Forward Today: We wish to see Jesus

The central dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. (Photo by Scott Gunn)

Dear friends in Christ,

This Sunday, we’ll hear in the Gospel reading the story of a time when some Greeks approached Philip. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” These non-Jews wanted to meet the Lord, for they had no doubt heard of his saving love and mighty deeds.

I love that they got right to the point. “We wish to see Jesus.”

Several years ago, I knew someone who was looking for a church. She’d been very involved in her church, and then she had to move to a new town. Because church mattered to her, she wanted to find a church in which to become involved. After several months, I ran into her. I asked her if she’d found a church. No, not yet. I asked her what she was looking for. “I just want to find a church where they’re talking about Jesus.”

It’s so simple. So obvious. And yet, there are plenty of churches that get so busy going through the motions of keeping the doors open, we forget to keep the main thing the main thing. Yes, of course, we Episcopalians mention Jesus in our liturgy. But do we talk about him at coffee hour? Do we share all the ways he is involved in our lives? Do we tell others how much we love him?

In our increasingly secular age, if someone darkens the door of your church, it’s probably for one reason only. They are looking for the living and true God. They want to know the Holy Spirit’s power. They want to see Jesus.

How would your church do? Would people hear you talking about Jesus at coffee hour? Are people sharing their yearning for God’s peace? Do people express their love for God and neighbor? Would every guest and every long-time member say, as they walk out the door on Sunday morning, “I’m so glad I was at church today. I met Jesus”?

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director


More from our ministry:

Prepare to celebrate the resurrection: Get your Easter calendar today

Easter devotions from Scott Gunn: Easter Triumph, Easter Joy

Help your church get back to basics with RenewalWorks

Meet Jesus in Scripture: A Journey with Mark

Forward Today: The most important thing

Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea

Dear friends in Christ,

This spring has been a whirlwind of travel for me. It’s vestry retreat and Lenten retreat season, so I’ve been visiting congregations far and near.

Last weekend, I was visiting the Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida, where I preached and led a Lenten retreat. If you are near there, I highly recommend visiting this stunningly beautiful church. But the impressive architecture and glorious gardens are not even the most impressive thing. The church is bursting with ministries. The Spirit is alive there.

There are a lot of reasons why this church is thriving, but some of the reasons are in common with many other churches that are seeing numerical growth and spiritual vitality. Churches that focus on compelling preaching, excellent liturgy, learning for all ages, and the encouragement of spiritual disciplines are often doing quite well.

In other words, churches thrive when they focus on the most important things: God’s love for us, our love for God, and the joy of sharing God’s love with the world.

How is your church doing? What is important there? I encourage you to have a look at Jay Sidebotham’s recent book on spiritual vitality if you want some ideas for how to help spiritual growth take root in your congregation.

By the way, if you want to hear my sermon from Bethesda, have a listen. I preached about exactly this topic, which is why it’s on my mind. The most important thing is love.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

P.S. The rector at the Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea is the Rev. Tim Schenck. He’s doing a great job, and I am blessed to count him as a friend. If you want to savor some of his wisdom, check out his latest book: Devotions for People Who Don’t Do Devotions.


More from our ministry:

Simple practices for spiritual living: The Way of Love Practical Guide

Get ready for Easter with Scott’s book: Easter Triumph, Easter Joy

Build scripture and prayer into your daily routine: Forward Day by Day

FREE curriculum & companion book: Walk in Love | Practicing Our Faith

 

Forward Today: The gift of Lent

Dear friends in Christ,

As I write this, voting is under way in today’s Lent Madness contest. For those who aren’t familiar with it, Lent Madness is a mostly silly game in which 32 saints go up against each other as voters decide who wins the Golden Halo. Among other things, voters end up learning about each of these many saints as they make their choices of who to support. When we see how God has worked in the lives of so many different kinds of people, we begin to see that God could work in our lives, too.

I mention this, because Lent Madness is not exactly what one might conjure up when asked to imagine a Lenten devotion or habit. It’s too… fun. And yet it does the job. The point of Lent is not to be miserable. The point of Lent is to grow closer to God.

Perhaps you are well on your way through this sacred season with a solid plan that you’ve kept up with. You might have chosen to give something up or take something on. I hope your practice is bearing fruit.

Maybe you “failed” your Lenten plan, or you just never got around to deciding how to observe this holy time, it’s not too late. With Jesus, it’s never too late!

If you want something on the lighter side, give Lent Madness a try. Or maybe try reading Forward Day by Day (online, for free) for the rest of the season. The classic practices of Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Picking one or more of those three will serve you well.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director


More from our ministry:

Pray the Daily Office wherever you are with our daily podcasts

Make free resources like Lent Madness possible: Become a donor today

Explore the words of our ancestors in faith: Bible Women

Practices of prayer for any season: Seek and You Will Find

Q&A with the Rev. Tim Schenck

You may know the Rev. Tim Schenck as one half of the Supreme Executive Committee— he’s the creator of the wildly popular online devotion Lent Madness. In addition to filming Monday Madness videos and creating saintly brackets, Tim is also the rector of the Church of Bethesda by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida, and the author of books full of humor and faith. His latest release, Devotions for People who Don’t Do Devotions, is available now from Forward Movement.

Get to know Tim a little better – and explore his unconventional devotional book!

Where did the idea for this book come from?

The whole concept for this book, and the title in particular, is rooted in my own frustration with so many devotional books out there. There are times for contemplation and spiritual navel gazing, but I also think we need to engage our faith on a practical, real life level. I find that’s often missing in the devotional industrial complex.

As I write in the Introduction, “Maybe it’s the saccharine sweet, holier-than-thou tone of most of the devotionals I’ve browsed in the Religion & Spirituality section at Barnes & Noble. Okay, most of those were put out by Joel Osteen, Inc. But still, there’s a Ned Flanders-esque vibe to many spiritual books that leaves you wondering if the people who write them even inhabit the same planet. And surely that’s not helpful for those of us seeking the divine presence in the midst of our daily lives.”

What is your hope for this book?

Ultimately, I hope that people will buy it. Just kidding. I hope that people will relate to the personal stories I share, and that they’ll see themselves and their own experiences in what I write. Like any good sermon illustration, you should be able to find something relatable that touches something deep in your own soul — not that the book is preachy or anything…

But I also really hope people engage the book in groups. There are reflection questions following each devotion and I’d love to hear that people are building community by reading the book together. Loneliness is such a spiritual burden and here’s an accessible, fun opportunity to gather and go deeper with one another.

You’re well-known to many of our readers as one of the faces behind Lent Madness, our Lenten bracket challenge featuring various saints. How is writing devotional books like this one similar to – or different from – working on Lent Madness?

Well, I like to think that I bring a bit of that Lent Madness humor to my writing. With Lent Madness, and in my own ministry in general, I always seek to take my faith, but not myself, too seriously. You can speak deep spiritual truths without being grim.

Also, there’s less voting involved!

Where do you typically write?

Coffee shops! I do all my sermon writing, book writing, pretty much any kind of writing with the accompaniment of a good cup of single-origin black coffee. I hear there are other ways to write, but I haven’t come across them.

What was the most enjoyable part of writing?

Hitting send on the manuscript email to the editor! Sort of kidding. But writing is hard, often gut-wrenching work, that you put your whole being into. I love to write, but it’s never an easy process. This is my fifth book, and after each one, I swear I’ll never write another one. Which I stick with…until I get another dose of inspiration.

But the most enjoyable part of writing this particular book, was reflecting back on situations and encounters and experiences from my life and viewing them anew through a spiritual lens. It’s always a fruitful exercise.

Do you have a favorite prayer?

That’s like asking a preacher if they have a favorite Bible verse. Or a coffee snob if they have a favorite coffee. But I’ll have to go with one from Compline that I pray most nights, one that I’ve concluded every vestry meeting I’ve led over the past 20+ years:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love’s sake. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, page 134)


How can folks support Lent Madness and all the other accessible spiritual practices that Forward Movement offers?

Consider becoming a donor today! Donations power Forward Movement’s variety of ministry resources, from RenewalWorks to The Good Book Club and seasonal offerings like AdventWord and Lent Madness. Help us inspire disciples and empower evangelists every day!

Forward Today: The world, or your life?

Photo by Adriel Kloppenburg on Unsplash

Dear friends in Christ,

This Sunday’s Gospel brings a challenging message from Jesus. Among other things, Jesus says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

Wow. That’s rough. But it makes total sense. If all I worry about is protecting myself, I end up closing myself off from opportunities for God’s grace to work in my life and, through me, in the world. It makes everything about me. But if I can make everything about God’s grace and mercy, I begin to live a life that is steeped in gratitude and overflowing with love.

Jesus says we have to choose whether riches are more important to us than living an abundant, joyful life. If I spend my life chasing earthly things, I will almost certainly miss out an knowing heavenly things. Focusing on stuff leads me to lose my soul for the sake of… not much, really.

But when we make God’s grace and mercy the core of our being, we discover gratitude beyond our imagining. And we cannot help but spill over with mercy and grace for the world around us. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is truly astounding.

This season of Lent offers us the gift of a time to focus on what’s important. Perhaps we first need a reminder so we notice what’s important! And then we can try to live the life to which Jesus calls us—rooted in gratitude, grace, and mercy.

I hope you’ll join me in asking the big question. What’s most important? Chasing worldly things? Or seeking heavenly things?

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director


More from our ministry:

Explore this gospel text: A Journey with Mark

Hear from churches focusing on what’s important: Signs of Life

Reset your approach to money and faith: The Unjust Steward

Start your day with scripture and prayer: Forward Day by Day

Forward Today: Lent is about true love

Photo by Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash

Dear friends in Christ,

Today’s juxtaposition of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday offers the perfect occasion for a critical reminder. This season of Lent is all about love. No, it’s not necessarily about romantic love. But this season invites us to return to the Lord—to focus on love of God and love of neighbor.

89 years ago, the very first publication of Forward Movement was a set of Lenten devotions. The founding leaders of Forward Movement saw Lent as a vital time to move forward on our journey as a church and as individuals. A few weeks ago, a friend sent me a transcript of a sermon preached at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine just before Lent in 1935. Bishop William Manning offered what he called “A Charge to the Diocese of New York on the Observance of Lent and the Forward Movement.”

Bishop Manning said, in part:

In the Forward Movement that we now need, and are undertaking, the first step must be a movement back to the use of our Bibles and our Prayer Books. A sincere, intelligent, and believing use of these two books by all of us will bring an awakening of interest, a deepening of conviction, a revival of faith and life which will arouse the whole Church, and at this time in which we are living we need this in every Diocese, in every Parish, and in every Home. Every man and woman who will faithfully read his Bible, and faithfully follow the teachings of his Prayer Book, will come near to Jesus, and this is the soul of our religion as Christians.

I encourage you to read the whole charge for some inspiration and very specific practices to try this Lent as we all repent and return to the Lord. What’s old is new again in our spiritual practices.

If you do not own a Bible you love, buy one to read and study at home. If you do not own a Book of Common Prayer, ask for one at your church or enjoy this lovely gift edition Book of Common Prayer from Forward Movement. If you are on the go, you can pray the Daily Office wherever you are, by reading or by listening to our podcasts, on our prayer website. However you do it, I strongly encourage you to take the good bishop’s advice and use this season to savor the scriptures and the prayer book.

The Bible and the Book of Common Prayer are not in themselves the ends of our spiritual journey, but they are treasures which can help us discover true love: the grace of God, the joy of loving God, and the delight of loving our neighbors. Have a blessed Lent.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

P.S. Do you want to pray through Lent with a devotional this year? It’s not too late. Download an ebook of Will You?, our newest Lenten devotional, from Amazon or Apple Books. You can also listen to Will You? as an audiobook from Audible or Apple Books. Our other Lent devotionals are also available as ebooks – browse to see which one speaks to you this season.


More from our ministry:

Laugh and learn about the saints this season: Lent Madness

Start your day with scripture and reflection: Forward Day by Day

Prepare for Easter: Order your Easter calendars today

Forward Today: Giving thanks for the Book of Common Prayer

Dear friends in Christ,

Years ago, when I served as a parish priest, I spoke with quite a few folks who found their way to the Episcopal Church. Our church was growing, and new members came from other church backgrounds and from no church background. I loved listening to what God was doing in their lives.

A common thread in those stories was gratitude for Episcopal liturgy, especially for the prayer book. People said they loved the sense of connection to the church in all times and places, liturgies that were hundreds of years old yet still compelling in today’s world. They spoke highly of the poetic and theologically rich language.

If you’ve read Walk in Love: Episcopal Beliefs & Practices, you’ll know how much I love our liturgy. The Anglican liturgical tradition certainly not the only way to rightly and beautifully worship God! But the prayer book is certainly a treasure to enjoy.

Forward Movement publishes a beautiful edition of the Book of Common Prayer (1979). We want you to have a book that is as beautiful as the liturgy. The edition we publish has a leather cover, gilt-edge pages, and a ribbon. Perhaps most exciting to me personally, the book also offers red rubrics. The word “rubric” literally means red, after all. So the red-letter days are actually red! It looks lovely.

So if you need a prayer book, or if you’re looking for a gift for someone on a spiritual journey, check it out. (There are bulk discounts if you’re buying several at once.)

But that’s not all. Today I also want to share a new PDF of the prayer book. As we prepared this edition, we realized that some of the PDFs floating around have quite a few errors. And they don’t show rubrics in red. As a gift to the church, Forward Movement is glad to share a PDF of the whole prayer book. By canon, the Book of Common Prayer (1979) is not copyrighted, and neither is our PDF. You are welcome to share it or post it on your church website, or whatever you like.

Whatever book or digital resource you use, I commend the richness of the prayer book to you.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

P.S. We also offer the complete BCP in Braille.


More from our ministry:

Listen to this year’s Lent devotional on Audible or Apple Books

Explore the spirituality of the BCP: Inwardly Digest

Another beautiful, portable prayer book: Hour by Hour

Pray from the Book of Common Prayer each day: prayer.forwardmovement.org

Forward Today: Savoring Lent

Dear friends in Christ,

It’s hard to believe, but Lent begins two weeks from today. From many conversations over years, I know that some people really look forward to this season and others dread it. A long time ago, I didn’t love the subdued season of Lent, but I grew to love it.

Lent can be a joyful time. Shocking? It shouldn’t be—even the Book of Common Prayer speaks of this season as a time to “prepare with joy for the Paschal feast.” With joy!

How can this be? Lent is a time to turn back toward God’s ways, to repent. Lent is a time to grow closer to Jesus. Lent is a time to live the life that God intends for us. What could be more joyful than that?

In its wisdom, the church suggests several ways to use the season of Lent for our good. We are encouraged to practice fasting and self-denial, to realize that our health and happiness doesn’t come from things, but only from God’s grace and mercy. We are urged to spend time in prayer and in studying the scriptures. We are commended in giving alms.

I encourage you to take advantage of whatever opportunities your local church offers. It is good to spend this time in the company of others. Forward Movement also offers a wide array of resources to support your Lenten journey. We have published Lenten daily devotions. We have a website and an app with resources for daily prayer. We offer a joyful practice in Lent Madness—learning from the saints.

With just two weeks until Lent starts, now is the time to make a plan. How will you savor this season, this time to return to the Lord?

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

P.S. Your church might want to order copies of our colorable Lent and Easter calendar posters. These engaging posters are fun for all ages—to color in the pictures and to find ways to engage these seasons.


More from our ministry:

Follow along with Lent Madness with this 2024 Bracket Poster

Meet Amanda Perkins McGriff, the author of this year’s Lent devotional

Look ahead to Easter: Easter Triumph, Easter Joy

Savor God’s word with this bite-sized devotional: Forward Day by Day

Forward Today: A new life in Christ

Spinello Aretino, The Conversion of Saint Paul, ca. 1391–92

Dear friends in Christ,

Tomorrow the church celebrates the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle. The story of Paul’s dramatic encounter with Jesus Christ is told in the ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. In this moment, Paul had to reckon with his very identity. Instead of persecuting Christians, Paul would become one who built up the church.

Can you imagine how hard that must have been for Paul? The biblical narratives move too quickly to dwell on the details, but we can surmise some more of the story. Think about how humiliating it must have been for Paul to walk into rooms full of Christians, people who must have feared and mistrusted him at first. Consider how his fellow believers had to set aside their skepticism and make room for the possibility that God had worked in Paul’s life to change him completely.

It’s never easy to make big changes. It never has been, and it’s true to this day. Lord knows, I know it’s not easy to make big changes in my own life! But that is exactly what we are called to do.

We have to be ready to set aside the things and ways that are familiar to us. In the Bible, the heavenly messengers never appear and affirm the status quo. Jesus never encounters anyone and urges them to “keep on keepin’ on”. No, divine encounters always seem to lead to changes that would scarcely be possible without God’s intervention.

I pray that I am ready to change. And I pray that you are ready, too. Only God knows what adventures are in store for us, and we will find out only if we are willing to set aside our knowledge in favor of God’s wisdom.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director


More from our ministry:

Read through the book of Acts with this 50 Day Bible Challenge

Journey through Lent with this colorable calendar

Track your favorite saints through Lent Madness with the 2024 Bracket Poster

Hear from the author of our new Lent devotional: Will You?

Q&A: Amanda Perkins McGriff, author of Will You?

Amanda Perkins McGriff is an Episcopal priest who lives in Memphis, Tennessee, with her husband Wil, their son Darwin, and their retired greyhound, Goose. She currently serves as a chaplain at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital and as curate at St. George’s Episcopal Church.

A graduate of Bexley Seabury Seminary in Chicago, she is the recipient of a 2021 Episcopal Evangelism Society grant to create a curriculum exploring connections between baptism, eucharist, and evangelism. This project is available now as Will You? a five-week Lenten study on the Book of Common Prayer’s baptismal promises. Learn more about Amanda and her work in this author Q&A.


Where did the idea for this book come from?

Will You? began as a project  for a Bexley Seabury Seminary class called Reimagining Congregations in Mission. The assignment was to design a five-session formation offering specific to my context that invited participants to think about mission in new ways, and I had the idea to build my curriculum around the five “will you” questions of the Baptismal Covenant. These promises that we agree to, or that are agreed to on our behalf, in our baptisms are supposed to guide our individual and corporate lives. It should not be a surprise that they can guide us into a fresh understanding of evangelism as well. After graduation, I received an Episcopal Evangelism Society grant which allowed me to expand that initial project, through two piloting phases, into Will You? and the accompanying Group Leader Guide.

What is your hope for this book?

My hope is that Will You? will help Episcopalians come together during Lent to engage in lively and fruitful discussion about where our Baptismal Covenant is calling us. I hope that the book leads people to think deeply about the connections between evangelism and these promises we make in our baptisms.

Your book examines the five baptismal promises from the Book of Common Prayer. Which promise resonates the most with you? Are there any of the promises you struggle with?

I struggle with all of the promises, but the promise that I think about the most as I go about my day is to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself.” I am a hospital chaplain, and my prayer every day is that the love of God will shine through me, that I will see and treat all those I encounter as the beloved children of God that they are. The promise that was the most difficult for me to write about was “proclaiming by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” This is the most obviously evangelistic baptismal promise, and it is also what I am called to do as a priest. But I struggled because there are so many different ways to interpret “proclaiming the Good News.” I wanted to be careful because some of our past interpretations of this mandate have led to some of our worst corporate sins, but I also wanted to invite readers to think boldly and creatively.

What does evangelism mean to you?

I think that the cover art for Will You? is a perfect illustration of my definition of evangelism. I am so grateful to artist Jason Sierra, who created it. He was able to really encapsulate the concept of the book, which is that the “will you” questions of the Baptismal Covenant follow an arc, from a gathering in to a sending out. The art on the cover is inviting readers to go out of their church doors, but it is an invitation issued from inside the church. And that is what I think we miss about evangelism and why it is so helpful to look at it through the lens of the Baptismal Covenant. It is indeed going out of our church doors and participating in God’s healing work in the world, the essence of those last three “will you” questions. But those actions need to be grounded in our beliefs, in prayer and discernment in community, and in self-examination of our past mistakes and repentance of sin. These are the elements that make up the first part of our Baptismal Covenant, and we get into trouble when we leave these important pieces out of our definition of evangelism.

Do you have a favorite prayer?

My favorite prayer from the Book of Common Prayer is Thanksgiving Over the Water. It is part of the service for Holy Baptism and is found on page 306 in the BCP. I love the imagery and the balancing of the phrasing in it. And I love that it conveys our story so succinctly yet so beautifully.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with readers?

I first want to highlight that there is a comprehensive free Group Leader Guide available. As someone who has led small groups in the past, it was very important to me to give group leaders the tools they would need to facilitate weekly discussions that follow along with the book and delve deeper into the Baptismal Covenant questions. Find the Group Leader Guide here or on the Will You? page on Forward Movement’s website.

I also want to share my sincere gratitude to all of those who are considering making Will You? part of their Lenten practice, whether individually or in a small group. I am so humbled and honored to be on this journey with you.