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Here are brief descriptions of Seekers' mission groups. For more information on the activities, disciplines or inner life of any of these groups, please contact the Seeker whose name is listed.
This is a call
to persons who find in the arts an expression of an inner vision,
of a holy and growing place in themselves.
This is a call...
to those who find in color, line, surfaces, form, movement,
sounds, metaphors, and the many other aspects of art, the presence of the
mysterious, unpredictable, silent and enlivening power of God...a God who
dances and sings.
This is a call...
to persons who find in the struggle to create, in the discipline
of an artistic form, in the encounter with an art object, an experience of
faith and grace where God is known as the Creator of their lives.
This is a call...
to join in a community which will support and encourage
individual efforts, and encounters with art. Through communal prayer,
dialogue and sharing of experience, the inner vision will be nurtured to be
expressed in some outward forms.
The Artist's Group calls persons to express an inner vision in an outward form. In the engagement with the medium one becomes aware of the gift of creation, and hopes to be a channel for this gift. The artist is held by the group in the faith place where both the creative blocks and creative gifts are experienced.
In the Artist Mission Group we work individually on our art but corporately we become community.
Claiming being an artist means being under the authority of that. Once deciding to join, then comes the sorting through of how this is to be manifested in one's life. Setting priorities is important. Most members are working full time and must fit this being an artist in with other wants. Some who come may have set their goals and hopes so high they dare not venture forth. Some humility is needed to accept one's own work. When one experiences the creative process in oneself one realizes that intentionality is needed but also faith to hang in when there seems to be no inner resource to rely upon.
The call to be an artist is radical in that it asks us to find a voice for our uniqueness and be responsible for that as co-creators with God. As created beings we can only express our uniqueness with God's help.
[More about the Artist Mission Group]
This is a call...
to dance and movement....
to celebrate the oneness of body and spirit.
This is a call...
to dance and movement....
to release the captive within
and claim ourselves as bodyspirits.
This is a call...
to dance and movement....
to create a safe place to meet God and each other.
This is a call...
to dance and movement
to serve Seekers Church and build the body of Christ
sharing the healing power of dance
in worship, teaching, ritual and celebration
We will meet weekly, with time for sharing, movement, meditation and dance. The dance/movement may take many forms to include: non-judgmental dance, authentic movement, circle dance and choreographed pieces.
Our disciplines will consist of: daily intentional movement, dance or bodywork, daily lectionary reading, prayer for group members and our mission, spiritual accountability, and commitment to regular attendance at group meetings.
We encourage involvement in a weekly movement or dance class. As we are led, will offer danced prayer, meditation or teaching of community circle dance out of our experiences as a group. We want to be available as a resource for inCORPORating (bringing our bodies into) our spiritual life as individuals and a community.
[More about the Bodyspirit Mission Group]
Celebration Circle is called to energize and structure the worship life of the Seekers Church. We write Seekers' worship liturgies, plan and coordinate worship and other celebrations, and coordinate preaching.
In Celebration Circle our work is some combination of what is traditionally done by ministers, worship committees and altar guilds. We try to live out that part of the call of Seekers Church to come "...together in weekly worship rooted in the Biblical faith, with shared leadership..." so that we can "...disperse with a common commitment to understand and implement Christian servanthood in the structures in which we live our lives."
During our weekly mission group meetings, we select themes for worship based on the lectionary and concerns in the life of the community, compose the liturgies and special rituals, schedule the preachers and work with them to select the hymns and music, and plan the altar table. Wednesday evenings are busy, lively times, as the work helps us confront our assumptions about God and face our prejudices about worship.
On Sundays, we arrange the worship space and coordinate the different parts of the morning. One of us usually leads the gathering circle, and another usually serves as the liturgist.
In addition to our corporate mission, we provide a place of support and spiritual accountability for the members of the group. We can usually find the time to celebrate birthdays and share each others' joys and sorrows.
We want to give all Seekers the opportunities they desire to contribute to our worship life. We welcome offerings of leadership and suggestions about how Seekers' worship can be improved so that, in worship, we are "...empowering others within the normal structures of our daily lives (work; family and primary relationships; and citizenship) as well as through special structures for service and witness."
Celebration Circle is committed to maintaining a flexible but familiar framework for worship that offers a variety of opportunities for shared leadership. If you are interested in offering something to Seekers during worship, or if you might like to join us, please let one of us know!
[More about the Celebration Circle Mission Group]
Our vision for Homemakers Mission Group is to create a process for finding a new worship home for the Seekers Community by strengthening our identity, deepening our community faith journey, and expanding our call to be church in the world. Our call informing the Homemakers Mission Group is to assist the Seekers Community in finding a new home. The mission group intends to be informed by several years of discussion and reflection about how our future place of worship is an expression of our call to be church. Another dimension of our call is to invite conversations about stewardship issues which will be raised in finding a new home. Finally, we envision our call as exploring and making recommendations on location options for the Seekers Community. The Homemakers Mission Group will not be the final decision maker but rather servants of the larger community. We know all final decisions will need to be made by the members which will follow several discussions and consultations with the entire Seekers Community. Those who choose to become part of the Homemakers Mission Group will be expected to have the spiritual, personal, and group life disciplines of the Seekers Community.
The Homemakers Mission Group meets weekly, but some of its regular meetings may be replaced by visits to potential sites for Seekers new home.
[More about the Homemakers Mission Group]
Hope and a Home ís vision is ìa city in which all families are housed, intact, growing stronger, and giving life to themselves, their children, their neighbors and their community.
We are a transitional housing and education program for low income inner city families. We lease apartments for up to three years to families whose incomes are low and whose stability is threatened because they lack adequate housing and certain critical supports.
The Hope and a Home Program is made up of families, volunteers, and staff. We work and play together in a variety of ways. We share leadership in workshops that cover a wide range of topics chosen by family members, including working successfully with children and their schools, developing parenting skills, increasing personal growth, and learning home maintenance skills. Families are encouraged to think in terms of eventual home ownership.
Staff provide opportunities to learn through regular goal-setting with families, one-on-one counseling, and after-school programs for children. Both support and accountability are an essential part of the process.
The Hope and a Home mission group made up of volunteers and staff meets two times a month to create, guide, and evaluate the program. Being part of the mission group offers opportunities not only to translate news stories about problems of the city into reality through the lives of friends made in Hope and a Home but also actually to be able to help offer solutions to some of these problems.
Hope and a Home welcomes those who are interested in being part of this exciting work.
[More about the Hope and a Home Mission Group]
Journeying With Children is called to nurture children, and the child within each of us. We pray together for God's guidance to be more open to growth, to playful joy, and to our own feelings.
Our call is to a mission of journeying with children. We seek to be open to change -- praying for God's guidance and help to be more present to young people and children in our midst and beyond. We call all Seekers to break the barriers that separate children and adults -- to open our hearts and minds to unity among us, our unity as God's new creations and as a Christian community which liberates each of us to share our own uniqueness. We seek to more fully accept and value the spiritual journeys of our children, knowing that the child's awareness of the nature of God may be the word offered to us, perhaps 'the one thing needful.'
We serve as a sounding board for ideas and a source of advice, guidance and emotional support for the Sunday School program and its coordinator. We have assumed a leadership role in planning programs and activities for children in Seekers. With help and support from the whole community, we designed and led the first 'confirmation class' in 1994 for children then in junior high school. We will plan a second class such next year for the next group coming long. We have led several discussions in the larger Seekers community about issues related to raising boys. We have planned informal events for families, such as camping, canoeing and hiking.
Our disciplines include praying for each child in the larger community (we invite parents and children to bring their concerns and prayer requests to our attention), and meeting three times monthly for worship, sharing and business. Toward the goal of deepening our prayer and spiritual life together, we are undertaking study of a chosen text at each mission group meeting. We are working toward the regular exchange of spiritual reports.
[More about the Journeying with Children Mission Group]
Learners and Teachers is called to invite, enable, and empower participants to live more fully into faith and God's call to mission, and to enable the Seekers School of Christian Living. The School is a place of learning and sharing for adults in Christian community, and an important place of preparation for committed membership in Seekers Church.
The Learners and Teachers Mission Group exists to support the spiritual growth and development of Seekers. This includes providing the classes required for committed membership in Seekers (Old Testament, New Testament, Christian Growth, and Christian Doctrine) as well as other classes of interest to the wider community.
The School of Christian Living is frequently a place where newcomers are introduced to a life of intentional spiritual commitment. We also offer visitors the opportunity to explore Seekers Church by inviting them to participate in classes with committed members and community participants.
The School provides a setting for Seekers to express their gifts and to practice mission by teaching and outreach through classes. We also welcome participants from other communities.
During the year, we usually sponsor two ten-week sessions of the School (fall and spring),opportunities for short, special or experimental classes during January and an informal sermon discussion group during the summer. Because dinner and the meditation are considered an important way to build community, we encourage people to come for that part of the evening as well as for the Tuesday night classes.
People who feel drawn to participate more fully in the life of Seekers may join a mission group after completing two classes in the School.
All members of the Learners and Teachers mission group feel a call to provide continuing education for adults in the Seekers community. The way that call is expressed differs with our gifts, experience and available energy. We revisit the issue of roles for our inner and outer life together about twice a year, to allow for growth and change.
Tasks connected with our mission include planning and developing classes, recruiting teachers, promoting participation, offering orientation to the School for newer teachers, shepherding classes, coordinating use of the facilities with the Church staff, providing hospitality and coordinating dinners. We rotate responsibilities for these tasks to develop gifts growing in us.
[More about the Learners and Teachers Mission Group]
Members of the Mission Support Group are called to individual mission, or are in the process of discerning mission. The group provides a place of support and accountability for these individual calls.
The Mission Support Group (MSG) is the only Seekers mission group that does not have a corporate mission. Each of its members is called to an individual mission; the group meets every other week to support each other in our various calls. The calls of MSG members range from literacy and hospitality to less easily named efforts to contribute to and improve the world.
MSG is notable for its lack of rigidity and willingness to accommodate the particular needs or concerns of its members. Meetings generally begin with a period of prayer and lectionary readings, and always include a period of sharing by each member about their call and/or other life issues which affect the member's spiritual life.
In addition, the group often devotes a block of time to one of several activities, such as reading and discussing a devotional or spiritual book; focusing in depth on the particular call of one member and ways to deepen that call; or analyzing issues of particular concern to Seekers or the larger church. MSG also encourages members to engage in disciplines and prepare spiritual reports which are exchanged with prayer partners at meetings. The group is working toward adding a little structure to meetings and having greater intimacy and risk-taking in sharing.
MSG has the closeness and camaraderie of a group that has been together for many years, although there is some movement in and out of the group. Each of the members places great emphasis on being at each MSG meeting, but all tend to miss meetings from time to time due to travel. All in all, there is an abiding warmth in the Mission Support Group which lifts up each member in the pursuit of his or her call.
The Spirit and Sexuality Mission Group meets to deepen its own understanding of spirituality and sexuality, and offers leadership and activities to help people in Seekers and the larger society to grow in their understanding of the relationship between sexuality and spirituality.
The Spirit and Sexuality Mission Group has its roots in the discernment process that Seekers undertook in 1989 and 1990 around welcoming into the community people of all sexual orientations. In that process, the community began to talk about celebrating the diversity of expressions that our incarnate sexuality can take and also about our fears around intimacy and sexual power.
Mission group members meet out of a personal desire to work with how our sexuality is an expression of our body-spirit nature - how our sexuality can feed our spiritual lives. The group also comes together out of a belief that Seekers, along with other reconciling and inclusive Christian congregations, is on the cutting edge of a more just and inclusive church: we are confronting the history of exclusion within Christendom, which stands, in our view, in stark contrast to Jesus' message of good news.
Our life together is one of a slow building of trust as we learn to express and work with attitudes of joy and shame associated with our sexuality and sexual expression. We're aware of relationships among sexuality, violence and power, and have begun to explore the depth, breadth and complexity of those relationships.
The group's life is also marked by a consistent intention to be on mission. Within Seekers, we have offered a class in the School of Christian Living, served as a resource for Sunday School, and helped organize Seekers participation in public demonstrations of support for the end to discrimination based on sexual orientation. Commitment to traditional Church of the Saviour spiritual disciplines is an essential part of our group life.
With respect to the larger church, the mission group has intentionally made Seekers' call to inclusion known to other churches of the Church of the Saviour tradition. Through regular participation in the Kirkridge annual retreat for gay and lesbian Christians, as well as other meetings of reconciling Christians, we have shared the good news of the Spirit's work in Seekers and sought insight into the paths of reconciliation being walked by other congregations.
[More about the Spirit and Sexuality Mission Group]
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