First English Lutheran Church | Austin, Texas
God Loves. We Love. Everyone!
I’m back.
Dear people of God in and around FELC,
I’m grateful for “being home” among you after a time apart. It was a good experience. And what a delight to return to a workspace for music ministry.
Beloved people ARE this church community—in all our wonder, joy, challenge, and possibility. I anticipate working with you to deepen and expand our music ministry and its community engagement. Hope to see and hear more of you soon.
God bless us, all.
Bryan Rust
Livestreaming our services has become a vital part of our ministries
since the start of the pandemic. As many of you have noticed, that part
of our ministry has faltered and failed over the past several weeks,
taken down by network issues.
A group of us has been working to understand the network and resolve the
network issues, and are hopeful that normal streaming can resume this
Sunday.
We are still in need of more folks to help run the streaming. If you can
click a mouse button, you’re pretty much qualified.
For more information on the network issues or on helping out with
livestreaming the services, ask Charlie Boas. charlie@boasfamily.com
The first Adult Forum focused on the Transitional Ministry of FELC (including the future Call Journey) will be held this coming Sunday, August 20, at 8:30 AM in the Fellowship Hall. Pastor J will be offering clarity on the journey to date as well as opportunities for getting our feet wet in the future of this ministry. If you have questions that you would like to have addressed during this forum, please forward them to Pastor J at pastor@felcaustin.org. As preparation, Pastor J would like to share with all of us some words that seem appropriate for the last seven months of growth we have experienced; Pastor Hannah Adair Bonner is a Methodist Pastor and has an active blog regarding many of the ministry realities of this 21st Century.
To encourage everyone’s attendance for this very important gathering, the “Hospitality Team” will begin serving breakfast at Sunday, August 20, at 8:00 AM in the Fellowship Hall. Please join us for fruit salad, coffee, juices, “Lutheran Breakfast Casserole”, muffins, and other sweet breads (Including vegetarian & gluten-free options).
Child-care will be provided by Jenn Cook, our CDC Director, from 8:30 – 10:00 AM.
Public Facebook Post by Hanna Adair Bonner, 21Jun2021
“This post is for my Queer church [folx]… but the rest of y’all can eavesdrop. Last week, I started physical therapy to try to get myself back to full-functioning after a 20 foot fall this year. For the past few months, every time my back started to hurt again, I shut down everything. If it was bad enough, I would try to lay still for days and hope it would stop. I was terrified, and every time the pain came back, I was convinced that I was broken again and that I’d never heal.
I did not understand what was happening in my body, or which parts of me the trauma had hurt. No one had ever explained it to me. No one took the time. The broken bones were obvious, but they were actually the first to heal. It was the deeper tissue that wasn’t making any progress, because I would not let it move and I would not let it heal.
I did not know what was wrong with me, and I was not getting the help I needed, so I gave up trying to ask for help.
Until last week, when I finally got a great physical therapist, who took the time to explain to me what was happening inside my body. He seemed totally convinced that I was going to be fine, and I started to believe it too.
Every time I had felt pain, I thought it was the bones, and I rushed to protect them. In doing so, I shut down the healing. The physical therapist explained that I was living my life too guarded. I was afraid of being broken again, so I was guarding that entire part of my body. I did not use my abs to sit up, I used my biceps to push myself up. I did not bend at the waist, I squatted with my quads. My arms and legs became a wall, protecting my core – they got stronger, while the rest of me got weak.
My back muscles – the ones responsible for my stability – atrophied, and I never helped them come back, because I interpreted the pain of healing as the pain of brokenness. My fear of being broken forever kept me from being able to recover.
My physical therapist could poke at my back and tell me the places that I had not let heal, because they were the places that were still tender, where I had shut down whenever they started to move and repair and heal.
“You’re moving so guarded. We’ll work on that.”
I’ve been thinking about how we as Queer [folx] in the church have been moving in ways that are guarded, moving in ways that we have learned to move in order to survive and fend off the most vicious attacks. We intended to protect old brokenness, but we are actually blocking new healing.
I want to say to you today: We won’t be broken always. I want to believe that enough that you begin to believe it too. The way that my physical therapist believed me into believing.
I’ve been thinking about all the trauma that we’ve experienced, and the ways that we cannot even begin to understand the places that it has harmed us. I’ve been thinking about the walls that we build as Queer [folx] in the church, ESPECIALLY my context, the United Methodist Church… ESPECIALLY those of us who are clergy. The way we use other parts of ourselves, and other emotions to guard what is tender and keep it from feeling anything… unknowingly keeping it from healing.
When I came out, my mother told family members, “Well, Hannah can just stay celibate.” She was very content with viewing a future for me where I would never use the muscle that is my heart, where it could atrophy for all she cared. If I listened to her, I would go through life feeling always that I was broken, never beginning to heal. So I keep trying to use it, clumsily and anxiously pushing through the pain, struggling to remember to breathe, trying to be less guarded, asking for the help I need. I believe my heart is a powerful muscle, and I want to use it well.
We church kids have built up a lot of defenses, afraid of experiencing and re-experiencing our deepest griefs – when the pain shoots up to 7 or 8 or 9 on a scale of 10. But maybe we’ll find that if we push through the 2 or 3 or 4, we can actually get ourselves down to a 1.
We’ll never heal if we are too afraid of the process, too afraid to ask for the help we need, too afraid to start somewhere, too afraid of the pain to be able to feel the joy.
We won’t be broken always… I want to believe that enough that you begin to believe it too.
Cheers, Queers 🥂 I absolutely adore you.”
Our conference is for ministers like you as well as church leaders, church critics, community organizers, and deep thinkers. If you can’t attend the whole conference, we have a host of ticket options available: Sunday night only, Monday only, Monday night only, and Tuesday only! Sunday night features spoken word poetry and live music. Monday night we are hosting the drag queen, Flamy Grant, and Monday and Tuesday the daytime hours are packed full with incredible speakers, conversations, and workshops.
Visit nsp2023.eventbrite.com to view your ticket options. Learn more about us at neverthelessshepreached.com!
HELP US DONATE BOOKS TO TEXAS PRISONERS
Based in Austin, Texas, the “Inside Books Project” is an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization that sends free books and educational materials to people in Texas prisons. Inside Books Project works to promote reading, literacy, and education among incarcerated individuals and to educate the general public on issues of incarceration.
See below for exactly what’s needed. We’ll be collecting until SUNDAY, AUGUST 27.
Thanks so much,
FELC Racial Justice Taskforce
Books most in need:
Books not needed:
Read & Review a Book
Now that the kids are going back to school, maybe you’ll have a moment to read. Check out the books in the Racial Justice Lending Library in the hallway near the restrooms. The more we know, the more able we will be to work for racial justice.
For more information, contact Barbara Wiederaenders, on behalf of the Racial Justice Taskforce, at bwiederaenders@att.net
Here are recent book reviews:
Just Mercy – A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (2014)
Stevenson teaches us about the appalling ways that justice has been derailed, primarily in the South, by taking us through the personal stories of people his firm, The Equal Justice Initiative, was, in most cases, able to exonerate or free. A compelling read, Just Mercy concludes that “we have to reform a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. A system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed. . .fear and anger are a threat to justice, they can infect a community, a state, or a nation and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous. . .mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us. . . .the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die. . .the real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill?” The pages are filled with real life illustrations of these truths. I highly recommend this book! –Barbara Wiederaenders
Baptized in Tear Gas by Elle Dowd
It was the love for her Black children that moved Elle Dowd to join in the Ferguson Uprising and that experience moved her from being a white moderate to an activist. Written from a white perspective, she shares why anti racist activism is important on a personal, but also a theological level. Baptized in Tear Gas is a worthwhile read from a Lutheran and LGBTQ+ point of view if you’ve just begun pondering what anti racist work entails and why we should do it. –Cassie Smith
The Inner Work of Racial Justice by Rhonda Magee
Favorite quotes from the book:
“See our potential together and to lift ourselves up to a new plane for being in relationship with one another in ways that do not depend on power over, but rejoice in power with!”
“May the ocean of our healing your river meeting mine bring peace, renew the places and spaces we share and strengthen the currents running through us of injustice, of just this unceasingly” –Andy MacLaren
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
In the prologue to his novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s narrator states, “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.”
Invisible Man is the story of a young, college-educated Black man struggling to survive and succeed in a racially divided society that refuses to see him as a human being. Told in the form of a first-person narrative, Invisible Man traces the narrator’s physical and psychological journey from blind ignorance to enlightened awareness through a series of flashbacks in the forms of dreams and memories.
This novel is beautifully written and incisive. A powerful piece of literature, I recommend it for anyone who wants to gain insight into the state and impact of racism in the U.S. Sadly, much has not changed since this book was first published seventy years ago. –Mari Ward
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
Resmaa Menakem writes that his grandmother “wasn’t a large woman, but her hands were surprisingly stout, with broad fingers and thick pads below each.” One time, he asked her why her hands were like that, and she replied, “That’s from picking cotton. They been that way since long before I was your age. I started working the fields sharecroppin’ when I was four.”
Just as Resmaa’s grandmother’s hands were scarred by this abuse, so was a part of her psyche. And this caused her to overreact at times to his misbehaviors. He knew that she loved him, but some of the trauma was passed on nonetheless. Similar experiences can result in overreactions in other stressful situations, too, such as when a police officer shoots an innocent person in reaction to their skin color and the fear that it induces in them.
As a trauma therapist, Resmaa explains that we all suffer trauma at some point in our lives, usually as a result of an abusive relationship or system. He argues that trauma can be passed on genetically as well. In My Grandmother’s Hands, the authorreveals meaningful ways in which each of us can begin to heal our own trauma and that of society in order to make the world a better place for all of us and for future generations. –Mari Ward
For information about ways to connect and our community journey in racial justice, visit Racial Justice Action | First English Lutheran Church | Austin, Texas (felcaustin.org)
While cleaning the kitchen, we came across this maverick silverware. If it’s yours, please contact CDC director Jenn at director@felcdc.org and drop by the kitchen to claim it before it gets branded in September and placed back in the herd or else sent to auction.
We are excited to return to Austin Pride this year with our RIC congregations on Saturday, August 12 at the Fiesta Gardens, 2101 Jesse E. Segovia St, Austin. The Festival begins at 11AM. Please sign up below for an hour to staff the festival booth or to help set up or tear down. The festival runs from 11 am to 6 pm, and the parade is at 8 pm.
2023 Pride SignUp Genius hosted by Peace Lutheran Church
If you can’t attend in person but would like to offer financial contributions or donate specific needed items, you can sign up there, and we will be in touch about how you can help. Thanks!
If you would like to purchase the Technicolor Ministries Pride shirt please click here.
Looking forward to seeing you there! Please contact Pr. Carolyn Albert-Donovan, of Peace Lutheran, through the SignUp Genius link (above) with questions.
In this post, we’ll be in regular connection with J. Mills, FELC transitional pastor.
27 June 2023
While I am uncertain of the future of my “musings” column, I thought I would broaden the conversation around a question received this week from one of our Siblings regarding the word “Evangelical” and its connection to both an expression of Lutheranism in the world and a movement of conservative Christianity sweeping the nationalist stage (addt’l context: https://statesman-tx.newsmemory.com/?publink=340f3abd2_134ac68). Here was my response to the conflicted-question: I am reminded of one of the Dwelling in the Word passages we use in Holy Fork in the Road Ministry, John 2:13-22. Verse 17 reads:
(First Nations) 17The ones who walked the road with him listened and remembered the ancient prophecy, “My desire to honor your sacred lodge burns like a fire in my belly.”
(NIV) 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
(NRSV-A) 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’
(New Life) 17 Then His followers remembered that it was written in the Holy Writings, “I am jealous for the honor of Your house.”
I share these multiple translations (versions) because I think that’s what we’re experiencing here around the idea of Evangelical (of or according to the teaching of the gospels of the second testament). A word is always defined by its use; the definition itself has no power in connection to the word but instead to the context of the usage. Context provides the definition, and we have a separation of contexts (etymologies) over time regarding the opportunity to experience zeal for the word ‘evangelical’, or ‘evangelical’ as a synonym for the negative aspects of the experience of zeal as a zealot or being zealous. Many of us would love to think that this current rise of Evangelical as a synonym for ‘zealot’ as new, and yet this manifestation of a ‘Christianity’ in this nation, specifically, is not new and you may be interested to know that the conflicted use of ‘evangelical’, as used today, has not yet crested its height of vogue in the 1840s (I wonder what could possibly have sparked that rise…?).
Now: scripture. In the four translations I’ve offered we have two starkly different understandings. Three translations seem to agree that zeal is a positive quality, a yearning that offers us an invitation to just be in God’s reality of moving heaven into earth with our entirety; every cell and sinew moving together to support and show God to our siblings. Then there’s this fourth translation that invites this sinful manifestation of jealousy into the mix, as though a) Jesus were at odds with God about how one might be honored OR b) experiencing the honoring of the world in PLACE of God in a space that is meant to be sacred (this latter opportunity makes the most sense in the entirety of our experience, but the former can’t be discounted just because we don’t like it; language is funny that way).
So where is it written that our historical friends, the disciples, finally remembered? Psalms, of course: (sticking with New Life because that’s where we get this idea of jealousy) ” 9 For the strong desire for Your house has burned me up. And the bad things said about You have fallen on me.” Now… no ‘jealousy’ here. How did we end up with jealousy in the Second Testament rehash of this psalmody where v.9 clearly does not invite us into a Hebrew understanding of jealousy at all? I blame Greek (as we all should) for having used the word ζῆλος (zelos) which, in English, can be translated as zeal (huh, weird that) or jealousy. We would not use these words interchangeably like this today, but was there a time? Nope, no there was not a time when English interchanged these words. Then it must be that the Greek invites us into the description of an emotion of consumption: either you are consumed in favor of something and desire a whole-self-support of that thing (zeal) or you are fully consumed against something and view it as an utter rival to your being (jealousy).
My question, in light of all of this: does it matter what Evangelical means or is the context more important? If for us the context is “of or pointing to the gospel” how are we living that, and do we describe that as evangelical in the face of continued coopting of a term that Luther (re)claimed in the 1500’s? I refer what we are called to be, in accordance with the gospel: loving. If that’s how people experience me then that’s how I hope they experience God and evangelical is just another word that might point to a thing that people do… by and large “evangelical” doesn’t point to love as the greater populace of the world understands it and, maybe? Never has.
I invite continued discourse around this and everything happening around here (and you 😉 ). I look forward to returning from a northern trip to temperatures my body is better suited for in time for our Pride 2.0 celebration with our Sibling RIC churches; sign up and show up on both the 12th and 13th of August (also blessing the back-to-school crews)! While I am gone (from 31Jul to 11Aug), please reach out to Pastor Sharolyn Browning for your pastoral care needs: (512) 289-2732. Peace+ be with you.
You can connect with Pastor J at: pastor@felcaustin.org | 512-478-1933 | 443-846-9203
Please join with the Council in welcoming Terry Porter and Paul Barlow, both of whom will be filling unexpired terms until our Annual Meeting in January 2024. Terry is a familiar face, having grown up at 1st English. Both Terry and his wife Merrily have served on the council in the past, and Merrily is currently serving as Vice President of the newly constituted CDC Board. Paul and his wife Claudia transferred membership from Palm Valley in the Fall of 2022. Paul served on the council at Palm Valley as well as volunteering at Vacation Bible School and on the Stewardship Committee. Claudia is currently serving on the Admin Team overseeing the hiring of our office administrator. Welcome to both Terry and Paul. We are looking forward to working with you in the coming months as 1st English continues on this exciting journey.