'Church in a box' concept expands ministry

By Jon Kaplan*

A volunteer unloads equipment for an offsite worship service in Aurora, Ill. Batavia United Methodist Church uses the "church in a box" to expand its reach beyond its historic downtown sanctuary in nearby Batavia. UMNS photos by Jon Kaplan.

BATAVIA, Ill. (UMNS)-Batavia United Methodist is a church on the move-literally.

The thriving downtown Batavia congregation, 45 miles west of Chicago, has outgrown its historic building and 11 parking spaces. So, out of sheer necessity, the 850-member church has embraced a unique community outreach concept called "church in a box."

Each Sunday, in addition to holding three worship services in Batavia, the congregation sends a missions team with a 24-foot trailer to the nearby family-oriented community of Aurora. Inside the trailer are wheeled containers filled with an altar, hymnals, musical instruments, audio and video equipment, signs and even a coffeemaker-everything needed to provide a worship service, Sunday school classes and a nursery.

Substituting brick and mortar for teamwork and elbow grease, volunteers and worshippers convert the auditorium of Herget Middle School into "church" in just minutes.

"Church in a box allows us to quickly set up a place of worship in a place where you wouldn't have worship," explains the Rev. Jeffry Bross, Batavia's associate pastor.

Batavia calls its portable worship space "Flowing Grace," and Bross is the modern-day circuit rider in charge. The plan is eventually to take the worship experience to other locations.

An average of 100 worshipers attend the Flowing Grace service each Sunday.

The ministry began last March, and Batavia's senior pastor, the Rev. Mike Stoner, says Flowing Grace is helping to keep the anchor church vibrant and welcoming.

"If you're in an old building that has no parking, you're landlocked," he says. "… The central message all along was this was about going to where the people are. It really embraces the United Methodist passion for going where no one's been."

A different way of thinking
Not everyone embraced the concept at first. "I was leery," says long-time member Jim Hansen, "but once we visited, I can see why we needed to do it."

"We had to overcome the notion that we were going to become two different churches and that we'd just be one church worshipping in two sites, and I think we have overcome that," says Hasana Sisco, another member.

One church in two locations is a concept that more and more United Methodist congregations and other churches are adopting. Batavia purchased its "church in a box" resources for $85,000 from Portable Church Industries of Troy, Mich. The company's Web site lists close to 1,000 clients.

Flowing Grace volunteer and lay member Joanne Mendicino understands the appeal. "We're able to minister one on one a little bit better in the way that people need it," she says.

"It's great to take the church to some place else as opposed to keeping the church here," adds Batavia member Rodney Sisco.

Thus far, Flowing Grace is averaging about 100 attendees each week and has added 11 members since March. Batavia members are encouraged and excited about the blessings.

"I see more personal growth at this location, providing more opportunity for people to get involved and engaged than I had at the standard site," says Flowing Grace member Mike Harvey.

"A lot of people that are participating are experiencing changes in their personal faith journeys," adds Joanne Mendicino.

Church and lay leaders alike say the ministry has allowed church members to use gifts and talents they didn't realize they had and to develop as leaders themselves. They believe the potential is limitless.

Says Stoner: "I would dream of having some people from Flowing Grace who have caught this vision, to go do it at another place and then another place."

*Kaplan is a freelance producer and writer in Chicago.

National Spiritual Writing Conference at Scarritt-Bennett Center, Nashville, September 7-9, 2007

NASHVILLE, TN: The 2nd Annual Path & Pen Writing Conference is scheduled for September 7-9, 2007 at Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville, TN. This inspiring conference brings writers and would-be writers together to explore writing as a spiritual practice, and is a hands-on encounter with various forms of spiritually oriented writing, including memoir, poetry, liturgy, inspirational writing, and creative nonfiction.

The weekend begins Friday and ends Sunday and consists of a variety of intimate workshops led by award-winning facilitators, as well as both an Open Mike and a Songwriters Roundtable, featuring some of Nashville’s most creative lyricists on Saturday evening.

A partial list of workshops includes: Symbol and Spirit; Praying in Color; Tools for
Sacred Writing; Writing Spiritual Memoir; Writing Psalms from the Four Worlds: Body, Heart, Mind, and Soul.

The Nashville Path & Pen Writers Conference is co-sponsored by the Scarritt–Bennett Center and the One River Foundation. Scarritt-Bennett Center is a conference, retreat, and education center committed to empowerment through cross-cultural understanding, education, creativity and spiritual renewal. The One River Foundation promotes peace, justice, and personal awakening through inter-spiritual study, dialogue, and contemplative practice.

Cost: $160 for the weekend; rooms and meals are available onsite. For more information and to download a registration form, visit http://www.scarrittbennett.org/ or contact Kim Johnson at 1.866.420.5486 or kjohnson@scarrittbennett.org


Facilitators:

Nearly fifteen years in the book publishing industry have provided SHERI SWANSON with a wide breadth of experience. As a sales representative, her clients ranged from independent book and gift stores, to national chain store and distributor buyers. For five years, her dual roles at Publishers Weekly, as Southern Sales Manager and Religion Marketing Manager allowed her to nurture publisher relationships and develop an inside understanding of the business of religion publishing. Since leaving PW, she has built her own company, inkplot, into a source for book doctoring and reviewing, copy writing, and publishing industry consulting.

STARSHIELD LORTIE has been a student of Native American Shamanic and Toltec traditions for over 8 years. She brings a perspective of heart and truth to her work creating the space for the manifestation of her heart’s deepest desires. Her writing practice has become the road for these desires to travel. Expanding through her personal writing practice, StarShield created Writing Medicine as a way to share her journey and promote the utilization of writing as a spiritual tool. Writing Medicine includes writing workshops, a monthly writer’s group, individual coaching and more; all designed as a way to open a dialogue and remember the relationship with self that has always been there. Her first book, a collection of sacred poetry titled Voices in My Heart, is due out in September 2007.

SYBIL MACBETH is a mathematics instructor, a dancer, and a doodler. She has an M.S. in Mathematics from the College of William and Mary and was on the faculty of Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach until 2004. Her 2007 book Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God introduces a prayer practice that is both meditative, active, and playful. Praying in Color is both process and product, conceived when Sybil could find no words for her prayers and picked up pen and colored markers. She began to draw shapes, writing names in them and adding lines, squiggles, dots, doodles, and color. Each mark of the pen and each stroke of color was a wordless act of hospitality – a nonverbal way to communicate with God, and the product is a prayer drawing or icon.

A former spokesperson for Miss Black USA, Inc. SHELLIE R. WARREN is a full-time writer and speaker, published in over three dozen publications including Honey Magazine, Upscale Magazine, CCM, b-gyrl.com, DOE Network and NV Magazine. Warren, who was named Miss Woman of Color 2002- 2003, is also a spoken word artist and is featured on b-gyrl.com’s compilation, The Lyristcess Lounge and Gotee-recording artist, GRITS Dichotomy A and B.

RAMI SHAPIRO is an award-winning poet and essayist, whose liturgical writings are used in prayer services throughout North America. He has written over a dozen works of poetry, liturgy, short story and nonfiction. Rami are an ordained rabbi, and hold a doctoral degree in religious studies. A congregational rabbi for 20 years, Rabbi Shapiro currently directs the One River Foundation, a not-for-profit educational center for inter-spiritual study and contemplative inquiry. His most recent books are Open Secrets, Hasidic Tales Annotated and Explained, The Hebrew Prophets Annotated and Explained, The Divine Feminine, Annotated and Explained, and The SacredArt of Lovingkindness.

The Rev. JASON SHELTON has been director of music at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville since 1998. He is a published composer, an active conductor and choral clinician, and an advocate for using music as a means of creating community in multi-faith, multi-cultural environments. Formerly a Franciscan brother, Jason received an MDiv at Vanderbilt Divinity School in 2003 and was ordained to the Unitarian Universalist ministry in 2004.

CONSTANCE BOVIER is a writer, speaker, spiritual director and retreat leader in the Houston area. Her publications include two inspirational books that build bridges between the recovery community and Christianity – More God and From the Crucible – as well as short fiction, essays and numerous articles in general interest, literary, inspirational and aviation industry periodicals. Her creativity is currently challenged through writing articles and PR in support of two non-profit organizations. She serves on the board and faculty of a regional spiritual director training program, conducts classes and retreats on a variety of spiritual topics, studies and counsels others in dreams and dream work and continually seeks new opportunities to encourage the spiritual growth of others.

ROBBIE CLIFTON PINTER is professor of English at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. She enjoys teaching writing at Belmont, and in the larger community. In both, she believes that writing is a way to hear the voice of the soul. She practices this belief through her classes and workshops, which primarily focus on all kinds of life writing (the journal, autobiography, and memoir), writing for social change, faith-based writing, environmental writing, and writing non-fiction prose. She publishes in a variety of small journals, and in 2004 her memoir about open adoption, For This Child I Prayed, was published.

To download Path and Pen brochure CLICK on the following web address:
http://www.scarrittbennett.org/programs/images/pp_web/PathPen07_broch_r2.pdf

To download Path and Pen registration form CLICK on the following web address:
http://www.scarrittbennett.org/programs/images/pp_web/Path&Pen07_regis.pdf

Liturgies provide comfort, support to service members

U.S. soldiers return home following deployment to Iraq. The needs of service members leaving for and returning from the Middle East is the focus of a United Methodist task force of military chaplains. A UMNS photo by Staff Sgt. Chris Farley.

By Kathy L. Gilbert*

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS)-Duty places a heavy burden on military service members, and warriors need to feel their faith community shares that burden with them, says a Navy chaplain who has served in Iraq.

The needs of service members leaving for and returning from Iraq and Afghanistan is the focus of a task force formed by the United Methodist boards of Church and Society and Higher Education and Ministry.

As part of that effort, the Rev. Laura J. Bender, a Navy chaplain, has written two liturgies for congregations to use in services to bless the deploying soldier and welcome home the returning warrior.

In both liturgies, the service member hears and receives words of support and love while standing before the congregation.

"I think having people come before the congregation and having the congregation send them out is saying, 'We know this is difficult, we know you leave behind your whole life. We will help you carry that burden while you go off to do what your country asks you to do,'" Bender said.

Bender was among active and retired military chaplains who met in February in Nashville with staff members from the two United Methodist agencies to find ways to teach and encourage the church to welcome and support service members and their families.

At that meeting, the Rev. Dale White said churches should think of military chaplains as missionaries. "We have a unique way of presenting God to an audience of 18-to-22-year-olds," said White, who was a chaplain for a Marine unit in Iraq for 14 months. "We bring them God-many of them for the first time."

Bender agrees and says churches also should hold a service to send chaplains out as missionaries, recognizing that they "represent more than themselves."

Long road home
Military members are not war mongers, she said; in fact, they least desire to be in battle because they have the most to lose. "It makes a difference to them that their faith community upholds them even when at times they don't uphold the reason they are fighting," Bender said.

Congregations need to know the journey home from war doesn't end when a soldier steps through the front door. Processing their war experiences can take many years.

Bender served at a field hospital in Iraq and recalls talking with a wounded 19-year-old soldier struggling to come to terms with a battlefield decision.

The young soldier and three other 19-year-olds in his troop had been attacked by two Iraqis. Each Iraqi held a little girl in front of him as a shield. "I asked him what he did, and he said he did what his training had taught him to do. That meant he killed all four," she said. "But it also meant he saved the lives of the three other 19-year-olds that were with him."

Bender was thinking of that young man and many others while writing "An Order for Welcoming Service Members Returning from War." (http://www.gbhem.org/chaplains/mltchapguideItem.asp?item_id=80)

In the service, the pastor shares that Jesus had compassion on a man who called himself Legion because he was haunted by so many disturbing spirits. The service goes on to say: "As you return to us today, we want you to have the opportunity to leave behind what is past and accept for yourself the healing and comfort that God alone can provide."

In "An Order for Blessing Service Members Deploying for War," (http://www.gbhem.org/chaplains/mltchapguideItem.asp?item_id=79)
the congregation promises to remember the departing service member with prayer, uphold them with encouraging communication and surround their loved ones in a community of care and support.

"We as a nation send people to war and, even if they pull the trigger, we actually pull the trigger," Bender says. "Until the day we say we are not going to war, we are still all liable for what happens."

Bender hopes the two liturgies ease some of the pain for service members and helps congregations offer the comfort and assistance that often is desperately needed by soldiers and military veterans.

"When I was in seminary in Washington D.C. in the '80s, I volunteered for a local soup kitchen and the vast majority of the homeless in the shelters were Vietnam veterans," she said. "I am afraid without intervention, we are making a whole new generation of homeless-of people that don't feel welcome anywhere."

*Gilbert is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.