All Saints Presbyterian Church

thrift store prom

Thanks to Kady Dunlap for capturing it all. Visit the full gallery.

Spring Picnic Photo Album

The rain never materialized. Thanks to the Bueschers (specifically Eric and Eleanor) for taking some pictures. See the GALLERY.

The McReynolds in Tanzania

During Sunday's worship service, Bryan McReynolds introduced us to the TIMO Project.

TIMO will send a team of missionaries, led by the McReynolds, to Tanzania for 2 years beginning in early 2012. This team will be living with and serving the Nyamwezi people, an under-reached tribe in western Tanzania. Their goals include the establishment of a viable church and to equip team members for a lifetime of mission work.

Make plans to join Bryan on Wednesday evening at 7:30 for an informal dessert at the home of Ed and Jamie Kruft (4219 Lostridge, 78731). To RSVP, please email me (bslaton@allsaintsaustin.org).

Lent, Ash Wednesday, and All Saints

Next week (Wed. March 9) All Saints will host its first Ash Wednesday service (actually we will offer two services – one at noon at Red River Church and one at 5:30 PM at St. Gabriel’s.) Why are we doing this? I assure you it’s not just to add another activity to our church’s life in a season that is already very full. These services are also not an attempt to do something spiritually hip or provocative. We are simply seeking to have the life of Christ more fully formed within us through our observance of Ash Wednesday.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians saying, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:13) What is the goal of which Paul speaks? What is the prize? Knowing Jesus and “the power of his resurrection.” That’s one way of stating the goal that resides behind everything we do at All Saints. Jesus stated the same goal this way: “Make disciples.”

The question then becomes How?

Ranchopalooza Gallery

Ranchopalooza #2 just happened. Visit the full GALLERY to get a better idea of what it looked like.

2011 Growth in Grace Cancelled

Our annual Growth in Grace event is cancelled due to inclement weather. Refunds will be made available. Please contact the office if you have questions (office@allsaintsaustin.org). Thanks.

Meet the Speaker

 

Vigen Guroian is Professor of Religious Studies in Orthodox Christianity at the University of Virginia. He’s the author of nine books and has contributed over 200 articles to journals, magazines, books, and newspaper on subjects from liturgy to bioethics. He’s been featured on programs as diverse as NPR’s Talk of the Nation and Chuck Colson’s Break Point.

He’s also an avid gardener. “I think that gardening is nearer to godliness than theology,” he writes in Inheriting Paradise. “One of the principle things gardening teaches is that you cannot make your garden grow. Other forces are at work.” Of course, “you have to weed. You have to cultivate. This is painful. You get blisters. You bleed, you sweat.”

More important—at least to us—is his fondness for good stories.

Fall Picnic - November 14 - Cancelled

*The All Saints picnic scheduled for this Sunday has been cancelled due to expected weather conditions.

The All Saints picnic returns next Sunday, November 14. The P. Terry's burger truck will be back to serve fresh burgers and fries. Please make plans to join us. You'll need to register, make your menu selection, and pay ($5/individual or $15/family), all of which you can do online:

REGISTER HERE

Please don't let cost be the reason you miss the picnic. If your personal budget doesn't allow for you to spend this right now, just register and select "Free lunch, please." You'll also find an option to cover a burger (or two) for someone else ... just find the "Sponsor a burger" box.

The Vibrant Dance of Faith and Science

Andrew D. White was the first president of Cornell University back in 1896 when he published his History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. His little book (919 pages) was a hot item back then, for despite the persistent rise of science and increasing skirmishes between scientists and theologians (e.g., Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859), it was still hoped that the romance of science, democracy and Christianity would flower in the 20th century and bless the world. White was a naysayer, arguing that science and faith had always been at odds and would always be at odds.

Fall Financial Class; by Ryan Motola

Have you ever played the prosperity game? It’s a mental exercise that asks how you would spend ever increasing amounts of money. Here’s how it works. Each day, for twenty days, you receive a sum of money and you must spend it all that day (no giving or tithing on the gross allowed). On day one you have a virtual $100. Each day the sum doubles (day 2 you have $200, day 3 $400, day 4 $800, etc) and you continue to play (spend) for 20 days. For you math nerds, you’ve already figured that by day 20 you will have $52,428,800 – nice job.

If you seriously consider your purchases you will learn about your heart. You will also get frustrated as your virtual account is replenished anew each day and deciding how to spend your money actually becomes a burden (ha!). It really is fun to consider what we would do with that money!

What can we learn from this game? Our ‘play’ purchases teach us what our hearts value – the gospel, security, knowledge, experiences, learning, friends, and so on. It will be a unique combination for each of us. With this ‘play’ money we actually begin to form a (virtual) world according to our hearts desires. For a heart changed by the gospel, often times this (virtual) world can be a great one.

Absence of Mind

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Marilynne Robinson

www.thedailyshow.com

Marilynne Robinson's new book, Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self, is a collection of lectures she delivered at Yale last year. You can actually stream videos of the original lectures here.

For more on faith and science, consider attending The Vibrant Dance of Faith. This conference from the The Hill Country Institute takes place in Austin in October.

Spring picnic photo album

The Spring picnic, in pictures: Picnic, May 2010.

City School Work Day

This past Saturday, 15-20 men from All Saints spent the day serving our friends at City School. We did some general landscaping and grounds maintenance, but our main project was building a deck behind their administrative building (if you are familiar with City School, that's the old house on the east side of the property). José Corea, who sends his children to City School and owns a construction company that specializes in outdoor living spaces, designed the deck and oversaw our construction efforts. And while the job was bigger than most of us anticipated, the deck was 95% complete when we left at 5:30. What was once a muddy patch of grass and mostly unused space is now a place where students and teachers will be able to gather for years to come. 

This was the first project for the freshly-minted City Team. If you are interested in learning more about City School or getting involved in other local mercy ministries, please contact me at matthewpipkin@gmail.com.

WORK DAY GALLERY

Growth in Grace photo album, 2010

Ralph Wood - Learning to Love & Appreciate Good Literature.

GALLERY

Women's Luncheon

pool party photo album

The pool party turns five. Thanks to everyone who came, and thanks to Alison and Melissa for taking some pictures. See them all here.

Knowing is for living

For 9 weeks this summer (June 7-August 2) we'll consider together the fundamentals of "Reformed" Christian doctrine using Sinclair Ferguson's book, The Christian Life, as our guide. The books ($5) are available on the book table, and everyone is invited to read along. The book offers a highly readable survey of the "simple essentials" of Christian doctrine. As J.I. Packer notes in the Preface:

"Jesus told Peter to feed his sheep, not his giraffes, and this Dr. Ferguson does, bringing everything down to simple essentials.  Christian beginners will get the benefit and the Lord's older sheep, grown tough and stringy maybe, will find themselves edified and perhaps tenderized too."

Living in Grace

This Sunday we will continue to unfold God’s gift to us in the resurrection of Christ Jesus.  In doing so, we will explore the biblical principle of stewardship.  The following week I will be on Lookout Mountain, training counselors at Alpine Camp for Boys.  Tim will be in the pulpit as we celebrate Jesus’ ascension. 

The Sunday after that (May 31) I will be back, and we will have a special guest in the pulpit, Dr. Paul Kooistra, Coordinator of the largest agency in the PCA, Mission to the World.  In order for you to appreciate the privilege we have in hosting Dr. Kooistra, allow me a brief story…

In the Fall of 1991 I drove from Lookout Mountain, Alabama to Creve Couer, Missouri (St. Louis) to begin seminary.  I didn’t really know what seminary was all about.  I did not know what I wanted to do, vocationally.  I did want to learn, and I soon became aware that the one thing I needed to learn more and more about was God’s grace as shown to people like me (fallen, broken people) in Christ Jesus.  Perhaps more than anyone else, the person responsible for convincing me of the centrality and ultimacy of God’s grace in Christ Jesus was Paul Kooistra.

Over the Rhine

A year ago, I was granted the privilege of interviewing Linford Detweiler of Over the Rhine. Armed with a notebook, a small recorder, two nice bottles of wine (a thank you gift), and a friend/photographer (Stanton Newman), we spoke for a few hours prior to his sold-out performance at The Cactus Café. During our conversation, he referred to a specific kind of musician – after you hear their music, “something changes. Things are never the same again.” He continued, “That is the kind of songwriter and singer I want to be.” Linford mentioned some of the people who have had that affect on him: artists like Maria McKee, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Randy Newman, and Bob Dylan. For me, that list would include Over the Rhine.

You can listen to an excerpt of our conversation here:

I am no singer-songwriter, but something changed in me after hearing Over the Rhine a few years ago. Dennis Haack has said that Emmylou Harris’ Red Dirt Girl is music for adults. I couldn’t help thinking the same as song after song played from Over the Rhine’s CD Ohio. This was music forged in the furnace of relationship. These were lyrics crafted with literary and poetic sensibilities, a Biblical ethic, bold honesty and what Jonathan Rogers has described as, “an appropriate and persistent sensuality.” In short, this sounded like life-as-it-is combined with hope for life-as-it-will-be. Don’t listen unless you are prepared to blush and to smile; to weep and to rewind.

Why debates are a good idea (and a bad idea, too)

Some debates never end.

Most of the endless ones are pointless, too.  Aggies or Longhorns?  County Line or Rudy’s?  Hymns or praise songs? Momo’s or Cactus Café?  In our heads we care about them, but deep down in our hearts, we don’t. Not really.

But not all endless debates are pointless.

“When we behold the heavens, when we contemplate the celestial bodies, can we fail of conviction? Must we not acknowledge that there is a divinity, a perfect Being, a ruling intelligence, which governs: a God who is everywhere and directs all by his power? Anybody who doubts this may as well deny there is a sun that lights us.” 
Cicero, 1st century BC

“The idea that every organism was meticulously constructed by a great Designer provided a significance and order to nature and an importance to human beings that we crave still. A Designer is a natural, appealing and altogether human explanation of the biological world. But, as Darwin and Wallace showed, there is another way, equally appealing, equally human, and far more compelling: natural selection, which makes the music of life more beautiful as the aeons pass.”   
Carl Sagan, 20th century

The debate about the nature of the universe and life has been going on for as long as there have been human beings and shows no sign of ending soon.  But despite its persistence, it’s not a pointless discussion. There’s a lot riding on whether or not we and our world are creations or lucky accidents.

With this in mind Hill House and the UT Biomedical Engineering Department are sponsoring a debate at 7 pm on April 28th in Gregory Gym on the UT campus. The topic?  Was Darwin Wrong? 

Birth of the Cool

Why does it always take visitors coming in town to get me out to see something cool? I always talk about going to see art shows or hear music but then end up just walking my dog, sitting on the sofa and doing the old ho-hum.

Needless to say, it took my parents descending upon Austin for me to finally get out to the Blanton Museum of Art to see the Birth of the Cool Exhibit that has been up since February. The title comes from Miles Davis’ album, Birth of The Cool, released in 1957. Around that time, a mid-century revolution of sorts was happening in southern California amongst painters, musicians, filmmakers, designers and architects. The exhibit showcases examples from this vast assortment of art-makers, representing a wide variety of mediums.

I particularly loved seeing the amazing photographs of the revolutionary houses built out on the cliffs of southern California. They are truly breathtaking. But, my favorite part of the show had to be the gallery of ‘50s furniture. I just love the sleek styles that were actually affordable when they hit the market. Take the Eames chair for example: Ray & Charles Eames introduced the Eames Lounge chair in 1956 and the furniture world has never been the same.  While a bona fide lounge chair will cost you a pretty penny these days, you can find a knock-off at almost every Ikea in America.

So this is the part where I tell you not to wait for someone to come in town to see the exhibit.  Here it goes: Just go see it.  Really.  I think you should.

Also, the show closes on May 17th so it’s only open for 3 more weeks.

Josh Welker at CRL - Opening Reception this Saturday

The Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin presents Terrain, an exhibition showcasing the work of three designers and eight studio artists completing their Master of Fine Arts degrees. Terrain features the work of Alec Appl, Jonathan Aseron, Beth Ferguson, Bonnie Gammill, Laura Kinneberg, Tahila Shireem Chavez Mintz, Teruko Nimura, Cecelia Phillips, Steven Spears, Joshua Welker, and Joseph Winchester.

You may recognize Josh as the guy who plays occasional bass in the worship band, or as Michelle’s husband, or as the father of that little boy who dances to all the hymns at church (Frederik). He’s also a sculptor, a printmaker, and a painter who’s about to finish up his MFA.  About his work, he writes:

“My approach to art making aligns with my concept of humanity. I see both as fundamentally dependent upon community.... An object, like a civilization, must be placed and confronted in a particular context in order to understand its depths, its glories and its tragedies.”

Come see for yourself starting this weekend. 

Opening Reception:  This Saturday, April 4, from 6-9 PM at the Creative Research Laboratory. The show will be up from April 4-25, 2009.

What Is This Thing?

Every spring thousands of people from all over the world descend on our city. The streets are jammed. Live music pours from any conceivable location. Odd movies appear at the theatres. Strange people wander the streets. For nearly two weeks, South by Southwest takes control of Austin. Is there a place for the casual onlooker in all this madness? Is it possible to participate in SXSW without losing all of your mind, your money, or your sleep?

The answer is: maybe.

But, let’s take it slow. Here’s a short quiz** to get you started:

1.  What is this thing they call South by Southwest?

a)    An opportunity to get out of town until all the crazy people leave
b)    An internationally unique event showcasing talent from all over the world
c)    Something for hipsters and teenagers who don’t need sleep
d)    All of the above

2.  Who are these thousands of 22-year-olds in skinny jeans wandering around my city?

a)    Musicians and filmmakers
b)    Confused spring breakers who got lost on their way to South Padre
c)    Your new best friends
d)    All of the above

Aprons and Asparagus

When my grandmother died she left me a large collection or aprons, some cookbooks and table linens.  She clearly knew something about me that I had yet to discover, because, at the time, I couldn’t make a grilled cheese without setting off the smoke alarm in my apartment.  In the years since her death, I have grown to love cooking as a pretty great hobby. Along the way, I’ve become a decent cook (I am still no Julia Child).

I would feel like I was lying if I didn’t mention the fact that the initial appeal of cooking for me was born out of my selfish desires to impress others with my knowledge and skill.  But somehow, when I fell down the culinary rabbit-hole, it all became a lot less selfish.  New relationships were formed and old ones were strengthened all because I started to love to cook.  Isn’t it great how God sometimes uses our own ambitions for his glory?

Growth in Grace photo album

Just about a "perfect" evening with Richard Winter at the Wildflower Center.  Thanks to Topher for chronicling it all with his camera.

3 questions with Richard Winter

Dr. Richard Winter joins us next Friday for our annual Growth in Grace Conference.  He’ll be talking about perfectionism.  Tickets are selling out fast, so be sure to purchase them at the book table this Sunday or call the church office. What follows is a brief interview between Greg and Richard, along with a few other Winter resources. 

In recent years you've written books on boredom and perfectionism. What drew you to the subject of perfectionism?

Firstly, in my family there is a strong influence of “healthy” perfectionism in the value that is placed on hard work, high standards, good grades, punctuality, cleanliness, tidiness, moral integrity, and maintaining good relationships.  What is normal? What is healthy?  The perfectionist tendencies verge on the unhealthy, contributing to indecision, procrastination, obsessive behavior, depression, and even criticism - almost contempt, for others who do not live up to the same standards.  For most of us it has been a good trait that contributes to achievement and success and does not damage relationships.  But the line is fine and the question recurs: when does being good become bad? Should I always try to be better? In some areas of life I wish I was more of a perfectionist.

Money, Beauty, Perfectionism, and Me

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  Jesus said that.  In fact he talked a lot about riches, saying things like “you can’t serve both God and money”; and “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”  Jesus said these things (and others like them) because people believe that the opposite is true.  We believe that life does consist in the abundance of our possessions; that we can serve both God and money; and that a rich man entering the kingdom of God is a fairly normal occurrence. 

Why is money so potentially disastrous for one’s soul?  One answer is that money can give people, immediately and in this life, what only the gospel can give eternally in the age to come.  We learn this from the parable of the rich fool told in Luke 12.  He finds security, peace, significance, respect, pleasure, rest, food, drink, happiness, and more - all through money and all immediately.  It’s not money that’s so dangerous; it’s the immediacy.  Money’s just the middleman – we want, we need - what it gives. 

Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo

Having folks over for dinner usually involves a meal plan of sorts.  But I learned the essence of  hospitality from an old woman who on the spur of the moment invited 4 young GI's to her home for lunch one Sunday after church.  She had just moved and enlisted the young men to start unpacking  boxes until they found her black cast iron skillet, while she busied herself cutting up a chicken and battering the pieces.  They sat down to a marvelous meal of fried chicken with the fixings and those boys decided that was the church for them! 

Her spontaneous act of charity embodies for me the heart of true hospitality...it is all about them; not you.  Not the state of your house, not the menu, not your culinary skills.  This Sunday we will have many small children coming to our table, and I always try to have some foods that specially please them, like pigs 'n blankets. Turns out some adults really like such fare as well!  In any event my meals are all on the simple side. Too many ingredients with too many steps and I glaze over.  Here is an easy crowd pleasing recipe:

5th Anniversary Picnic

The All Saints 5th year anniversary took place last Sunday, October 26.  Thanks to Amanda Calhoun and Terri McClendon for organizing; and to everyone else who helped out on Sunday. We've posted a new photo album from the picnic over on the right side of this blog.  Thanks to Stanton Newman for taking the pictures.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

“Everybody is reading it.”  Hyperbole or not, this claim about a book gives us cause to consider:  should we read it?  If a book has woven itself into the fabric of our culture, become a topic of discussion, resulted in testimonies of changed lives, should we know what it says?  In the women’s book group (which meets the 2nd Wednesday of each month), we try to read books, both fiction and non-fiction, that are shaping our culture.  We also read classics, theology, biography….a wide range of literature.  We talk about what we liked, what we didn’t, how the book does or does not match our worldview.  Last month’s book was Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver.  Making the cheese, learning to can tomatoes and sauces, experimenting with small gardens….many from within our community have been intrigued and challenged by the book’s premise of seasonal, local foods, even while disagreeing with some of the author’s philosophy and theology.  Below, Amy Fast gives an overview of the book and some questions raised; Rachel Breeding follows with the results of her local foods experiment.   This month’s book is The Shack, which has been both praised (Eugene Peterson) and criticized (the PCA’s ByFaith magazine).  We’ll keep you posted….or join us to get in on the conversation.

Review: by Amy Fast
Author Barbara Kingsolver, her husband and two daughters move to a one hundred year-old farm house in the southern Appalachians to devote a year to growing their own food and eating only what is produced locally.  She documents the joys and struggles of farming for sustenance, feasting on what is in season and otherwise doing without.

Feed My People

If you’ve been in Austin long, you’ve probably interacted in some way with our city’s sizable homeless population. The Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department estimates there are about 3,625 homeless individuals here on any given day. We have in our own backyard a tremendous opportunity to heed God’s call to bring hope to the hopeless and to love the unloved. In seeking to love this group of people, it’s hard to think of a better starting point than providing them with a hot meal.

Tuesday morning, a group from All Saints, organized by Joe Christian, took part in the Foundation for the Homeless “Feed My People” program at the First United Methodist Church Family Life Center downtown. Feed My People brings in hundreds of homeless individuals every Tuesday and Thursday morning and, in their words, “let[s] [their] guests experience abundance – in food and love.”

Ask, Receive, Disbelieve, by Andrée Seu

Ten years ago I was diagnosed with cancer, had major surgery to remove it, and have had follow-up scans since then, including the one that resulted in more cancer surgery last spring.  With 30 or so CTs and MRIs under my belt, plus countless x-rays and ultrasounds, I've had two extremely dramatic, clearly providential interventions--the kind where the big bad spot shows on one scan, then on the rescan a couple of days later it is just gone and the doctors say "hmmmm". These have both involved lots of praying folks and very loud trumpeting of praise to God.  But the rest of the time, when I have a set of scans and they are all clear, I am privately thankful to God but typically hesitant to announce His involvement beyond my close circle who wait with me for results.  Are the scans clear because God intervened, or did it "just happen"?--even though I know full well that doesn't match my theology. For some reason in these instances there is a blurry line between common grace and the natural workings of a fallen world, on the one side, and the Lord who numbers the hairs on my head and the days of my life on the other. How much credit does God actually get for no evidence of disease?  What are the real implications of living in His blessings?  In "Ask, Receive, Disbelieve" Andrée Seu keeps the focus on the truth that our lives are in God's hands, whether via natural means or miraculous ones. Melissa

Ask, Receive, Disbelieve?
Dr. Greenberg found a lump. A “thickening,” she called it, and with professional sangfroid, jotted on my chart. Trained fingertips--2,000 receptors per digit and sensitive to a dot 3 microns high (the diameter of a human hair is 50 to 100 microns), or to textures 75 nanometers deep (one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair)--were the bearers of bad news. Let evolutionists despair and intelligent designers delight: The most advanced robotic “fingers” engineered by man are clumsy with the toddler’s task of picking up a drinking glass.

The Big Snow, by Andrée Seu

Though my children are native Texans, I’m of the “got here as fast as I could” variety.  “As fast as I could” was age 11, when my family moved to the Dallas area. We moved from Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes, and a winter wonderland in which every child owned his or her own ice skates, snow skis, and sled.   Somehow we didn't get cold back then, even after hours outside.  “The Big Snow,”  by World Magazine columnist Andrée Seu, brings back many fond memories (though in the north they never close the schools), as well as offering a beautiful reminder that this is our Father’s world.  Andrée will be visiting All Saints in November, to speak at our annual women's retreat.  Over the next few weeks she'll have several things to say to us, by way of introduction. Melissa

The Big Snow
Because of La Nina, or just because God willed it so (Christians admit no conflict between first and secondary causes), children as far south as North Carolina have been able to sample a northern staple of late. I have imagined them often, cutting out swaths of cardboard, cozying up to the neighborhood kid with the sled, finding the second life of discarded inner tubes, then trudging, with a mission, to the highest hill in town.

The school is closed--the brick and mortar edifice, that is. Classes will be held today in the original one-room schoolhouse, the one fashioned not with human hands, the one God made long before anyone ever thought of herding kids into rigid rows and bolting them in desks, having checked their frogs and rabbit’s feet at the door.