holy spirit – Carnes Family Web

03May201308Dec2016

New Life

Scott Carnes Finding My Way, Virtues of Scripture baby, carrie carnes, god, holy spirit, new life, pregnancy, Scott Carnes, scotteugene79, sonogram, unexpected

My wife and I have been wanting to get pregnant since late last summer. It was frustrating month after month without the results for which we yearned. One morning in February my wife woke me up with the exclamation that she was pregnant. I was glad, but it didn’t seem real. The only indication was a stick with a symbol on it. I waited for it to ‘feel real,’ but the feeling didn’t come, at least right away. I went with my wife to see our OB doctor a few weeks later but wasn’t expecting too much. I had seen many people post those black and white sonogram pictures on Facebook and I have never been able to make out anything that resembles a life-form. My lack of excitement had been a let-down and I expected to be equally underwhelmed by that visit.

My experience at the doctor’s office was very different from what I expected. As the baby became visible on the screen, I was mesmerized. I could actually see the little heart beating! My heart leapt. The doctor put the heartbeat on speaker while she measured it. I could hear and see the incredibly fast thumping of that little heart. My eyes were glued to that screen and when the doctor told us that our baby looked very healthy, so far, and that its heartbeat was very strong, I felt pride and joy all at once: It flooded over me in a totally unexpected way.

New life comes to us in very unexpected ways and seldom on our terms. When we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit we can experience a newness of life: we can experience God in all new ways. But it can be frustrating when it doesn’t happen right away: there have been times that I prayed…fervently…yet I didn’t feel God in the way I expected. But, experiencing God requires us to learn about ourselves and practice faith. Much like those months of trying to become pregnant, It can take some time to experience God more closely way, but, once we are open enough to God it will just happen. And when it happens, you will feel it.

For me, I didn’t experience the joy of new life when I expected to: at that first moment of finding out about the pregnancy. No, I experienced overwhelming joy much later in front of an ultrasound machine. Yes, the joy of new life often catches us unaware. Week after week and month after month I pray that you will go to scripture, join together with other people of faith, worship God, and be in prayer. When we become committed to these practices we will eventually and unexpectedly experience a new life for ourselves and grow in faith and with God.

Blessings,

02Jun201228Jan2015

To Ponder: Full Pentecost Scripture

When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak. (Acts 2:1-4)

When the day of pentecost came, the believers were emboldened with the Holy Spirit. They were able to be understood by the people around them, even if they spoke other languages. The religious people of this past century have begun to struggle in being heard and understood by a new generation and their new and “troubling” ways of communicating. I believe that the Holy Spirit is coming upon believers who are open to it and alighting us with new language and new ways of being heard!

Pastors and lay people alike who feel the Spirit upon them and who God has given the language of social media must be a new church, just like the earliest believers at Pentecost.

This is our chance. This is a new day and there will be a new church whether we like it or not. It will look different and it will not be confined by the traditional walls that we have come to associate with ‘church.’ Will the mainline (or I prefer to say: old-line) churches (United Methodist, United Church of Christ, Lutheran, Presbyterians, etc) be a part of this new church?

If we can let go of the structure and fear that is holding us back, we will. And the price is too high to not be a part of this new church. We have theological gifts to share with a new generation.

Unfortunately… and I can only speak for the United Methodist Church, but our UM Communications and, in Illinois, our Conference Communication team make the church look old-fashioned (that’s honest, mostly, I suppose) and they move too slowly and carefully. Worse, they focus on communications rather than relationships! Our denominations are stymied and they make us look terrible (recently at our annual charge conference we were shown a video of our bishop that made him look like a used car salesman, oh- and the district office couldn’t provide my church a digital copy when asked!!!). But at the local church level and in our own communities we can now accomplish bigger things than they are even capable of with social media. Our reach can be effective in our local communities (even the most rural) and they can grow our local, walled churches… yet our reach can also,now, go well beyond our local communities and walled churches. When we effectively use the internet, social media, and blogging we can share faith, touch lives, and experience community in places that we never before dreamed possible.

If you are listening for the Holy Spirit in this new generation and want to speak out and connect with new people, I have some suggestions:

Make sure you have Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts and (and this is the really important part) grow your presence:

Work hard to cultivate a following by:

posting often
posting quality and relational materials
try not to use insider language
continually adding friends / followers

Look at other accounts / pages / walls / feeds and share interesting items
Don’t be afraid to share personal things about yourself (within safety and reason). Use these avenues as a way to foster relationships!

Get a blog account!!!

There are several sites that can help you, I especially recommend: Blogger (by Google, just use your Google user/pass) or WordPress.
Get your blog and social media accounts connected to your webpage. It makes your page more dynamic and personal.
Share your blog by social media. It turns 140 characters into a full and on-going narrative.
I can’t emphasize this enough: don’t be afraid to share your own personal stories, yet connect them to your faith.
Keep it short. Think in terms of a 1/2 to full page of paper at most when you write your blog! (This blog post is pushing the limit)

Keep your eyes peeled for new ways to connect online. If lots of people are using 4square or LinkedIn, etc…then go where the people are.

Paul used tent making to build relationships, John Wesley went out to the masses in England preaching in fields and cemeteries…I don’t know what it will look like entirely yet, but we have to find new venues and ways to build relationships and share our faith story! Now, in 2012, we must be a Pentecost people! We must feel the Holy Spirit as it enlivens us to share our faith and we must speak the languages that God is giving us the gift to speak. It is our time and our new and exciting world. Let’s share our faith as disciples of Christ!!!

Title image found at: http://peacesojourner.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html

27May201208Dec2016

Meet Rev. Dr. Mark Fowler

Dr. Fowler is a professor at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. As one of his former students, I can tell you that he is just as much a pastor as teacher and as much a man of deep compassion as he is a mentor and role model. He is the Murray H. Leiffer Associate Professor of Congregational Leadership and is the Executive Director of the Institute for Transformative Leaders and Communities. He received his BA from DePauw University, his Master of Divinity from Boston University, and his Doctor of Ministry from Andover Newton Theological School. Please warmly welcome to my blog, as today’s guest blogger, Mark Fowler!

Pentecost

Today’s Scripture: Acts 2

I have often thought of Pentecost and the activity of the Holy Spirit as wind and fire, of the birth of the church with thousands of folks swept up in the witness of Peter (although I have been amazed that the church does not utilize the scripture from Joel that Peter used in this “birth” sermon of the church, hmmm!) It is a dynamic and dramatic experience that is reported at Pentecost.

In an age when we are drawn to the “big show”, the dramatic increase in numbers, the pyrotechnic displays and the moment-by-moment sensory overload so central to our consumer culture, the Pentecost story could be easily exemplified as a reasonable expectation. Shouldn’t the people of God, using God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, use the craft and expect the results of Pentecost to draw the world?

In a time when the traditional church is in traumatic dislocation, loss of privilege, bereft of its traditional social influence and seemingly in disarray. At the recent United Methodist General Conference, proposals for changing ecclesiastical structures are left on the table, traditional covenants of ministry are tossed aside for a more effective way in which “only the temporally effective pastors are allowed to stay on the bus” (without a similar capacity for assessment being placed on the unassailable Episcopal office) and a casual vote declares a rather sizable number of delegates have put a restraint on the prevenient nature of the grace of God, a distinctive principal of the Methodist movement and a hallmark of its proclamation and effective evangelism. And, we all will move forward to try to capture lightening and wind in a bottle as an assurance of the future survival of the denominations.

For me this year, Pentecost has been preceded by a delightful bit of weather in Chicago. It has drawn me to the lakeside to sit and relax, reflect on the future. I have felt close to the experience of the disciples prior to the amazing events on Pentecost that gave birth to the church, a ten day retreat in the upper room. My mind flew to John Wesley prior to the Aldersgate Street experience that renovated his soul and was the source of the regeneration of the church through the birth of the Methodist movement. It came to clear memory that in a difficult turning point in my own ministry, that it was preceded by a time of wilderness in the desert southwest where I experienced the disorienting reality of my own life in the vast and unfamiliar landmarked desert.

In this anxious time for the church, we cannot fancy ourselves capable of doing the work of the Holy Spirit in the regeneration of the church. Nor do we exactly know what form it will take or what methods of evangelism and discipleship will be most effective to be embraced in the mission dei toward the fulfillment of God’s purposes for the creation and the beloved. We must discipline ourselves to be open to the Holy Spirit’s presence and work among us and in the creation. We must Sabbath intently and yearn for God and trusting the promise that “in these last days, God will pour out the Spirit on all flesh…and the daughters and sons will prophesy and the old will dream.” And, the dreams and visions will be of a world re-born and the loving purpose of creation will be fulfilled in our experience!