Forward Today: Prepare with joy

,

Dear friends in Christ,

Our prayer book says that Lent is a time to “prepare with joy for the Paschal feast” among other things. This season of repentance helps us to bask in the radiant light of Christ’s resurrection, as we turn away from earthly things and toward things heavenly.

Lent still seems new, but if we are to be ready for Easter, we have to look ahead. Many of us tend to put more focus on Lenten practices than on Easter practices.

Last year, I decided to focus on my own Easter practices, and I ended up writing a book of daily devotions for the Easter season. The whole book asks the question, “How might our lives change if we took seriously the astounding reality of the empty tomb?”

Whether you use my book or something else, I encourage you to consider an Easter devotional practice. The reason I mention this today is that you might want to get it selected and ordered so it arrives on time.

Easter Triumph, Easter Joy: Meditations for the Fifty Days of Eastertide is available as a book or ebook. If you buy directly from Forward Movement, there are also bulk discounts if you want to invite your whole church to consider an Easter practice. At a time when the world’s news often seems hopeless, this might be just the year to dive deeper into a season that’s all about ultimate hope.

Forward Movement also has colorable Easter calendar posters (Alleluia! 50 Days and 50 Ways to Celebrate Easter) by the inimitable Jay Sidebotham. Your church can buy packs of 25 calendars and then give them away, perhaps on Easter Day, to help people celebrate the Easter season at home.

You don’t have to spend money, of course. You can read the Book of Acts. Or take up a joyous prayer practice. Or find another way to keep the full fifty days of Easter. Whatever you do, it’s time to start planning.

Meanwhile, I wish you every blessing of this season of Lent. We still have plenty of Lent left to repent and renew in our walk with Christ.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

Try a practice of simple Lenten joy: Play Lent Madness
Follow along as the church reads Acts in Easter: A Journey Through Acts

Forward Today: Simply showing up for Lent

Dear friends in Christ: This week’s Forward Today is written by Margaret Ellsworth, who started working on the Forward Movement team in our marketing department in August 2021. From time to time, I hope Forward Today readers will enjoy a perspective from others on our team. – Scott Gunn

Today we are officially two weeks into Lent. And for those of us who are practicing a Lenten discipline this year–whether that’s giving something up or taking something on—we are coming face-to-face with how that practice is working in our lives so far.

Maybe you’re satisfied with how your practice is working—maybe you’re noticing how it’s leading you into self-examination and repentance. Or maybe it’s been a struggle.

Maybe you gave up chocolate for Lent and then remembered with chagrin that you’d already pre-ordered some delicious Thin Mints from the Girl Scouts next door. Maybe you picked a discipline last week and promptly forgot about it after the ashes were washed from your brow.  Maybe a Lenten practice feels like just one more thing to add to your plate, and after two years full of work and worry your plate’s just… full.

In a culture that tells us to optimize our lives for maximum productivity, it’s easy to see Lent through that lens. Easy to think our prayers and fasts are failures of will.

But what if our practices don’t have to be perfect? What if simply showing up could be enough?

In this season of my life I’m finding that a small and simple practice is more likely to be done consistently, and thus bear more fruit, than a thorny ambitious one. Take dishes, for example: the bane of my housekeeping life. When I set out to clean the whole house in a day, it stays messy. When I set out to wash one dish, more often than not I move on to empty the sink—and if that isn’t possible, at least I have a plate to eat off of for dinner.

So too with habits of prayer. I have tried for many past Lenten seasons to pray the Daily Office every day. Some hectic days I can’t find the full thirty minutes it would take to pray the whole service aloud. But I can try the small and simple version of that. Perhaps I’ll just pray the five-minute “Daily Devotions” service from the BCP instead. Or even just one psalm or canticle. Maybe just the Lord’s Prayer.

The Forward Day by Day app (available on iOS and Google Play) makes this easy. The readings and prayers are already there for me without any flipping through pages or looking things up. I can move from the long Morning Prayer service to a shorter prayer or devotional with just one tap. And for days when I can’t sit still, I pull up the Morning Prayer podcast (right there in the app as well) and let the prayers and readings wash over me as I get the dishes done.

So wherever you are with your discipline this week, I pray that God is meeting you there. I hope you show up with me this week, no matter how small or simple your practice may be—because after all, it is not our work but God’s that draws us into holy presence.

Margaret Ellsworth serves as Marketing Coordinator for Forward Movement. She holds an MA in worship and the arts from Claremont School of Theology. Margaret lives with her husband and two young children in Boise, Idaho.

More from our ministry:

Prayer practices in everyday life: Seek and You Will Find
Try a practice of simple Lenten joy: Play Lent Madness

Forward Today: The neglected commandment

Dear friends in Christ,

I lead a Bible study on Tuesday evenings. Not long ago, we looked at the Ten Commandments in Exodus. One of the things we talked about is how we mostly respect and try to keep nine of the commandments. We don’t murder, steal, or lie. Or at least we agree that those things are bad!

But we don’t rest very well, do we? Christians have varied understanding of what Sabbath means and how to keep it. But in the Ten Commandments and elsewhere throughout the Old Testament, it’s pretty clear that God wants his people to rest! There are myriad ways this is lived out in the scriptures. Jesus, too, kept the Sabbath, though he sometimes got into squabbles about how to keep it.

Jesus rested. He kept the Sabbath – though perhaps not the way others expected. God commands rest. Jesus rested. So why is it so hard for us?

In short, our culture promotes the idol of productivity. We live in a world that teaches us that our value comes from what we produce or accomplish. But that’s antithetical to the Gospel. The Gospel teaches us that we are precious regardless of what we produce. The scriptures say that we are worthy of God’s love and redeeming grace.

Taking a day to rest – not to check off a list of errands, but to really rest – is countercultural. When someone asks you what you’re doing today, try answering, “Nothing. I’m resting.” See what kind of reaction you get!

The pandemic has blurred lines of home and work. We all need rest more than ever, and it’s harder than ever to get away. I hope you’ll find a way to rest regularly. God literally made us hardwired to benefit from the gift of rest. When we rest, we can simply enjoy our creation and preservation by almighty God. We can remember what is truly important.

At Forward Movement, we try to model the practices of discipleship. We pray every day at the office. We practice generosity by giving away thousands of free books and booklets every year. We study the Bible together. And we rest.

We rest in several ways. Our lay staff and clergy have taken sabbaticals. Our full-time staff have every other Friday off, yielding a three-day weekend. We work hard while we’re on duty, but we also do our best to give folks time away from work for family time and other activities.

This week, we’ve closed our office. All week long, Monday through Friday, our whole staff is enjoying a week of refreshment and rest after a very stressful few months with pandemic-related issues. I hope you’ll say a word of prayer to give thanks for my hard-working and amazing colleagues at Forward Movement, that they can rest well. We love our work, and that’s why we’re all taking a few days away from it.

How are you doing at rest? How is your church doing? Can you allow your hard-working and probably exhausted staff and clergy to have some real rest time?

Rest. It is God’s command, and God’s commandments are good for us and for our world. Rest.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

From Grow Christians: Sabbath by sprain
Fill out your bracket at the new Lent Madness website

Forward Today: Make in us new and contrite hearts

,

Dear friends in Christ,

It seems like the world is spinning out of control. Lies fill the airwaves. Nations invade nations. Greed seems endemic. Division abounds. Fear spreads.

Honestly, sometimes it’s hard to know what to make of all this. It would be easy to lay all the blame at the feet of others. If only THEY would change. To be sure, all of those people do truly need to repent.

There’s one thing I’ve noticed that all Christians have in common: we love to talk about other people’s sins.

Lent invites us to see things differently. I can’t control others, but I can open my own heart to God’s transforming grace. I can turn away from my own sins and turn toward the merciful God who loves me more than I can imagine. I can seek to be a bearer of God’s mercy and grace in this upside-down world.

I very much hope you’ll make it to church today if you can. Receiving that gritty, ashen cross on our foreheads reminds us that we are mortal. That cross also reminds us that we are not defined by what we do, but by the God who offers redemption.

By God’s amazing grace, the world can change one heart at a time. We defeat evil with love. We crush fear with hope. We hollow out greed with blessing. This Lent, let us all focus on the things that truly matter.

Blessings to you all. I wish you a holy Lent, for Christ’s sake.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

Fill out your bracket at the new Lent Madness website

Forward Today: Thank you notes

Dear friends in Christ,

This week’s Forward Today is written by Lindsay Barrett-Adler, who started working on the Forward Movement team in our development department in June 2021. From time to time, I hope Forward Today readers will enjoy a perspective from others on our team. – Scott Gunn

“Don’t forget to write your thank you notes!” You know how people lament turning into some version of a parent as they get older? Maybe they develop an infatuation with one, very particular brand of a product or mirror a habit they observed while growing up, suddenly following patterns established decades beforehand. Well, that was me on a recent Saturday morning.

There I stood, at the foot of our stairs, yelling up at my six-year-old, “Don’t forget to write your thank you notes!” A fresh-faced Daisy, this is her first year selling Girl Scout cookies and we’ve included a drawing and small thank you note with each order. I help her write the thank you note, but my daughter provides the drawing and signs her name. Each note flashes me back to my own mother reminding me to send those thank you notes after birthdays, holidays, or other occasions of gratitude.

Growing up, I hated writing those thank you notes. I just wanted to play with my new toys! Little did I know that receiving, acknowledging, and celebrating the generosity of others would ultimately become a vocation. I joined the Forward Movement team last summer, with a background in fundraising and relationship building. I bring experiences with capital campaigns, annual appeals and donor solicitations, grant management, annual reports, and a host of other development projects. Donor-advised funds? I’m familiar. Bequests? No problem. Receiving stamps from a prison commissary in the mail? Now, that was new to me.

Being a part of the development world at Forward Movement is unique from any of my other positions because of the people in our network of ministry. Thanks to our donors’ generosity, Forward Movement provides tens of thousands of copies of Forward Day by Day for free each year. We have sent free, devotional items to friends in prisons, mental health treatment facilities, hospitals, assisted living facilities, and military bases around the world. This is only made possible by generous donors who support Forward Movement’s mission and work. We also write each one back to thank them for sharing their stories with us and remind them that they are beloved children of God, who matter to us, and in this world.

Like other organizations, our donors receive acknowledgment notes for these gifts that enable this ministry. Receiving notes of profound gratitude from inside those same hospital rooms, cells, and all too often lonely rooms has set my experience with Forward Movement apart. These notes share how relationships with God have been renewed, paths to forgiveness and redemption forged, and faith deepened. And there might be a stamp.

Using their credits at the commissary, the most vital form of physical currency, a donor might show their appreciation by including this small gift, just the size of a postage stamp, with their note of thanks that might say:

“Thank you for coming into my life- prison cell- and embracing me with daily hugs and warm wisdom.”

“Thank you for being my family.”

Small notes of thanks, with huge amounts of meaning.

– Lindsay Barrett-Adler

More from our ministry:

Announcing the release of the Spanish Finance Resource Guide
Pray with us wherever you are: Episcopal Prayer Podcasts
Make this gratitude possible: Donate to Forward Movement 

Forward Today: Prepare with joy for the Paschal feast

Dear friends in Christ,

Last week I wrote about churches embarking on a Lenten journey in these strange times. This week, I want to say a few things about how we might go on a Lenten journey on our own.

Fundamentally, Lent is about repentance, about rejecting the alluring evils of this world and turning toward Jesus Christ. While it’s serious work, it need not make us glum! There is always joy in finding Jesus.

The classic Lenten practices are prayer, study, fasting, and self-denial. If you have an established habit of these practices, you certainly don’t need another thing. You’re ready to go, and I commend you on your Lenten journey.

My sense is that many people struggle to make sense of Lent in their own lives, and it’s especially challenging now. So I encourage you to give Lent a try. Reading scripture is always good, and there are lots of apps (including the free Forward Movement app, available on iOS and Google Play) to help with that. We also offer podcasts to be your companion on the way.

If you like a daily devotional, there’s always Forward Day by Day. This year, Forward Movement partnered with Washington National Cathedral on a book of daily devotions for the season. You can buy The Pilgrim Way of Lent: Meditations from Washington National Cathedral as a book or ebook.

Lent Madness is a fun way to see how people of all nations, cultures, and times can be disciples of Jesus. If you’re looking for something “less serious” for the season, the Saintly Smackdown will be just the thing. If you want something else that’s outside the box, ChurchNext offers several courses that may work for you.

My latest book, The Way of Love: A Practical Guide to Following Jesus, is a gentle and encouraging guide to going deeper with spiritual practices. If you always wanted to pray more or find ways to study, or go deeper in some other way, The Way of Love could be useful.

Forward Movement offers a whole array of resources for Lent. And our friends at other publishers have great books and materials, too.

Whatever you do, I hope you’ll do it with seriousness AND joy. Jesus always welcomes us when we turn to him. Lent is coming, and that means Easter can’t be far behind. As our prayer book bids us, let us prepare with joy for the Paschal feast.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

P.S. Global logistics challenges continue. If you are ordering materials from Forward Movement or any other Christian publisher, I encourage you to order right away to ensure your materials arrive in time.

More from our ministry:

A rhythm of prayer from Grow Christians: Family Morning Prayer with Young Children
Learn more about the newest ChurchNext Course: Understanding Systemic Racism
Announcing the release of the Spanish Finance Resource Guide

Forward Today: Lent in your church

Dear friends in Christ,

Lent is just around the corner. This week, I want to share a few thoughts about Lent at your church. Next week, I’ll write about Lent for you.

Once again, Lent this year will be different than we might prefer, as the pandemic continues. In some places, church activities will seem “normal” while in others nearly everything will be done online or in homes, and I expect everything in between. So how can we productively use this Lenten season?

The Book of Common Prayer suggests some ways to savor the Lenten season:  “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” Some of this work may best be done by individuals, but certainly churches can encourage repentance and prayer, for example.

Bible studies are popular, and with good reason. They work well online or in person. You can just gather some people with Bibles. Or you might like to use a book as a companion, such as A Journey With Luke or the Social Justice Bible Challenge.

My most recent book, The Way of Love: A Practical Guide to Following Jesus, is a brief little book that invites people into deeper spiritual practices such as prayer, study, and service. Though it wasn’t written specifically for Lent, I’ve heard good reports from those who used it as a Lenten study.

ChurchNext offers group courses. These can be used in person with a projector and shared conversation, or they translate very well to Zoom gatherings too. While it’s not specifically Lenten, the latest (free!) anti-racism course may be timely.

There are myriad ways to enter into a Lenten journey of repentance. Whatever you do, I hope you and your church will find ways to gather for learning and formation this coming Lent.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

P.S. Global logistics challenges continue. If you are ordering materials from Forward Movement or any other Christian publisher, I encourage you to order right away to ensure your materials arrive in time.

More from our ministry:

From Grow Christians, our family blog: Overcoming Prejudice with God’s Love
Learn more about the newest ChurchNext Course: Understanding Systemic Racism

Forward Today: A Light to enlighten

,

Dear friends in Christ,

a group of white taper candles, lit, against a dark backgroundToday the church celebrates one of the great feasts, the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple. We recall the time, told in the second chapter of Luke, that Mary and Joseph took young Jesus to the Temple to present him to God. This was to fulfill the law set forth in Exodus 13 commanding the firstborn to be offered to God.

When Mary and Joseph got to the Temple, they encountered Simeon, a man who had been waiting to behold his Savior. Seeing the Savior would be the culmination of his life. When he held Jesus, Simeon offered the beautiful praise we now know as the Nunc dimittis (from the Latin of the opening words).

Lord, you now have set your servant free *
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, *
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations, *
and the glory of your people Israel.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: *
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

Nearly every time I pray evening prayer, I repeat this canticle. I think of that man, essentially waiting to meet Jesus, a moment that will mark his readiness to leave his earthly pilgrimage and move on to his heavenly home. What was it like, waiting day in and day out to see his Savior? I ponder how his heart must have nearly burst with joy, holding the young child who was destined to change the world. I wonder if Simeon expected to greet his Savior as a child, or if he had been waiting for a powerful grownup? What a moment this must have been!

Simeon’s lovely song of praise reminds us that Jesus, the Light of the world, shines on every nation, on every person. Jesus’ saving love is for everyone.

I wonder if we are open to meeting our Savior in ways we might not expect? And I wonder if we are prepared to share the light of Christ’s grace, mercy, righteousness, peace, and love with the whole world?

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

Pray this canticle tonight: An Evening at Prayer podcast 
From Grow Christians, our family blog: Simeon sang – and we still sing today 

Forward Today: Noisy gongs and clanging cymbals

,

Dear friends in Christ,

This Sunday’s epistle brings us one of the greatest hits of the New Testament, mostly because it’s one of the readings of choice at just about every wedding. St. Paul writes in the first letter to the Corinthians, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.” In the context of weddings, it’s easy to read that as advice for marriage. And that’s not totally wrong.

But that’s not really what St. Paul was getting at. He was writing about Christian love – the self-sacrificing, generous, beautiful work of loving others as Christ first loved us. Of course, that love is essential in marriage. But it’s bigger than that.

We live in a noisy, chaotic world. It can often feel like our world is spinning out of control. This is what happens when love isn’t the foundation. St. Paul writes, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” He’s talking about life in the church in this particular moment, but his passion to call us all to love is obviously bigger than what we do among other believers.

The scriptures call us to live always by the rule of love. It’s easier said than done. It’s easy to forget that Christian love is primarily action, not feeling. It’s easy to forget that we are called to love in every moment, with every person.

There’s a lot of loveless clanging and gonging in the halls of government, the studios of cable news, and, yes, even in the sacred walls of churches.

I can’t fix the world. But I can fix my heart, by God’s grace. If I can manage to love others as Christ first loved me, our world becomes a tiny bit more beautiful, that much more grace-filled.

This Sunday, I’m looking forward to hearing these familiar words. Not long before we remember that Jesus Christ called us to remember his outpoured love for us until he comes again, we will be reminded that day by day, we are called to make love our way.

I aim to gong and clang a bit less, and proclaim love a bit more. Will you join me?

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

From Grow Christians, our family blog: The Conversion of St. Paul 
From the RenewalWorks blog: What we believe and refuse to believe
Get your Lent calendar today: Join the Journey through Lent

Forward Today: Challenges and gifts

,

Dear friends in Christ,

This coming Sunday’s epistle comes from 1 Corinthians 12, in which Saint Paul reminds us that we Christians together are the body of Christ, and that each one of us is a member that has a crucial role to play in the body.

I was thinking about how this works out at Forward Movement, a ministry of the church that has a different calling than a local congregation. Our work is to inspire disciples and empower evangelists. We do this in lots of ways. We host conferences, publish books, create apps, provide websites, offer podcasts, and more.

Doing our work requires a variety of gifts. We need people whose spiritual calling is finding missing commas. We need people who are patient and persistent to make sure that our orders ship on time. We need people who can tell the story of Forward Movement and what we have to offer the church. And that’s not even getting the list started!

The pandemic has pushed us hard. At times, it has felt futile to struggle against the tide of adversity. And at other times, I think we’d all say the pandemic has challenged us to work in new ways that will help us be more effective in our ministry. Our whole staff is weary, but I’m also amazed by the resilience of every single person at Forward Movement, as the staff has pressed onward to carry out our mission. We know that just as this has been tough for us, it’s also been tough on the individuals and congregations we serve.

Dozens of shipping boxes and mailing envelopes, stacked in the back of a large hatchback car.One of our latest challenges is that our warehouse has struggled to ship orders. You’ve read about all the issues with the supply chain and the world of logistics. Well, it’s no abstraction for us! To get things out on time, our Cincinnati customer service team has worked tirelessly to ship orders from our offices in Cincinnati.

This photo shows a carload of orders heading out. That’s just one of many batches. These orders—and hundreds more over the last few months—were all hand-packed by folks who stop every day at 10:00 a.m. to pray for our work and the ministry of the whole church.

I’ve certainly learned a lot about logistics and shipping! And we’ve had to change how, where, and when we work. We’ve improved our technology. We’ve learned to support one another in new ways. We’ve learned to go with a flow a bit more readily. Someday when the global health crisis is over, we’ll work better because of the challenges of the last two years.

Why am I telling all this? First, while I fully acknowledge and grieve very real costs of the pandemic in terms of death, illness, and personal struggle, I can also see that it has pushed us in some ways we needed to be pushed. I wonder if that’s true in your congregation? Second, we couldn’t have gotten through the last two years without the support of the whole church. I know that you have been patient with us. You have prayed for us. And you have supported us with an outpouring of donations to sustain our ministry. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

We’re going to get through this. Things will change, but we have each other and we have the abiding Holy Spirit with us along the way.

Blessings to you. May you have the strength and the courage to do the work God is calling you to do in this strange and challenging time, and may we never forget that Jesus has promised the Holy Spirit’s companionship with us on our journey.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn's signature

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

More from our ministry:

From Grow Christians, our family blog: Who is Jesus to you?
Get your Lent calendar today: Join the Journey through Lent
Help make this work possible: Donate to Forward Movement