Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do ... - Christ the King

Issue # 1 | March – May 2013
to an excellent Stewardship
campaign. Virtually all of our
members contribute regularly and
many have increased their
contributions, or pledged for the
first time this year.
The new mayor of Frankfurt, Peter
Feldmann, was reported recently to
have said, “[t]he champagne days
are over….” He also said that the
city of Frankfurt cannot keep on
digging into its savings. That
somehow rings a bell, except that
CTK’s champagne has for a long
time been coffee, tea and apple
juice from Aldi. The city has come
up with a plan of higher charges,
e.g. for parking, tickets for
museums and entrance fees to
swimming pools. We can’t start
charging € 3 an hour for parking in
the Sebastian-Rinz-Straße, and I
believe that wringing the last cent
out of our members’ pockets is not
the right way to go about increasing
our income. But a concerted effort
to publicize our church should be
fruitful, and everybody in the
congregation could and should take
part in spreading the news about
this wonderful community.
---------------------------------------
Lifelong Formation
Submitted by Aimee Schmidt
Sue Vornhagen and I were blessed
to spend the weekend of 8–9 Dec.
2012 at St. James in Florence,
where Ruth Ann Collins from the
Episcopal Church Center in New
York worked with us on
implementing Lifelong Formation at
the parish level. The training is a
part of the Convocation of Europe’s
“Academy for Parish Leadership”, a
program to deliver quality
education on leadership issues for
lay members of our congregations.
[Editor’s note: It was Sue’s second
training with the Academy and she
has now earned a Master Training
Certificate, which means she can
train others wishing to become
Master Trainers.]
We started by talking about the
beginning of our formation as
Christians. As Episcopalians, this
usually begins with our baptism, as
the sacrament, the church, and our
families welcome us into the body
of Christ.
But what happens after baptism?
After confirmation? We are the
ministry of all the baptized! We
have a responsibility to each other
to help us grow in our baptismal
covenant and to help one another
live out that covenant in our
everyday lives.
This sounds like serious business.
And it is. But probably the most
inspiring message of the weekend
is that this growth, this formation, is
most successful when approached
with creativity and imagination.
Formation doesn’t have to be
boring: it SHOULDN’T be boring!
How often do we look at that
baptismal covenant, or the Lord’s
Prayer. These are powerful spiritual
tools that when renewed with
prayer and active reflection can
energize our spirits and charge us
up for the work that He has sent us
to do, both corporately and
individually.
Formation is a collective effort
Formation happens through
ministry, and ministry is about
relationships. It’s how our
relationship with God is manifested
in our relationships with one
another. What does it mean to be a
Christian? Ministry is about
answering this question in
relationships with each other. “I
cannot understand myself until I
understand my reaction to you.”
This statement comes from the
African concept of ubuntu and
seems quite obvious at first. Yet it
is shocking how quickly we lose
sight of this fact in our
individualistic western culture. And
in our journey of lifelong formation,