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6/30/2016 0 Comments June 30th, 2016 Fill the ArkThis week at Vacation Bible School, we are learning about Noah and how God saved him by having him build the ark and fill it with animals of every kind. As a part of our time together, we are challenging our kids to "Fill the Ark!" with animals to help hungry families around the world. Our mission offering this year is going to Heifer International - an organization that provides farm animals and training to people living in poverty so that they can have a reliable source of food and extra income from selling what they do not need. Our goal this week is to buy two flocks of chickens, two goats, two sheep, and two cows to send them to help those in need. If you would you like to support the goal of raising $1,500, please talk with me, Dinah, or Susie! Blessings on the journey, Jim Summer Book ClubFor the next few weeks this summer, we are going to be reading some of the lesser known books or overlooked parts of books in the Bible. Sunday's Sermon Snippet: Zerubbabel's New Job (Haggai) About three centuries after the Temple was first built in Jerusalem, the kingdom of Judah was conquered, Jerusalem captured, its people taken into exile in Babylon, its king deposed, and the Temple destroyed. After a few generations, the people were freed from Babylon and allowed to return to their homeland. They rebuilt their homes, built a city wall for protection, planted crops for food, and began to return to life as normal. In the midst of all this rebuilding and simply living lives, the Temple still lay in ruin even 18 years later. Haggai the prophet spoke to Zerubbabel the governor, Joshua the priest, and all the people to remind them that God's house needed attention. Unlike many prophets who spoke of coming judgment, Haggai did not condemn them for this failure but pointed out how fruitless their lives were without a place to worship God. These were not bad people; they were just people who had forgotten about the work that God wanted done. So Haggai gave Zerubbabel a new job - to rebuild the Temple! Like Zerubbabel and his people, we too sometimes forget about how urgent the work of God is. We are busy simply living our lives and we put off the things God wants done for another day. After all, there will always be another opportunity to help someone, another Sunday to worship God, another day to pray. So we forget about how urgent the work of God is. Sometimes it is a matter of life and death for someone, and the opportunity may never come again. May we remember how urgent the work of God is and commit to doing what we can each day! This Sunday in Worship We all remember the story of Jonah and the Whale and the second chance God gave him to do what was right, but there's more to Jonah's story than that! What happened when Jonah actually went to speak as a prophet to the people in Nineveh that he hated? What did he learn about the ways of God? Join us this Sunday as we hear the story of "Jonah and the Worm"! Living in CommunityThanks to Ralph for reporting to us on Sunday about what happened at Annual Conference this year! If you are interested in singing as a part of a Christmas Cantata this year, please talk with Linda. This Week at Port ChurchMonday - Friday 6 - 8:30 pm - Vacation Bible School at South River Elementary School Sunday, July 3 9:30 am - Worship: "Jonah and the Worm" 11:00 am - Sunday School Looking Ahead100th Anniversary Celebration of Sanctuary - July 24
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6/22/2016 0 Comments June 22nd, 2016 Giving Thanks and Looking AheadThis past weekend, Virginia United Methodists met in Roanoke for our Annual Conference - our yearly gathering of clergy and laity who worship, study, and work together to celebrate the past year and ministry and prepare for the year to come. While some years are filled with busy-ness and - yes - contentious issues, this year's conference had a more relaxed, spiritual focus. One of the highlights of the conference was the honoring of Bishop Cho who will be retiring this year. Bishop Cho has spent his four years of leadership promoting spiritual renewal of our churches, especially in the devotion to prayer, and we are thankful for his reminder of what is at the heart of what we do - not the meetings and even programs we develop but first and foremost a love of God and desire to serve in the name of Jesus. As Bishop Cho prepares for his retirement, our elected delegates from Virginia and across the Southeast are preparing for next month's Jurisdictional Conference. At this conference, new bishops will be elected to replace those who are retiring and bishops will be assigned to the conferences they will serve for the next four years. Please keep our delegation and this election and assignment in your prayers over the next month that God will send us the leader we need to carry on the good work of the bishops who have faithfully served us thus far. Also, keep Bishop Cho and his family in your prayers as he continues to lead us in his final days and to prepare the way for our next leader. Blessings on the journey, Jim Summer Book Club: Zerubbabel's New Job Summer is officially here, so here at Port Church we are going to jump into one of the great joys of summer - the Summer Book Club. For each of the next four weeks in worship, we are going to look at one of the (shorter) books of the Bible to see what it has to say to us today. We encourage you to take time to read each book during the week before coming to worship. If you do so, you will have read four books of the Bible by this time next month! This Sunday, we begin by looking at the book of Haggai, one of the lesser known prophets of Israel who lived in a sad time when the God's Temple lay in ruins. Join us this Sunday to find out what Haggai did about this sad state of affairs in "Zerubbabel's New Job" and learn about the job God has for us today! Living in CommunityThanks to our RENEW Youth Mission Team - Julia, Hannah, Rachel, Leslie, Jordan, April, Heather, Camden, and Dinah for leading a powerful service of worship to the glory of God this past Sunday! Thanks to Tracey, Laura, and Dinah for leading our RENEW Mission Team throughout the week! Thanks to Ralph for preaching and leading worship in Pastor Jim's absence two Sundays ago! Thanks also to Ralph for representing our congregation at Annual Conference this year! Please remember in your prayers all the kids who will participate in VBS next week and all our many volunteers who will make it possible. This Week at Port ChurchWednesday, June 22 9:30 am - 2:00 pm - Office Hours Thursday, June 23 9:30 am - 12 noon - Office Hours Saturday, June 25 7 pm - VBS Kickoff Party at Grand Caverns Pool Sunday, June 26 9:30 am - Worship: "Zerubbabel's New Job" 11:00 am - Sunday School RENEW Team leaves Looking Ahead Vacation Bible School - June 27-July 1
100th Anniversary Celebration of Sanctuary - July 24 6/8/2016 0 Comments June 08th, 2016 Rest and RenewalAs a graduate student in engineering, I had a job working as a research assistant for a professor at the school. He was a man who had been a leader in the field for over forty years and gained more than a little wisdom through his years. Much of his success, I am sure, was due to his dedication to working hard, but he was also a man who knew that he needed to take time away in order to come back to his work re-energized and with new ideas. Whenever we students working for him were about to take some time off, we always met with him to go over where our projects stood. He would inevitably end the meeting by saying, "I hope that you will find rest and renewal in your time away." When we would return from our time away and have another meeting with him, he would always ask if we had found rest and renewal. He knew the importance of what we in the church call sabbath time - the rest and renewal of the body and the spirit. Over the next week, our family will be taking some vacation to spend time with relatives and visiting places we've never been to before. Following that, we will quickly change modes and head to Annual Conference, which is always a great time of worship and feeling the Spirit move in new ways. We will certainly miss being with all of you, but I look forward to sabbath and new inspiration. I ask that you would pray for our family to find rest and renewal in our time away, and I will pray for your rest and renewal wherever your summer plans may lead you, so that together we may serve the Lord with a renewed energy and inspiration! Blessings on the journey, Jim Taking Up the MantleSunday's Sermon Snippet (2 Kings 2:1-11) In life we face all kinds of moments of truth - those moments when all the work, hopes, and dreams that we have invested into something will either pay off or come crashing down. In those moments, the truth that we often find is about who we are and where we are headed in life. Those moments can be terrifying, and no one could blame us if we put them off for a bit or avoided them altogether. Elisha faced just such a moment of truth as Elijah, his mentor and friend, has been swept away by God, and Elisha is left behind with his mantle hoping that he is Elijah's heir as God's prophet. He takes the mantle back to the river Jordan and strikes the water with it to see what will happen. It is his moment of truth as he finds out who he truly is. Are we that brave as we face our moments of truth? It has been said that as Christians our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things that do not really matter. That is, we can fear taking the risk to see if we are up to some difficult task that God needs done or we can rest secure and comfortably in our little successes that in the end do not amount to much. That is a decision we must make every day, because every day holds a moment of truth as to who we will be. Will we take up the mantle of those who have gone before us to try to carry the work of God forward another step? Will we face the new day with courage knowing that we may fail or we may succeed but that it will all be for something that matters to God? Living in CommunityThanks to Sue, Joyce, Davida, Pat, Connie, Debbie, Chris, Norman, and our youth for all you did to make our potluck lunch possible this past Sunday! Thanks to Dave, Adam, John, Gary, and Connie for the preparations you made to set up for Praise in the Park even if the weather did not cooperate! Congratulations to Jordan, Jared, Linzze, Tomi, and Kara on your graduations! May God bless you on the journey ahead! Thanks to Jean for the beautiful prayer shawls you made for all of our graduates! Please keep our RENEW Youth Mission Team in your prayers as they leave for a week of mission and worship beginning June 12. Please keep Ralph and Pastor Jim in your prayers as they prepare to leave for Annual Conference beginning June 17. This Week at Port ChurchWednesday, June 8 10:00 am - 12:00 pm - Office Hours Limited office hours in Dianna's absence May 25 - June 9. Please feel free to call or email Pastor Jim if you need anything outside these hours. Thursday, June 9 6:30 pm - Trustees Meeting Sunday, June 12 9:30 am - Worship 11:00 am - Sunday School RENEW Team leaves Tuesday, June 14 7 pm - Council Meeting Wednesday, June 15 9:30 am - 2:00 pm - Office Hours Thursday, June 16 9:30 am - 12:00 noon - Office Hours 10 am - Sunshine Seniors Sunday, June 19 9:30 am - Worship led by RENEW Team 11:00 am - Sunday School Looking AheadVBS Kickoff Party - June 25
Vacation Bible School - June 27-July 1 100th Anniversary Celebration of Sanctuary - July 24 6/1/2016 0 Comments June 01st, 2016 Praising God I am excited for our worship service this Sunday - Praise in the Park! We are going to gather in our church park for a special service of celebration. We will praise God in the midst of God's creation, letting our songs join the songs of the sparrows. We will recognize our graduates and bless them as they prepare for the next chapter in their lives. We will gather by the flowing river to confirm two of our youth who have decided to claim the gift of their baptisms for themselves. Finally, in good Methodist fashion, we will celebrate it all with a grand picnic! We have much to celebrate, and I hope you will be there to lift our praises and bless our young folks. Invite a friend or neighbor, and let us praise God together with all God's creation! Blessings on the journey, Jim Tongues of FireSunday's Sermon Snippet: Fighting Fairly (John 12:1-8) Conflict is a natural part of life and fills our every day. From the minor things to the major, we experience conflict with those around us because we have different ideas, priorities, and concerns. Conflict is not necessarily a bad thing; sometimes conflict is actually good as it can lead us to re-evaluate our beliefs and ourselves so that we might make much-needed changes for the better. Conflict is a part of life and indeed a part of the gospel. When Jesus was born, it created conflict with the powers that were, namely Herod the king. When Jesus began his ministry of teaching and healing, it immediately created conflict with the religious authorities. Still, conflict seems to be counter to the call for us to be kind in our words and temper our tongues. How are Christians to engage in the inevitable conflicts of life without losing our souls in the process? One example we have comes from the conflict between Judas and Jesus over Mary's gift of anointing Jesus with perfume worth a year's wages. Judas, wanting to have a larger purse from which to steal, creates a false choice of serving the poor or serving Jesus. Who - especially Jesus - would argue with selling the perfume to help the poor? This, after all, is the Jesus who told a rich man to sell all he had and give it to the poor. But Judas is being dishonest in protesting this way. It is the same way that today we avoid issues by pointing out "more important" issues that no one would normally argue against. A group of folks want to reach out to the hungry and homeless, but other folks are worried about spending money that way. Instead of engaging the issue honestly with their concerns, they create a false choice: "What about the kids in our community?" No one wants to be seen as being against kids, so they may drop the whole issue. We see this constantly as people in power play one issue against another so that, at the end of the day, nothing actually gets done and nothing changes. But Jesus engages this conflict honestly. He acknowledges the truth of what Judas has said (despite the dishonesty it hides). The poor will always be with you and you should want to do something for them, he admits. "But I am with you only a short while." Jesus engages the false choice put before him in an honest way and explains why he believes Mary's actions reflect the greatest priority of the moment. This is how we are called to engage our conflicts - with honesty! Tactics that obscure the truth and create false choices may win us the battle, but God's will will likely not be done. We are called to speak our truth - the truth as best as we understand it - to one another and to listen to the truths of others that together we might uncover God's truth. John Wesley called this conferencing and considered it to be a means of grace - one of the ways we experience God's grace in our lives. To confer simply means to bring together, and in bringing together our truths in the search for God's truth we find grace. May we share in that grace throughout the conflicts life brings our way! Praise in the Park This Sunday - 10 am!June 5th will be a special day of worship here at Port Church - Praise in the Park! Join us at 10 am at our park for worship including graduate recognition and confirmation of new members. Bring a lawn chair as only limited seating will be provided. Please reserve parking at the park for our elderly and handicapped folks. We will have a picnic following worship. Meat will be provided, so please bring a dish or two to share. Living in CommunityThanks to Bob for leading our prayer as a part of our worship on Sunday! Thanks to Meg for helping to serve communion this past Sunday! This Week at Port ChurchWednesday, June 1 10:00 am - 12:00 pm - Office Hours Limited office hours in Dianna's absence May 25 - June 9. Please feel free to call or email Pastor Jim if you need anything outside these hours. Sunday, June 5 10 am - Worship - Praise in the Park: "Taking Up the Mantle" Graduate Recognition and Confirmation Picnic to follow Looking AheadVacation Bible School - June 27-July 1
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