Ready for Baptism?
We are excited to offer our next opportunity to receive the sacrament of Holy Baptism on Pentecost Sunday, May 19th during worship.
Baptism—like communion—is one of the two sacraments Jesus instructed us as His followers to practice. We believe it is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible spiritual grace. At The Mission, we offer BOTH believer’s baptism for those who have come to faith in adulthood or older childhood, AND infant baptism, for parents who desire to raise their child in the faith and community of the church. If you would like to be baptized or if you have a child or children you would like to be baptized, or if you MIGHT be interested in baptism but have some questions you’d like to discuss with us first, please register using the form below and a pastor will reach out to you.
Note: we want to make sure there is time to walk with and prepare all our candidates for baptism, so thedeadline for baptism registration is Sunday, April 14th.
An Invitation to Lent
Lent is a time of devotion and discipline as we prepare our hearts for the great celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection on Easter Sunday. It is a 40-day period that starts with Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday. If you are new to the liturgical tradition, you may be unfamiliar with Lent, but Lent has occupied a special place in the Church since the earliest of times. In Lent, we are invited to seriously consider our sin and our fallen human condition, even as we reflect on the nature of Christian hope.
This year, we will preach through the Lectionary passages looking at Promises God made in history that were fulfilled in Christ as well as promises Jesus made to His disciples and during His public ministry that we trust He will one day fulfill. Our hope in these days is to consider “The Promises of Jesus,” that we might draw close to Him and refresh our faith and confidence as His followers in the world.
We will also offer intentional spaces of rest, reflection, and spiritual practice during Lent. Here is a list of all the ways you can connect with us and press in during this season:
1) Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper: Tues. February 13th at 5:30 PM at the Hills’ home in NKY - a fat Tuesday party on the eve of Lent.
2) Ash Wednesday Service: Wed. February 14th at 6:30 PM
3) Lenten Missional Morning Prayer Group - Tuesdays in Lent at 6 AM starting Tuesday, February 20th.
3) Lenten Selah - Journey to the Cross: Saturday, March 2nd from 9:30-11:30 AM
4) Palm Sunday Service: Sun. March 24th at 10 AM
5) Maundy Thursday Gathering: Thurs. March 28th at 6:30 PM
6) Good Friday Service: Fri. March 29th at 6:30 PM
7) Easter Sunday Service & Celebration: Sun. March 31st at 10 AM
Rev. Kristen has also prepared a Lenten Devotional Guide to help you put spiritual practices in play for you and/or your household:
Ash Wednesday Service
WEDNESDAY 2/14 | 6:30 PM | 2221 Slane Ave. 45212
Join us as we mark time at the beginning of Lent through song, prayer, Scripture, the imposition of ashes, and communion. This 1-hour service will focus on remembering our own mortality and preparing our hearts for pressing into the season of Lent together.
No Childcare will be provided for this service, however, children of all ages are welcome to join with their families in worship!
Annual Congregational Meeting
Our 2024 Annual Congregational Meeting will take place on Sunday February 25th after worship from 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM in the church sanctuary.
The Annual Meeting is an important rhythm of our church’s life together. Every year at the end of February, we come together as a body to celebrate God’s faithfulness to us over the past year by recapping ministry highlights, updating our membership on our financial position, and honoring those who have served in the previous year. We also look ahead to the year to come by sharing our new year’s ministry budget, electing new members to our Vestry, and celebrating Vestry members who are concluding their terms and rolling off.
While only members who have completed Mission Pathways and joined the church can VOTE in the Annual Meeting, all who attend the Mission are welcome to join us for this special day!
We do ask that you please RSVP by no later than Sunday 2/18 if you plan to attend using the Sign-Up Genius linked below. Free childcare will be available upon request so please comment in your Sign-Up if childcare is requested and for how many kids.
Finally, we need at least 50% of our members to be present at this meeting to satisfy the requirements of our Code of Regulations so your prompt RSVPs will greatly help us with planning!
An Invitation to An Honest Advent
So what do you think: has the world gotten BETTER this year?
As I consider that question, it strikes me that to live as a Christian is to embrace a profound and constant tension. On the one hand, we believe that God was born into human flesh in Jesus, that He died on a cross, rose from the dead, and will come back again at the end of all things to destroy sin, end evil, wipe every tear from every eye, and make the whole world new again. So to be a Christian is to live always with a profound assurance of hope.
But Jesus hasn’t come back yet. And we live in a world full of pain, violence, racism, slavery, abuse, poverty, and disorder. A 24 hour global news cycle allows us to see even more of the brokenness rampant in our world. Every year, I seem to have more and more friends and family fighting personal battles of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. I fight many of those battles within myself. I daily face up to the reality that I am not the husband, father, man, neighbor, son, brother, our pastor I want to be. The world is deeply broken. Our hearts are deeply broken. And our faith as followers of Jesus calls us to be honest about that brokenness, and to lament the devastation in our world and in our hearts. Things are NOT as they should be. NOT as Jesus desires them to be. NOT as we believe and hope they WILL be.
So how do we live faithfully in the midst of this tension? How do we honestly reckon with the devastation all around us while continuing to hold onto and even to rejoice in our hope in Christ?
The church season of Advent offers us a venue for exploring and wrestling with this tension. Advent is the Christian New Year, a pentitential season Christians throughout history and across the world today observe in the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas. In Advent, we enter into the story of Israel after the exile: the 500 years between the last prophets and the coming of John the Baptist when God’s voice was silent and Israel waited for God to send His promised Messiah to deliver them. In Advent, we enter into Israel’s waiting, their longing, their expectancy. We sit with their sadness over God’s felt absence. Their sorrow over their individual and corporate sin that led to their exile, their honesty over the sorrow and suffering they experience all around them in the world.
Yet thousands of years later Christians know that the Christ child born in the manger was God’s answer to Israel’s longing. The Messiah HAS come into Israel’s waiting! But Christians throughout history and us today are—like Israel!—waiting for Jesus to come again! We too live in a world where God’s voice often seems silent. Where we feel sorrow over our personal and systemic sin. Where we lament and weep over the pain and brokenness around us and in our own lives. We too wait for God to do what He’s promised: for Jesus to come back and reveal His Kingdom in full.
In Advent we reckon with devastation even as we rejoice in hope. There is darkness in this season and there is light. We actually PRACTICE waiting. We PRAY for our world: we name and lament sources of devastation and invite Jesus to come, not just generally but specifically into those places and needs. We examine our own lives and confess the sins that have laid hidden in our lives. We invite the power of the Holy Spirit to help us repent: that Jesus might make US new, even as we invite Him to make our world new. We are generous to the needs of the poor and we rest from the constant chasing of idols we’ve made that has promised us salvation but has run us ragged. In short, we LIVE the tension: reckoning with devastation even as we remember and rejoice in our sure and certain hope in Christ.
And we do all of this together!
As Tish Harrison Warren reminds us in her book on Advent, the story and practices of this season take place within a community: the church! We will never be as effective in embracing the tension of our faith alone. We need brothers and sisters to pray with us, to lament with us, to persist in hope with us! And God gives us this Advent family through His people in the Body of Christ.
If you are looking for a community with which to live out the tension between hope and devastation this Advent, I’d love to invite you to join us during this season at The Mission Cincinnati! We’ll gather for worship on Sundays 12/3, 12/10, and 12/17 at 10 AM at 2221 Slane Ave. Cincinnati OH 45212, and for our Christmas Eve service and celebration on Sunday 12/24 at 4 PM. We can’t wait to welcome you with us as we lean into an Honest Advent of reckoning with devastation and rejoicing in hope together!
Fall Ministry Preview
Summer’s winding down, the school year is around the corner, and with that, its time to share a preview of what we have in store for Fall Ministry here at The Mission Cincinnati!
1) Ephesians Preaching Series – Sundays 8/20 – 10/29 – God has done AMAZING things for us in Jesus! Things that totally transform our identity and can change the way we see the world and live our lives. Join us this Fall as we study the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Christians in Ephesus to learn about all the things Jesus has done for us in Christ that give us a new identity as His people in the church, and transform the way we live our lives as a part of God’s One New Humanity in Christ.
2) Pathways | Heartbeat & Anglican 101 Cohort – 9 Sundays from 11 AM – 12:30 PM starting Sunday 9/10 – New to the Mission? You’re invited to be a part of our Fall Heartbeat & Anglican 101 Cohort which will introduce you to our church’s vision, mission, values, and the distinctives of our Anglican Heritage. All of this is done in community so that participants make real friendships, even as you have opportunities to take next steps into Belonging, Growing, Serving and Going here. Childcare is offered free of charge for all sessions of Heartbeat & Anglican 101.
3) Regional Small Groups – Launching first week in October! – In the Fall & Spring, we gather in homes across our city for hospitality, food, spiritual conversation based on the previous Sundays’ sermon, and prayer. Check out the full list of our 4 regional groups for the fall:
4) Baptisms & Renewal of Baptismal Vows – Sunday, November 5th in worship – Twice per year, we offer the sacrament of baptism for infants and children of members as well as adults professing faith in Jesus for the first time. We also offer the opportunity to renew your baptismal vows in worship. Renewal of Vows is for those who may have been baptized as a child, but for whom faith in Jesus is become real for the first time in adulthood. Our pastors want to support and prepare those plan to participate in either of these rites. If you’re interested in being baptized, having your children baptized, or renewing your baptismal vows in worship, please fill out the baptism registration form below and a pastor will be in touch soon
5) Confirmation During Bishop Mark’s Visit – Sunday, November 12th in worship – Our bishop Mark Engel will be visiting The Mission Cincinnati on Sunday, November 12th. As a part of his visit, we invite those who have completed Pathways to be confirmed. Confirmation is a sacramental rite that is sometimes called “a lay ordination.” In confirmation the bishop prays for you to receive the Holy Spirit and His gifts for ministry, while formally welcoming you into the Anglican Church. As with baptism, our pastors want to intentionally prepare and support our confirmands. If you are interested in being confirmed, please fill out the confirmation registration form below, and Rev. Kristen will be in touch soon.
6) Serve Team Trainings – Serving is a great way to get involved, advance the mission of our church, and make friends with others at The Mission. We have multiple Sunday service teams at The Mission and all of them could use your help! Interested in joining a serve team? Fill out the interest form below and one of our leaders will be in touch to make sure you’re included in an upcoming training!
FAQs on the Finances of our Move
Greetings Mission Family & Friends,
On Sunday, July 9th, we shared the news of God’s provision of a new home for our congregation at Grace United Methodist Church in Norwood. This past Sunday, July 30th, our Vestry Treasurer, Nelson Wesley, shared an annual stewardship update, as well as an invitation to join us in funding the needed repairs and updates we hope to make to the building prior to move-in.
To further inform this invitation, we want do address some FAQs about the financial aspects of our move:
1) Is the Mission buying this building or renting?
The Mission Cincinnati has entered into a 3-year lease agreement with Grace UMC which includes
- unlimited uses of the main and second floor spaces on Sundays
- 24/7 exclusive office and meeting spaces
- Use of the building for special services and weekly meetings on a scheduled basis
- a first right of refusal which gives The Mission the first opportunity to purchase the building should the congregation at Grace cease to exist or otherwise desire to sell the building.
2) What is the scope of the updates/repairs the Vestry has approved?
In general, the Vestry has approved cosmetic updates to beautify spaces we will use, and redesign rooms to match our uses. This includes:
- updating multiple children’s classrooms that will serve on Sundays as
o a nursery
o 2 older elementary children’s classrooms, and
o a cry room/sensory room for nursing mothers, and/or children with special sensory needs that will be available for use during worship and will have the service livestreamed.
- Painting, updating carpet & A/V, reconfiguring altar area, and rearranging seating in the sanctuary.
- building out a sacristy room for use in worship,
- renovating 3 rooms as offices and designated meeting areas for anytime use.
3) How are you planning to fund these updates?
Currently, the Mission has existing reserve funds that can cover the entirety of the proposed building updates budget if needed. However, given that we may have an opportunity to purchase the building in the near future, we’d like to preserve as much of our existing reserve capital as possible, so as to be financially prepared to purchase the building if and when it becomes available.
4) So what is the specific invitation to partner now?
We hope to raise the full $102,000.00 renovation budget through new one-time gifts from our local congregation and from supportive friends in Cincinnati and beyond who want to add energy to our ministry in this key moment in the life of our maturing church plant. We hope to raise these funds between now and November 1st 2023. To date, we have received $24,000.00 toward this goal. Thus, we invite you to help us raise the remaining $78,000.00 by making a one-time gift to The Mission Cincinnati between now and October.
5) How can I contribute?
Gifts can be made online to the General Fund using our online giving platform on our website using the link below.
Check can be mailed to “The Mission Cincinnati // P.O. Box 6006 // Cincinnati OH 45206.
Thank you SO MUCH for your prayerful, faithful, and enthusiastic partnership with us in God’s Kingdom work through The Mission Cincinnati. We cannot wait to see and share the news of how God will provide and how He will transform lives and impact our city and region through that provision!
If you have any questions, you can reach out to me, Fr. William, at william@missioncincinnati.org.
Blessings to you in Christ in all things!
William
Fr. William D. Eavenson Jr.
Rector | The Mission Cincinnati
Children's Ministry Vision Night | 8/16 | 6-8 PM
Dear Mission Family,
In so many ways, we are in transition! Transition is not always a comfortable place. The now and not yet pull us and the tension can make us feel taut, like we might snap in the waiting and the work! As a whole church, we are right here in the middle of this tension as we move toward a new space. Our kids and kids ministry are also in this space. We are taking steps forward but there are a lot of unanswered questions like, when will we go? And, what will things be like when we get there? All the while we must continue to work in the present. For me, the best thing to know is that our good God is right here with us and gives us the gift of each other for the journey!
As we have contemplated where we are headed, we have been drawn to a program for our kids that seems to fit us as a community. One that values liturgy, wonder and the whole story of Scripture, as well as experiencing God in sacred spaces and bringing that experience into congruence with our daily lives. The program is called Godly Play and we are just learning about it as a team and we would like to introduce it to all of you, as well!
I met Dennis Mulcare, dad to our own Emily Yokajty, because Emily grew up on Godly Play and her dad taught it for many years. As we began to consider it, a conversation with Dennis was very encouraging! He offered to trek to our neck of the woods from Colorado (well, maybe a new granddaughter was a tiny bit influential on his trekking!) to demonstrate how Godly Play works. And in his words, not mine, “Adults will love and appreciate this, not just kids!”
So, on Wednesday, August 16th, we are inviting whole families and all households to wrap their arms around our kids ministry and join us at our new space of Grace UMC to enjoy a pizza dinner and dessert and to listen to Dennis tell us about Godly Play and demonstrate how it works! This is not a training for volunteers nor a presentation for kids–as a matter of fact, our kids will be in childcare while WE get to experience Godly Play! All of us will get to see the new building, and listen to Dennis as he invites us to experience this unique children's curriculum! Everyone is invited because we think it’s important to have our whole body see where our children may be headed and to offer their thoughts and ask questions after watching it presented. For those of you who would consider teaching in the future, this evening will be very key! Plus, we can all see the building we plan to move to and let our kids see their new space as well. This is bound to give us energy and excitement moving forward!
Come Play with Us! Let’s see where it takes us!
Grace and Peace to each household!
Christine and the Mission Kids team
~questions are always welcome at christine@missioncincinnati.org~
Announcing our Future Home!
On Sunday, July 9th, we shared with our congregation the exciting news that we have signed a lease on a future home for The Mission Cincinnati. The congregation at Grace United Methodist Church, located at 2221 Slane Avenue in Norwood, has graciously invited us into a shared space usage arrangement where we will have permanent office and group meeting spaces, as well as designated use of the sanctuary, main floor common areas, and children’s classrooms on Sundays and Holy Days.
We are THRILLED at God’s provision for us in this regard! This announcement is the fruit of an almost 18-month process that began with discussions between our Rector & Vestry, involved 45 adult attendees participating in a congregational survey, commissioning a task force of volunteers based on those survey responses to formally search for a space, evaluating almost a dozen possible spaces—some submitted by the congregation, some shared with us by others in the city—and finally executing negotiations between our Vestry and Grace UMC’s core team. This arrangement will solve every ministry constraint we currently experience in our present context: we will no longer have a time limit on Sunday worship, we will have multiple large kids classrooms we can utilize, we will be able to linger in the sanctuary and immediately adjacent common spaces after worship, and we have ready-made community engagement opportunities we can join with without needing to reinvent the wheel. Among these, Grace UMC hosts a Wednesday evening community dinner they would be thrilled for us to partner with!
Though we do not have a set move-in date, our hope is to transition from House of Joy to the new space sometime this Fall. We are planning to make a number of cosmetic and structural updates and repairs to the space before moving in. There will be plenty of opportunities to join hands in this transition through 1) participating in congregational work days, 2) contributing financially to cover the cost of needed updates, 3) beginning to participate in Wednesday evening community meals and other acts of community engagement, 4) joining in one of 2 of the pilgrimages from the Rec Center to Grace UMC that will be hosted by Jamie Noyd in August and September. We look forward to sharing the specifics of these opportunities for participation in the weeks to come in our Mission Minute newsletter and social media. Please stay tuned!
For now, we are thrilled to share and celebrate this wonderful news and significant milestone in the life of our maturing church plant! Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
Questions or want more info? Contact admin@missioncincinnati.org.
Summer Preaching Series: Proverbs
Several years ago, I read a study reporting that the amount of information on planet Earth is doubling every 5 years. Since that was more than a decade ago, I can only imagine that with developments around AI, the omni-presence of Smart Phones, and growing access to the internet, that that the information explosion is only accelerating.
Access to knowledge used to be the challenge in our society, but not anymore. When my 6-year-old daughter asks me a question about anything from what house roofs are made of to what type of wasp’s nest is in the park, I can Google it and have an answer in seconds.
Our problem today is a lack of skilled curators for our information. We have plenty of instant-answers available, but very few reliable guides who can instruct us on which answers are better than others.
In short we have plenty of KNOWLEDGE in our society, but not enough WISDOM.
The nation of Israel had a king thousands of years ago named Solomon who was renowned for his wisdom. People from nations across the world would travel to Jerusalem to ask Solomon questions, invite him to speak into their problems, and benefit from his God-given understanding and discernment. And even though Solomon is no longer with us, he wrote down a collection of some of his favorite sayings in a book that’s now included in our Bibles today: a book called Proverbs.
This summer, we will spend 9 weeks studying the Book of Proverbs. We’ll learn what wisdom is, see how God intends wisdom to be accessible to EVERYONE and not just reserved for a few elite smart people. We’ll see how wisdom is personified in the Person of Jesus and how in many ways, Christ’s invitation to become more like Him is also an invitation to grow in wisdom. We’ll explore topics such as friendship, family, wealth & poverty, speech & silence, love of neighbor, learning from others, justice, and compassion. We’re excited to share this rich and wonderful journey with you in these weeks! We hope you’ll join us this summer as we learn what wisdom is and why we should desire it.
What Is Pentecost & Why Do We Celebrate It?
Christians across the world today and throughout history have set aside this coming Sunday to celebrate “Pentecost.”
On Pentecost, the Church remembers the events of Acts chapter 2, when, after days of waiting in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, God was faithful to His promise and sent the Holy Spirit to fall on Jesus’s disciples, empowering them all to speak in all the many languages of the Jews gathered in Jerusalem from all nations for the Feast of Weeks. The Holy Spirit also gave the Apostle Peter boldness to stand and preach a sermon that caused 3,000 people to give their lives to Christ in one day.
Thus, Pentecost focuses on God, the Holy Spirit, the 3rd member of the Trinity who effects and actualizes the promises of Jesus to “be with [us] always to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), to cause us to “receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on [us]” (Acts 1:8), and to be the promised Advocate whom “the Father will send in [Jesus’s] name, [and who] will teach you all things and will remind you of everything [Jesus]” (John 14:26).
On Pentecost, we remember the God who has sent the Holy Spirit for the first time to the disciples in history, 50 days after Jesus’s resurrection on Easter. We also rejoice in the God who continues to send His Holy Spirit to all who believe in Jesus as Savior and follow Him as Lord. God’s Holy Spirit indwells the hearts of believers, baring sure and steady witness within us of the truth of our salvation in Christ. The Spirit empowers followers of Jesus with gifts for ministry. The Spirit allows us to say yes to the things of God, even as we say no to the things of our flesh. In this way, the Spirit enables to us to grow to become more like Jesus. This is why on Pentecost, and throughout our faith journey, we pray for God to send His Holy Spirit upon us as His people: that we might be those who are regularly being filled with the fullness of Christ’s presence, power, and love ministered to us through the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost reminds us that our faith is relational and participatory, and that these practices of relating to God and participating in His Kingdom will for the world are enabled and empowered by God’s own Spirit that He generously and freely gives to us as His people. We need the Holy Spirit to fill us daily to do the things God has called us to do, to be like Jesus, and to reveal Christ’s Kingdom in our world. The Spirit reminds us that God loves us, that God wants to be with us, and that one day God’s Kingdom and our world will be one, Jesus will come back, and all things will be made new. In the meantime, God has given us the Holy Spirit to empower us to be Christ’s Kingdom agents revealing what God’s Kingdom will be like in the period between the resurrection and Christ’s second coming.
May you be filled afresh with the Holy Spirit this Pentecost. And may your mind and heart receive fresh and enlarged vision for how great God’s promises are to us in Christ, and how amazing it is that through faith and by the Holy Spirit, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me and lives in you!
What is Jesus's Ascension? (And Why Does it Matter?)
Christians throughout history and across the world have set apart the day 10 days before Pentecost to remember and celebrate Jesus’s Ascension.
And if you hear the word “ascension,” and go “huh?” you’re not alone.
In preaching team last week, we discussed our experiences of the Ascension. Some folks on the team have been in the church their whole lives. Others are relatively new to Christianity. But we all agreed that we never grew up learning about what Jesus’s ascension was, much less why it matters. At best, we heard the ascension explained as a sort of Jesus add-on. Like “oh yeah, after Jesus died and rose from the dead, He also ascended.” Profound.
So what actually IS the Ascension?
In Acts chapter 1, the Gentile doctor Luke gives us the play-by-play. After Jesus died and rose from the dead, He appeared to a bunch of people. He ate with them, walked around with them, and shared conversation in ways Luke said proved convincingly to people that He was in fact alive again after having been dead. John’s Gospel records the Risen Jesus actually walking through a wall, appearing to His disciples in the middle of a locked room without using the door.
What’s clear as we read Acts 1 and other accounts of Jesus appearing to people after His resurrection, is that 1) He was for sure the same Jesus the disciples had known and spent time with prior to His death, but 2) He was also somehow changed. Over and over, when Jesus appears to people after His resurrection, people don’t recognize Him. Why is this?
Anglican New Testament Scholar N.T. Wright explains: The Bible envisions reality as composed of a material dimension (Earth) and a spiritual dimension (heaven). All of our lives take place in the material or Earthly dimension. The spiritual dimension—heaven—interlocks with our material Earthly dimension, but we can’t always see it. Most of the time we don’t. During Jesus’s Earthly ministry, He lived entirely within our Earthly dimension with a body just like ours. Following His resurrection, He was still the same Jesus, but His body was now at home in BOTH the Earthly and spiritual dimensions. As my former colleague Chris Woodhull once summarized, this was why “Jesus could walk through walls because He was more real than the door.”
This raised-from-the-dead, same-yet-somehow-changed Jesus appeared to and spent time with His disciples after His death and resurrection. Until one day, when His disciples gathered around Him, and Jesus “was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid him from their sight” (Acts 1:9). It is this moment that often comes to mind when we think of the Ascension: Jesus flipping the switch on His cosmic jet-pack, lifting off the ground like Iron Man or a Blue Origin Rocket, and levitating up into space.
But when the James Webb telescope sent its first images of deep space back to us in 2022, it didn’t show us jet-pack Jesus accelerating through a distant nebula. Because in the ascension, Jesus didn’t go “up.” He moved FULLY into the SPIRITAL dimension of reality. This is why he became hidden from our Earthly view, and will remain so until He comes back at the end of time. When He does, the spiritual or heavenly and material or Earthly parts of reality will fuse and become one. And then, we will see Him face to face. Those who are in Christ will be raised from the dead with same-yet-somehow-changed bodies just like His. Then our world will be made new, the Kingdom of God will be revealed in full, and every tear will be wiped from every eye.
So if that’s what the Ascension IS, then why does it matter? How does Jesus’s Ascension make a difference in our lives and faith today?
The world watched the coronation of King Charles, England’s newest monarch just a few days ago. The service—with all its pomp and circumstance—was a public announcement of a shift in power. Charles was announced as the new monarch of England’s royal line. The baton has now been passed and Charles is now fully authorized to act with all of the powers and privileges of the office of British King (whatever those are).
Jesus’s ascension is LIKE Charles’s coronation, but it’s also quite DIFFERENT.
Like the coronation, Jesus’s ascension is also God’s public announcement to everyone everywhere, that Jesus is the New and enthroned King over all Creation. In this moment the actual power behind Jesus’s promise in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20—that all power and authority in heaven on Earth has been given to Him) is conferred.
But Jesus’s ascension is also importantly different. When Charles was coronated as King of England, my life didn’t change. But because of Jesus’s ascension, my life and your life can now be dramatically different! The spiritual work that makes possible the sending of the Holy Spirit (the gift Christ promises which will be given to the disciples’ 10 days later in Pentecost and which is still given to all of us who believe in Jesus today) was accomplished by the ascension. Because Christ ascended and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God, He can now become the High Priest the Book of Hebrews describes Him as who PRAYS for US right NOW at the right hand of God. And what’s more, in Christ’s ascension, an embodied human being has taken up residence within the Trinity! There is literally one like you and me who is now a part of the eternal community of God. This makes it possible for US to be included in the life of God as well. To be welcomed into God’s family: to share in the inheritance of all the gifts and glory God has conferred on His Son King Jesus. By faith, Christ welcomes US to receive those gifts, His power, and God’s identifying love too.
Because Jesus ascended, the Christian life has been made possible. Jesus can now be WITH us by His spiritual presence in every place and circumstance we experience. And Jesus can now be WITHIN us through His indwelling presence given to us by the Holy Spirit the Ascended Christ pours out, with the Father, on His people on Pentecost.
The Ascension is truly a game-changer for the Christian’s life of faith. May this explanation increase your joy and wonder as you celebrate this glorious day, and the One who’s life, death, resurrection, and now ascension made it all possible!
The image featured with this article is an antique Russian Orthodox icon depicting Jesus’s ascension and painted on a wooden board in 1542.
What Now? – Introducing our Eastertide Preaching Series
A week and a half ago, we celebrated Easter Sunday, the day Christians throughout history and across the world today have set aside to remember and celebrate Jesus’s resurrection from the dead in history. But historically, Christians have celebrated Easter not just as a single day on the calendar, but as a SEASON of 50 days, beginning on Easter Sunday and ending on Pentecost. The duration is significant: in Lent we observed 40 days of fasting, penitence, and prayer. But because Jesus has been raised from the dead, the FEAST is always GREATER than the fast! We continue to celebrate the resurrection and lean into these celebratory themes of Easter for the full 50 days. Pastorally, we encourage you to consider, how might you PRACTICE celebration in these days, with the same intentionality you practiced fasting, penitence, and prayer in Lent?
As one of the ways we will press into the season of Eastertide at The Mission, we will journey through a preaching series entitled “What Now? How the Resurrection is Changing Everything.”
As our preaching team was thinking about this season, we recognized that over the past 100 or so years, American Christianity has done a great job explaining how Jesus’s crucifixion and atonement make a practical difference in our lives today. But we don’t think the church has always done as good a job at explaining how Jesus’s resurrection from the dead 2,000 years ago matters for us in our lives today. For most of my life, when I’ve heard pastors and Christians talk about “preaching the Gospel,” what they’ve meant is really preaching the CROSS: how Jesus died on the cross in payment for human sinfulness so that we could be restored into right relationship with God. And certainly the cross and atonement are an essential and important PART of the Gospel, but what about RESURRECTION? Why does it matter that Jesus rose from the dead other than that’s cool? Does the resurrection actually have practical implications for our lives as Christ followers today? And if so, what are they?
Over the next 6 weeks, we will be addressing exactly these questions through our Sunday sermons. Through the Gospel and New Testament lessons assigned as each week’s lectionary passages, we’ll look at how Jesus’s resurrection made a difference in people’s lives 2,000 years ago, AND how it STILL makes a difference in our lives today. Specifically, we’ll look at how the Gospel transforms doubters, the Bible, relationships, the Church’s mission, power & authority, and culture. We hope that by the end of these 6 weeks, you will have a deepened understanding of why the resurrection of Jesus in history matters, and how it’s a key part of the Good News message of Christ today! We look forward to sharing this journey with you!
Holy Week Service Schedule
Holy Week is the collection of days beginning on Palm Sunday and concluding on Easter Sunday when we—alongside Christians throughout history and across the world today—remember the mighty acts of Jesus that took place during the last week of His ministry and life on Earth.
Here is our service schedule for Holy Week:
PALM SUNDAY WORSHIP SERVICE
Sunday, April 2nd - 9:25 AM - 3220 Central Parkway
We’ll distribute Palm fronds, shout “Hosanna!” on our opening liturgy as we remember Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Fr. William will conclude our “Prayers of Jesus” sermon series with a message on Jesus’s Prayer from the Cross: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” We’ll consider our own hearts that shift, like those of the crowds in Jerusalem from wanting to welcome Jesus as King on Sunday to wanting to crucify Him on Friday
GOOD FRIDAY SERVICE & STATIONS OF THE CROSS
Friday April 7th - 12 PM - 3220 Central Parkway
We’ll remember the events of Jesus’s sufferings, crucifixion, and death in this our most somber service of the year. The service will conclude within the hour, and the sanctuary will remain open for you to pray and journey through the 12 Stations of the Cross as desired. There will be no Mission Nursery childcare on Good Friday.
EASTER SUNDAY WORSHIP SERVICE
Sunday April 9th - 9:25 AM - 3220 Central Parkway
Our sorrows will turn to joy as we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus through joyful songs, teaching, communion, and prayer. Our service will be followed by an interactive “adventure” for our kids as we make our way to our post-service pop-up party which will feature special pastries to celebrate Easter! There will be no Mission Nursery. All families and kids are welcome to join us in celebration in worship in the sanctuary!
Ash Wednesday Service | 2/22 - 12 PM
Our Lenten Journey begins with Ash Wednesday.
We’ll gather for an intimate and stripped-down service of worship at noon on Wednesday February 22nd. Due to a funeral in the sanctuary, we will meet downstairs in the ROCK room which we will transform into a sacred space. You are invited to enter through the side door under the purple awning next to the parking lot when you arrive. Greeters will be stationed at this door to let you in until 12:05 PM. Please arrive by noon to ensure someone is there to let you in!
The service will feature acoustic music without amplification, call and response prayer, a short message from Psalm 51, the Imposition of Ashes, and communion. We will conclude within the hour, but you are welcome to stay and pray in the space for as long as you need.
There will be no childcare offered during Ash Wednesday, but children of all ages are welcome to join us for the service—wiggles, noises, and all!
Our Lenten Sermon Series & Seasonal Liturgy Changes
The Prayers of Jesus Series
During the Season of Lent, we will preach a 6-week sermon series entitled “The Prayers of Jesus.” During these weeks, we will look at texts featuring prayers Jesus prayed as well a things Jesus taught His followers about prayer. Our hope is that as we see Jesus in prayer, our own prayer lives will be deepened and shaped by His, and that we will learn how to pray from Christ.
Seasonal Changes to the Liturgy for Lent
As in Advent, we will be making some seasonal changes to our Sunday service liturgy to highlight spiritual themes and distinctive practices of Lent. Fr. William & Rebekah Burkhardt have prepared a series of videos to prepare you for these changes. Below are explanations of the spiritual WHY behind each WHAT that we’re changing/adding along with videos walking you through how each change will be experienced:
1) Very stripped down acoustic music with only 1-2 musicians moved to the floor to emphasize congregational singing. As Lent is a season of self-examination, repentance, and prayer, we want our worship service to highlight a stripped-down rawness of unflashy desire and genuine need for the Lord. For that reason, our musicians will move the floor and we’ll have fewer of them. The music will be simpler and the congregation will need to sing out as our voices will be the featured instrument. Check out the OVERVIEW VIDEO for Lent HERE—> Lent Liturgical Changes Overview Video
2) The Penitential Order with confession & absolution at the beginning of the service with special processional music and a seasonal Kyrie. As Lent is a season for self-examination, repentance, and prayer, during these weeks, we will move our confession and absolution to the beginning of the service and sing a new processional song (Prayer to Trinity by Trinity Anglican in Atlanta) and a seasonal Kyrie (We Cry Mercy by Greg LaFollette). Check out the PROCESSIONAL & PENITENTIAL ORDER VIDEO HERE—> Lent Opening Liturgy + Kyrie Video
3) The Bible processed into the midst of the congregation for the Gospel reading. During Lent, we will process the Bible into the middle of the congregation where the Gospel text will be read amongst the people. This act helps us remember the incarnation: that Jesus has come among us to bring salvation to us. There will be special music that will be played as the cross and Bible are processed into the congregation and then recessed back to the front after the reading. Check out the GOSPEL PROCESSIONAL VIDEO HERE—> Procession of the Gospel Video
4) The corporate proclamation of our faith using the words of the Nicene Creed after the sermon. One of the traditional acts of Book of Common Prayer worship is the corporate proclamation of the Creed after the sermon. This is an act whereby we as the Church proclaim our shared and historic faith together. We will recite the words of the Nice Creed together each week during Lent.
5) A sung Sanctus prayer during the communion liturgy. As in Advent, and fitting with our emphasis on congregational singing and participation during Lent, the Sanctus prayer during the communion liturgy will be sung. Check out the SANCTUS VIDEO HERE—> Communion & Sung Sanctus Prayer Video
6) The Doxology sung a cappella during the benediction. During Lenten Sundays, fitting with our desire for raw expression of need for Jesus, our benediction music will be an a cappella (i.e. no instruments) singing of the Doxology. This will happen in the place of Pentecost and before the Benediction, so our services will end with our voices raised as one in blessing over one another. View the DOXOLOGY BENEDICTION VIDEO HERE—> Doxology & Benediction Video
To help all these elements work, please plan to arrive early, sit toward the front and center of the sanctuary, and sing loud! We can’t wait to share this Lenten Journey with You!
Introducing Our New Director of Children's & Family Ministry!
This past Sunday, we shared the exciting news that our own Christine Mitchell has joined our ministry team as our new and part-time Director of Children’s & Family Ministry. Over the coming weeks, Christine will transition into taking over coordinating our current Mission Nursery team, as well as beginning to convene volunteers, parents, and all interested members in conversations to design our Next-Step Children’s Ministry offering for children ages 4-7 which we hope to launch this Fall. In her role at the Mission, Christine will also serve as the point of contact for all things Children’s Ministry-related. She will also work with the rest of our staff and volunteer leaders to help us continue to shape and foster a church culture that sees the discipleship of the Next Generation in our midst as a shared priority and calling in which we ALL join together regardless of life-station.
We are so THRILLED at God’s provision for our church in and through Christine and for His work in and through her life. Please welcome Christine into this new role with us!
Just Be With People: An Epiphany Sermon Series on Learning Evangelism from Jesus
What do you think of when you hear the word “evangelism”?
Increasingly, our guess is most people don’t have positive associations with this word. Non-Christians likely think of door-to-door Jehovah’s Witness proselytizers or manipulative TV evangelists. Even within the church, we often tend to think of evangelism as a “got to” of the Christian faith rather than a “get to,” that requires putting yourself in a really uncomfortable situation to bring up Jesus and eternal salvation in conversation with strangers.
How did this word, translated from a Greek word that means “to share Good News” become such bad news to our ears? Can evangelism’s public image could be rehabilitated? Are there ways of doing evangelism that are actually life-giving, healthy, and dignifying for both the person sharing Good News and the person hearing it?
During Sundays in Epiphanytide, we’ll be looking at scenes from the life of Jesus in the Gospel of John where He interacted with people and shared the Good News of the Gospel with them. In these days, we hope to discard all the modern perversions of evangelism that have grown so distasteful, and recover a simple understanding of how to just be with people and share good news with them as modeled to us by Jesus. We hope this series will be refreshing for our faith even as we gain some practical vision for how we can have healthy spiritual conversations with real people we love and want to see come to know Christ in our lives!
Join us Sundays January 15th – February 19th as we relearn evangelism from Jesus Himself in the Gospel of John!
A Devotional Guide For Epiphany
On January 6th, Christians across the world today celebrated Epiphany. Epiphany is the day when Christians throughout history have celebrated the coming of the Magi to worship the Christ child. Epiphany is significant because it was the first time when the Gospel (in the face of Christ) was revealed to Gentiles. In this moment God’s intention in Christ to bring salvation to all peoples of the world is prefigured. The church calendar recognizes Epiphany, not just as one day but as a season of Epiphanytide which lasts from Epiphany on January 6th until the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday.
To help you press into the spiritual significance of this season, Rev. Kristen has created an Epiphany devotional guide you can access and use via the link below!
Building Search Task Force Seeking Volunteers
Dear Mission Cincinnati,
If you've been with us since at least last fall, you know we've begun the process of discerning where Mission Cincinnati should call "home" over the next few years. While meeting at House of Joy has been a tremendous blessing, we've also encountered logistical and missional constraints. After several discussions as a Vestry and a very insightful congregational survey, it seems the next steps should be in the direction of seeking out rental or other space-sharing opportunities.
To that end, we are forming a Task Force that will hold responsibility for a search process. This small group of people will lead the effort to leverage connections, gather viable options, and act as the primary point of contact for ideas from the congregation.
Many details of this group's structure and process flow will be determined at our first meeting together the week of January 30 (actual date TBD), but, roughly, we believe this will be initially a two-to-three month project. We also have very helpful search parameters based on the responses to the congregational survey.
If you are interested in being part of this Task Force, we would love for you to fill out and submit the interest form (link below) by no later than January 20.
Whether you are interested in this particular opportunity or not, we ask that you commit to praying for this group and for our church's next steps in seeking a place to flourish in all the ways God calls us to.
If you have any questions about the Task Force or the building search process in general, please reach out to me (erinduncan1118@gmail.com) or Sarah Love (smzorko@gmail.com). We're excited to talk more about it!
Erin Duncan
Mission Vestry Secretary