MISSIONARY INDEPENDENT SPIRITUAL CHURCH
Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 5
08-15-06
A VIEW FROM THE NORTH-WEST OF
MISSIONARY INDEPENDENT SPIRITUAL CHURCH UNDER RE-CONSTRUCTION
OUR BOOK OF PRAYER REQUESTS
Like most Spiritual Churches in America, we encourage both our members and the general public to allow us to assist them in their needs. Many people turn to us for the setting of lights and for our help with intercessory prayers on their behalf. We believe that "prayer united is stronger" and add our prayers to those which accompany the lights that are set on our altars. Many of the people upon whose behalfs we work return to us repeatedly with new -- or renewed -- prayer requests, and in time become like old friends to us, as we set lights for them on a semi-regular basis. Some have sent us dozens of photos of themselves, their families, their pets, their homes, and their loved ones.
It may be of interest to some who are unfamiliar with our practices to learn that we keep a permanent record of these prayer requests, a custom that is traditional in many Spiritual Churches.
In a Spiritual Church, when such a volume is called a "Book of Healing," it is used primarily or only for recording the prayers of those who seek physical healings. In some churches, there may even be a separate Book of Healing for pets. For prayer requests not directly related to healing, some churches keep an additional "Book of Special Prayer Requests," which volume covers everything except healing. Other Spiritual Churches record all prayer requests, including healing, in a single "Book of Prayer Requests."
Prayer Request books are generally hard-bound blank journals, into which church members or their surrogates can enter hand-written, dated notes. Due to the nature of the binding, the prayers are entered chronologically, in the order received, and as each book is filled, it is laid away and a new one takes its place before the altar.
Because we set lights for so many types of works -- from blessing, healing, and protection to love, money drawing, and even justified work against enemies -- and because those who seek our aid are scattered all around the planet and do not always attend upon our physical altars, we are instituting an unusual form of the traditional Book of Prayer Requests. Instead of a chronologically-ordered blank-page journal, we have created a loose-leaf binder book, in which people's names are filed alphabetically, ordered according to the name of the one requesting the prayer, not by the name of the one being prayed for. And, in keeping with our personal ecological awareness campaign, we will not be segregating pets or wild animals into a "separate but equal" book; their names and pictures will be treated the same as those of human beings and will be found in the same book.
On the page or pages set aside for each person, we are "scrap-booking" their letters, pictures, name papers, and other relevant material. For those who have sent actual personal concerns, such as a lock of hair, we will create a small pouch to hold the items with which they wish us to link our work on their behalfs.
By means of this alphabetized and scrap-booked system, if someone requests additional prayers at a later time, we can easily look them up; make colour photocopies of any relevant images; copy out full names, birthdates, and other important information; temporarily access their personal concerns; and proceed to writing name-papers for them and blessing their candles.
Unusual though our Book of Prayer Requests may seem, we believe that it will facilitate our energy focus for those who seek our aid.
CANDLE ALTARS
While the church building is in progress, we are still setting lights for folks in the Lucky Mojo shop, and planning how the interior of the building will be laid out. I have decided upon four wrought iron candle stands, each one four tiers high, to be placed in each of the four corners of the building, giving us four altars. Each set will probably be able to hold 16 candles. The candle stands will have to be custom made to fit the space, and will be quite costly, but the resultant utility and beauty will be worth the expense.
Since we are setting up to 20 candles on our love altar these days (love is always the most prolific condition for which prayer requests are made, followed by various forms of blessing, healing, and protection), this means that even with the addition of the church building, we will still be handling some prayer requests in the shop.
THE ROOF PUZZLE
Our carpenter, Roger Rupe, is back at work, after a break he had to take while moving into a new house, and he is now working out the structure of the roof gables for the church building.
This is the portion of the Burgess Buss Stop that had suffered the most extreme damage, both due to weathering and then due to the former owner's son-in-law accidentally felling a mature Eucalyptus tree on the building.
Not a single one of the four roof peaks and valleys was intact, and one of the four sections consisted of splintered boards laying on the ground when we took possession of the building, so working out the complex angles of the roofline in order to recreate what was broken and fit the new pieces into the salvageable boards has been, in Roger's words, "a geometry puzzle."
Today was a day of mini-triumph for us all when he applied one of the old boards to the new framework and it fit perfectly. What a relief -- and how happy he was to have solved the puzzle.
CHURCH COLOUR SCHEMES AND ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOS
This section is a repeat from the previous month's newsletter, because we are still taking votes on colour schemes. The leading colour scheme -- the colour pattern with the most votes at this time -- is shown at left.
You can express your opinion by going to the URLs below, looking at the colour schemes and posting a message to our Yahoo group.We have put together a web page on British Automobile Association Emergency Roadside Telephone Boxes, the form of which we speculate may have influenced Don Burgess when he designed and built the structure that is to be our church. See this online at
We also have put up a web page demonstrating our interest in Chinese Joss House and Tibetan Temple architecture, with colour swatches proposing how Missionary Independent will look when it is painted. See it online at
Mendocino Joss House, Bendix Lama Temple, and Missionary Independent Spiritual Church
For those who are interested in the building process, we have a web page showing the literal foundation of the church at
The Foundation of Missionary Independent Spiritual Church
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OUR WEB SITE
Missionary independent Spiritual Church can be found on the world wide web at