welcome at the table. I look forward to forming a community with you and to work for justice together in Minneapolis.

Thank you again for all of your support.