Year: 2020

MONONA — “When you find something that you really love to do, and you’re passionate about it, it changes everything,” said Sr. Anne Joseph from the Sisters of Mary Morning Star in Monona. She was speaking about her recent involvement in the practice of “writing” icons, an ancient Christian art form that dates back to the earliest centuries of Christian history.

The Wisconsin State Journal asked a cross-section of area Christian clergy members to share with readers excerpts from the sermons they plan to deliver on this most extraordinary Christmas. In most cases, the messages are being delivered online as churches adjust to new forms of worship during a pandemic, although some are also holding in-person services. At least one — Gateway Community Church in Middleton — planned to hold a drive-in service on Christmas Eve. Here are excerpts of their glad tidings.

On one of the holiest nights of the Christian year, there will still be candle-lighting, the singing of “Silent Night,” children’s pageants and sermons heralding the birth of a savior. It’s just that much of it will be live-streamed, prerecorded, in very small groups and — in at least in one case — conducted in the bitter cold. The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing Madison-area churches to come up with inventive, 21st century ways to celebrate Christmas Eve — perhaps the most traditional of Christian services when people pack the pews to sing hymns, listen to the story of a pregnant…

When the world hits the longest night on Dec. 21 in this year that has had more than its share of darkness, four congregations from very distinctive traditions will be worshipping together to bring a bit of light into the lives of the folks who join in.

(RNS) — Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Sister Mary Bede was no stranger to quarantine life. Sister Bede and 22 other Cistercian nuns who live with her at Valley of Our Lady Monastery in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, are cloistered in silence according to the rule of their ancient monastic Catholic religious order.

Think of it as driving around to see Christmas lights, but based on the Christmas story.Think of it as a way to honor Christmas traditions in the time of a pandemic.Think of it as a venture in cooperation among seven congregations that could be the groundwork of future collaboration.Seven Lutheran churches that stretch from McFarland, across the east side of Madison and touching the city’s south side have come up with what they are calling an Advent Adventure. Starting Dec. 6 and running through Jan. 6, each congregation will have an outdoor lighted display that tells a part of the…

When Jon Anderson was a pastor working on community outreach in Madison, he found a lot of overlap in how churches tried to work with nonprofits to help the city. “What I started to see in those jobs was a lot of redundancy happening in the county, especially in church efforts,” he said. “And an ongoing need for resources of all kinds (with) direct service providers doing amazing work, but not seeing that the church was a part of the solution to reaching the community.” Helping church leaders better collaborate, understand and serve Dane County is now at the heart…

The Thanksgiving meal drive is more than two decades old, launched by Pastor David Smith of Door Creek Church and Tracy Smith, his wife, in partnership with the South Madison Neighborhood Center and the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County, but the method of preparing, organizing and delivering the dinners is new to this year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the past several months, Upper House has been working behind the scenes with the Wisconsin Council of Churches, Collaboration Project, and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary to apply for a grant from the Lilly Endowment Thriving Congregations Initiative. We were thrilled to recently learn that the endowment awarded the partnership a $1 million grant for the Awaken Dane initiative. We look forward to working with initiative leader, Rev. Kerri Parker of the Wisconsin Council of Churches, the collaborating partners, and local churches and congregations, on this five-year effort.

Is there such a thing as “cosmopolitan evangelicalism,” and is it worth talking about? As a historian of American evangelicalism, I can only recall reading the term a few times—in D. Michael Lindsay’s Faith in the Halls of Power (2008), where he gives it some sociological heft; in Lydia Bean’s The Politics of Evangelical Identity (2014) comparing Canadian and U.S. evangelicals; in the epilogue to David Swartz’s Facing West (2020); and in Charlie Cotherman’s recent history of the Christian study center movement, To Think Christianly (2020). I work at a Christian study center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, so Cotherman’s…