TCR EDITORIAL – A POTPOURRI OF THINGS I WANT TO SAY BEFORE GETTING TO FAR INTO 2015, PART 2: Dr. Calvin H. Sydnor III The 20th Editor of The Christian Recorder This is a modified issue of The Christian Recorder Online In reviewing various FaceBook messages, some of the messages seem to convey the notion that Christmas ended on Christmas day. We need more than a day to celebrate the birth of Jesus! Christmas day is the beginning of the celebration of Christmas, not the end. Advent ended on December 24th and the Christmas season began and is celebrated for 12 days until January 5th and on January 6th, Epiphany (and the Sundays after the Epiphany) is celebrated. Another challenge of reading the Bible from Cover to Cover I am excited by the number of readers who accepted the challenge and will journey with us in reading the Bible from cover to cover beginning on January 1, 2015. This will be Challenge I for some of you and for others, it will be Challenge II, III or IV, or more depending upon how many times you have read the Bible from cover to cover. Let’s encourage and challenge each other. Some readers are planning to do the 360-day challenge, some of us will do the 180-day challenge, and others the 90-day challenge. Commitment and discipline are needed, but if you fall behind, stay the course. In one challenge, I was doing a 360-day challenge, but decided I wanted to go a little faster, so I switched to 180-day schedule. If you start out on the 90-day or 180-day reading plans and determine either of those plans is too time-consuming, switch to the 360-day plan. If you fall behind for one reason or the other, don’t quit, just keep reading. You can also incorporate listening to portions of the challenge is you have a heavy travel or work schedule. The challenge is to complete the challenge of successfully reading the Bible from cover to cover. I have sent the three reading schedules to those of you who requested them. If you need the schedule, email me: [email protected] Some more odds and ends -- After any Doxological statement or affirmation, “Amen” – (So be it) is appropriate. An “Amen,” sung or spoken, is always appropriate after the singing of “Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow…” -- It is inappropriate for pastors and liturgists to ask the congregation to “say” the Lord’s Prayer. Instead, pastors and worship leaders should enjoin the congregation to “pray” the Lord’s Prayer. -- Assembled parishioners are not “audiences” because they are not “spectators.” Assembled parishioners are “congregations.” We refer to those assembled for worship as a “congregation.” And, yes, there is a difference between an “audience” and a “congregation!” -- The general rule in many churches; and it’s a very simple formula - “We stand to praise God, we sit to learn, and we kneel to pray.” Spoken or unspoken, the same rule has been followed in many AME Churches. For instance, we stand to affirm our faith, the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed. We stand for the Doxology, the Call to Worship, the preface to The Decalogue, The Decalogue, the Gloria Patri, the Offertory hymn and the benediction. We stand to sing hymns, but in some areas, AMEs tend to sit and reflect during the sermonic hymn/hymn of preparation. Please do, I beg us -- I would hope that every AME Church would celebrate the second Sunday in February as Founder’s Day in observance and a celebration of the birth of Richard Allen. -- I would also hope that all of our churches would celebrate and designate the third Sunday in February each year as “Jarena Lee Sunday,” who was born on February 11, 1783. Jarena Lee was the first woman licensed preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and is recognized as the first woman preacher in the AME Church. She preached in the face of hostility and though she was not ordained, she was an itinerant preacher in the fullest sense. She was a pioneer for women in ministry and her birth-date should be etched in our hearts and minds. Read her autobiography online: umilta.net/jarena.html. I am excited about 2015 and I am anxious to begin reading the Bible from cover to cover – for me, Challenge IX (9). I think I am going to start in a day or so before January 1, to help keep me on schedule in case I fall behind during challenge IX.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 18:22:06 +0000
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