Jan. Potluck Meeting AND Important news from national ECAPC

 

. . (1) Reminder: Next Potluck Supper Meeting - Monday Jan.12, 2009

            Christian Peacemaker Teams in Colombia

. . (2) News from ECAPC (National) and an important request

            Messages from  Joan Haan, John Stoner and others

 

(1)

Our Jan. 12th Potluck Supper Meeting will be hosted by the Northeast Community Lutheran Church.  Because of some emergency repairs at that church the actual location of our meeting will be at the former site of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, 724 Lowry Sve. NE; Minneapolis.  For further information call the church office at 612-788-2444 or send e-mail to >  ecapcTC@...

 

The program will be: A presentation by Nils Dybvig and Michele Braley

Christian Peacemaker Teams in Colombia

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) was founded on the belief that as Christians, if we hope to bring an end to war, we need to bring the same level of committment and self-sacrifice to peacemaking that soldiers bring to waging war.

Nils and Michele recently returned from two years in Colombia working with CPT.

Join them as they talk about the work of CPT in Colombia, and their work

with civilian communities resisting violence.

 

Please download the attached MS-Word document file.  It is a publicity flyer for this event. Print a few copies (or many); post them at your church and hand them to others who may (or should) be interested in the program. Really YOU are our primary means of communication.

 

(2)

The letter below is from Joan Haan, a very active member/leader in the Twin Cities peace community.  She also just happens to be a member of the Board of Directors for the national ECAPC organization.  Please do give your serious consideration to these messages from Joan and her colleagues at the national level of ECAPC.

 

Dear Twin Cities ECAPC,

 

I am writing to you as a Member of the Board of Directors, Every Church a Peace Church. I am also writing as a member of this community, one who attends pot lucks and planning meetings. I had the great honor of working along side long time members Bill Berneking, Rod Olsen, Al Bostelmann, Laurie Garfield and Linda Thomson  co-creating the fourth Twin Cities Regional Conference, Preemptive Peacemaking: Just Peace vs. Just War – the keynote was board member, Dr. Glen Stassen; a panel member was Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. ECAPC (national) was our fiscal sponsor.

 

I am writing to ask for your support of the national ECAPC organization.

 

We’ve had a difficult two years. Our Executive Director resigned, and we lost a large grant.

 

We are back on track with a new Executive Director, Dr. Matthew Johnson and the return of Founder, John Stoner. We are clear about our Mission statement:  Following Jesus in nonviolent struggle for justice and peace, we love our neighbors and enemies as God loves us all becoming a peace church to share in God’s work to save the world.

 

Please see article below from John Stoner. Also attached is the referenced article by Dr. Matthew Johnson, "A Message worth Shouting".  You will find more articles on our website home page, http://ecapc.org

Visit our website and see what we are doing as partners with Churches Supporting Churches, CSC,  http://www.cscneworleans.org and download ECACP TV, http://ecapc.org/video.asp and meet peacemakers like:  Imam Plemon El-Amin and Rabbi Karpuj, John Carmody, Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, Ruby Sales and Jim Wallis. Revisit our website and see for yourself.

 

Our need is urgent.  We have an opportunity to gain back the grant lost when we raise $50,000 from constituents and organizations that support our mission. To quote John Stoner, “Every Church A Peace Church does not seek too much income, just enough to do basic good.  That’s why our appeal two weeks ago for your gifts emphasized our need for many small gifts, not a few large ones. Your small gift matters, but we have not said we will refuse larger gifts!”

 

Donations can be made on line at https://www.ecapc.org/donate.asp Or you may phone 404-771-6379. email mjohnson@..., or mail to:

ECAPC

PO Box 162158,

Atlanta, GA 30321 USA

Thank you,

Joan Haan, ECAPC Board of Directors

 

The following items may be accessed in a perhaps more readable form at:

   http://www.ecapc.org/articles/article-12557.htm    (A New Beginning ...)

   http://www.ecapc.org/articles/article-12548.htm    (A Message Worth ....)

 

          **************************************************

 

A NEW BEGINNING FOR ECAPC    by John K. Stoner

Every Church a Peace Church is experiencing a new beginning.  I hope that you will be part of it.

    You have been an supporter of ECAPC in the past, reading our daily commentary, taking action, sharing the peace church vision,  praying and donating for the support of ECAPC.  Then we fell silent.  You didn't leave us, we left you, and for that I am profoundly sad.  The national director we hired in 2007 did not work out.  ECAPC has had a wilderness wandering of nearly 2 years.

    But now is the time of a new thing.  The board appointed Matthew Johnson national director on September 1, and Matthew feels the call, appreciates the history and shares the vision of ECAPC.  

    I met Matthew for the first time and spent a little over 24 hours with him last weekend when he visited some of the key founders and new supporters of ECAPC in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania.   For me, others here, and Matthew himself by his word, it was a time of amazing grace and energizing hope.  

    Matthew's speech in the Friday night public meeting was a model of historical insight, theological clarity and political analysis.  That's claiming a good bit, I know, but you and read the speech and decide for yourself on the ECAPC home page http://www.ecapc.org.  His topic, "A Message Worth Shouting" was centered on the new model of leadership, compassion and reconciliation which Jesus brought--this in the historical context of the election of Barack Obama.  Matthew read those crucial and much-ignored words of Jesus from Mark 10:
     "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.  But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

    We have a leader in ECAPC who understands this.  And he understands that Jesus was saying not only that his community must operate this way, but also without any doubt, that the Gentiles themselves will either learn this way or fail miserably.  And this is central to what Jesus meant when he said, "I am the way, the truth and the life."  To share that good news is, in short, the contribution which the church is called to make to interpersonal and world peace.

    Matthew has invited me to write a commentary each Wednesday as he implements his plan to renew regular communications on the website (and, by subscription, through email).  He will be writing each Saturday.  I look forward to regular communication with you and many new readers whom you and others will help us to find.  ECAPC will move forward through the gifts of hundreds, growing into thousands, of people who believe that the church is called to reap a "harvest of justice sown in peace by those who make peace" (James 3:18).

 

           *************************************

 

A Message Worth Shouting

 

Text: Matthew 10:27

Delivered at the Akron (Pennsylvania) Mennonite Church, Nov. 7, 2008

By Dr. Matthew V. Johnson

 

Click here to download a PDF version of this message

 

    I come to you in the exaltation of perhaps the most meaningful moment in American history since the civil war; a moment saturated with hope and pregnant with possibility, while the forces of negativity and narrowness skulk in the shadows hoping the light will fade. My granddaughters will come to awareness in world where perhaps the most powerful man is black and though racially mixed like most African Americans he descended from the race that provided the fodder for the slave-ocracy that once was the United States of America. It is a remarkable moment. The election of Barak Obama is not, however, the end of our struggle; nor is it yet the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.  It is time for the struggle for justice and true democracy to mature and the mission of the church in the modern world to come of age. A short time before the alarming wake-up call at pearl harbor Life publisher Henry Luce prematurely declared the twentieth century the American century. But America was far too immature as a nation. America hadn’t grown up enough to accept its self proclaimed birth right to bring leadership to the nations. Perhaps now she has and this new century will truly be ours. 

Where are we my friends? And how did we get here?

 

    Beginning with the election of Richard Millhouse Nixon and culminating in the Regan revolution and the Fundamentalist seizure of the moral and spiritual space of the public square , the forces of counter revolution swept across the country and beat back the tide of progress, as the forces of justice and demilitarization balkanized and engaged in territorial turf battles and competitive claims of whose position deserved pride of place in the moral universe and hierarchy of values. And whenever hierarchical thinking pre-empts moral cooperation and the principle of priority preempts the common cause empire thinking has displaced Kingdom consciousness and our best efforts are doomed to failure. This is why Jesus told his disciples that they were not to relate to each other as did the Romans. They were not to allow personal ambition to trump their sense of service to the Kingdom which first manifests itself in their love for one another.

 

 42 But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them.

 43 But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister:

 44 And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.

 45 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

 

    As competing voices began to contest and contend for the lion’s share of the moral terrain within the progressive sphere, that sphere itself came under fire and began to shrink. As the ideological siege dried up the spiritual resources of Churches Black, white and other and much of what little energy was left was squandered in infighting.  There was excessive fragmentation and our movement to create a more perfect union stalled.

 

    Now the winds of change are blowing again. They started as a slight breeze, but they are lifting; rising until they finally and entirely engulf these amber waves of grain.

 

    We now have a window…And a window we’ve never had before and will perhaps never have again, certainly not in our lifetime. We have a window and we must use it now.