Taking God on Vacation

Editorial Note: Today the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel leaves on the youth pilgrimage to Guatemala with a team of two additional adults and eight teens and young adults. Please pray for them in their travels and for safe return at the end of the month. In the meantime, we present a series of guest posts beginning with this one from our newest Deacon, the Rev. Barb Ballenger.

When I was a kid, camping was the family vacation of choice. We had a large Coleman tent that fit five of us like sardines, and a separate awning to create a dining area. My dad had crafted a camp box that held all the camp kitchen essentials, from minute rice to marshmallow forks. To this day the smell of canvas and wood smoke or the taste of Tang can make me feel at least 40 years younger. 

These trips were often long weekends in Ohio state parks; though sometimes they were multi-state excursions of a week or so. They would inevitably include a Sunday and my mom would make sure that we went to church. 

I remember them as a blur of tiny, clapboard rural Catholic churches. The smells would be different from what I was used to, the layout strange, the pews different from the large suburban church we attended at home. Occasionally we would find ourselves at a campground service, seated on cut logs in the amphitheater where we had watched “Charlie the Lonesome Cougar” the night before. 

My mother saw to it that we were a weekly church-going family, and vacation was no exception. Looking back, it was one of the few times we visited other churches, where we got a chance to explore how others marked their Sabbath, sang their songs, or arranged their donuts during coffee hour.  

There is something about summer that changes the feel of church-going. Trips, camps, even just a little time off, can slow things down or break things up when it comes to our Sunday practice. This change of pace can be an opportunity to do some spiritual exploring. For families, visiting other churches during trips can be a conversation starter about faith and religious preferences. What was the same? What was different? What did it feel like to be a visitor? Was I welcome? Did I find God there? These are good insights to bring back to your regular church experience. They are good questions to ask on any Sunday.

If summer vacation offers you the luxury of a quiet morning, consider it an invitation to explore prayer in a new way. Bring a Book of Common Prayer along (or download an app from Apple or Google) and pray morning prayer  with a cup of coffee nearby, or read the psalms to the rhythm of ocean waves or the song of gulls. Even just sitting on a familiar back patio in the presence of a garden box or hanging flowers can extend summer’s invitation to contemplate a God that reveals the divine self through the scents of flowers, the hum of bees, or the distraction of humming bird or mosquito whine. 

This summer, let your time away or your time to yourself be opportunities to rest with the Spirit and delight in the places where God waits for you. When you make it back to St. Martin’s, I’d love to see the pictures. 

Blessings,

The Rev. Barb Ballenger

Deacon and Associate for Spiritual Formation and Care

Editorial: Here are some resources to get you started!

• Find an Episcopal Church near you -- https://www.episcopalchurch.org/find-a-church
• Forward Day by Day - These quarterly booklets offer daily scripture and reflections that fit in a pocket or purse. Copies are available in the back of the church or on the table and in the rack in the Parish House lobby. Donations are welcome. Want an app for that? Download the Forward Day by Day app for your smartphone.
• The Daily Office from the Mission of St. Clare --  https://www.missionstclare.com/english/ -- gives you all you need for the prayers of the Episcopal Daily Office, including songs.
• Listen to Presiding Bishop Michael Curry's Way of Love podcasts, with new episodes posted each Tuesday -- https://wayoflove.episcopalchurch.org/
• Bible Lens app by YouVersion -- Bible Lens “transforms your everyday photos into profound, Biblically-based artistic shareable images.” Take a photo of the places that you are finding God on vacation, and then open them in Bible Lens to see them paired with Bible verses that match!
• Find the Episcopal saint of the day -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_of_saints_(Episcopal_Church)#July

Ordination to the Transitional Diaconate: What are we celebrating, exactly?

This week the Rector's Note has been turned over to Barb Ballenger, our Associate for Spiritual Formation and Care.

On June 8, Laura Palmer and I will be ordained to the transitional diaconate, a ministry that lies between our work as lay people and our future as Episcopal priests. For those in the priesthood process in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, this ordination occurs about six months before priestly ordination.


Many have asked about the difference between a transitional deacon and a permanent deacon, such as the Rev. Carol Duncan. It’s a good question, and the answer reflects several hundred years of conflicted church practice.

In his article “Lifting up the Servants of God: The Deacon, Servant Ministry, and the Future of the Church”, Thomas Ferguson explains that the sacred order of deacons is the church’s oldest ordained ministry. Acts 6:3-4 recounts how the Apostles delegated the first deacons to oversee table fellowship in order to make sure Greek widows and orphans were treated justly in the early Christian community. That focus on service to the poor and assistance to the bishop marked the diaconate for about three hundred years.

With Christianity’s new-found legitimacy after the conversion of Constantine, the church took on the deeply hierarchical structures of Roman society. A series of sub-orders developed that Clerics-in-training passed through on their way to ordination, from doorkeeper to exorcist to lector to subdeacon. The diaconate, which was originally its own order with its own particular ministry, was folded into this succession. For several hundred years it lost its early singularity. Even so, there were important exceptions in monastic communities, Ferguson writes, noting that St. Francis of Assisi, was a deacon throughout his life as a friar.


In the 20th century, Christian churches recognized the need for ordained ministers that served vulnerable people, and the distinctive ministry of the diaconate as a holy order was reclaimed in the Lutheran, Catholic, and Anglican churches. The permanent diaconate was restored throughout the churches of the Anglican Communion in 1968.

Meanwhile, as the various suborders that made up the path to priestly ordination fell away over time, the transitional diaconate remained part of the path to priesthood. As a result, the church now ordains two kinds of deacons in the same ordination liturgy. It’s in that liturgy, specifically in the “examination”, that we can best discover what the deacon is ordained to do.

“My sister,” the bishop will say, “every Christian is called to follow Jesus Christ …. God now calls you to a special ministry of servanthood directly under your bishop. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are to serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely.”

Then the bishop will commend us to do the following:

• Study the Scriptures and model our lives upon them;
• make Christ known to the world, by word and example;
• bring the “needs, concerns, and hopes of the world” to the attention of the church;
• assist the bishop and the priest in public worship;
• and all other duties as assigned.

But most importantly, the bishop will say: “At all times, your life and teaching are to show Christ’s people that in serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself.”

For me, this last statement captures well how this period in which we practice diaconal ministry will shape the ministry of our priesthood. While priests and deacons practice their ministry “to represent Christ and the Church” in different ways, this fundamental call to serve the most vulnerable is an essential charism of ordination. We do not lay it down with priestly ordination, just as bishops do not lay down their priesthood when they are ordained.

At the same time, the ministerial roles among the three orders of deacon, priest, and bishop do differ significantly. Ferguson offers a helpful way to think about these orders of ministry by considering where they are located in the church. The bishop serves from the center of the local church, or diocese, leading this regional community in its practice of the faith as the people of God in worship and the Body of Christ in practice. The priest serves from the center of the parish faith community, leading it in living out its common identity as part of the wider people of God. The deacon serves from the edge of the community, leading the Body of Christ into its work in the world.

For the next six months or so we transitional deacons will be practicing leadership from the church’s edge, inviting its members to step intentionally into the world as representatives of Christ. It is a perspective that should ever orient us and ground us in the direction that Christ always walks in the world.

In Christ,
Barb Ballenger
Associate for Spiritual Formation and Care

Laura Palmer and Barb Ballenger will be ordained to the diaconate on Saturday, June 8, at 10:00 a.m. at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, 19 S. 38th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. The ordination is open to all. Complimentary parking is available at Laz Parking, 39th and Market Street, entrance on 39th Street. Click here for directions and public transit options.


For further reading:
“Lifting Up the Servants of God: The Deacon, Servant Ministry, and the Future of the Church” by Dr. Thomas Ferguson. Found on the website of the School for Deacons, an educational institution of the Diocese of California, sfd.org.

In The Book of Common Prayer see “The Ordination of a Deacon” (p. 537-547) and the catechism (p. 855-856) for our liturgy and teaching around the ministry of the deacon.

Get on the Bus!

For eight years we have worked on full, fair funding for the public schools of Pennsylvania. We won a big victory two years ago when we convinced Harrisburg to use the full, fair funding formula on all new money allocated for public schools in the Commonwealth. 6% of state funding is now distributed justly. Our next goal is 100%, a change that will bring $1,800 per student to Philadelphia public schools, not to mention Reading, Allentown, Harrisburg, etc. 

On June 12 a bus will depart from St. Martin’s to the State Capitol, full of citizens concerned about public school excellence. Our goal is that 25 members of St. Martin’s will be on the bus reflecting our deep, long-term commitment. Please talk to Deacon Carol Duncan or me for more information and sign up on POWER's website.

St. Martin’s has a lot at stake in this funding struggle. More families will stay in Philadelphia when their children hit school age when the schools reach their potential. More families who stay in Philadelphia will have more free time and resources for other things without the demands of the private schools. Our members will invest more in the neighborhood as property values increase in proportion to the desirability of our schools. 

The church is committed to this struggle not only because we believe in equity, equal opportunity, and the inherent dignity of every human being, but also because we have a real self-interested stake in the outcome. I hope you will join me and at least 24 other church members on the bus to Harrisburg. There, we will join thousands of other citizens exercising our duty and right to shape our Commonwealth into a just society. 

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

Rector

Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Episcopal