What is “Church?”

• A Group of people with common commitment to keep moving forward doing God’s Word.
• A Community listening to each other, welcoming God’s love.
• Church is unique because it is where we find sustenance for our spiritual journey
• Place where we can feel safe and can explore
• Place to be with others who help one find new directions, keep focused on the old, it is more than worship.
• Therapy to be with others, and even when not together we are wrapped in one another’s prayers
• Bring others into the fold for support or help through outreach
• Place where we can reflect or think—keeping me focused.
• Is that worship? Yes, but not all of it.
• Security equals church -We can trust in the fellowship and in church people.
• Jesus message for us - live with people in trust. How do we help others to trust?
• We are avoiding the word, “Building.” It has a place in our thinking and feeling.
• The church building is where these things happen.
• The history comes in through the building.
• We gather to worship God and determine how to live life. A whole lot of what we do as church happens in this building.
• (Example - went to Kansas where grandparents lived—the house, almost everything was destroyed, except for the Oak Tree. I have my memories of the place. It will always remain in my memory even though it is gone. In the same way, this church is a part of us always. The dispersed family still feel this building is a part of what they feel is their remembered church. Place is very important.)
• A gathering of the church makes it a church. Church and worship are not the same thing. Although there is a sanctuary.
• A building is a place for worship.
• Gathering of Christians makes it a church. A building facilitates worship.
• Type of structure influences feeling of sanctuary (mood, worship).

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will...

Bless us with tears - for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort - at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience - and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility - open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance - replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity - remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln 's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand - that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN."
Submitted by Jan Johnson