Sunday’s text is from Matthew 26:6-13. It’s the story of the woman who gave a perfume gift worth a year’s wages to Jesus. It was also an act that drew the scorn of his disciples. Here’s a snippet from Sunday’s sermon:

Jesus catches them off guard. He scolds them and rebukes their attitude. “Don’t give her a hard time” he says. He reminds them they always have the poor, but he will be with them only a little while longer. Christ sees this action by the unnamed woman as an anointing for his burial. A meaning that I’m sure was lost on his disciples. I have a hard time understanding Jesus in this story. I must admit I have a hard time understanding the actions of the woman as well. I can, however, understand the disciples. Their reaction resonates with me and I’m sure with others also. You see, this type of thing is repeated every day in this church and thousands of churches around the world. At Christmas we give money to put a poinsettia in the sanctuary. Could that money be better spent on the needy? Here at Easter when lilies will adorn many houses of worship, wouldn’t it be better to use those funds to feed the hungry? All that money congregations spend for new buildings and furnishings, would we not be more in line to use that on the mission field somewhere? It’s easy to preach these kinds of things from this story and these are legitimate questions. But I’m afraid they’re not the right kind of questions for this particular episode.

Sunday concludes our series from the book of James with a sermon titled, “Silence is Golden.” The text is James 3:1-12. Here’s a preview:

Early church leaders taught that when we speak, we should do so only from silence. A person who hasn’t been quiet and still, will only speak from a noisy and busy heart. If a heart is noisy and busy, how and when is God able to give His wisdom? If we speak without such wisdom, we let loose an undisciplined, unfettered tongue that James calls “a restless evil full of deadly poison.” There was even a rule of thumb: if words are used to defend self or offend others, they don’t have their birth in stillness. Words that are used to restore and heal can only come from silence and then “much can be said without much being spoken.”

“He entered my room and said: ‘Poor creature, you who understand nothing, who know nothing. Come with me and I will teach you things which you do not suspect.’ I followed him.”  - Excerpt from The Notebook Of Simone Weil

Simone Weil garnered the name of Christian Mystic somewhat clumsily. Now that I think about it, that seems most appropriate. She was foremost a French philosopher and social critic. She rejected her Jewish upbringing and developed a fascination with Catholicism. She spent Easter of 1938 in a Benedictine monastery where she poured herself into the chants and liturgies of their community. She later developed close friendships with Catholics like philosopher Gustave Thibon and Dominican priest Fr. Perrin. While stories of her mystical encounters with the presence of Christ fill her notebooks, Weil never received baptism.

Weil escaped the Nazi occupation of France and fled to America. Feeling guilty about abandoning her people, she went to London to work for the French government. It was here that she went on what some believe to be a hunger strike – though this is debated by many. As a result she contracted pneumonia and died.

The publication of  Weil’s writings, and its impact on religion and philosophy occurred posthumously.

The excerpt at the beginning of this post is indicative of Weil’s journey. It also reveals something of our own journeys as well. She writes later in this section that, “Sometimes I cannot help trying, fearfully and remorsefully, to repeat to myself a part of what he said to me. How am I to know if I remember it rightly? He is not there to tell me.”

Weil is also starkly honest about her doubts saying, ” I know well that he does not love me. How could he love me? And yet deep down within me something, a particle of myself, cannot help thinking, with fear and trembling, that perhaps, in spite of it all, he loves me.”

During this time of Lent, it is good to be reflectively honest about our journey with Christ. We are often following Christ into the unknown and unexpected. There are points along the way where we will forget why we came along, or if its worth it. We will even lose sight of Christ and face feelings of abandonment from time to time. If we patiently remember Jesus’ own journey to the cross we will recall that he too faced these same feelings. Even thought he set his face toward Jerusalem, he wept tears of blood in the garden, and cried out in forsakenness on the cross.

Know that Christ is present with you each day. In your waking and in your sleeping; in your going and coming; in the face of friends and in the mouths of strangers. Christ is with you in your following, forgetting, doubting, remembering, and hoping.

NEW STAFF MEMBERS

We have two new staff members who have joined our ministry in this new year. Holly Baldwin is our new Administrative Assistant, and Randy Sherron is our new Interim Pastor. We are excited about the creativity, gifts, and energy they each bring to the life and mission of RRBC.

NEW COLLEGE CLASS

This year we have begun a new class for college students, and college-age young adults. Nathaniel Grubbs is leading this class. He is currently a graduate student and TA at NC State. Currently the class is going through the NOOMA DVD series produced by Rob Bell. This video series is thought provoking, and creatively invites viewers into conversation about matters of faith and practice. This class is meeting now in room 210 of our education building @ 9:40 AM.

NEW ADULT CLASS

Starting February 21, 2010 there will be a new class for couples/parents and young professionals. This class will be led by Zach Roberts. To get started, this class will spend 10 weeks studying the “Teachings of the Twelve.” Historically this document is called the “Didache”, and is one of the oldest confessions of faith & practice in the Christian tradition. This class will discuss these teachings in dialog with the Bible. By looking together at the ancient wisdom of our collective past, we can face the mystery of the Bible, and the vastness of today’s complexity with a measure of confidence and excitement. This class will meet in room 205 of the education building @ 9:40 AM. (The book in the link above is not required for this class, but is an additional resource for those interested.)

Come see what’s new at Ridge Road Baptist Church!

With Thanksgiving here, we are about to enter into the season of Advent along with Christians all over the world. Advent is a special time of year where we celebrate, remember, and reenact the story of Christ’s birth. This is an exciting time of hope, peace, joy, and love as we anticipate the coming of our Lord.

There will be many ways to observe this Advent season at Ridge Road Baptist Church. We have provided advent devotionals for adults and families. The adult devotional is a collection by C.S. Lewis. The family devotional is an interactive guide through the symbols of Advent and Christmas. We hope you will be blessed by these in your personal and family reflections. Our calendar is also full of gatherings and observances that will happen throughout the month of December.

November 29th is the first Sunday of Advent. As we spend this week thinking of what we are thankful for, I encourage you to begin a journey to Bethlehem. When God came to earth God did so in a very unexpected way. While most thought God would come in great power, might, and vengeance, our Creator instead came as a helpless baby, born amidst damp stone walls, livestock, and unassuming parents. A far cry from the palaces in which other kings had been birthed.

As we begin our Advent journey I want to challenge you to be attentive to the unexpected, the unplanned, and the inconvenient. These are often the things we try to avoid during the holiday rush. However, these are the very things that make up the story surrounding the nativity. Often we assume God’s absence when things go awry, when our lives get thrown off track, or when we face significant trials. The story of the nativity, however, shows us that in the midst of those very experiences, Christ arrives.

In the midst of a broken, frantic, hyper-active, and fearful world, Jesus shows up — God shows up. The Advent season challenges us to keep a look out for that to happen.

Sonshine Kids

…On the Ridge

Have you heard the exciting news? Ridge Road Baptist church is launching a new Sunday Morning Children’s ministry on Sunday, November 1! We’re kicking things off with a breakfast for our members from 9:00-9:40 AM.

This brand new ministry will engage children ages birth to eleven in multi-sensory learning, all within a loving and nurturing environment. Children will also participate in an active worship experience involving music, games, puppets, and art.

In partnership with our preschool director Penny Atwood, we have recruited 7 amazing teachers from our weekday program. They will be staffing this ministry with the help of some of our members & youth helpers.

If you are looking for place on Sunday Mornings where your children can grow in faith, then you will definitely want try out the “Sonshine Kids” experience. To find out more, click here.

About a month ago I asked our Web developer to keep an eye on our stats for people visiting the website and engaging the content. For some folks, the idea that a website can be an effective form of outreach and ministry is a new one. After a month of  watching our stats I’ve got some good news to report to you.

First, some explanation of the data. Data is collected in two categories: “hits” and “visits.” A “hit” is counted any time a file is requested on the website. For example, if you have 10 files on a given page, one visitor to that page could net you 10 hits. A “visit” is counted each time a person comes to the site.

So, here are the stats for the last month: Total hits = 12,972     Total visits = 550

As I think of what this means for ministry, I like to use the term “connections.” Our website has allowed us to make a lot of connections. Keeping engaging content up on the site is a key ingredient. The podcasts have certainly added to the visit and hit count.

One disclaimer needs to be made here, however. The longstanding measure of success in ministry has always been the number of people in the pews on any given Sunday. Web-based outreach doesn’t necessarily translate into people in attendance on Sunday. It can, but its not a direct corollary. Web-based outreach is best understood as making wider connections in the larger conversation about faith and life with God. Its best seen as a way to increase relational and conversational possibilities exponentially. We’ve done that, and in a culture that is often more virtually connected than physically connected, we’ve entered a new arena of ministry with a healthy measure of success.

These days, practically no one will open their front door for you to share the good news with them. Countless many, however, will click a link and listen or read about it online.

The possibilities are endless and exciting!

Our adult studies for Sunday mornings starting this September will entail discussion about key freedoms that make up our identity as Baptists. In an effort to enhance and deepen this study and corresponding conversations, I have put together a series of podcasts from selected Baptist scholars.

If you are teaching this curriculum, please utilize these podcasts for instruction. If you are a class member, tune-in as preparation for engaging the material with your fellow classmates. I think you will enjoy and benefit from listening.

To listen, simply click on the podcast title in the right-hand sidebar that has the earphone graphic in the top corner. (Located on our homepage.) You will be taken to a new page that has a QuickTime player bar in the center of it. It should start playing on its own.

The social media phenomenon is a bit new to many churches like ours. The pace at which social media has evolved is dizzying, and one’s ability to be conversant and agile within such media can be cause for anxiety and frustration. As one who has made use of social media for much of my work in ministry over the last 10 years, I would like to set my fellow church members’ minds at ease, and invite those interested into a most fascinating medium of communication and relational connectivity.

First, let me be clear that no one presumes that social media is a replacement for physical, face-to-face relationships within and outside of the church. Person to person relationships are life-giving and vital to being human. Social media allows for an expansion of those possibilities, and can be utilized to foster, maintain, and extend the kind of connections we need and long for as persons. Social media doesn’t replace a physical presence with an other; it simply opens the horizons on that exponentially.

Second, social media is not complicated, nor does it require a significant level of computer skills. If you can read, point & click, and type, you’re pretty much ready to go. Some forms of social media are more complicated than others. The nice thing is that you can choose just how intricate you want to get with various forms of social media. I still have friends on FaceBook and Twitter who haven’t uploaded profile pictures. Geesh! The truth is, you can engage the media at your own pace – as much or as little as you want.

Third, social media is fun. You can update your friends from high school that you haven’t seen in 20 years in a matter of seconds in real time, video, or in 140 characters or less. You can share links to news articles with colleagues as soon as they are run. You can organize an event and inform hundreds of people without using a single piece of paper, and without paying one cent on postage. You can create a network of references for your resume portfolio. You can upload video from your family vacation or share digital photo albums with family and friends while the event or trip is still happening. The possibilities are almost limitless.

If you’re reading this, you are already participating in the social media phenomenon. If you click the comment link of this post and add your voice to what I have written here, you are participating in what I think is the most valuable contribution of social media; “open source participation.” In other words, anyone who wants to add their voice & creativity to the mix can do so.

Our church website is an effort to make the most of some social media basics like blogging, twitter, and podcasting. What did he just say?

Blogging – Writing for, and interacting with a blog. Blog is short for “Weblog” which is a type of website where one or several writers post commentary on any number of subjects, issues, and topic. You are reading and interacting with a blog right now! See full wiki here.

Twitter - A micro-blogging website/application that allows you to send messages and links in 140 characters or less. Our church twitter feed is updated in real time and can be found on the right-hand (yours) side of each page of the website. See full wiki here.

Podcasting – Digital audio recordings that can be posted for downloading and sharing via blogs and websites. Our church website will provide sermons and other audio files as podcasts soon. See full wiki here.

You will also notice that at the end of each explanation there is colored text that says “See full wiki here.” Wiki is short for “Wikipedia” and other open-source resource materials. It is colored because it is a hyperlink. Hyperlinks allow you to click and find additional information from other websites. Bloggers use it to reference additional materials.

We hope you will utilize these elements of our church’s social network. We also have a FaceBook page that you can access if you have a FaceBook account. You can get there by clicking here.

We’ve launched a new site for Ridge Road Baptist Church. We hope you will utilize this site as a significant source of information, communication, and conversation in relationship to our church, and the greater discourse on spirituality, faith, mission, and community.

Our church welcomes you to engage this website for regularly updated content on our blog and podcast pages. You can also keep up with what’s happening at RRBC by downloading our newsletter and checking the events page.

We are pleased to have you visit this virtual space, and hope to meet you soon when you are able to visit the church.

Grace & Peace,
Zach T. Roberts
Associate Pastor