Jennie Churchman

Come celebrate “Christmas in July” with us this Sunday, July 30!  We will gather as one worshipping community at a special 10:00 a.m. combined Festival Service!  Our resident Christmas aficionado Abby Reel will share the message, “The Secret to Sustainable Christmas Spirit.” 

As part of our Christmas in July celebration, we will take up a special offering for the Heart House “Tree of Hearts” Christmas gifts for teens and tweens. 

After worship, make plans to stay for a potluck fellowship meal in the Parish Hall.  Please bring a dish to share and your own table service; beverages will be provided.  It’s a day of worship, service, fellowship and fun!  See you there!

We will have a congregational meeting this Sunday, June 25 at 9:30 a.m. in the Sanctuary.

The purpose of this meeting is to approve our 2023-2024 Leadership Team and to approve revisions to the Eureka Christian Church Constitution and Bylaws. 

If you are not able to come to join us on-site, we will livestream the meeting. Links below. You can vote online here.

We hope you will join us for this important meeting, whether it is onsite or online.  See you Sunday!

Join the meeting online at eurekachristian.org/worship-online or facebook.com/eurekacc/live

Our journey to the Galapagos Islands continues this Sunday as we encounter the famous Galapagos giant tortoises. Here’s a preview. (Photo by Dusan veverkolog on Unsplash)

They are massive creatures! I knew they were big, but I never dreamed just how BIG! According to galapagosconservation.org.uk, “Males can weigh more than 500 pounds, and females average about 250 pounds…The largest recorded Galapagos Tortoise was nearly 6 feet long and weighed 919 pounds.” 

The arrival of the conquistadors in the sixteenth century was devastating to the giant tortoises. Conquistador is a Spanish word that means “one who conquers.” And, boy, did they ever conquer.

There is no doubt they were incredibly brave and curious as they set sail from the Old World and set out to explore the New. Unfortunately, they didn’t just bring their courage and curiosity with them; they also brought a mindset that said, “All the earth is ours to conquer and control.” 

But the earth wasn’t theirs. And the earth isn’t ours. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” as Psalm 24 proclaims. The earth is the Lord’s. 

In his book The Galapagos Islands, Brian McLaren is very right when he says, “The conquistador spirit lives on today” (p. 48). I see it everywhere. Including in the Church, which begs the question: Will we embody a conquistador spirit or will we share the Spirit of Christ out in the world? 

What is the Spirit of Christ? How is it different from the conquistador spirit? Because we certainly use the word “conqueror” in relation to the power of God. 

God conquers the shroud of sin; God conquers the sting of death. 

But note one crucial difference between God’s kind of conquering and the conquistadors’ kind of conquering: God’s kind of conquering leads to liberation and life; the conquistador kind of conquering leads to destruction and death.

This is the lens by which we should examine everything we do and say: Does it bring liberation and life, or does it bring destruction and death?  What’s it going to be–the conquistador spirit or the Spirit of Christ?

I’ll see you Sunday.

Jennie

Worship at 8:15 and 10:30 a.m.
On-site at 302 South Main Street       Eureka, Illinois
Online at eurekachristian.org/worship-online or facebook.com/eurekacc/live

Meet 2023 DPF Peace Intern Grace Dearhamer!

Of course we already know Grace at Eureka Christian Church! But what you may not know is that she is serving as a Disciples Peace Fellowship (DPF) Intern this summer. As part of this role, she will be sharing regular updates on her blog . Here is her first post! You can follow all three DPF interns as they blog about their experiences this summer.

Good luck Grace! You are in our prayers as you serve on our behalf this summer.

Come join us as we “travel” to the Galapagos Islands this summer at Eureka Christian Church! 

Our summer worship series will focus on the book The Galapagos Islands: A Spiritual Journey by Brian McLaren. This is “one part travel guide, one part spiritual memoir, and one part ethical & theological reflection” (Preface, p. ix). Each week we will explore a different spiritual theme as we also learn more about the Galapagos Islands. Many thanks to Gary and Barb Baner, Karen Fyke, Abby and Carolyn Reel, and Tracy Simmons for providing visuals for this series.

This Sunday, June 4 will be an introduction. Here is a preview.

McLaren writes:
“Most theology in recent centuries…has been the work of avid indoorsmen, scholars who typically work in square boxes called offices or classrooms or sanctuaries, surrounded by square books and, more recently, square screens, under square roofs in square buildings surrounded by other square buildings, laid out in square city blocks that stretch as far as the eye can see…There is nothing inherently wrong about [this] civilized, indoor theology. 

Except this: theology that arises in human-made, human-controlled architecture…will differ markedly from theology that arises in conversation with the wild world that flourishes beyond our walls and outside our windows and cities…a wild theology that arises under the stars and planets, along a thundering river or meandering stream, admiring a flock of pelicans or weaver finches, watching a lion stalk a wildebeest, gazing at a spider spinning her web, observing a single tree bud form, swell, burst, and bloom” (The Galapagos Islands, p. xiii-xv). 

As I see it, this indoor theology has also contributed to some of the environmental issues the global community faces today. We are increasingly detached from the wild world. We have spent so much energy controlling it and consuming it that we haven’t left ourselves any breathing space, any soul space to contemplate it or celebrate it. I have spent most of my life in cities, for example, going from air-conditioned homes to air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned stores and places of work. And while I have long-enjoyed walking, before moving here, it was mostly in neighborhoods. On sidewalks, dodging cars. 

This detachment has consequences. 

Because what we don’t know, we don’t appreciate.
What we don’t appreciate, we don’t value. 
And what we don’t value, we don’t take care of. 

For many of us, that “wild world that flourishes beyond our walls,” as McLaren puts it, is “other.” It is separate, completely foreign. 

But here’s the thing. 

It isn’t other, separate, or foreign. For we are part of it. We are inseparable from it, in fact. 

Now I know that we have done a mighty masterful job at deceiving ourselves here, but the truth remains: what happens out in that wild world affects us. What happens out in that wild world is us, becomes us. 

McLaren is right: We need a wild theology. A theology that marvels at the stars and the planets, that meanders alongside the streams, that admires pelicans, spiders spinning webs, and the blossoms of spring.  A theology that contemplates and celebrates.

“We imagine,” McLaren writes, “a wild theology that doesn’t limit itself to Plato and Aquinas but also consults the wisdom of rainbow trout and sea turtles, seasons and tides. We imagine a wild theology whose horizons are measured not by thousands of years and miles but by billions of light years. We imagine a wild theology that is articulated in books, yes, but also in stories and songs, in foods and feasts, in dances and lamentations and pilgrimages that resonate with the turning seasons and rhythmic tides of the natural world” (The Galapagos Islands, p. xv). 

Sign me up! I want to find God “where the wild things are.” What to come along?

I’ll see you Sunday.

Jennie

Worship at 8:15 and 10:30 a.m.
On-site at 302 South Main Street       Eureka, Illinois
Online at eurekachristian.org/worship-online or facebook.com/eurekacc/live

Experiencing God’s Good Earth, June 26-29

Eureka Christian Church is pleased to offer “Discovery Day Camp: Experiencing God’s Good Earth” for children and youth ages 4 through just-completed 8th grade. This fun week of VBS-style learning activities, crafts, and singing will take place June 26-29 at the Wuethrich Farm near Carlock.

Each day begins at 9:00 a.m. at the farm. Our Pre-K children will go home before lunch at 11:30 a.m.
Students who have completed kindergarten through 8th grade will stay for lunch and then head off for a different field trip destination each day. Their program ends at 3:00 p.m. each afternoon.

All children and youth need to wear closed-toed shoes and bring a water bottle. Kindergarten, elementary and middle school participants also need to bring a sack lunch each day.

Cost is $15 per child, with a $40 family maximum. Friends and extended family are welcome. Please fill out the registration form and return it with payment to Eureka Christian Church (302 S. Main, Eureka, Illinois 61530) by Wednesday, June 21.

Our “Healing Waters” series addressing the wounds caused by religious trauma ends this Sunday, May 28. In the sermon, I will be inviting us to become a healing church. Here’s a preview.

According to “the latest U. S. Religion Census from 2010-2020, the share of Americans with a religious affiliation dropped by 11 points.” And not just, as you might be thinking, on the East and West Coasts.  The share of Americans with a religious affiliation also “sharply declined,” to quote the survey, here in the Midwest middle (Ryan Burge, “How Religion Influences Politics,” quoted in The Week, May 26, 2023, p. 12). 

Why is that? We can blame all sorts of things, of course. Distractions, incessant busy-ness, the current “what’s in it for me” American malaise. But we would be sinfully remiss if we did not also turn the mirror to ourselves, get those logs out of our eyes, and ask the questions:

What we have done to drive people away? 
In what ways has our Christian proclamation become irrelevant or even damaging?

Jesus, my friends, is not the problem. 

The Good News he came to share and embody is just as needed and life-giving today as it ever has been. He came to bring abundant life. He came “to preach the Message of good news to the poor; to announce pardon to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind; to set the burdened and battered free; to announce, ‘This is God’s year to act!’” (Luke 4:18-19, The Message). Jesus came to offer food to the hungry and a cup of cool water to the thirsty. He came to offer welcome, hope, healing, forgiveness, peace. 

Much-needed Good News, all. 

No, Jesus is not the problem. The problem are those theologies, teachings, and practices that lead to distorted images of God, self, and others—which in turn lead to alienation from God, self, and others. 

We call ourselves “a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.” Eureka Christian Church, are those just pretty words? 

What kind of Christians and what kind of church are we going to be? Are we going to be the kind of church that contributes to religious trauma? Are we going to be the kind of church that—perhaps more insidiously, more temptingly—keeps silent in the face of religious trauma? 

Or, are we going to be the kind church that lovingly, faithfully, tirelessly carries Jesus into all the broken places and all the wounded hearts that are all around us? 

We call ourselves “a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.” Disciples, do we mean it?

I’ll see you Sunday.

Jennie

Worship at 8:15 and 10:30 a.m.
On-site at 302 South Main Street       Eureka, Illinois
Online at eurekachristian.org/worship-online or facebook.com/eurekacc/live

This Sunday, May 28, we will continue to receive the Pentecost special offering that goes to support the formation of new congregations through our New Church Ministries.

In the beginning, every church was new.

It’s right there in the Book of Acts. Early disciples came together, sharing all things in common, breaking bread with glad and generous hearts. God was doing a new thing:  creating a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.

Our gifts to the 2023 Pentecost Offering help ensure that our movement continues to embody the Disciples of Christ vision: to be and to share the Good News, witnessing, loving and serving from our doorsteps to the ends of the earth.

Half of our gifts support the local new church movement through our region’s ministry. The other half supports New Church Ministry efforts across the United States and Canada to equip, train, and empower new leaders. 

So, thank you. For participating in the new thing God is still doing — just as in the beginning.

Our “Healing Waters” series addressing the wounds caused by religious trauma continues on Sunday, May 7.  This week we will be exploring 1 Peter 2:1-10 and what it means for someone to hear that they are God’s beloved.  Here is a preview.

Early Christian communities were filled with people who had been told again and again that they could never be enough.  These were people on the margins.  The poor.  The powerless.  The broken.  Slaves.  Women.  Gentiles.  And no wonder, because these were the very people Jesus himself interacted with. 

Jesus spent all of his time ministering to people on the margins.  The people left out, left behind, left for dead.  Samaritans.  Prostitutes.  Tax collectors.  Lepers.  Demoniacs.  Those ailing in body and spirit.  Blind men.  Paralyzed men.  And let’s not forget the women.  Jesus ministered to, acknowledged, and valued the women around him. 

People on the margins, all. 

Think about how these words from 1 Peter would have resonated with them:  “Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people” (1 Peter 2:10).  Wait a minute.  I’m not a nobody, you mean?  I’m a somebody?  I have worth, and I am accepted here for me? 

This isn’t ancient history.  I know there are many tender, hurting souls all around us who have only ever been told they are nobodies.  There are many people—too many people—who are longing to hear, aching to hear that they are loved.  They have never dreamed that the voice of God could say to them, “You are my son.  You are my daughter.  You are my beloved ones.  And with you, I am well-pleased.” 

Christians, I do believe God has work for us to do.  I’ll see you Sunday.

Jennie

Worship at 8:15 and 10:30 a.m.
On-site at 302 South Main Street       Eureka, Illinois
Online at eurekachristian.org/worship-online or facebook.com/eurekacc/live

Join us Sunday as we recognize our high school and college graduates at both services. We will also present Bibles to our 4th graders. Congratulations all! We are proud of you!

Worship at 8:15 and 10:30 a.m.
On-site at 302 South Main Street       Eureka, Illinois
Online at eurekachristian.org/worship-online or facebook.com/eurekacc/live