Blessings, Cursings and Chess

This last Sunday we played Chess during the service. While worship was going, during the times of prayer for the world, and during the teaching on the subject of blessing, a chess board in the middle of the room was the center of our attention. We talked about the mount of Blessing - Gerazim, and the mount of Cursing - Ebal. The black players represented Ebal, and the white players represented Gerazim. Anybody who knew how to play chess was invited to join the game, and make a move for their team during the service.

It was on these two mountains that Moses commanded the children of Israel to stand once they entered the promised land. Six tribes on each mount, and the Levites reciting the law in the valley below. When the curses were pronounced, the tribes on Ebal responded, "Amen." When the blessings were pronounced the tribes on Gerazim responded, "Amen."

Since Chess is like life itself, we discovered a number of illustrations in the game which relate to blessing, and cursing.

The most simple of these illustrations came from the beginning of the Bible, and the beginning of the chess game. White goes first - always. Blessing came first as well. Blessings are given by God before any curse falls upon the earth. We believe this illustrates God's heart toward us - it is a heart of blessing, which is shown by his first contact with life. It was the contact of blessing.

Other illustrations of spirituality came from the game: often blessings and curses do not occur all at once. Like a chess game which has forethought, and preparation, some moves planned for many moves ahead, blessing and cursing are granted on the basis of our action - our set up moves as it were. This law of reciprocation is found in many faith paths. As followers of Jesus we call this the law of Sowing and Reaping. Some people have called this law the three-fold law believing that things would come back to us three-fold.

Are there illustrations in Chess which speak to you about walking with God?

Thanks to the Minstrels

Below is a list of all the musicians who joined us to help make the Halloween Stage a great event. We can't thank all of you enough - you are way too cool!

Up the Octave (Brandeis University Singing Group)
Robin Lore
The Fran McConville Band
Cocofeesh (Steve Brandi, and Carl Nystedt)
Paul Duffy
The Starving Artists (Brandeis University)
Peter Mercier
Laura Bullock
Dave and Kirsten
Josh Sturgeon
ARRRRRRRRR (Pirate Sea Chanties)
Casey Abrams
Mike Beaulieu and 3:16
El Rancho
The Grateful Ted Project
Judy C
Jim Trick
Youthstorm
Elysian Sky Unplugged
Mamadou Diop
Brooke Wilcox
Maeve
Laurel Grove

Dear musicy groups and peoples - We could not do the things we do over the Hallween season without your help, and talent. Thanks in really big piles of ooey gooey drippy thanks.

If you have a note of thanks to give to them, click the little comment button below and leave thanks. Follow their links and buy their stuff, if they have stuff to sell.

Pastor Phil

The Boams - Reho and Jero: A lesson in Leadership

Last week I taught on the division of Israel into two nations.

Rehoboam was set to become the king of Israel after Solomon's death. Rehoboam decided to neglect the advice of his father Solomon's wise counsellors. Instead of offering a kind hand to the people who were looking for tax relief, and a kinder, gentler government than Solomon offered, he took the advice of his friends, and told the nation that they would experience far more harshness under his rule.

Now of course, it is probable that Rehoboam was afraid that Jeroboam had returned from his exile to rebel against him. His strong stand was probably an act of defence against the perception that ease would give the people opportunity to rise up against him. Instead they rose up immediately, and broke away from Rehoboam. Ten of the twelve tribes of Israel beat feet, and left for a gentler government under Jeroboam.

We can guarantee that a harsh manner of leading people will lead to those people living in rebellion. The heart of man has fled cruel standards since history began to speak. Our Lord Jesus freed us from the bondage of legalism under the law. Yet somehow we feel that harsh leadership is occassionally warranted in churchlife today. How is it that we do not learn?

Jeroboam came along to deliver the people from this harsh manner of government. He took the ten tribes to the north, and broke away from Rehoboam's cruel hand. Yet Rehoboam still had a trump card. He held Jerusalem - the religious center of Israel. So Jeroboam concocted a plan to keep the heart of his people with him in the north. Two golden calves were forged, and set up in high places to be worshiped. Then the lowlifes were brought in to be the priests - can you read between the lines here? We're talking the party dudes. Okay, not such a smart plan, but perhaps he never read about Moses and Aaron, and Israel wandering in the wilderness.

So one king attempts to navigate difficult leadership moments with cruelty, and the next provides his people with entertainments in the form of false gods and festivals around those dieties. These two styles of leadership are found in every generation of of history. Sometimes they are married together under a despot who provides sensational festival holidays.

These two styles of ruling are a picture of a deeper struggle in our own hearts. We tend to migrate toward legalism or licentious behavior, and sometimes bounce between the two over the course of our lives. Somewhere between the two is a land of grace and self-control. It is a land of love which views service to another as a higher goal than service to self. It is a land of freedom which allows people to grow, and progress gently despite the messiness of that freedom. Of course, this is a simplified view of the subject as can only be provided in short blog.

This story perhaps gives us a picture of the religious persuasions in the U.S. No wonder many people have fled Christianity for freer, more fun religious experiences. The Christian church has been perceived as cruel, and unbending by many people today - sometimes deservedly, sometimes unfairly. We are the Rehoboam of religion today, Jeroboam is waiting outside the doors of the church to take people to a land of festival fun. Should we be surprised that they have gone off with him?

I have had many people say to me, "I love Jesus, but I hate the church." At least they understand that Jesus is not the cruel dictator they have experienced through the harsh leadership of churches they attended.

May we all grow in grace, and learn to live balanced between Rehoboam, and Jeroboam.

All the Help, All the Excitement, All the Friends

Another Halloween is over, and all the work has been worth it once again. There were a number of people who experienced an intimate interaction with the Person of Jesus, and even took steps to move toward Him. Pray that these interactions would bring the new life promised by Jesus to those who experienced His grace.

All the gang at The Gathering was so wonderful in all their efforts to make this year happen - Thanks all.

Some pictures from our Children's Day, and our Haunted Happenings Outreach events can be viewed in slide-shows on our website:

Haunted Happenings Outreach

Children's Day

Special Thanks has to be given to the following people and groups:

Streams Ministries Internship

Our Buddies from Sinners and Saints

Pastor Steve Pate from Church on the Coast

Jobey McGinty and Jamie

Josh Rivera - the Floridian Crazy Guy (See you soon bro!)
John Psiakis - Yeah for the Sausage Man!
The Rev. Allen Henninger - Thanks for being here bro.

I will say more thanks in another post, but this is a beginning. All you musicans come next!

Three Cheers for Suzanne! or, Yeah! We Made the Wall Street Journal

I like Suzanne Sataline. She talked with me for days, followed me around Salem, and discussed theology into the wee hours with me.

The story can be found here.

Maybe in the near future it will become evident that living like Jesus, and loving people like He did will result in good things.

The following places are where stories and blogs about us can be found:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06304/734412-51.stm
http://johnwmorehead.blogspot.com/
http://www.johnharmstrong.com/
http://www.fingertoe.com/2006/11/witches_pastors_and_fame.html#comments
http://www.salemnews.com/siteSearch/apstorysection/local_story_304150851?page=0

There are a few more out there. If you want to find them you can google search Phil Wyman, Wall Street Journal, and Salem.

Thanks Suzanne

Hot Dogs, Tootsie Pop Spiders, Pink Cadillacs, and Big Thanks

Saturday was our 5th year (I think) of running the Salem Halloween Children's Day. It began as a community fun day for the children in Salem, and has been running for 10 years now. The Haunted Happenings committee sponsored and ran the event with the help of Domino's Pizza, and we got involved because we had a big sound system, and a trailer full of tents, chairs, and general party stuff. After helping for a few years, we discovered that the day was going to be nixed. I called Dominic Benvenuti from Domino's, and asked if he wanted to work together to keep it going. Voila! Children's Day was in our hands suddenly.

This year we had about 3,500 people come to Children's Day. The coolest costume you've ever seen was created by a family in Peabody, who had their little kids driving around in a Pink Cadillac, and their oldest daughter was the hamburger stand girl on roller skates. The Big Bad Pig was not there this year, but I am told they are going to resurrect him next year, and that means I'll be piggin' again I think.

It has been a day requiring a lot of work for our little church, but everyone has been real champs over the years, and this year was no exception.

Thanks Bev, Anita, Jeff, Vic, Linda, Rennie, Joanne, Stef, Sam, Carly, Kevin, Diane, Carlos, Hank, and Gloria.

Thanks also to friends from other places: John Tsiakis from "Loaf in a Round in Danvers, who helped us raise some money with hot dogs and sausages (John, you're the man!); Jeff, Kellie, James, and Brooke from "Sinners and Saints who are always there for us when there's a pile of things to do; Dan the Man Stevens who always brings some youth from 2nd Congregational Church in Peabody, and Mark Carr who unloaded and reloaded most of the trailer.

More Pictures coming soon, and most of you (except maybe Vic who took the photos) should be in them.

Pastor Phil

Stuff We're Doing in Witch City!

Well, here we are - 6 days into the Halloween season in Salem. Last Thursday was the parade to mark the opening of the season, and tomorrow we set up the stage inside the fountain on Essex Street.

A ton of metal and wood will be delivered, and we will arrange it into a stage. This weekend, on Saturday the 14th, we will sponsor, and run the 10th Annual Halloween Children's Day. (Scroll down on the link page to find the info.)

Movies begin playing at The Vault 3 times a week from now until Halloween.

BYOT Autumn Art Sale happens in The Vault this weekend also. Eli and Ra are running the art sale.

These are just three of the things we will be doing. Check out our calendar page (which I have already sent you to twice on this post) for more info.

See at the stuff!

Meeting to Organize - Friday, 6:30pm at The Vault

That's right. Friday, October 6th at 6:30 we will meet to organize ourselves for Children's Day, The Fountain Stage, Dream Interpretation Tents, The Hot Cocoa Booth, Movie Nights, The Hot Dog Cart, and the Stage set up.

All interested parties who can make it, come on down, and help us out with the preparation.

Halloween Parade Tonight

Well, the official kickoff for Halloween is here tonight. The Halloween Parade starts the month long series of events in Salem. Usually we are in the parade, but this year we will not be marching. The giant puppet will not walk the parade route.

We will be passing out flyers for our 10th Annual Halloween Children's Day on October 14th on the Common, and will be providing Dream Interpretation from The Vault. It ought to be silly crowded around The Vault, because we are right on the parade route.

My buddy Steve and his gang from California will be joining us for a few days. We always enjoy having Steve around, and he just might be part of tonight's ferstivities as well.

So, come and hang out with us if you like. Flyer Passer Outers (Yep, I just made up that title - betchya couldn't tell) will be meeting at 5:30 at The Vault --> 217 Essex Street.

"Sit Here Under My [Chair]"

Okay I know James used the word "footstool" when referring to the poor manner in which rich people were treating others of lower class who visited the churches, but I don't have a footstool at church. In fact we don't have pews. We have padded chairs which we found on ebay, and purchased used for $11 each. Then we drove to New York with a U-Haul trailer to pick them up at a country club.

Now we have 120 chairs, and we have a church of much smaller size. We even have 60 extra which are being stored in our vault. So, if someone asks to borrow our chairs, we figure that we have extras, and we can loan them out.

Well, what would you do if a Witch asked to borrow 15 of your chairs for some workshops He would sponsor over the Halloween season in Salem?

"Heavens no! Thou shalt not sully my holy chairs by thine unclean hiney!"

"Well, I think that we will be needing them, and can not spare a chair at this time."

"I will have to consult the church council, and my denominational leadership before I can offer help of this magnitude."

"I will allow you to use our chairs, but please know that as a Bible believing Christian I stand firmly against your beliefs, and I am giving them to you, because it shows how Jesus gave His life for us even when we were sinners."

"Sure, we've got more than enough. Do you need help hauling them over there?


For far more reasons than I can list here, I chose the last response, and we gave our own chairs - not the extras in the vault. I know many Christians would have chosen any answer but the last one. At The Gathering we tend to think that honesty, grace, and helping out friends no matter who they are is a good thing. Perhaps some people would feel that we are helping to further a bad cause - like giving an alcoholic cash to get his next bottle. All I know is that a friend who happens to be a Witch asked for some help, and I did not have to break the Ten Commandments to do it.

So, there you have it. Life in Salem gets more interesting all the time. I know that Christians will hear about the chairs, and freak out. I also know that there will be Witches who hear about the chairs, and will wonder what kind of manipulation we are masking by our kindness.


Darn, I'm not even sure how generous it was. After all, we had 180 chairs, which is about double what we need right now. Well everybody has happy butts now, and that can only make Salem a better place to live, and maybe there will a person or two who realize that Christians don't have to be spooky, and afraid during Halloween, or around people who call themselves Witches.

Apologizing: the new apologetic

Last year our friends from Sinners and Saints ran a confessional booth. It was based upon an idea which came from Donald Miller's book "Blue Like Jazz." James brought up the idea, and I loved it, because it fit with my belief that the best apologetic the church might offer today is an apology.

The confessional booth is a reverse confession. People walk into our booth nervously anticipating giving a confession of their sins. Instead they experience a person dressed as a monk confessing the sins of the church through history, and even their own shortcoming to them.

This evening when I returned from showing "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" at The Vault, I found an e-mail in my box asking asking me what things I believed the church needed to apologize for. Below is my response;


"...where to begin...?

Witchtrials
Crusades
Sexual Misconduct
Hypocrisy!
Repeated historic acts of Greed, Violence, Dishonesty, and Pride

but, today it is not much different. Even in my own heart, I sometimes judge other people by what I see, or what I hear them say without taking time to know why they do and say what they do and say. We still pass judgment and determine who is in or out of our little club on the basis of personal preference, or ease of relationship.

Sometimes the church sounds like they know it all. We do a good job of preaching without having learned to listen. Protestant preachers speak of the priesthood of all believers, but their believers still sit in the pews voiceless. We speak of grace, but we often judge people on the basis of fairly petty issues, and chase them away from the church. We exercise heavy handed leadership which may be fine for running an army, but is no good for creating the family which we are supposed to be.

I can not express deeply enough how these things break my heart, and how sorry I am that anyone has experienced a heavy hand of oppression from the very community which should have offered liberty.

This is not to say that the church has not done good things in its history, or that it is not doing good things today. It is merely the acknowledgment that we are far from perfect, and that we have hurt people - people who need to be told from someone in the church that we are sorry.

Every time I roll my eyes in frustration at someone who is peculiar by my opinion, every time I prejudge someone's politics without hearing their story, every time I feel an urge to suggest that someone doesn't really fit with us, I have the seed of deTorquemada the Grand Inquisitor rearing up in me. So the apology is not some distant disconnected issue, but an issue of every humble follower's heart, and it is quite personal to me.

Does that make sense?"

We will be doing the confessional booth again this year. I think it may become a regular part of our lives.

Pagans, Preachers, and Free Hot Cocoa

If you've never been to Salem, MA during the month of October, specifically the last two weeks, you've missed a carnival of religious experience.

We have half a million visitors in October. Some come because they anticipate Halloween fun. Some come just for the Witchcraft and Pagan based events. A few come to witness. Witnessing is something Born-Again Christians do to non-Christians. Well sometimes we Born-Again Christians do it to people who we think are not born-again, even if they are Christians. It's called evangelism, and people don't like being evangelized most of the time.

Some of the witnessing Christians bring big signs, and lots of little propaganda papers called tracts. Most of them come from far away places like Louisiana, or New York - which really isn't that far away. The big sign people sometimes cause quite a stir, but they don't mind being yelled at, because it is proof that they are "sold out" for Jesus. We Christians might be the only group who think that being a "sell out" is a good thing. I only thought of that just now. I'm not sure I want to be a sell out. I might have to think of another way to say I want to live my life for God completely.

So we have Prachers with big signs, and one or two with megaphones, and we have Pagans of various kinds - you know Witches, Druids, Shamans (or is that Shamen), and the like. We also have people who just want to have fun, but are interested in all the spiritual stuff nonetheless. Then we have us.

We put up the big stage in the fountain by the museum, and provide live music for 7 days. We give away some free hot cocoa. We do that to draw a big crowd, and on most days we can keep a crowd for a long time. I think the crowd is good for the businesses too, because any business near us gets a larger crowd from being near the happening spot.

Then we have our tents. In the tent you can have your Psalm read (note: P-S-A-L-M not P-A-L-M), or a Dream Interpreted (Daniel in the Bible did Dream Interpretation - it was around a long time before Freud.) We also have a confessional booth, but the confessional booth comes with a surprise which we can't tell. You have to try it. We will do all of this for seven days.

Sometimes people think that the preachers with the signs are with us - but they're not. Other people think that Tarot, or Palm Readers are doing the same thing we are, but it's different too. Some people are expecting us to preach on the stage, because we're a church, but we don't. One year a church helped us on the stage for one night. They preached on the stage, and we got in trouble for it.

We don't preach on the stage. We just try to make a party which everyone wants to hang out at - but no beer. Then we have our tents, and you can stand in line with all the people who want to go in, or you can stay out and watch the music - whatever you like. We don't really preach in the tents either. Well maybe a few guys do, once in awhile, but we try to just talk about life, and God, and Jesus, and how God might be working in your life with your dreams, or your experiences. Then we try to help you understand what He might be saying.

Our approach is kind of simple, and without a sales pitch. God's not for sale, and if He was He would be too expensive for you to purchase even a toenail clipping, or a strand of hair anyway. So we do all this stuff for free. Except it's really expensive for us to do it. So this year we have some really cool shirts with our name on them, and people seem to really like them, and then we'll have a classic horror movie in the late evening. Something like Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein - really scary stuff, and it's $5, unless you live in Salem, then it's a buck.

Oh, and there's a nice guy named John. John is letting us use his hotdog cart, and we'll sell hotdogs, and sausages to make some money to pay for all this too.

Now, with all this some people think we are really cool. Others think that we "sold out" - in the bad sense, because we don't preach from the stage. I try to tell them that we wouldn't have the stage if we preached there, but they don't seem to understand. Others are scared of us because they think that we are going to get preachy. So we've got all the Pagans, and the Preachers, and the people trying to figure out who's who. I hope you'll be one of them this year, and that this helps you understand what we do at Halloween.