Palm Sunday weekend reflections

Last week ended up being a busy week.

We did 3 egg coloring events: 7 kids from the Wed. morning English Club did eggs on Wed.; 8 kids & 1 sister from the Sat. English Club colored on Sat.; and 6 kids came over yesterday to color. We have 1 more egg party for this Saturday.

Our younger daughter had 2 birthday parties over the weekend. Both events provided opportunities for us to connect with the families hosting them.

We had the first annual meeting of le Pavé d'Orsay on Thursday night. It's amazing how well things have developed over the past few years. This year will have some new financial challenges, but we have a good team working together.

Yesterday we ate lunch at church. Several of us parents noticed a nice ambiance among the kids that come. The church hardly had any young children a few years ago, so it's a healthy sign to see children. Now that our kids are older, we'll probably should eat Sunday lunch there more often.

Tonight is the monthly gathering of artists of la Fonderie. There are 34 signed up, which is a record, at least for the last year since we started up again these gatherings. It's another encouraging sign.

As we think about another HMA, we see some of our sponsoring churches facing significant challenges. Some are struggling financially. Perhaps a bigger challenge for some is coming to grips with the culture that they are living & working in. The U.S. is not really a Christian nation today. Arguing about whether it ever was or not is rather pointless IMO.

One term that helps me understand the situation is "post-Christendom." This means that, while the country was heavily under the influence of Christianity in many of its cultural forms, this influence is rapidly decreasing. It is no longer the majority religion.

This concerns some people, the loss of this perceived privileged position. Living in France, I've gotten used to the stronger official practice of the separation of church & state. For me, it seems different now to have the American flag in a church or to say the pledge to the flag right after the pledge to the Christian flag. That just doesn't happen in France.

In my readings of church history, the Church grew the fastest in the first 3 centuries when it wasn't in a privileged position. It was Constantine that made it the State Religion and the Christendom model. This form had its pros & cons.

May God grant U.S. churches the ability to understand the times they are living in and to proactively morph as they need to in order to impact their neighborhoods, particularly the growing number of "outsiders" in them.