Resonance Vol 1.2

Resonance: A Theological Journal

Volume 1.2 | Location

www.TheologicalResonance.com

Saguaro in the Snow Painting by Meg Newberg

Table of Contents 5 Morning Prayer

9 Faith to Leave Andre Castillo considers what it takes to obey God’s call

17 Dwelling in Place, Dwelling in Prayer Julie Forbes reflects on the discipline of faithful presence

23 The Community of the Cross Martin Robinson explores the shape of Christian community in context

36 The Plurality of Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist Porter Taylor considers the presence of Christ in our worship

43 “But Now I See” John Cheek reflects on the interplay between physical and emotional location

48 Christ in the Neighborhood Markus Watson considers the incarnation and its mandate for ministry

55 Evening Prayer

Contributing Artists & Photographers Artists: Brian Freeman, Curt & Heather Lunsford, Meg Newberg, Pete Seiferth, and Susan

Stokes. Photographers: James Hetherington, Brian Holland, Stuart Conner, Pete Forbes,

Lee Jordan, Charles Dyer, Charles Clegg, K. H. Rawlings, Tin DC, Alexander Boden,

Fortherock, Seluryar, Elvert Barnes, Brad Folkens, Chad McDonald, and Michel Filion.

Front Cover by Bert Kaufmann | Back Cover by Duncan Idaho

Resonance: A Theological Journal is published to cultivate theological reflection and

response among evangelicals who are committed to ecumenical generosity, historic

orthodoxy, and growing closer to God. The editorial content of Resonance reflects the

opinions of the various authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily repre-

senting the views of Splintered Light Press.

© 2015 by Splintered Light Press. Produced in limited quantities.

Production Team Micah Lunsford, Managing Editor

Rachel Lunsford, Associate Editor

Anna Stokes, Marketing Assistant

Theological Advisory Council Rev. Gary Stokes, Vineyard City Church

Fr. Pete Forbes, Joy Faith Anglican Church

Rev. Pete Seiferth, Northminster Presbyterian

http://theologicalresonance.com/

Cultivating Reflection and Response 2

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3 Resonance: A Theological Journal


Letter from the Editor

Photo by James Hetherington | Magdalen Tower, Oxford

Dear Reader, Are you the sort of person who notices your surroundings? Does the space you inhabit demand your at-tention or are you able to pass through each place without really noticing the details of it? I must confess that I tend toward the latter. Typically, I am so focused on an abstract idea that my physical surroundings can become a bit of a blur. I rarely slow down long enough to absorb the details of each new location, much less interact with the space in a purposeful or creative way. If I do take note of my surroundings it is usually because some object is impeding my way and I am frustrated by its intractability. I want to sim-ply get past it so I can return my attention to the world of ideas where the laws of physics do not slow me down. I say all of this, not because I believe that my blundering obliviousness to the places I inhabit is a virtue, but because I have come to believe that such a mode of being reveals an entrenched falsehood. It suggests that the places we inhabit do not matter. Yet nothing could be further from the truth! God created us incarnate beings and located us within a physical cosmos that He then commanded us to steward. Presumably it could have been different. He could have formed us as intelligent spirits with no embodied presence within the physical matrices of this universe. Instead, He chose to form us from the tangible material of this earth and placed us in a garden filled with the diverse and fruitful beauty of His physical creation. This fact alone should prevent any Christian from belittling our incarnate existence. But our loving Creator took the commitment to His crea-tion one step further. He became incarnate Himself. The one who flung the stars into space emptied Himself and stepped into our physical reality. “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). He was born at a specific time in a particular place and remained bound by the constraints of His location. Every aspect of Jesus’ ministry was mediated by His embodiment and un-folded within very concrete settings and circumstances. This mystery is beautiful beyond human compre-hension, but one thing is certainly clear. All of creation, our own embodiment, and the manifold places we inhabit have been hallowed by the simple fact that God willingly stepped into the frame of His own handiwork. He became located in time and space on our behalf.

In this volume of Resonance, we celebrate the importance of location as embodied beings and as disciples of an incarnate savior. My prayer for all of us is that we learn to see our unique surroundings as both a gift and an opportunity. God desires to meet with us in the spaces we inhabit. May we seek Him in those places that we rest, move and have our very being. Your servant in Christ, Micah Lunsford Managing Editor

Micah Lunsford loves theological reflection and is constantly looking for an opportunity to start a theological conversation...

preferably over good food and drink. He is a native of Tucson, AZ and currently works for 4Tucson, an ecu-

menical non-profit ministry, when not crafting Resonance. God's steadfast love and overflowing generosity

continually astonish him and he is particularly thankful for the gift of his wife Sydney.


Collect Father of the incarnate Son, O Holy One who dwells where mortals live. Enliven us through Your life-giving Spirit. Be made known to us as we gather together in Your Name and send us out to be the presence of Your Son, so that we may embody the message of Him who died and rose again. Amen. Scripture Behold, the dwelling of God is with mankind. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them, and be their God. Revelation 21:3 Venite Psalm 95:1-7 Come, let us sing to the Lord; * let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving * and raise a loud shout to him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God, * and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the caverns of the earth, * and the heights of the hills are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, * and his hands have molded the dry land. Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee, * and kneel before the Lord our Maker. For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. * Oh, that today you would hearken to his voice! Almighty and everlasting God, in Christ you have revealed your glory among the nations: Preserve the works of your

Morning Prayer


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mercy, that your Church throughout the world may perse-vere with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that peo-ple everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all flesh; and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Responsive Reading V. Save your people, Lord, and bless your inheritance; R. Govern them and uphold them, now and always. V. Day by day we bless you; R. We praise your name for ever. V. Lord, keep us from all sin today; R. Have mercy upon us, Lord, have mercy. V. Lord, show us your love and mercy; R. For we put our trust in you. V. In you, Lord, is our hope; R. And we shall never hope in vain. Heavenly Father, whose blessed Son came not to be served but to serve: Bless all who, following in his steps, give themselves to the service of others; that with wisdom, patience, and courage, they may minister in his Name to the suffering, the friendless, and the needy; for the love of him who laid down his life for us, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Photo by Brian Holland | Sunrise over Keuka Lake, NY


For those of us who drive, I would venture to say that we generally get behind the steering wheel with a concrete notion of where we are headed. In this day and age, we may not have a picture in our minds, but have a trusted navigator in Siri, who can direct us step by step along the way. Or, in case you are as curious as I, you may take the helm on occasion to seek an exciting new road, to process thoughts and emo-tions, or to experience the sheer joy of driving. But I would venture to say that a person does not sit behind the steering wheel without at least a subconscious notion of being in control, the captain of the ship, direc-tor of the journey, or cultivator of destiny. In life, the human temptation is the same: to be the cultivator of our own destiny. The spirit of independence in our culture hardly lends itself to outsourcing navigational control. Yet this is the crux of the Christian life: the practice of relinquishing control to the Author and Finisher of our faith, in trust that He will complete what He has begun in us. It can be particularly difficult to submit the reins to God when we lack any foreknowledge of the intended destination, or at least a few concrete steps along the way. I can recall a few times in my life when following the call of Christ required that I forsake both the need for control and the need to appoint a designated destination in advance. The only direction given in these challenging seasons was: leave. I recall the departure from the first undergraduate school I attended, unsure of where I would transfer, but confident in the call to depart from an unhealthy environ-ment. I experienced the same single direction on the drive home from a lost love interest’s presence, recognizing that I could never go back, and without a single idea as to what my life would look like moving for-ward. In the same way, leaving a position at a thriving church plant in Los Angeles, to support my wife’s calling to an internship in Chicago, left me with a keen knowledge of what I had left behind, and little un-derstanding of what God had in mind for the future. These were seasons of my life when, if I were to respond to the calling of Christ on my life, I would need to move to the passenger’s seat in obedience, and trust that the One who made me would lead me along the appointed route. I would be remiss if I did not admit that in addition to being seasons of perceived obedience, these were also seasons of fear, anxiety, and heart-break. Having sacrificed the route I had carefully crafted ahead of time, I must also admit that I approached these seasons of clear calling with more than a little objection. But ultimately, when God calls us to leave where we are and follow Him, we either respond or we miss out on the promises God makes to those who follow.

Faith to Leave

Andre Castillo gave his life to Christ at the age of

fourteen in his hometown of San

Diego. He began his journey toward vocational ministry at Rancho

Bernardo Community Presbyterian

Church, where he served in music

ministry for ten years. Andre com-

pleted his Bachelor of Arts degree in

Music at the University of Califor-

nia, Irvine, and his Master of Divin-ity at Fuller Theological Seminary

in Pasadena, CA. After graduating,

Andre worked as a hospital chaplain

for a season, followed by the role of

Community Life Pastor at Fellow-

ship Monrovia, a non-denominational church plant in

Monrovia, CA. Later he worked as

the Director of Operations at Re-

newal Church of Chicago. Andre

currently lives and works as a car-

penter and writer in Niantic, CT

with his wonderful wife, Melissa.


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Scripture paints portraits for us of those who trustingly relinquished control of their journeys, and those who refused. As we will discover, obedience to God and the achievement of His best for us is often as much about where we are headed as it is about what we leave behind. In this chapter in human history when progress has been deified without regard for the baggage we accumulate along the way, perhaps there has never been a more pressing opportunity to leave behind all that would prevent us from ex-periencing God’s promises. Leaving All Else Behind Consider the conversations we read between Jesus and a few would-be followers in Luke 9:57-62 (NRSV):

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and pro-claim the kingdom of God." Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

Scripture does not reveal the final outcome of the conversations between Jesus and these last-minute objectors to his calling, but we see (and can possibly relate to) the hesitancy and lack of urgency on behalf of the called. These people had plans. They had families and fortunes and fears (oh, my!) – all legitimate reasons to stick around for a little while longer and put off an invitation to follow Jesus. But Jesus is clear in his message: “No one who puts a hand to the

plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” In other words, one cannot cling to new life in Christ, and continue to remain stuck in old patterns of living. We see the hesitant response again from a wealthy young man in Matthew 19:16-30:

Then someone came to him and said, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." He said to him, "Which ones?" And Jesus said, "You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The young man said to him, "I have kept all these; what do I still lack?" Je-sus said to him, "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treas-ure in heaven; then come, follow me." When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many posses-sions. Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." When the dis-ciples heard this, they were greatly as-tounded and said, "Then who can be saved?" But Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible." Then Peter said…

To be continued in our full publication

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Joni, our five-year-old Golden Retriever, sits as I slip the Gentle Leader over her nose, snap it behind her ears, and hook the leash through the ring. Eagerly smelling the morning, she crosses the courtyard and waits for me by the gate while I lock the front door. I join her and as my thumb lifts the latch, words begin forming in my mind: Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust” (Ps. 91:1-2 NIV). We round the corner of the house and head down the long driveway to the street as the words of Psalm 91 continue in my head—collecting me and centering me for the work I will do over the next hour or so. We will walk our neighborhood and I will pray as we go; this is our morning liturgy. I say it is “our” liturgy because it is as much her work as it is mine. She is beautiful, playful, and loving, and no one we encounter on our walk will escape her exuberant affection. She greets everyone with a happy face and a wagging tail—walkers, construction workers, landscapers, housecleaners, and drivers that slow down to chat. My ministry is that of silent prayer as we walk our daily route; Joni’s ministry is to lavish her doggy love on all those we meet on our way. Our house sits on a cul-de-sac at the end of a street named Joy Faith Drive. It winds up a hill, forming the spine of our small neighborhood of forty-five lots. We moved to Oro Valley, Arizona, two years ago, built this house, and finally moved into the neighborhood a year ago. My husband and I were both raised in the desert southwest but had no his-tory, family, or friends in the Tucson area; we moved here because we felt called to this place. In 2009, I had a dream with a vivid image of feet in it, and after that, messages about feet began popping up in my prayer time. One message was, “I’m taking your feet to new places.” This soon began to play out as I found myself doing God’s work where I never imagined. Now, He has taken my feet to the Tucson area, to Oro Valley, to Joy Faith Drive, and it is here that I do the work He has given me to do each morning with Joni—the work of prayer. Whoever dwells…. The word “dwell” is a fitting beginning for our morn-ing walk. It is translated in Psalm 91 from the Hebrew word yashab and means to sit, remain. My husband and I have moved many times in our thirty years of marriage but have vowed to each other to stay here, to finally put down roots. Morning walks with Joni are my time to dwell with the Lord in prayer as I learn to dwell in this physical place. From the bottom of the driveway we climb up the hill. I finish reciting Psalm 91 and begin offering thanks to God for the beauty of the desert, for this neighborhood and the people who live here, for my family, for

Julie Forbes earned a degree in engineering from

Stanford University and an MBA from

the Harvard Graduate School of Busi-

ness Administration. She pursued a

career in the corporate world across a

variety of functions and industries for

twenty years. Since 2003, she’s been

doing volunteer work and was active in

lay ministry and leadership at several

churches in southern California. Cur-

rently Julie and her husband, Pete, an

Anglican priest, lead Joy Faith Anglican

Community, a small fellowship that

meets in their home. They have two

grown children.

Dwelling in Place, Dwelling in Prayer


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His abundant provision, and for all that He is do-ing in and through me. I thank God that He is in control and I am not. Joni keeps pace with me, the leash hanging slack between us, until we reach one of her favorite stopping places where she refuses to budge. Our first stop each morning is here, at the top of the hill by the entrance to the neighborhood, in the driveway of what was once the model home. Joni lays in the shade as I confess my sins and pray for forgiveness. Rolling to her side, she looks at me expectantly. I kneel to rub her belly and when I finish and rise to my feet, she wriggles on the brick pavers scratching her back. I pray what I pray each morning in this place: Make me humble, Lord, fully submitted to Your will and Your way, pa-tient for Your perfect timing, trusting You in all things. Help me to do the work You give me to do today and to always rest in You. These places where Joni stops to rest, far from being interruptions to the progress of our walk, serve to keep me on track, to draw me back to prayer after conversation with someone we’ve met, to remind me of where I am in my prayers if my mind has wandered.

We start back down the hill. The stunning peaks of Pusch Ridge were behind me as I climbed, and now they loom large in my view. I notice window blinds in a house we pass, slanted open for the first time in months, signaling the return of a seasonal resident here for our mild desert winter. A coyote chases a rabbit across three front yards until it gives up and ambles back to the wash that is choked with desert foliage after the monsoon season. In the springtime, I thrill to see families of quail scurrying along in a row, and I’ve learned when to be vigilant for rattle-snakes. In the year that I’ve walked these streets, I’ve become tuned to the unique rhythms of this desert, to the seasonal changes of light and tem-perature, to the birds and wildlife, and to the comings and goings of the people who live here. I pay attention as we walk, because it takes time to really know a place, and it takes knowing a place to truly be grateful for it. We follow a side street to a road that parallels Joy Faith Drive, continuing down the hill until the pavement levels off and then we turn and retrace our steps. Halfway down, Joni rests by the road under a shady tree—her second stop. During this part of the walk, I pray for my fam-ily—that the Lord will reveal Himself to those who don’t know Him yet and that they will fol-low Him. I pray that God will bless and protect and guide and provide for our extended family members, for our kids, and for my husband and me. Joni and I return to Joy Faith Drive and head down the hill towards home. Before we moved back to the desert, we lived a few blocks from the ocean in Huntington Beach, California. I kept a busier schedule then and...

“Joni” | Photo by Fr. Pete Forbes






The Community of the Cross

Rev. Dr. Martin Robinson was born in India of missionary

parents and then brought up in

Scotland where his father was a church planter. In his early 20’s

Martin trained for the ministry and

his first church was inner city Bir-

mingham. After 13 years in local

ministry, Martin went to work for

the Bible Society in a variety of

roles. In his role as Director of Mis-sion and Theology and since then,

Martin has written many books on

the broad theme of mission, includ-

ing Faith of the Unbeliever, Meta-

vista, and Invading Secular

Space. Since 2002 Martin has been the Principal of what is now called

ForMission College.

Even though it was nearly 40 years ago, I still remember vividly my first week in full time ministry. A number of thoughts were resonating in my imagination. The first was, “most of what I have learnt over the last four years is no help to me in this context.” The second was, “where can I find some help to equip me for this situation?” The context was inner city Birmingham, a location of significant urban deprivation. The time was the early 1970’s and the church was in a hous-ing area that had been recently redeveloped as a part of a slum clearance programme that had begun in the 1950’s, moving the original population (and genuine community) to a myriad of other locations in the city, usu-ally involuntarily. The very patchy redevelopment, conducted over a twenty year period, did not think of community so much as numbers of people that could be ac-commodated in high density housing units (mostly but not exclusively high rise). The very basic elements of schools and a few local shops were on offer but that, combined with some wind swept, empty and rather bleak “green” areas, was it. The dominant thinking was that if you pro-vide people with good quality housing they would respond well and naturally build community. There was very little thought given to the na-ture of community and how it might actually function. My wife and I moved into the neighbourhood with two small children in tow. As part of that experience we encountered first hand the sense of helplessness or powerlessness that pervaded the community. Some of the frustration was visited on us by our neighbours. Our milk (left on the doorstep by our local milkman) was often stolen and you could never be certain that the petrol in your car would still be there when you came to drive off in the morning. We were not being singled out for special treat-ment. This was a normal part of the locality’s terms of trade. The city authorities who owned all the local housing stock, every social amenity, and even the green open spaces, were not gifted in the creation of social capital. Our family lived in a housing block which comprised four maisonettes (as they were so charmingly called). It had a common entrance way and communal door. On one occasion when local vandals smashed the communal door and left it hanging rather morosely on its hinges, I thought I would demonstrate some responsibility as a local resi-dent and reported the damage to the City housing authority. Imagine my surprise when I was given a sharp dressing down for having the audacity to interfere with something that was apparently none of my business. The City owned the block, it was their door, and they would find out themselves if it was damaged and repair it in their own good time. They didn’t need interfering busy bodies like me who had the privi-


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lege of living there, to waste their time with information like that. I began to see why the whole neighbourhood was so depressed. The City had taken respon-sibility for the environment in which people lived, even the grass was owned by the City, but they simply could not deliver on the re-sponsibilities they had assumed. In the process the city authorities had reinforced the sense of powerlessness already experienced by so many of the poor living in their grip. Community was in short supply and it was not easy to see where it might come from. The mixture of people moving into the area were either working class English, those of Irish de-scent, West Indians and the occasional African and Asian from the Indian sub-continent. The churches were probably the closest thing to community that existed in the area. The Ro-man Catholic church was reasonably strong because of the Irish connection but the Angli-can church was very weak and despite the lo-cal Church of England primary school, had difficulty filling 20 seats out of the 300 on of-fer. This did not look like community so much as grim survival. The Salvation Army sought to meet the needs of the very deprived and the handful of non-conformist churches kept their doors open be-cause those who had once lived in the neighbourhood and had attended the church when it was part of a functioning community, continued to commute back to those same churches as senior citizens. This loyal band fondly recalled how life had been in the 1930’s when the Sunday School was full and social life was lived in the orbit of a full church cal-endar. The West Indians residents who had a church going tradition tended to commute out of the community to Pentecostal churches in other

areas where Kingston, Jamaica could be recre-ated Sunday by Sunday. They often took the same buses out of the community that had brought the commuting non-conformist pen-sioners into the community. So what could a clergy person bring to this situation where there was a scarcity of resource – financial and spiritual? There was a woeful absence of human giftedness and energy on offer. At that time there were two kinds of re-sponses to the needs of the community from the non-conformist churches in the neighbour-hood, which could be fairly neatly divided into an evangelical and a more liberal approach. One church in the community which would have identified with a liberal theological posi-tion had a very entrepreneurial minister who set about identifying social need and locating funding with which to meet that need. The church he produced by this means was a hive of activity all week. The cash generated by the various programmes certainly helped the church to pay its bills. The community was sig-nificantly impacted during his time in office, but unfortunately the church did not grow and when the next couple of ministers were unable to reproduce the same entrepreneurial spirit and skill the church was eventually forced to close its doors. The evangelical approach was to see the com-munity as a recruiting ground from which a viable Christian community could be built. This activity was largely unrelated to the broader community apart from developing friendships and meeting a limited number of local needs so that more people could be welcomed into the life of the church. That was essentially the approach that the church I served took and to a certain extent it worked in that the worshipping congregation went up from around 30 people to just over a hundred. Offerings increased to the point


Photo by Lee Jordan | Birmingham, England


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where viability in terms of paying the basic bills was achieved and a certain number of individuals in the community were undoubtedly helped. But the broader community was essentially un-changed. More problematically in terms of build-ing a genuinely local expression of community, power remained with those who commuted and those who came from the community were essen-tially made to feel dependent. Not surprisingly many who at first felt so warmly welcomed eventually drifted away, some to other churches and some to no church at all. That church still exists but does not have sufficient members to pay a great deal for ministry though they do meet the other basic needs that enable them to meet Sunday by Sunday. So why recount that story, after all, that all took place some 40 years ago – almost a working life ago? To some extent I tell the story because it also encourages me to see what has been learnt since then. Engaging with the Community There has been much talk and accompanying ac-tion about reconnecting with the neighbourhood or community in recent years. That raises a ques-tion as to why such talk is necessary in the first place. The language of reconnection suggests that a connection has been lost. The extent of that loss has been surprising. Even as recently as the late 1950’s, the beginning of what McLeod calls the long 1960’s,1 the church was at the centre of most communities and clergy had social standing. The idea that the church would not form a moral and functional centre for public life was almost uni-maginable by most ordinary people. Part of the reason for the church seeming to be at the centre of community life is that for the previ-ous 150 years the church had been vigorous in its involvement with the day to day life of communi-ties of all kinds. In particular, in many parts of Europe, as the population moved from the coun-tryside to the towns and cities the church was not only present to offer a narrative of hope to the many dislocated migrants but in many ways helped to shape the very nature of community itself. Some have argued that very notion of sub-urbia was an evangelical idea – the creation of a

sanitized form of the countryside, close enough to city centres to provide employment, but far enough away to offer a degree of safety for the healthy de-velopment of family life.2 In the United States, the Second Great Awakening produced a spiritual impetus that moved with the frontier. As Americans moved west there grew a feeling that a new settlement – town, village or hamlet, could not really be a fully formed commu-nity without the church. That outcome was not the result of denominational church planting strategies so much as an outpouring of the spiritual energies and aspirations of millions of lay people. In both Europe and America we are dealing with spiritual movements of a grass roots nature.3 For 150 years as a modern industrial society emerged in the west, the church was the place where leadership was formed, gifts were nurtured, in the case of the African American churches con-siderable gifts in terms of music, the needs of fami-lies were met, social welfare organized, basic health care encouraged, education offered and children cared for. The church (or chapel) was the natural place where communities focused social life. The Sunday School anniversary was often the best organized festival in the village and the Sunday School outing often the furthest that many ordinary people ventured out of their community. The travel agent Thomas Cook began life organizing Sunday School outings for churches in Leicester. The church was valued, belonged to the people, was a natural expression of the aspirations of many and in par-ticular was trusted to shape the horizons of the chil-dren of every community. In excess of 75% of chil-dren in Great Britain were enrolled in a Protestant Sunday School until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.4 As Callum Brown suggests the loss of this position seemed to be sudden and decisive.5 This is not the place to debate the reasons for that...







The Plurality of Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist

Rev. Porter Taylor is an Anglican priest (Anglican

Church in North America) and PhD

student (University of Aberdeen) residing in Kansas with his wife,

Rebecca, and two sons. He is the

author of "The Liturgical Theolo-

gian," a blog on the Patheos Evan-

gelical Channel and is passionate

about liturgy, the sacraments, and

ecclesiology. He received his MAT from Fuller Theological Seminary

and is part of the Schmemann-

Kavanagh-Fagerberg-Lathrop school

of liturgical theology.

The question of Christ’s presence or location in the Eucharist is common among theologians and readers of theology. Is Christ really present in the sacrament? If so, how? Such debate has similarly been central to ecu-menical dialogue: transubstantiation, consubstantiation, memorial feast, real presence, and spiritual presence represent varying answers to the conundrum. Rather than disagreeing about the nature or form of ele-mental transformation or the spiritual aspects of the Eucharist, ecumeni-cal dialogue should instead focus on affirming the presence of Christ through the power of the Spirit to the glory of the Father. George

Hunsinger offers a masterful attempt in The Eucharist and Ecumenism to find common ground amid these viewpoints while also capturing the thickness of the Sacrament.1 Such concrete attempts to locate Christ in the sacrament fall short of the depth of the Church’s liturgical worship however. The ordo, or structure of the church’s ancient liturgy, cannot be divvied up into smaller por-tions in an attempt to find Jesus or to use some elements while removing others. The ordo has an inherent meaning to it that cannot be separated out or watered down.2 Christ is fully present throughout the entirety of the liturgy because the liturgy in its entirety is considered to be the Eucharist. Any meaningful conversation about the location of Jesus in the Eucharist must see the Eucharist as the whole of the service rather than just one prayer or moment of consecration.3 This article will seek to argue that not only is Christ really present in the Eucharist, but he is present in a plurality of forms and ways. Ultimately his presence is made known in the ritual sacrament in its most tangible and mysterious form, but he is also present in the assembly, (through the presiding minister), and by the reading and proclamation of his word.4 By understanding his location in such light, we as the Church are then able to articulate his presence more fully and embody his presence in the world he loves and is coming back to redeem.

Synaxis Our first encounter with the person of Christ is found in the very gather-ing of the ecclesia for Sunday worship: the synaxis. As the people of God join together for the corporate praise and worship of Almighty God they

become the Church in a very real and tangible sense. Our Lord said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among...

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons






Pastor John Cheek is a native Arizonan, having been

reared in the agricultural commu-

nity of Elfrida. In preparation for his 24 year career as a police officer

John received degrees from Cochise

College and the University of Ari-

zona. He worked for the Douglas,

Arizona, Police Department, the

Pima County attorney’s office (as a

Criminal Investigator) and for the Tucson Police Department. In 1996,

while still a Patrol Officer for the

Tucson Police Department, John

began attending Fuller theological

seminary. In 1997 John left police

work, accepting a lay ministry posi-tion at Northminster Presbyterian

Church. He continued in that role

until he was ordained as a pastor in

2005, having graduated with a

Master of Divinity degree in 2004.

He is a husband, father of three

sons, and grandfather of four boys.

A number of stories flow in the wake of my 24-year law enforcement ca-reer. A great number of these stories are humorous, some are poignant, and a few are chilling. The one I’m about to recount here doesn’t fit very well into any of these categories, and yet it represents a truly defining mo-ment in my life with an impact which has extended even beyond my law enforcement career. Every story is driven, to a greater or lesser extent, by its location. The lo-cation of this story is Tucson’s South Side. In particular, the story takes place in a predominantly African-American neighborhood—one that dis-plays many of the scars of poverty. In this location, there is a combination of hopelessness and community, despair and family feeling. Some homes, although not all, have junk cars in the driveways, peeling paint, and fail-ing roof materials. Neighbors visit across their fences at all hours of the day. There is a wariness, a palpable lack of trust between this community and the police officers who are sworn to serve it. For almost a decade I was one of those officers. My story begins when a drive-by shooting is reported at about 9:00 p.m. in the neighborhood described above. Such a scenario played out on Tuc-son’s south side with unfortunate frequency during my time of employ-ment in the Tucson Police Department’s Operations Division South. A minimal description of the suspect vehicle leaving the area at high speed came along with the initial report and officers were immediately dis-patched to the area. While some patrol officers responded to the location where the shooting was reported, other officers responded to the periph-ery of the neighborhood. One of the responding officers saw a vehicle in the area, and this vehicle broadly matched the description given. When the vehicle was stopped, four young African-American men were its occu-pants. By the time I arrived on that scene as one of the patrol officers, the four young men were out of the car, handcuffed, and sitting on the curb; two officers were talking to them while others were searching the vehicle. It isn’t particularly relevant to the part of the story I’m telling, but ultimately nothing was found in the vehicle to connect these men with the drive-by shooting. As I stood by my patrol car, trying to decide if there was some-thing for me to do here, a van pulled up directly behind my car. The highest compliment one police officer can receive from another is: “I know I can trust you to have my back.” That’s a phrase that has become ubiquitous to the degree that it has lost much of its meaning, but in the police context it means, “I know that I can focus on what’s in front of me without looking over my shoulder. I know you’ll be aware of what’s hap-pening behind me and protecting me from any threat that might be com-ing from that side.”

But Now I See


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This civilian vehicle, pulling up behind a line of police cars, represented a potential threat to all those focused on the investigation. All of a sud-den, the most important role I could fill on this call was to engage this potential threat. There was the possibility that those in the van were prepar-ing to kill police officers, including me. There was also the possibility that the incident had been gang related and that this van contained passen-gers who might want to harm or kill the suspects who had been handcuffed. With all these thoughts in mind, I went to the van, and quickly saw that its occupants were two middle-aged African-American women. I engaged them in conversa-tion and one said that she was the mother of one of the handcuffed men; the other said she was his aunt. The mother made it clear that she wasn’t moving her van until she knew what was happen-ing to her son. Standing there, I weighed the situation and a number of thoughts went through my mind. I appreciated (and still do) the anger of African-Americans at the treatment they have received at the hands of the white majority in the US. As a child of the 60’s, I was all-in for the civil rights movement, even though I grew up in a rural farm-ing community in southern Arizona, with an Afri-can-American population varying from one (usually) to fifteen or twenty (if there was a crew of itinerant laborers in town). I also recognized that I could cite the mother for stopping her vehicle in that location if I wanted to, but I also knew that citing her would play into the narrative of a white officer harassing an African-American or potentially hiding some illicit actions by police. I was pretty sure that she knew that, too, and that she was trading on the fact that there was nothing I could do without making things worse. And I resented it. Or at least, I resented it until I had a sudden epiphany. In a flash (which I attribute to the grace of God toward the unworthy and often slow-witted) I came to know, with absolute certainty,

that I had projected an entire, erroneous narra-tive on these two women. I suddenly knew that the only motivation these women had was one of terror—terror that their son and nephew might suffer injury, or worse, at the hands of the white police officers who had handcuffed him with his friends. This was, for me, the equivalent of having spent a long time looking at the drawing of the two faces, and suddenly seeing that it was, instead, a drawing of a vase. It may be that one of the reasons I was so dense is that I knew absolutely that by the time I had arrived, and certainly by the time the mother and aunt arrived, the young men were in no danger of being harmed. Once the initial contact was over, the suspects were in handcuffs, and more witnesses (albeit other officers) had ar-rived, the likelihood of bad things happening decreased dramatically. However, the mother and the aunt had no knowledge of that. They only knew that they were going to stand, alone together, in a desper-ate attempt to protect their loved one. Their ac-tions weren’t driven by defiance or manipula-tion, but rather by courage and love, quickened by desperation and terror. Once I could see...







The Incarnation: God’s Model for Ministry

Markus Watson has been the pastor of Northmin-ster Presbyterian Church in San Diego since 2007. Prior to coming to San Diego, Markus was the As-sociate Pastor at Union Presbyte-rian Church in Union, Kentucky (just south of Cincinnati). Prior to that, Markus led youth ministries at several churches in the Los An-geles area. Markus’ educational background includes a B.A. in Communication from Slippery Rock University, a Master of Di-vinity from Fuller Theological Seminary, and a Doctor of Minis-try with an emphasis on Missional Leadership also from Fuller Semi-nary. Markus wrote a chapter for the book Finding Church (edited by Jeremy Myers) and occasionally writes film reviews for Visual Par-ables, a theological film review journal.

Markus and his wife Robin have

two boys and one girl, ages 10, 8,

and 3, and are pretty sure the word

“circus” is an apt description of

their home when all the kids are home from school. Markus loves

longboard surfing and watching

any movie with lots of lasers, ex-

plosions, and/or time travel.

I am the pastor of a small and struggling Presbyterian church in San Diego, California. Like most mainline churches, our church has been declining for the past thirty years. And it’s depressing. It makes me feel kind of like a failure. I look at other churches that are growing—mostly not from my denomination—and wonder why they are more successful than my church. Part of the problem, of course, has to do with how we define success. In our culture, one of the ways we define a church’s success has to do with how many people we can get to come to our church building on a Sun-day morning. We want them to come from where they are to where we are—in my case, a building located on Clairemont Mesa Blvd. next to the O’Reilly Auto Parts store. We’re familiar with this definition of success, but if we’re honest we know that this is not how God defines success. Success in God’s eyes is not defined in terms of getting people to change their location. How do we know this? Because God’s most successful endeavor—the salvation of humankind—was not achieved by getting people to change their location. It was ac-complished when God changed His location. It was accomplished when God became a human being. It was accomplished when God was con-ceived in the womb of a young girl in Galilee. It was accomplished when God joined his human brothers and sisters in the waters of bap-tism. It was accomplished when God allowed the location of his death to be a Roman cross on a hillside outside Jerusalem. It is in the incarnation that we see God’s greatest success. And it is in the incarnation that we discover the model of what success looks like for the Church. The Incarnation The incarnation is a pretty fantastic concept if you think about it. It’s the belief that God became a human being in the man Jesus Christ. Not that he took on the mere form or likeness of a human being, as the gods of ancient mythologies sometimes did. No, in the incarnation God actually became human. It is “the doctrine that in Jesus of Nazareth God took...

Clouds Over the Sonoran Desert, Painting by Brian Freeman






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