METAPHYSICAL MEETING, May 16, 2011
Contents
| - Topic | |
| - Call to the meeting | |
| - Readings | |
| - Member contribution A | |
| - Member contribution B | |
| - Member contribution C |
Topic
Enlarging the border of our church
Call to the meeting
Our branch church has been having metaphysical meetings each month almost two years. We have all gained spiritual insight and support from sharing ideas on many topics of church. This month we are focusing on “Enlarging the Borders of Our Church.” Please come and join us in the discussion.
What does this mean to you? What can we do besides overseeing selling the property or putting more material online: what is the true purpose in doing all this?
How can we best expand our outreach in the metaphysical sense? How can we usher in a “new era” of spiritual enlargement for members as well as the community?
What are some potential pitfalls on the path to an enlarged sense ? How do we break out of --or wake up from-- the material sense of a mortally bound church?
Here are some suggestions to consider:
Is 54:2
Is 35:1,8 (to ;)
Ps 122:2
Ps 36:7
Ps 43:3
S&H 430:6-7
S&H 46:31 – 1
My 229:30-1
My 185: 10-14
My 165:16-22
Un 3:20-26
Hymn 253
Hymn 412
Journal April 2011, “Church Unity” by Marjorie K. Talbot
We come back to this admonition from Isaiah:“Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.” (Isa 54:2)
Readings
See above.
Member contribution A
I’ve been considering that enlarging the borders of our church begins with our own thinking. It requires an expansive, all-inclusive thought, rather than one that is narrow and limited. Let me give you a recent personal example that many of you experienced. For our Bible Lesson Discussion Group last Saturday, I had thought we could try to make it available by Skype® and put that fact on Facebook. In fact, I had a remote participant lined up and it was going to be a great (and safe) experiment. Then, that person called and said she was coming in person. I just assumed that nobody else would be joining us electronically. Even though I took my computer to the reading room, I didn’t complete the set up for a Skype® call. Fortunately, another person was persistent and when I didn’t respond to her Skype® message, she called us, we heard the computer ringing, and we had a nice addition to our group, as well as a very inspiring discussion.
What happened here? I was limiting participation in my thinking. I wasn’t being inclusive. It’s kind of embarrassing to be caught like this, but it is instructive. I won’t do that again! In fact, Saturday’s discussion was so successful and inspiring that I’m wondering how we can increase the frequency to more than once a month.
So, I’ve been thinking, “How do we enlarge the borders of our church in thought?” It’s easy to say what we’d like the outcome to be—more members, more participation by members, more attendees at our services and Sunday school, more customers in our reading room. For me, it means starting with my thought about our members. Am I limiting them? We all have foibles, but am I limiting our church because I accept the foibles as true? This would be serious malpractice! It requires incredible discipline to avoid thinking, “Well that’s just the way s/he is,” or “We can’t expect to progress unless THEY change.” What about me? Isn’t this all going on in MY thinking? I’m the one that needs to change. I’m the one that needs to practice more Christian love, not in accepting the foibles of others, but in knowing that these foibles aren’t a part of the real man. It also means checking my thinking about me and my relationship to our church’s forward growth and what I think you all might think about me. Yikes!
Let’s take an example, attendance in church. If we’re counting the number of mortals who are present, that’s doing as much good as counting the number of chairs. Mortals don’t inspire the service. However, if we’re counting the number of healings that occur during the service, wow! How do we effect healing when a) we can’t give Christian Science treatment without permission from the one being treated and b) we may not know what needs to be treated? First, I would be obedient to the Manual bylaw instructing us that “prayers in Christian Science churches shall be offered for the congregations collectively and exclusively” (Man. 42:1). To me, a prayer offered collectively for the congregation specifically instructs us not to give individual treatments. However, we still have a responsibility to be healing our own thought of whatever “problem” walks in. If we see that “problem” as unreal, it is healed and we are fulfilling our duty to pray for the congregation collectively. It also means applying what we hear during the service to the “problems”—really applying it so that the content of the service is the inspiration for prayer. Everybody there will feel it. The community will feel it. If everybody felt that prayer, people wouldn’t feel the pull of secular activities, they’d be on time so that they don’t miss a note or a word, and we wouldn’t have enough chairs to seat them. Don’t forget that we should be going to church expecting healing and feeling the prayer, too.
I don’t mean this to sound like a lecture or to be covering ground that I know we’ve covered before. I’ve been working on enlarging my sense of church and church participation and this is what’s coming to me. I’m trying my best to put it into practice and it’s taking self-discipline and vigilance. Hopefully, I’m making progress.
Member contribution B
Q #1: It’s important that we maintain the spiritual concept of church & church unity, as we let God direct us and let good unfold in this most holy work and Cause. The church unity as we progress together is a result of our “heart’s rich overflow.” (Hymn 139, Christian Science Hymnal)
Q #2: It is important that we continue to communicate with one another with spiritual ideas and practical ideas, so that we can keep with the momentum of going forward as one. “Unity is the essential nature of Christian Science. Its Principle is One, and to demonstrate the divine One, demands oneness of thought and action.” (Mis. 264: 10-12)
Q#3: As we gain a clearer understanding of our Church Manual, each By-law, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and Mary Baker Eddy’s other writings, we will keep on the upward way in following the path of divine Science. “The way leads upward and its goal draws nearer, Thought soars enraptured, fetterless and free; The vision infinite to me grows clearer, I touch the fringes of eternity.” (Hymn 64, Christian Science Hymnal)
Q#4: We can continue our metaphysical study, as we grasp hold of new and fresh ideas for each progressive step for our church. “Every step of progress is a step more spiritual” (Peo.1:2). Our demonstration of church blesses not only ourselves, but our whole community and our world.
Q#5: It’s good to remember that Mrs. Eddy made so many demonstrations in establishing this precious Christ Science: organizing the Christian Science church & the legacy of all of her writings, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Prose Works, and in establishing the periodicals, The C.S. Journal, C.S. Sentinel, The C.S. Herald, and the founding of a newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. What we do with our understanding of Christian Science is our individual and collective demonstration of this beautiful religion and of all it stands for. “Something in a Name” (Mis 353: 9): “I have given the name to all the Christian Science periodicals. The first was The Christian Science Journal, designed to put on record the divine Science of Truth: the second I entitled Sentinel, intended to hold guard over Truth, Life, and Love; the third, Der Herold der Christian Science, to proclaim the universal activity and availability of Truth; the next I named Monitor, to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent. The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.”
Q#6
We can listen for God’s voice as we are guided to really more clearly understand the definition of church, as found in Science and Health, p. 583: 12 -19. “ … gaining proof of its utility and … rousing the dormant understanding from material beliefs to the apprehension of spiritual ideas.” It will require even more spiritual listening and trusting God all the way.
“ … your fields are already white for the harvest.” “ … Look up, not down, for your fields are already white for the harvest and gather the harvest by mental, not material processes. The laborers are few in this vineyard of Mind-sowing and reaping; but let them apply to the waiting grain the curving sickle of Mind’s eternal circle, and bind it with bands of Soul” (Un. 12: 28-6)
Member contribution C
We need to see clearly that prayerful treatment for our church has similarities to handling a bodily physical problem, or a personal financial crisis, or an employment situation, or a family situation. Where do we start when we work spiritually on any of these challenges?
Fundamentally, we don’t start with the problem. We aren’t attempting to heal a broken home or a declining bodily function. That would be to accept a form of reality for the problem, which doesn’t help. If we feel a need to “enlarge the borders of our church,” does this mean we think the church is too limited in it capabilities, perhaps lacking members, resources, initiative, inspiration. Or are we out of touch with modern community thinking? Are we working impossibly against a prevailing atheistic secularism sweeping across the developed world? Does this make us feel defeated before we start?
None of those things makes any difference with God. The only way forward is to start and stay with God. What does God know? What already exists within the realm of Spirit, divine Love? Everything, everything that ever has existed and ever will exist. That’s our starting and ending point. But we do need to realize that fact and its related spiritual dominion.
Probably the most significant challenge we face as a church organization is membership. At the opening of our church service yesterday, the congregation consisted of just one person, and that person wasn’t a member. I find myself continuing to think about the example I quoted at last month’s metaphysical meeting, the article in the Christian Science Sentinel for 28 March 2011, page 11, where Dawn-Marie Cornett writes: My “mom was the First Reader at our church. With only a handful of other members, our auditorium looked very empty. On Wednesday evening, my mom looked at all those empty seats and prayed. The idea came to her to see them as full — full of divine ideas, full of love reflecting divine Love, … that our church was there to bless and that those seeking hope and healing would find our church services. She prayed this way at every service — seeing the whole church filled with God’s ideas and prayerfully calling the community to worship. Soon, a few new people began to come, others moved into the area, and we had a small but respectable congregation of devoted and loving people.”
I find myself following the pattern set by that writer, seeing all those seats as “full of divine ideas, full of love reflecting divine Love.”
Human society goes through cycles where societal behavior evolves and changes. The nineteenth century saw a growth in church attendance, for all Christian denominations, but in the latter part of the twentieth century that church attendance waned.
I am not praying to reverse that trend in a human sense. I am praying to realize more clearly the definition of Church in Science and Health, as “whatever rests upon and proceeds form divine Principle.” Both that Principle and its manifestation are spiritual. They always have existed. The advent of Christ Jesus two thousand years ago, of Mary Baker Eddy in the nineteenth century, and of other spiritual thinkers through the ages, may be regarded as the human realization of what already exists spiritually. Overflowing churches in Mrs Eddy’s day was just a human realization of what always has been the case where divine Love is reflected in the ideas of divine Mind, the unbounded infinitude of Soul’s expression. That’s the reality of congregations and communities, what they truly are. No individual has ever existed who was not in reality a spiritual idea of immortal Mind, an expression of Spirit. The discoveries of Mary Baker Eddy uncovered these spiritual entities and relationships, making them more readily utilized on the human scene. However, the infinite expression of God that is the spiritual man has always been the spiritual fact.
Those seats are already filled with Mind’s ideas. That community is already a God-inspired expression of Soul’s activity. That church is right now a structure of Truth, the evidence of divine Life and Love. The respect and love of everyone for the church is already in place because each individual is a divine outcome of Spirit.
It’s inspiring to go ahead keeping this realization firmly in thought. Anything less than that is an acceptance of chance, of an environment where God is not in control. Let’s stay firmly on the side of Truth and Life. We and our community truly express God’s dominion, so let’s realize that on behalf of our church in every way.