For those who are able to make it, we will have a guest preacher at Upper Room this week: The Rev. Karen Sloan, leader of An Ordered Life and spouse of Upper Room’s own Dave Carlton.  Sunday school this week will take place at 9:30, and will be the first class in the May series on finances. Dave Carlton will lead a discussion of the idolatry of money and the “Two Masters” passage from Matthew 6.

Maundy Thursday – Thursday April 5 @ 7pm
This service is the celebration of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples before his crucifixion. This service will include an “Agape (Love) Meal.” We ask everyone to bring a contribution of bread, fruit, cheese or veggies to share. We’ll also celebrate Communion together.

Good Friday – Friday April 6 @ Sunset (7:50pm)
This is the service remembering Jesus’ death on the cross. This service will include some extended readings of Scripture and silence at the end to meditate on Jesus’ death for our sake.

Easter Vigil (part 1) – Saturday April 7 @ sunset (7:51pm)
This service is the oldest known holiday in the Christian church, and is designed to move us to Easter by reflecting on the mystery of the resurrection and recalling God’s faithfulness to his people by reading several Old Testament stories.

Easter Sunrise Service / Easter Vigil (part 2) – Sunday April 8 @ sunrise (6:51am) in Frick Park.  Go to the Blue Slide Entrance at the corner of Beechwood and Nicholson. (weather permitting)
While many Easter Vigils actually last all night, our will be “paused” a little before 9pm and resume with our sunrise service the next day on Easter morning. This service will include the reading of the Easter story and a renewal of our baptismal vows.

Easter Day Worship – Sunday April 8 @ 11am
And of course we’ll be celebrating Easter Sunday at our normal Sunday morning time as well!

Every two years the PC(USA) has a national meeting called General Assembly (GA). This year’s GA is happening in Pittsburgh from June 30th to July 7th. Pastors and elders from around the country come to GA as commissioners to make important decisions regarding the future of the denomination. Along with these 700 commissioners, several hundred other leaders from around the country come to GA, meaning that nearly 2,000 people will be present this year.  With so many people coming and so much going on, GA needs volunteers from all the local churches to help make the Assembly run smoothly. And this is where you come in.

Volunteers to General Assembly can do anything and everything.  Like interacting with internationals? You can volunteer to pick up Ecumenical Advisory Delegates at the airport and you just might end up picking up the leader of the Presbyterian Church in Ghana. Are you gifted in prayer and intercession? You can volunteer to pray for and lead others in interceding for this year’s GA. This is extremely important.  Do you like building things or working behind the scenes? Volunteers are especially needed to help with set-up and tear-down for the Assembly at the Convention Center. There are literally hundreds of other ways to serve, as well.

To get started, go to the 2012 GA Volunteer Registration Site and fill in the form to sign-up.  Notice that your phone number will be your password for the site.  Also, when it asks for your Church, select “Other” and then type “The Upper Room” in the box.   Once you’ve registered, you’ll receive a confirmation email with a link you can use to log in for the first time.  Once logged in, peruse the volunteering options by clicking the categories on the left side of the screen. For example, click Worship if you’re interested in volunteering for prayer, Hospitality if you want to pick people up at the airport, Office of the General Assembly if you want to help set-up and tear-down. Contact Chris (chris@pghupperroom.com) if you have any questions. Thanks for considering giving back to the Church in this way.

Throughout the history of the Church, religious communities have expressed their common commitments to one another and to God through following common rules of daily prayer.  Members of such communities pray the same prayers at the same times of day, essentially praying together even if they’re not physically in the same place at the same time.  This practice is called the “daily office”.  During Lent, we want to encourage members of Upper Room to consider praying the daily office.  Three resources which members of Upper Room have already found helpful for doing so are listed here:

1) Celtic Daily Prayer from the Northumbria Community is the daily office used by participants in the World Christian Discipleship Program.  It includes simple liturgies for morning, midday, and evening prayer.

2) The Divine Hours is a resource compiled by author Phyllis Tickle based upon the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and including prayers from a variety of other Christian traditions.  The online version is available for free at the Ann Arbor Vineyard Church website, and is automatically updated with different liturgies for morning, midday, vespers, and compline (before bed) prayers each day.

3) Common Prayer is a resource compiled by Shane Claiborne and other leaders in the New Monasticism movement.  Liturgies are available for morning, midday, and evening prayer, each incorporating resources from various Christian traditions.

4) Ancient Faith Radio offers mp3 recordings of the daily prayers from the Eastern Orthodox tradition.  The mp3s can be downloaded and listened to on your phone, computer, or mp3 player wherever you are.  There are eight offices available for the day.  The “First Hour” is 6am, so the Third Hour is 9am, and so on.  The Matins recording makes a great tone for an alarm to wake up with!

5) The Presbyterian Church (USA) publishes the daily lectionary, a set of different scripture readings for each day of the year, on its website.  Visit this page and click on “Read today’s daily lectionary reading”.  (For a few thoughts on the benefits of reading the lectionary, see this post on Chris’s blog.)

May God use these prayers to lead us into faithful life together as a covenant community under the cross!

January 28, 10am-3:30pm @ Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community
Sexual identity has become an idol in both the culture at large and in the Christian subculture. And yet concepts like “gay” or “straight” are relatively recent developments in human history. We let ourselves be defined by socially constructed notions of sexual identity and sexual orientation–even though these may not be the only or best ways to think about sexuality.

Anthropologist Jenell Williams Paris offers a Christian framework for sexual holiness that accounts for complex postmodern realities. She assesses problems with popular cultural and Christian understandings of heterosexuality and homosexuality alike. Her book, The End of Sexual Identity moves beyond culture-war impasses to open up new space for conversations in diverse communities both inside and outside the church.

On January 28, Upper Room will host a “mini conference” with Jenell at Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community. The morning session will cover the topic of sexual orientation/identity. The afternoon session will address sexual holiness in the context of both marriage and singleness. Each session will include a presentation from Jenell, Q&A, and guided conversation. Suggested donation for attending is $10. For more information or to register check out http://endofsexualidentity.eventbrite.com

Event Schedule:

10am-Noon: Session 1 : The End of Sexual Identity

Noon-1:30pm: Lunch (Franktuary will be on site and selling hot dogs and other items.)

1:30pm-3:30pm: Session 2: Cure or Care?: Sexual Holiness in Marriage and Singleness

Take for instance the word “tithing”. Churches like to encourage tithing, defining it usually as the giving of ten-percent of one’s gross (pre-tax) income to the ministry of the church. The idea comes from several Old Testament passages. Leviticus 27:30-33 says that a tenth of the fruit of the land is to be “holy to the Lord”.   Numbers 26:12 says that a tithe collected every three years went “to feed the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow”.  So the principle is often applied to the present-day life of the Church: a tenth of the income of the Church’s membership should be holy to the Lord, and should thus provide for the paid ministers of the church (Levites) and the mission budget (foreigners, widows and orphans).

But it’s not that simple. Consider these words from Richard Foster about why the New Testament actually never speaks of tithing as a practice in the early Church:

“The tithe simply is not a sufficiently radical concept to embody the carefree unconcern for possessions that marks life in the kingdom of God.  Jesus Christ is the Lord of all our goods, not just 10 percent.  It is quite possible to obey the law of the tithe without ever dealing with our mammon lust. . . . Perhaps the tithe can be a beginning way to acknowledge God as the owner of all things, but it is only a beginning and not an ending” (Freedom of Simplicity: Finding Harmony in a Complex World – Revised and Updated [HarperOne 2005] pages 58-59).

If Jesus is Lord of everything – the One who already owns everything we have in our possession and the One whom we can trust to provide everything we truly need – then ten percent seems like a paltry amount to give back. It’s a starting place, a beginning, as Foster suggests.  But on the other hand, when we really look at our finances and where our money goes, ten percent starts to seem like an incredibly high amount to give.  For most of us, it seems like it’s always getting more difficult to make ends meet.

Again, tithing isn’t simple. Consider also the issue of “split-tithing”, an increasingly common practice in my generation in which people give away (at least) ten-percent of their income to “Kingdom-work”, but only a portion of that ten-percent ends up going to the local church.  I understand this concept well.  In fact (I confess) it’s what Eileen and I still practice.  The problem with this line of thinking, however, is that it runs the risk of thinking that the local congregation isn’t really “the Church”.  But the truth is the local congregation really is the Church and its mission is just as valuable as feeding orphans overseas. Both are worthy of our giving because both are ministries of Jesus Christ.

So where do we begin this stewardship season? Maybe by asking Jesus what we need to do to grow in our discipleship.  As his constant push against the legalism of the Pharisees in the Gospels shows, Jesus is less concerned with whether we give 10 percent and more concerned with whether He is master of our life, or if we bow to money (Matthew 7:24).  So how is Jesus calling you to show that He’s master of your life? Maybe by giving more to the church this year, taking a step towards tithing if you haven’t before.  Maybe Jesus would just as soon ask you to sponsor a child through World Vision or support an overseas missionary or a local campus minister.  Or maybe Jesus wants you to “sell your possessions and give to the poor, and then you will have treasure in heaven” (Matthew 19:21).  He didn’t just say that to the Rich Young Ruler; He also said it to all his disciples (see Luke 12:33).  The question is which step is necessary for you to grow in your discipleship.

So if you’re in Upper Room,  you’ll receive a commitment card which we’re asking you to fill out and return to the church.  And on it there will be a line with the following options which could be checked: “□ This is a step towards tithing. □  This is my tithe.  □ This commitment goes beyond tithing.” Whichever box you check, know that it’s not about “measuring-up” to human standards of giving; it’s about making a tangible commitment to grow in your discipleship this year.  Know that there’s no shame in a step towards tithing, committing to tithe is not fulfilling a law, and going beyond tithing is no reason to be proud. Make the commitment that will go deeper than the surface of the words and transform your discipleship.

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” – Luke 12:32-34 TNIV -

 Upper Room’s screening will be at 7:00pm on Sunday, September 11th, at 5828 Forward Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15218.  Email us at church@pghupperroom.com if you have any questions.

If you’re new to Pittsburgh and are seeking a church, we would love to welcome you to our community. Here’s some information you might need:

Where are you and how do I get there?

Our worship space is at 5828 Forward Ave. in Squirrel Hill (it’s a storefront located next door to the now-closed Squirrel Hill Movie Theatre). There is plenty of on-street parking on Sunday mornings (and the meters are not enforced then). You can also use the parking lot just up the block in front of the dry cleaners (but only on Sunday morning).

If you’re looking to take public transportation from Duquesne, Pitt, or CMU, just take the 61c or 61d to the Forward Ave. stop, which is less than one block from the church.

When should I get there?

Our worship is scheduled to begin at 11am each Sunday morning. Feel free to come early, though! People tend to begin arriving around 10:30am to hang out and chat over coffee, and we’d love to get to know you!

This Sunday, June 26th, we’ll start a 22 week journey through 1 Corinthians.  In the first ten verses of this letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul uses the phrase “Lord Jesus Christ” five times. He’s driving home a point.  Jesus is Lord, and Paul’s about to explain what this means for more than a dozen different things in the practical lives of the Corinthian church. In short, he’s telling them, ”If you’re a Christian, then everything matters.”

So over the next twenty-two weeks, we’re going to think together about what it means to live a spirituality in which everything matters.   What does the fact that Jesus is Lord mean for our life in the Church? For how we worship? For the way we relate to people outside the Church?  What does Jesus’ Lordship mean for how we spend our money, for our sexuality, for what we eat?  What does Jesus’ Lordship mean for how we relate others inside the Church who disagree with us?  Join us as the Holy Spirit guides us in thinking through these questions, finding some answers, and even inspiring some new questions.