Tag: Body of Christ

Christ, Cladach Authors, Experiencing Community, Offering HOPE, The life of faith

Remembering Those Who Have Gone Before

Today is All Saints Day for those Christian traditions that follow the liturgical church calendar.

As publisher and editor-in-chief at Cladach I am reminded of three of our authors who have passed from this life to the next. We never formally acknowledged these passings. So today I would like to commemorate these three, faithful departed saints.

Candi Adermatt

G.H. Cummings

James Troy Turner

I often think of these lines from the hymn “The Church’s One Foundation”:

O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we
Like them, the meek and lowly,
On high may dwell with thee;

That is my prayer as we remember these three Cladach authors who have gone before us:

Candi Adermatt (1947-2015)

Candi worked in the Office of the Provost at Azusa Pacific University as a freelance doctoral-dissertation editor. She belonged to East Valley Authors. She found her greatest pleasure in spending time with her sons and their families. Candi authored the contemporary novel Love Rekindled.

George Herbert Cummings (1929-2019)

Herb had three careers in his long life: serving as a local pastor of churches in Colorado, California, and Oregon. Then as a licensed family counselor. And finally, as an author. He had two daughters (one of whom is yours truly). Rev. Dr. Cummings authored the book Making It In Marriage.

James Troy Turner (1949-2022)

Troy was a Vietnam vet who had a gift for writing poetry in which he creatively expressed his disappointments, questions, dogged faith, as well as observation and insights into life. He found metaphors in the grit of everyday life. He lived in Colorado.

**********

I thank God for the faithful lives they lived. May they rest in the peace of Christ.

Both we and those who have gone before us are part of the mystical body of Christ and the communion of saints.

God be with us all and help us to keep our sights on the “really real” but unseen, and bring us into full union with our God forever.

Answering the Call of Christ, Authentic Faith, Choosing What to Publish, Memoirs, New Releases, Nurturing Wonder, Offering HOPE, Venturing for the Lord

Finding the Sacred in Place, People, and Story

by Catherine Lawton • 0 Comments

“Are you hungry for a life that is more than simple existence, for something to give you hope, for surprises bathed in an eternal aura? Do you long for fellow travelers, for genuine community, a place where you can tell your story and listen to others? With whom you can share life and experience mission?”

So begins the book ON KITTEN CREEK: Searching for the Sacred by Nancy Swihart

God seems to make sacred the places where true Christian fellowship and community happen.

Inspired by Francis and Edith Schaeffer’s L’Abri center in Switzerland, Nancy Swihart and her husband dreamed of starting something similar in America, where people could come to learn about and experience—away from their usual distractions—”the God who is there.”

When the Swiharts left their thriving ministries, that were full of “promise” in Southern California and moved to a rustic, old 160-acre farm in the Flint Hills of Kansas, a missional center developed that came to be known as “Wellspring.” This loosely formed, and constantly evolving and renewing fellowship of folks experienced true, transformational community. Through the past thirty years, thousands of people of all ages have benefited from what Wellspring has offered in sacramental, creative, loving, and edifying ways.

Nancy’s memoir released this week.to the following praise:

“Nancy Swihart’s On Kitten Creek is an uplifting and thoughtful read. It will minister to your spirit and move you to give thanks for life’s simple gifts and cause you to reflect deeply about your life, as it has prompted me.” –Ken Canfield PhD., Founder National Center for Fathering; President, National Association for Grandparenting

“Let Nancy give you glimpses of His handiwork among us. Be inspired to look for sacred connections and creative opportunities waiting to surprise you within what may seem mundane in your own life.” –Kay Bascom, Author, Teacher, Missionary, and Conference Speaker

“A look over-the-shoulder and through-the-heart of someone with much to teach every one of us.” –Steven Garber, Principal of the Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture; author of Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good

I first met Nancy at the Colorado Christian Writers Conference. Drawn by her warm smile, I became convinced that her story fit every part of Cladach’s stated purpose to:

• exalt Christ as Savior and Lord, and know God as Creator, Father, and Redeemer-King.
• witness to His presence and work in creation, and in our world today.
• encourage believers in a mind-set and heart experience of joyful faith and obedience.
• provide practical guidance for developing a life of health and wholeness.
• through the power of story, depict grace to a postmodern world.

Nancy practices listening prayer, gives of herself in hospitality, has searched for and found the sacred in her daily life, and has embraced mystery in the mundane—while caring for farm animals, taking prayer walks on the farm trails, hosting ministry events in the barn, or teaching at a Christian college and giving hospitality to students. Active in local churches, schools, and wider ministries, the Swiharts and their friends together have dreamed, laughed, cried, celebrated, served and shared the life of Christ creatively in ways we all long for.

Let Nancy inspire you to embrace the story that God is writing in your own life!

Amazon currently has the price discounted from $13.49 to $8.83. It’s also available in Kindle and Nook.

Here’s a picture of the Wellspring barn (that is on the book cover) in more recent years undergoing a remodel:

Nancy with two farm animals, including “Donk” who is in the book.

Nancy with friends at her book-signing in the barn yesterday.

A beautiful tower of books:

On Kitten Creek

(Thanks to Nancy Swihart and Terri Gasser for the photos.)

Following Jesus, In the world but not of it, Memoirs, Offering HOPE, Reconciliation

An Early Lesson in Racial Reconciliation

by Catherine Lawton • 0 Comments

Corcoran-bday-1958

Children can feel the tensions, prejudices, and injustices that exist around them.

When my sister and I were about 6 and 7 Daddy pastored a church in a coastal town in Central California, where the parsonage was in a racially-mixed neighborhood. We thought nothing of the fact that we played with Black children. We went into each others’ homes and each others’ apron-clad mothers gave us drinks of water and fresh-baked cookies. I only remember feeling acceptance and friendliness.

Then we moved to a valley town where 2/3 of the student body in our elementary school were Black and Mexican-American, many the children of transient farm workers. In this school in the 1950s, I first experienced racial tension. There I first heard the “N” word used. We were naive little girls, unprepared for the sights of gangs fighting on the playing fields, busloads of kids shaking their fists and yelling out the windows. As insults and epithets flew, I thought, “What is this?!” At the age of 9 I didn’t know anything about the civil rights movement taking place in our country.

I do remember Daddy driving us to a farm workers camp and the shock and sadness I felt when I saw how some of my classmates lived. No sidewalks, no trees, no grass. Just dirt and squalid shacks that couldn’t really be called buildings. No indoor plumbing, out by the cotton fields, with no respite from the hot sun.

Some of our school mates bragged about how they didn’t have to go to school during the cotton harvest. They were going to pick cotton with their family and make lots of money! Bev and I went home and told our parents we wanted to pick cotton and make money and not have to go to school! Mother shook her head. “Girls, you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s back-breaking work. The cotton plants cut your hands and make them bleed. And the farm workers get paid very little. Those children’s parents need the extra money their children make just to help them subsist.” I had a hard time believing my mother. When we drove by fields of ripe cotton, the bursting heads looked white puffs of softness.

We were learning about divides between people groups that couldn’t be crossed.

My second-grade sister had a more personal learning experience. She got into an argument with another little girl on the playground, probably over the rules of a four-square game or something. It just happened that the other girl was Black. As the girls hurled insults at each other, the worst thing my sister could think to say was, “You’re nothing but a big chocolate sundae.” Understandably, the girl took offense. She could have yelled back: “Well, you’re just plain vanilla ice cream.” Instead she hit my sister, who then sat on the ground crying. I got scared and ran home (we lived across the street from the school) to tell our parents Bev was hurt. Daddy came to the school, found that only Bev’s pride was wounded, and made her apologize to the girl.

Well, that was really hard for Bev to do. But later, she and the little girl became friends. When Bev had her 8th birthday party, she invited this girl. The picture above (with the church building in the background) shows the two of them with me (age 9) in the middle.

If only reconciliation were always that simple.

Or maybe it is that simple!:
Wise and caring authority figures, don’t hide from suffering. Help us face the truth about ourselves and each other, encourage asking for and receiving forgiveness, then give us opportunities to celebrate our common humanity.

Authentic Faith, Cladach Authors, Theology, Thinking Christianly, What We're Looking For, Writing the Truth in Love

Cladach Authors Reflect the Body of Christ

by Catherine Lawton • 2 Comments

Cladach authors come from various streams of the body of Christ:

Baptist, Nazarene, Evangelical Presbyterian, Nazarene, Vineyard, Christian Church, Assembly of God, Salvation Army, Messianic, Orthodox, Catholic, Evangelical Free, Episcopalian, etc.

We seek to have agreement on the essentials of the Faith, liberty in non-essentials, and in all things love!

Do you follow Wesley? Calvin? Wimber? Jonathan Edwards? Phineas Bresee? Phoebe Palmer? Catherine Booth? The Early Church Fathers?

I wonder how our perspective might change if we were allowed a glimpse of all those men and women in fellowship together in Heaven and praising God together?

“They will know we are Christians by our …” Denominational affiliation? Theological distinctives? Form of government? Church buildings? Politics?

No.

“They will know we are Christians by our love.”

That doesn’t mean I don’t think theology is important. I do. I study it; I listen for it in sermons I hear and books I read. I sometimes write about it.

But I find it interesting that we tend to believe, sometimes fiercely, the theological slant of the particular tribe or camp into which we were born, or where we first came into the Faith and received teaching, or where we found soul refuge, acceptance and belonging.