With these words Jesus offers his final prayer to his Father in Heaven. He commends his spirit into the hands of God. "Commend" means to entrust for care and preservation; to commit oneself into the care of another. Jesus places his life and future into the hands of God. Due to his deeply intimate and personal relationship with God he has the firm assurance that God will vindicate him. He knows with all his heart, soul, and mind that God will raise him from the darkness of death into the newness of life.

Jesus' words should serve as a powerful example for all of us to follow. But sadly when many of us reach that moment when we face death, when our time to leave this world is at hand, we are fearful and reluctant to commend and entrust our spirits into the hands of God. We worry about leaving behind our families and friends. We worry about how they will be able to live and function without our help and support. We also have fears of the unknown which face us. Doubts begin to creep into our minds, as we begin to wonder if there really is an afterlife or if life on this earth is all that there is. We find ourselves choosing to remain on this earth as long as possible; we would rather endure the illness, pain, and hardships of this life rather than entrust our lives to God.

As Christians when our time comes we need hold on to our faith. Let Jesus' life give us the assurance that the God who created us in his image loves us more than anything in this world could possibly love us. He has promised us a place he has already prepared for us when we pass on. God wants us to spend eternity in his presence surrounded by all the saints. We must not allow our fears and doubts to diminish and weaken our faith and hope of life everlasting.

Fr. Ken+

Rector's Message

For those of you interested in what is going to be happening this fall, I recommend you pick up the book, Simple Church: Returning to God's Process for Making Disciples by Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger. Both the vestry and the staff have been reading this book and it will form the basis for how we organize our selves in the fall.

The book recommends four steps to becoming a vibrant, growing church and supports this claim with a great deal of statistical research. The four steps are:

Clarity: What kind of disciple are we trying to create at St. Dunstan's?
Movement: What are the steps a new person at St. Dunstan's takes to become that disciple?
Alignment: How must we align our programming to facilitate that movement?
Focus: Saying no to things that do not facilitate the above progression.

Recently the program staff spent 24 hours on retreat for prayer and planning. Below are the notes from that retreat and the beginnings of an outline for becoming a "simple church."

Assistant Rector's Message

The Beatitudes form the centerpiece of Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount. These bold proclamations of Jesus are very thought provoking and counterintuitive. How can it be blessed to be poor, hungry, meek, and in mourning? These things which society commonly perceives as negative, Jesus proclaims as being blessed. No one had ever said that before. In the Old Testament, it was clear that the rich were the blessed. Their abundance of money, land, and cattle brought pleasures and fullness to their lives. That is also true of us today in the twenty-first century. The rich and full are the blessed. With enough money to buy a home, pay the bills; go on a vacation or two a year. Most people in society want to be rich, to be full, to laugh and to have others speak well of them. It is difficult for us to comprehend the meaning of the Beatitudes, because it goes completely against conventional wisdom.

But what Jesus is describing are the qualities of the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven refers to the reign and sovereignty of God over all things, as opposed to the reign of earthly and satanic powers. Each of the blessed individuals is generally not considered blessed according to worldly standards, but with a heavenly perspective, they are truly blessed.

Rector's Message

As you may have heard, we have been planning to move the morning services from 7:45 and 9:45 am to 8 and 10 am beginning this fall. The other day I was thinking and praying about St. Dunstan's and our upcoming staff retreat and the question came to me, why wait? Thinking it might be from God I brought the question to the staff meeting today for community confirmation (it is always good to check spiritual leadings with other Christians) and they agreed that there was no reason to wait, and it might be an advantage to go ahead now and use the summer to get use to the change. So, beginning on July 4, our summer morning schedule will be:

• 8:00 am Service - Traditional, limited music
• 9:45 am Nursery and Sunday School through 5th grade
• 10:00 am Service - Family friendly, full music
• 5:00 pm Crossroads (no Crossroads - July 4) Contemporary with communion

We will, however, wait until fall after Labor Day to begin the full education hour for all ages at 9 am. For now Sunday School for children, nursery through 5th grade, will continue to begin 15 minutes before service, at 9:45 am.