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December
Wednesday, December 1st, 2010click here for past entriesLADIES’ GROUP
The ladies will not be meeting during December. We encourage you to watch out in the new year for our next Bible Study. A great big thank you to Teresa for all her hard work.
SPIRIT’S CALL CHOIR CONCERT
Please make a note for the upcoming Spirit’s Call Choir Concert on Sunday, December 12th, 3:30 p.m. at West Minster United Church, 745 Westminster Avenue. This has become an annual and very successful fundraising event for NEST.
N.E.S.T.
At our November meeting N.E.S.T. approved the following:
1. applications (full support) for two families from the Congo as requested by Sherwood Park Lutheran Church
2. a three family-linked sponsorship – two families from Eritrea and one from Thailand.
3. a joint assistance sponsorship (government supports) for a mother and three children from Columbia.
There will not be a General Meeting in December. The next General Meeting will be Tuesday, January 25th, 2011, 7:00 p.m. at Grace Lutheran Church, 211 Kimberley Avenue. Everyone is Welcome!
Plans for N.E.S.T.’s 25th Anniversary are in progress. The date is set for Sunday, June 12th, 2011, 2:30 p.m. at Grace Lutheran Church. The invitations will be sent to all former refugees. All are Welcome!
Please mark your calendars.
THANK YOU
Thank you to Randy Iwanicki and Craig Armstrong for all their hard work to make the Bingo Bowling evening such a success. Also thanks to those who brought/made goodies to share. We had a great time bowling, eating and chatting with friends. It was great to have youth from Christ Lutheran bowling with us.
NEWLETTER EDITOR
CONFRONTING CONSUMERISM
Help your family take a stand. By Vincent J. Miller
(Reprinted by permission from the Sept. 2010 issue of the Canada Lutheran)
As consumers, we generally see only the appealing side of commodities without understanding the product’s true cost. Every store display, catalogue, and ad feeds our imagination to form the part of the story that is glossy, bright, and pretty. The most fundamental response to consumerism lies in countering this glossy visual. Here’s how:
• Pick one thing you consume, and try to find out as much as you can about it. Where was it made? By whom? Under what conditions? With what impact on the environment?
• Experience the different treatment you receive from salespeople and corporations when you ask these questions.
• Meditate on the relationships hidden in each product we consume. The farm workers who harvest food that becomes our bodies, the time-pressured garment workers who sew the clothes next to our skin, the workers in industrial clean rooms that build our shining personal technology.
• Make something yourself. Knit a scarf. Grow some beans. Turn a bowl. Feel the labour and energy things require. With that bodily knowledge, feel the labour of others’ work that supports you.
• Encourage your congregation to take in some meditative viewing by watching “With These Hands I Demand the Future” by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers or Edward Burtynsky’s “Manufactured Landscapes” for a non-judgmental gaze upon the scale of industrial production. View these five-minute videos at www.youtube.com. So much of advertising does not really focus on the object itself, but upon the various values and effects it promises. Think about what it is you really desire as you buy an object.
• Is there a more direct way to find community or stand out as an individual than wearing these clothes?
• Is there some more fundamental way to express my love for the person to whom I am giving this gift?
• Is there some fundamental anxiety I am being tempted to ignore by trusting in things? Might these hide from me the need to trust more fully in God?
Vincent J. Miller is a professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton in Day-ton, Ohio, and the author of Consuming Religion: Religious belief and practice in a consumer culture.
I would like to thank Trish Rosolowich for agreeing to become our newsletter editor. Please take the time to thank Trish for taking on this responsibility and forward your newsletter items to her as soon as possible.
Items for the January newsletter can be given to Trish Rosolowich or emailed to trishroso@shaw.ca by Sunday, December 19th. Thank you!
THE URBAN The Urban is in desperate need for proper men's winter footwear especially sizes nine to eleven. Siloam Mission is only providing footwear to the homeless and the Urban has many families that cannot afford to purchase the necessary footwear because so much of their money goes towards rent. Even good runners are better than what some of their people have to wear outside. Isaiah 9:6 (New King James Version) For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 10 Christmas Commandments Anonymous "The following item appeared in a church newsletter and contains some good advice that will help us keep selfishness in check this Christmas: 1. You shall not leave ‘Christ’ out of Christmas, making it ‘Xmas.’ To some, ‘X’ is unknown. 2. You shall prepare your soul for Christmas. Spend not so much on gifts that your soul is forgotten. 3. You shall not let Santa Claus replace Christ, thus robbing the day of its spiritual reality. 4. You shall not burden the shop girl, the mailman, and the merchant with complaints and demands. 5. You shall give yourself with your gift. This will increase its value a hundred fold, and the one who receives it shall treasure it forever. 6. You shall not value gifts received by their cost. Even the least expensive may signify love, and that is more priceless than silver and gold. 7. You shall not neglect the needy. Share your blessings with many who will go hungry and cold if you are generous. 8. You shall not neglect your church. Its services highlight the true meaning of the season. 9. You shall be as a little child. Not until you become in spirit as a little one are you ready to enter into the kingdom of Heaven. 10.You shall give your heart to Christ. Let Him be at the top of your Christmas list. Anyone keeping these commandments is sure to have a blessed Christmas." EMPTY PROMISES (Reprinted by permission from the Sept. 2010 issue of the Canada Lutheran) (Reprinted by permission from the Sept. 2010 issue of the Canada Lutheran) As each new generation is indoctrinated into the ‘spirituality of consumerism,’ what will happen to our Christian faith and values? By Rev. Dr. Rolf Nosterud “We [Lutherans] have burrowed into our comfortable dens, surrounded by all the familiar trappings of ethnic and cultural heritage, and allowed our faith to slip into hibernation. We have taken the gift for granted. And in the meantime, there is a world that lies just outside our door, groaning in pain, hungry for anything that will fill up and make it whole, wrecked by sin, and longing to become everything it was created to be.” The opening quote above, taken from Evangelizing Church: A Lutheran Contribution by Richard H. Bliese and Craig Van Gelder (Augsburg Fortress, 2005), describes our churches’ impotence despite the longing for faith that’s evident among the citizens of our spiritually bankrupt nations. If we add the rising lethargy and attrition among active church members and consider that these sluggish stats plague most denominations, then surely, there’s something deeper at work in society than the failure of our evangelizing methods— methods that sustained us for centuries. So far, efforts that explore why we’re failing to make new Christians—and keep the ones we have—either omit or make only passing note of the primary culprit compromising our faith in today’s world: the well-funded promotion of a consumer culture. For generations, this “elephant” in our living spaces has subtly and thoroughly captured people’s minds and eroded their faith. So much so, even many of us within the church need to be re-evangelized or reconverted so that we might understand, experience, and share the faith of our heritage with greater maturity. In his book Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a new American Culture (Vintage Books, 1995) William Leach clearly unveils a century of collaboration between retailers and producers to create more covetous and zealous shoppers. A hundred years later, creeping consumerism has turned into a full-scale invasion that has seriously undermined the nurturing efforts of our grassroots covenant culture. Now, the globalization of consumerism threatens all covenant cultures worldwide. RAISED BY THE ROOTS Until the 20th century, our own home-grown institutions nurtured each new generation. Civilizations of human beings were socialized or enculturated by grassroots institutions like the family, church, school, and civic agencies—all part of a covenant, agreeing to work for the common good. Today new institutions, largely designed and manipulated from outside our borders, are now in charge. They include big media networks, entertainment industries, as well as spinoff institutions like the peer group—all of which erode our own work when it comes to nurturing attitudes, goals, and behaviours for the common good. These new institutions and their promotional content and methods are largely directed from the board rooms of mega-corporations that are far removed from our best interests and the local boards that run grassroots institutions. Corporations are driven by profit interests alone, and they spend their trillions to manipulate us. They captivate and bombard us with thousands of messages daily, messages that not just sell us products but reform our whole outlook, our way of looking at ourselves, others, and at life itself. Consider the implications: • Lost sense of self. A core philosophy of consumerism is to make us dissatisfied and unhappy with who we are and what we have. The strategy: to convince us that “buying it” is the only way to have the right look, enduring happiness, or the ultimate high. How long will it take for relationships to be seen as merecommodities, something to discard when we tire of them? Clearly, these new values did not come from Jesus. I marvel at how any of our youth escape consumerism’s culture of me, money, and materialism to embrace the values of our Christian heritage. Still, for many of us, this seductive messaging has slowly undermined the power of Jesus’ faith within and instilled a false spirituality and life-vision. Our confident “child of God” identity is replaced by an insecure consumer identity that leaves gnawing feelings of dissatisfaction and doubt. This, in turn, moves us to keep buying a better feeling, even though it’s fleeting. • Lost sense of community. Consumerism breaks down a sense of responsible belonging and relatedness, which is nurtured within the intimacy of family and the “communion of saints.” It gradually converts a sense of mutual relatedness into individualism. Using slogans like “the customer is always right” or “you deserve it,” the marketplace leaves us in a fog of self-absorption. Meanwhile, the entertainment industry dulls our senses with excessive, aimless amusement. This corporate-driven culture tends to create individuals who have little empathy for the hearts beating next to theirs or next door, because one’s ego sees everything and everyone as existing to fit his or her own unique and deserving self. “Everything has to fit me,” as one recent ad put the new image of cool. Yet, strangely, when kids get to the market, they end up being conformists where each desires the same products. So much for being unique individuals! • Loss of home-grown values. Some years ago, a parent complained to me, “What are the schools teaching children today? I don’t know my kids anymore.” She had a second preteen daughter exhibiting rude and deceitful attitudes. “These aren’t the values they learned at home!” she lamented. “That’s not what the teachers are teaching either,” I offered. “It’s whatthe peer-group culture is cultivating.” At her age, the peer group starts replacing family influences. The market milieu starts undermining manners learned in the classroom, and the preteens’ media icons trump the church’s effort at trying tobuild character. RECLAIMING OUR OWNHow can we combat this invasive influence? Just as families are now becoming more tuned-in and committed to greening practices that help the environment, so too, they’re likely more receptive to embracing whole-some practices that will “green” their own lives (see following article “Confronting Consumerism” ). I invite our congregations to explore clearly how the “spirituality of consumerism” has changed the face of each member’s own faith, as well as the face of their faithcommunity and society as a whole. We need to engage in small-group discussions where informed leaders raise people’s awareness of the cultural shifts affecting the world around us. Only then will we have a good chance to forge effective methods of making, maturing, and maintaining vibrant Christians in our churches. Then, too, perhaps the world will be at our doors, seeking to be made whole. Rev. Dr. Rolf Nosterud is the interim pastor at Good Shepherd, Red Deer, Alta.
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