Category Archives: Forward Today

Forward Today: There is always hope

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A cross with prayer beads hangs above the center console of a car. All we can see is the clock, a GPS unit, and the cross hanging in the foreground. In the background, through the windshield, we can see the sunrise.
Photo by Jules PT on Unsplash

Dear friends in Christ,

During my recent travels, I had an inspiring conversation with a rideshare driver. He had a cross hanging from the rearview mirror, so I asked him to tell me about his church.

Then I asked him how he became a Christian, because we were in a country that had a low percentage of Christians. The driver told me about his childhood, which was challenging. While he was in school, he got involved in gangs. One time, he was badly injured in a gang fight, and he spent some time in the hospital. It wasn’t his first visit to the hospital about a gang fight.

He told me how one of his schoolteachers came to visit him. She’d been to see him several times on his visits to the hospital after fights. This time, she had a long conversation with him. Finally, she invited him to change his life: she urged him to spend his life doing something good in the world rather than fighting for gangs. She told him about Jesus, and how much God loves him.

The driver accepted her invitation. He joined a church and changed his whole life. He found a worthwhile career. And after he retired from that, he decided to drive for a rideshare company. He said he thinks God put him here to tell people the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He’s certainly good at it!

I thought about all this because too often, in our society we may be tempted to write some people off as hopeless. But in God’s eyes, there is always hope for everyone. No one is beyond redemption.

As our world gets more and more polarized, it can be easy to give up on some people, to begin to tell ourselves that some are beyond redemption. I’m inspired by this teacher’s faith and her willingness to take the time to get to know a “gang kid.” What if we get to know our neighbors so we can love them—and perhaps invite them to know the love of Jesus?

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

Order now for a head-start on Easter hope: Easter Triumph, Easter Joy

Join the Madness this Lent at LentMadness.org

Four issues. 365 days of inspiration. Subscribe to Forward Day by Day

Pray with us every day: prayer.forwardmovement.org

Forward Today: The gift of Lent

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Photo by Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash

Dear friends in Christ,

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Amidst all the chaos and difficulties of our present world, it might seem that Lent is an unwelcome guest. More sorrow! More hardship! But I think Lent is the gift we all need.

As for me, I’m looking forward to a season that re-focuses me on what really matters. It’s all about love. God hates nothing he has made, as today’s prayer reminds us. Lent gives us an opportunity to ignore all the things that distract us from God’s grace and mercy.

I’m so glad to have this season dedicated to prayer, to scripture reading, to reflection, to self-denial, and to repentance. Difficult? Perhaps. Joyful? Absolutely! As my friend Fr. Tim Schenck says, “What could be more joyful than returning to Jesus?”

Christianity is a team sport. I hope you’ll find your way to a local church. If they have Lenten offerings, try them out.

At Forward Movement, we offer an array of tools to help you enter fully into this season. You can read Forward Day by Day, a simple daily devotion. You can pray the Daily Office, ancient patterns of prayer that sustain Christians around the world. Or you can still get an e-book copy of this year’s new Lenten devotional, The Disciple’s Way, offering daily reflections from church leaders vigorously encouraging you to be a disciple of Jesus.

I would be remiss if I also didn’t mention a lighter way to move through this holy season, Lent Madness, also known as the Saintly Smackdown.

However you choose to observe the season, I pray that Lent is a blessing for you. It might just provide the anchor you need to remember that God loves you and everyone else. If we can remember that, we can be bearers of God’s beautiful mercy and grace in this world.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

Get to know God better: Devotions for People Who Don’t Do Devotions

Prepare for Easter: Order your colorable Alleluia calendar

Travel through scripture in this season: The Path

Forward Today: Greetings from Kansas City

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Photo by Pedro Lima on Unsplash

Dear friends in Christ,

I’m writing to you from Kansas City, where I’m attending the Episcopal Parish Network conference. It’s inspiring to hear about all the wonderful things happening across the Episcopal Church these days. In many places, lives are transformed, and the Good News of Jesus is shared in word and deed.

Here at the conference, I’m giving a talk on the spiritual state of the Episcopal Church, and it’s also true that we have plenty of room for improvement. Churches are struggling to reach people and to make things work as they used to. It’s not surprising that church leaders (including me!) don’t always get it right. Read a few pages in the New Testament, and you encounter the reality that following Jesus is not always easy or obvious.

In the Acts of the Apostles, we read about what happens when the church lets itself be led by the Holy Spirit. My hope for the church today is that we’ll do the same. We’ll have to start by admitting we don’t have the answers, and then we’ll have to pray mightily and listen attentively for the Spirit. And we can notice where the power of the Spirit is always inflaming the church with the astonishing Good News of Jesus Christ.

Conferences such as the one I’m attending now remind me of how good it is to gather with others and to share our joys, our hopes, our sorrows, our worries, and, above all, our faith in Jesus. You don’t need to get on an airplane and go to a conference for that, however. This same kind of dynamic gathering can happen in your local church, in your diocese, or just among Episcopalians and other Christians who want to hang out together.

My hope is that we who follow Jesus will always be unflinchingly honest about ourselves and our churches. There’s no bragging in sharing our joy in what God is doing in our lives and in the world around us. And there’s no shame in sharing our worry about our own journey or our churches’ calling.

In this chaotic world we now find ourselves living in, we need to constantly remind ourselves and others in the church that we can’t fix what ails the world. Jesus offers salvation to all who accept his gift. And our task is to proclaim that Good News—and to share his love with the world that craves a word of grace and mercy.

Blessings to you, wherever you are in your own journey, however it happens to be going in the moment.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

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Equip your church to welcome new members: Invite Welcome Connect

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Linking baptism to evangelism: Will You?

Forward Today: Getting ready for Lent

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Dear friends in Christ,

Just two weeks from today, Lent begins. Maybe you love Lent, and this is good news for you. Or maybe you dread Lent, and you can’t imagine the burden of this season when the world seems to be coming apart. If the second one sounds like you, I invite you to look at Lent a new way.

Our prayer book liturgy bids us to use Lent to “prepare with joy for the Paschal feast.” This season can be a joyful time to get our hearts and our lives ready for Easter. And it makes total sense: what could be more joyful than returning to the love of Jesus?

It’s tempting to let the despair and chaos of the world distract us from the still, small voice of God. We might think we have other things to do, something that prevents us from observing Lent. But the opening overture of the Lenten story sets the tone. We begin our season on the first Sunday in Lent hearing about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Satan tried everything to tempt and to distract Jesus from his mission. And Jesus resisted all of Satan’s wiles so that he could be for us perfect love.

Let us all turn away from the distractions of despair, doom, chaos, busy-ness, and fear, and toward toward the loving embrace of Jesus as we use this season to repent and return to the Lord.

Forward Movement offers many resources to help you along the way. We have a brand new devotional book that providentially speaks the message we need to hear now: Check out The Disciple’s Way. If you need something to bring a bit of mirth to your life while still bidding you to know Jesus, try Lent Madness. Or maybe you’ll want to simply try out daily prayer or reflection for 40 days (these are free!).

If your church is offering Lenten programming, consider taking part. While it might seem like “one more thing” in a busy life, it might be just the thing to put the rest of your life in perspective. And, of course, celebrating Sundays and holy days during the season is always a good idea.

My fervent hope and prayer is that Lent will be blessings to you.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

Last chance to order calendars for Lent and Easter!

Get a head start on Easter joy: order this devotional today

Explore the Bible this Lent with one of our Bible Challenges

Stock up for the season: Order a 10-pack of Forward Day by Day

Forward Today: The steadfast courage of Absalom Jones

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Dear friends in Christ: We welcome back Margaret Ellsworth, Forward Movement’s Marketing Coordinator, as our guest author this week.

Tomorrow, the Episcopal Church remembers the holy life of Absalom Jones. He may not be one of the most familiar saints in our church, but if you follow Lent Madness, you’ll likely remember his name. A few years ago, Absalom Jones emerged victorious at the top of the bracket as the winner of the 2021 Golden Halo.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, here’s how Scott described this online devotion last year: “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.”

This week’s saint, Absalom Jones, is one of those saints that we learned about together during Lent Madness 2021. If you open up this year’s Lent Madness Saintly Scorecard, you can read his brief bio as one of the Golden Halo winners: “Absalom Jones and his fervent hope that the Body of Christ would manifest the diversity of God’s people continues to inspire and educate people more than 200 years after his ministry. Ordained a priest in 1802, Jones was the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church and is remembered on the feast day of February 13 for his commitment to opening the doors of the church to all people.”

Miriam Willard McKinney, one of our enthusiastic Celebrity Bloggers, helped illuminate Absalom Jones for us in her posts on the Lent Madness blog. Miriam shared about his life and also a little bit about him in his own words. She even found art in Absalom’s likeness—from portraits to peg-dolls—in the “Saintly Kitsch” round of the competition.

As Absalom advanced through the bracket, Miriam concluded her posts by asking friends, family, and colleagues: “What does Absalom Jones have to do with you?” The answers she got reflect the scope of Absalom’s life and witness—from his sacrificial acts of service to his community during a devastating epidemic, to his faithfulness to God despite the failings of the Church.

Miriam sums all these answers up for us: “Absalom Jones shows us what it looks like to be a Christian, a community organizer, a faith leader, and a friend. That’s what Absalom Jones has to do with you: he shows you how to follow Jesus, no matter what.”

This is why we do Lent Madness, as silly as it may seem: to learn about our fellow followers of Jesus, across space and time, and take inspiration from their example. I encourage you to follow Lent Madness this year if you haven’t already (sign up for email updates here!) and to pray with us to be formed in courage and love just like Absalom Jones:

Set us free, heavenly Father, from every bond of prejudice and fear; that, honoring the steadfast courage of your servant Absalom Jones, we may show forth in our lives the reconciling love and true freedom of the children of God, which you have given us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Margaret Ellsworth
Marketing Coordinator

More from our ministry:

Color through Lent and Easter with our seasonal calendars

To inspire you in following Jesus this Lent: The Disciple’s Way

Get your Lent Madness merch at the Lentorium

Learn more about the saints with this FREE downloadable curriculum

Forward Today: What are your gifts?

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Dear friends in Christ: We welcome back Margaret Ellsworth, Forward Movement’s Marketing Coordinator, as our guest author this week. 

During the last few weeks of the Sunday lectionary, we’ve traveled through 1 Corinthians 12: Paul’s discussion of the Body of Christ, with its many members and their many gifts.

These verses are rattling around in my mind with my reflections for 2025. I often spend the first few days of January journaling about my hopes and intentions for the coming year. It might also be a good time to think about my own gifts— and where they’re needed. Where do I fit into the Body of Christ that Paul describes? What gifts has God activated in my life?

I tell my kids that everyone has things that are easier for them, and things that are harder. Maybe that’s one way to think about spiritual gifts: what comes easy to you? What actions feel natural or joyful to you, that might be needed for the Church’s mission?

There’s one word that keeps showing up in my New Year’s journal: stories. I am drawn to stories: reading, writing, enthusiastically telling. That doesn’t show up on any of the lists in Paul’s letters, but once I name it I notice it everywhere.

Some of the less publicized spiritual gifts might resonate with you. Another of Paul’s lists of spiritual gifts, in Romans 12, names “the compassionate” who has the grace of “cheerfulness.” A friend once nudged me in church when this passage was read. She saw compassion and cheerfulness as God’s gifts in my life. Ever since she pointed it out, I notice it too.

Paul’s words could well have inspired the first head of Forward Movement, who is reported to have said in 1934, “If we want our congregations to be strong, we need them to be filled not with habitual Christians, but with disciples of Jesus Christ.” The Body that is our church is only as strong as its members.

It’s easy, in our busy schedules and our chaotic world, to be habitual Christians—to treat church more like a nice hobby than a way of life. This goes double for those of us who aren’t “professional Christians.” Christian practice can come secondary to our Real Work, fitting in our faith to the shrinking empty spaces on our to-do list or our calendar. To be a disciple, in contrast, is to know this faith as an animating force that moves us forward in all parts of our lives —inside or outside the church.

Of course, one of the main ways I use my storytelling gifts is by sharing stories about Forward Movement’s ministry. But perhaps my bigger storytelling work is raising my children, helping them know who they are and where they fit into God’s great story. The compassion and cheerfulness that God has given me are needed here—in my parenting work—and also allow me to encourage the other tired, overwhelmed parents in my community.

Another lesson I try to teach my kids: that hard things can become easier with practice. If we keep practicing, our gifts can become stronger, our joyful tasks easier. I’m glad for the opportunity to practice being a disciple, alongside the other members of the Body each week. Thinking about my gifts only goes so far —but showing up alongside my fellow disciples gives me the chance to practice using my gifts, with others traveling the same way.

What about you? Where do you notice God’s particular gifts in your life? How can you use them to deepen your discipleship and strengthen your community?

Yours faithfully,

Margaret Ellsworth
Marketing Coordinator

More from our ministry:

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Forward Today: The gift of Lent is coming

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A linoleum-print illustration of a ship with seven sails, white against a dark blue background. The ship is sailing on a stormy sea, with curling gusts of wind in the background of the image.
Art by Jason Sierra

Dear friends in Christ,

We are just about ready to celebrate the feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, which happens exactly 40 days after Christmas Day. This is always a sign that Lent is just around the corner.

Have you thought about how you’ll receive the gift of the Lenten season? This season is set aside to encourage us to return to the Lord, to get back on track as a follower of Jesus. While Lent is a time of quiet contemplation and somber reflection, the deeper reality is that repenting is joyful (though sometimes hard) work!

The church encourages us to observe Lent “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (BCP 265). If your local church offers opportunities to engage in these practices, I hope you’ll avail yourself of them.

We at Forward Movement offer a range of resources to help you savor the gift of Lent. You might try praying the Daily Office on our prayer site. Or perhaps you’d like to take on the habit of listening to a daily podcast.

This year, we have published a new Lenten devotional book that I’m especially excited about. Recalling the vigorous beginning of Forward Movement in the 1930s, a time when our church needed the bracing challenge of discipleship, our book this year is The Disciple’s Way: Daily Reflections for Lent. We invited a range of excellent writers to challenge us to follow Jesus in stirring language.

Given all that’s happening in the world these days, I am personally looking forward to making my way through Lent with these compelling voices—and to engaging other ancient, time-tested practices of the church.

I’m writing about this now, because we all might need some time to figure out what Lent looks like this year. Whatever you do, I hope you’ll have an inspiring Lent.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

Pray and color through Lent with this poster calendar

Prepare for Lent Madness by studying up on the Saintly Scorecard

Get ready for a new quarter of Forward Day by Day 

See all our Lenten devotionals on our website

Forward Today: We were all baptized into one body

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Water dropping into a bucket, creating a joyous splash.
Photo by Amritanshu Sikdar on Unsplash

Dear friends in Christ,

This coming Sunday, we will hear from St. Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth. He writes, “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body…” He goes on to talk about unity in diversity in the body of Christ. His teaching suggests that the church needs all of us in our diversity.

But how do we make that happen? Or, more accurately, how do we enjoy the gift of God making it happen?

The Gospel on Sunday reminds us of one of the foundational practices of manifesting the body of Christ. “When [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom.”

I’ve heard people say things like, “God doesn’t care if we go to church.” Nothing could be further from the truth. If we say we follow Jesus, we should pattern our lives after his example. Jesus went to the synagogue week by week. He kept the fasts and feasts. Praying in community matters to our Lord.

The letter to the Hebrews make this explicit for us: “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Heb 10:24-25).

So there are lots of reasons why going to church matters:

  • It helps us pattern our lives after our Lord and Savior
  • Church allows us to meet Jesus in the sacraments and to hear the great stories of God’s love for us in the scriptures
  • We can provoke one another to love and good deeds—and be provoked ourselves
  • We can offer our thanks and praise to Almighty God

 

This is a timely reminder. The news cycles invite us into a cycle of fear and dread. But we who follow Jesus are meant to manifest his light and his hope for the world. So we do well to put news cycles in the context of salvation history. And we do that at church.

So, this Sunday, I encourage you to go to church. Ever better, invite someone to go along with you, or gently nudge a fellow Christian who hasn’t been in a while.

Going to church matters to us, and it matters to God.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

Get your Lent and Easter calendars today!

Start planning your Lent Madness bracket with this poster

Connecting baptism to evangelism: Will You?

Travel the way of Jesus this Lent: The Disciple’s Way

Forward Today: Sharing the Good News in all places

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A pale blue sky and a pink-orange sunrise, seen through a close-up of scrubby plants in the hills of California.
Photo by OC Gonzalez on Unsplash

Dear friends in Christ,

Last Sunday, we celebrated the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a rich and complex feast, with many fruitful ways to approach our celebration. This year, I’m struck by how this wondrous event reveals Jesus Christ as the Savior of all. The voice from heaven was heard by everyone.

That’s not all. In the reading from Acts, we heard that the apostles in Jerusalem learned that the people of Samaria had received the Good News, so they dispatch Peter and John to offer ministry. There’s a lot to unpack here.

Let’s start with the place: Samaria. This is not a land that most Judeans would want to spend time in, let alone try to convert people to following Jesus. And yet that’s just what happened. The disciples were not afraid to embark on unfamiliar, stranger, or even hostile work. And the fruit was manifest: many people responded to the invitation to follow Jesus as Lord.

We could learn some things from this. Too often, I see our church shrinking back from challenges—an unwillingness to preach where it might be tough, a fear of the unknown, a resignation to secularism, or the simple embrace of church decline as inevitable.

Perhaps this Epiphany season, we will absorb the astonishing news: the Gospel is for all. If we are willing to be Spirit-led, the impossible becomes possible. We must not commit the sin of attempting to hoard the Good News for ourselves.

Let us rejoice that God has offered salvation to us and to all people. And then let us hasten to share that gift with the world.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

Now available: Colorable calendars for Lent and Easter

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Hospitality as a way of life for churches: Invite Welcome Connect

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Forward Today: Shine in our hearts

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Le Breton, Jacques ; Gaudin, Jean. Adoration of the Kings, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

Dear friends in Christ: While Scott is traveling, please enjoy this throwback post he wrote for Epiphany in January 2020.

Just two days ago, we celebrated the Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which of course recalls the adoration of the magi. It bears repeating that this feast day reminds us, among other things, that Jesus is for the whole world. The magi came from far away—and they were not among the chosen people. Yes, Jesus is for those who are near and those who are far. Jesus is for those we expect and those we do not expect.

We are near the beginning of the Epiphany season, a whole season devoted to basking in the light of God’s love. Our prayer book’s Eucharistic preface, prayed to God the Father, says during this season, “in the mystery of the Word made flesh, you have caused a new light to shine in our hearts, to give the knowledge of your glory in the face of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”

This Epiphany season reminds us that the life and ministry of Jesus is not only an event in the past, but a reality that changes everything. Even our very hearts are changed, as Christ’s light shines brightly through us.

Sometimes the evil of this world seems so powerful, that we might worry it will extinguish God’s love. But we need not be afraid. I hope that the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ reminds us all that God’s love is stronger than fear, sin, and death. I hope that we will resist evil at every turn, confident in God’s love for us and for all creation.

During this Epiphany season, my prayer is that Christians can be bearers of God’s love and light into the world. Against all the fearful, hate-filled noise in our world, let us proclaim the glad news of hope, redemption, mercy, and grace.

Do you see the light of Christ in your own heart? How might you share that light with a world in need?

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

Order our newest Lenten devotional: The Disciple’s Way

Pre-order your Lent Madness posters and booklets today

Make Christ’s Way of Love your way of life with this Practical Guide

Make prayer a habit this year with our convenient podcasts