|
10/29/2018 October 29th, 2018 A New Year of MinistryOn November 12 at 7 pm, we will be holding our yearly charge conference. At charge conference, we review with our district superintendent (DS) the past year of ministry and make plans for the year to come. This year, our DS Rev. Victor Gomez will be leading charge conference differently than we have done before. Charge conference will be a special worship service focusing on the our vision and call to ministry. Everyone is welcome to come and be a part of this worship! Blessings on the journey, Jim Update on General Conference 2019As you likely have heard, our denomination's General Conference will be meeting at the end of February, 2019 to discuss the recommendations of the Commission on the Way Forward. This commission was tasked with coming up with a plan for how we can faithfully move forward as a denomination given the diversity of belief on issues of human sexuality. They drafted three potential plans that were submitted to our bishops. The Council of Bishops endorsed the plan that would allow more local autonomy with the local congregation having the ability to set its own standards on related issues but passed along all three plans for consideration by the General Conference. This past week, our Judicial Council reviewed all three plans to determine whether they were in keeping with the Constitution of our denomination. They ruled that the endorsed plan was largely constitutional with only minor adjustments needed to bring it fully in line. One of the other plans - one to maintain the status quo but with increased enforcement and mandatory penalties for disobedience - was ruled to be largely unconstitutional as it sets up a different standard for obedience on issues of sexuality than on other areas thus bypassing the guarantee of fair process. No ruling was given on the third plan that creates three related denominations as it already required changes to the constitution. Please continue to keep our denomination and our delegates in your prayers as we wrestle with these sensitive issues. While this is a stressful, uncertain time to be United Methodist, remember that at the end of the conference we will still serve a wonderful God who is capable of amazing things, and we will still be family despite the differences we may have. How we treat one another in this time is as important as what we may wind up deciding. Living in CommunityThank you, Tina, for supplying our desserts for Wednesday at the Port recently! Thank you, Susie, for preparing our quarterly giving statements! We appreciate all you do to handle our money well. Thanks to everyone who worked on the cookbook project! From submitting recipes to editing the book, from buying copies to selling them, your generosity of time and money is greatly appreciated! We have sold out and raised a lot of money to care for the windows. Our windows have been prepared for the final framing of the new covers! The project should be completed in the next few weeks. Don't forget to continue praying for the leader(s) of the church you drew last week. Reminder: Please remember to bring your financial pledge for 2018 to worship on November 18. This Week at Port ChurchWednesday, October 31 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours No Wednesday at the Port Thursday, November 1 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Sunday, November 4 9:30 am - Worship: All Saints' Sunday Rev. Gene Williams preaching 11:00 am - Sunday School Wednesday, November 7 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours 6:00 pm - Wednesday at the Port 6:45 pm - Cantata Practice Looking AheadChristmas Shoebox Packing Party - November 11
Charge Conference - November 12, 7 pm Drive-thru Nativity - December 14 & 15 10/22/2018 October 22nd, 2018 Punctuation and Other Life-giving Gifts.Have you noticed how much communication has changed over the last decade or so? Through email, social media posts, and texting, we have lost the formality and even rules of grammar that once dominated our written communication. One of the most telling signs of this change has been the near extinction of the simple period. Write a text, a short email, or a post, and how do you end it? Most likely not with a period. An exclamation point - perhaps! An emoji - likely😀 A hashtag - #aslikelyasnot Nothing at all - probable But a period - absolutely no way. A recent study has shown that people now see a period in digital communication as passive aggressive. To use a period, you had to choose to use a period, and that must mean there is a hidden message behind it. Yet a period serves a very useful purpose in the written word. In an article I recently read, the author defended the importance of using periods in written communication, not because of any traditionalist argument about what is grammatically correct but simply because periods are a gift to the reader. The author believes this because a period says to the reader, "Take a breath, process what you've just read, and then prepare for what's coming up." It doesn't take long, but the short rest it provides between sentences is life-giving. I believe that Sundays are a lot like the period that divides this sentence from the next one. Sunday lies on that boundary between the week behind us and the week ahead. When we spend time with God on Sunday, it is the chance to take a little bit of time to reflect on where we have been and where we are going. Sundays punctuate our weeks and give us the break we need between the completion of one and the onslaught of another. It gives us the time to take a breath, reflect on what we have just experienced, and prepare ourselves for what is coming up. On Sundays, we remember who we are to God, we rejoice in the triumphs of what we have done over the past week and accept grace for our failings, we discern who God wants us to become, and we dedicate ourselves to doing what God is calling us to do in the new week. Like replacing periods with exclamation points, emojis, and hashtags, it may be tempting to replace Sundays with something more exciting yet ultimately exhausting!!!!!!!!!!!! Or we could just do away with them altogether and make Sundays no different that any other day Either way, we miss out on the much-needed life-giving gift of Sunday: a time to rest, reflect, and prepare for what's ahead. May Sundays be a gift of rest between your weeks. (No passive aggressiveness intended) Blessings on the journey, Jim Sunday's Sermon SnippetPromises to God: Prayers (Romans 15:30-33) Last week, we began exploring our vow to participate in the ministries of the church through our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. We are each of us a minister of the gospel of Jesus and are called to do our part to further his work to change the world. Over the next few weeks we are going to look at these five ways we have committed to participate, and we begin this week with the first - prayers. Prayer is simply having a conversation with God - sharing our hearts with God and listening to what God has to say to us. We often think of prayer as telling God what we want to have happen and hoping that God will do it, but there is more to it than that. When we participate in ministry through our prayers, it is not just giving God our wishlist and hoping to change God's mind. God presumably wants the ministries we have been called to do to be successful as well. So what does participation through prayer do? The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome about this very thing. He asked that they join him in the struggle of his ministry through prayer. Prayer unites us and helps us to share the burdens of ministry. Surely there are those will bear the brunt of ministry as the hands and feet carrying it out, but those who support it through prayer share the stress, worry, and weight of it all so that those serving are not alone. Paul recognized that the simple idea of being able to be present one day with this church would be refreshing to him. Leaders can take encouragement from knowing that they do not work alone but have the support of prayers from others. Participation through prayer means praying for our ministry leaders (see article below for ideas on this). All the while, Paul told them what he would like for them to ask God for, but he recognized that what mattered was God's will. This brings us to an important point about prayer. Some see prayer as easy, and it is. They say it is an easy way to start participating in ministry, and perhaps it is. Prayer is easy in that anyone can do it and there is no need for anything special to do it. Yet just because prayer may be easy does not mean that it isn't dangerous. In fact, prayer is one of the most dangerous things we do in our faith lives, because when we pray well we don't just tell God what to do but also listen for what God wants us to do. It is easy to pray for another person - whether for their healing and comfort or for their leadership in ministry. What happens when we listen to God in return? Often God changes us, and the answer to prayer becomes us. When we listen, God often tells us what we need to do to help those we pray for, and sometimes that means changing our lives. Prayer can be a dangerous yet wonderful thing. We are called to share the burdens of ministry through our prayers for one another and our church. Through our prayers, God changes us so that in ministry we will change the world! Praying for Our Church LeadersAs I shared in Sunday's sermon, I recently encountered an article published by UMC Communications on "15 Ways to Pray for Your Pastor." While I certainly welcome any of those 15 ways of prayer personally, I think that by and large they apply to how we should be in prayer for all of the servant leaders in our congregation. While we may need to think a little more broadly on a few of them - preaching, for instance, could be thought as worship leadership or how we proclaim the gospel in general - the vast majority are areas in which I believe any of our leaders could benefit from encouragement and prayer. On Sunday, we had everyone take a slip of paper with the name of a leader or group of leaders to pray for for a few minutes each day in the coming weeks. If you weren't able to get one, more slips will be available this upcoming Sunday as well. You can email Pastor Jim, and he can draw one and let you know who it is. As you pray for the one(s) you chose, check out the article on praying for leaders, and lift them up in prayer each day for a few minutes. Charge Conference, November 12We are busy preparing for our yearly Charge Conference here at Port Church scheduled for November 12 at 7 pm. Charge Conference is the time in we meet with our District Superintendent to review the ministries of the last year and make plans for those in the year to come. Church leaders make reports on what their ministries have done, we approve the budget to fund ministries for the next year, and we elect leaders for the next year. While the Charge Conference deals with some of the formalities of business, at its core is a time of reflection on who have been this past year and who God is calling us to become. I hope you will be able to join us! Living in Community Thank you, Chris, for an amazing dinner of pulled pork and macaroni last Wednesday! We appreciate your sharing your gift with us! Thank you, Courtney, Tina, Jason, and Brenna, for keeping the praise band going this week! Don't forget to bring your items for the Harvest Table to benefit the food pantry. This Week at Port ChurchWednesday, October 24 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours 6:00 pm - Wednesday at the Port 6:45 pm - Cantata Practice Thursday, October 25 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Sunday, October 28 9:30 am - Worship: "Promises to God: Presence" 11:00 am - Sunday School Wednesday, October 31 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours No Wednesday at the Port Happy All Saints' Eve! Looking AheadChristmas Shoebox Packing Party - November 11
Charge Conference - November 12, 7 pm Drive-thru Nativity - December 14 & 15 10/16/2018 October 16th, 2018 Mistaken for JesusLast week, I had the privilege of accompanying our son on a field trip. As we stood at one point awaiting instructions, a young child from his school came up to me and began to grin. He looked a little bit familiar, but I wasn't sure who he was. "Hello, Jesus!" he said. After a moment of shock over the boy's confusion, I realized that the boy had likely been at our Vacation Bible School this past year. I had taught his class the stories about Jesus each night, so in his young mind he had mistaken me for Jesus. As I bent down to speak with the boy to clear up the misunderstanding, I heard my son ask one of his friends, "Why did he just call my dad Jesus?" It is a strange thing to be mistaken for Jesus. I felt awkward in that moment to even be compared in any way to Jesus. I fall so short of the glory of God that it seemed ridiculous to think anyone - even a five-year-old - could make that mistake. Yet this boy's joy in saying hello got me to thinking. Isn't being mistaken for Jesus our goal in helping others? Don't we want others to see Jesus instead of merely us when they witness what we do and how we live? Doesn't God call us as the body of Christ to be just that - Christ for the world? Perhaps the discomfort with being mistaken for Jesus is really the discomfort at how knowing I often don't live in a way I want others to mistake for Jesus. If I feel this way, shouldn't I try to change how I am living so my witness will look more like Jesus than it does not? This small child reminded me of how important it is that I take my discipleship seriously each and every moment because folks just may mistake what I do for what I believe Jesus would do. Today, I give thanks for and am humbled and convicted by this gift from God that came in the form of a mistake. May you live your life today in a way that witnesses to the boundless grace and fierce love of Jesus Christ! Blessings on the journey, Jim Sunday's Sermon SnippetPromises to God: Participate (James 2:14-26, 1 Peter 2:4-10) When we are baptized or join a congregation, we make several vows - promises to God. We promise that we repent of our sin, accept the freedom God gives to do good, and trust and serve Jesus as our savior. We also make promises of what we will do - promises not only to God but also to one another. Among these is the vow to participate faithfully in the ministries of the church by our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. In fact, any time someone joins the church, we who are already members renew this same promise to one another. Over the next few weeks, we are going to explore this vow and what it means for how God is calling us to change the world. Before we jump into the ways we participate, I want us to consider what that word itself means. Participation has gotten somewhat of a bad name recently as certificates and trophies are given out for participating in almost any event. "You showed up!" the certificate proclaim - not the most inspiring thing to congratulate someone for. Yet participation is a big deal. To participate means to share in and do your part for something larger. In his letter, James wrote about the need to actually do something to help others than just to think about them. Faith without deeds is dead, he said. To participate is more than just showing up - it means actually doing something. We all have a part to play in any ministry of the church. Peter wrote in his first letter to the church that we are each and every one of us a priest and minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Ministry is not just what the pastors and a select lay leaders do. Ministry is what we all participate in to make happen on a larger scale than anyone of us could accomplish alone. Some of us may be the hands and feet making things happen, but it also requires the support of others through prayers, encouragement, gifts, and being present. Participation in the church's ministry - in a large way or small - is nothing to be mocked, as we all are called to share in and do our part for the work God wants done. Sometimes, however, we are satisfied with our part being too little. We pray a little, show up a little, give a little, serve a little, and witness a little, and we call it enough. Yet we are called to be more - not just to do more, but to be more! Participation means doing your part faithfully. Would we deserve a certificate of participation from God for what we are doing for the gospel of Jesus? Are we praying, being present, giving, serving, and witnessing faithfully both withing and outside the church? In the coming weeks, we will explore how we are called to do these things and hopefully discover how God is calling us to grow in our discipleship to change the world! Living in CommunityThank you to everyone who baked goods or came out to support our confirmation students' bake sale to support the local SPCA! With your help, they raised around $225 to buy supplies for pets in need of a home. Thanks again to Monica and the folks at the 340 Quick Stop for giving us a place to set up! This Week at Port ChurchWednesday, October 17 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours 6:00 pm - Wednesday at the Port 6:45 pm - Cantata Practice Thursday, October 18 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Sunday, October 21 9:30 am - Worship: "Promises to God: Prayers" 11:00 am - Sunday School Wednesday, October 24 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours 6:00 pm - Wednesday at the Port 6:45 pm - Cantata Practice Looking AheadNo Wednesday at the Port - October 31
Christmas Shoebox Packing Party - November 11 Charge Conference - November 12, 7 pm Drive-thru Nativity - December 14 & 15 10/8/2018 October 08th, 2018 Choosing JoyI recently read an article about a popular college class that is taught on the topic of happiness. The class explores some of the latest studies on what helps people to be happier. One of the major points that students discover is that, once a person's basic needs are met, happiness is largely a choice. We, however, often think of happiness as being a result of our life circumstances. If only we got a new job, if only our wayward child followed our advice, if only we had a new car, purse, boat, etc., if only our party were in control of things, then we would be happy, we tell ourselves. Researchers have found that our circumstances contribute only a small bit to our feelings of happiness. The larger factor in our happiness is our choice - our choice of whether to be happy. Our happiness increases when we choose to focus on being grateful. All of this, of course, should come as no surprise to us, because this is something that God's people have known for quite a while. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica: "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus." He knew that our joy is not dependent on what is happening in our lives but instead on the choice to rejoice. Focusing our thoughts in prayer and giving thanks no matter what are ways to increase our joy. Furthermore, this is God's will for us - that we would find joy in all things. Choose joy today! Pray and give thanks, for this is the happiness God wants for you! Blessings on the journey, Jim Sunday's Sermon SnippetLegacy: Leaving an Inheritance (Ephesians 1:3-14) Despite what the official rankings say, we are among the richest people in the world. We are not self-made men and women - we have inherited every bit of our great wealth. For God has made us heirs to the greatest inheritance in the world: every spiritual blessing, redemption, forgiveness, unity in Christ, the indwelling of the Spirit. There is no amount of money that can buy these things. They are simply given to us as we believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are adopted into sonship - a Roman legal term meaning that we are made full heirs - by the God who has everything to give. The inheritance of God is not like what we think of inheritances to be. For one thing, it is not about money and physical possessions. In our prayer book, we have a beautiful, funeral prayer that gives thanks to God for what the departed "has given us to make us what we are, for that of him/her which lives and grows in each of us." This is our true inheritance from those who have gone before us and indeed from God. Our inheritance is the way our lives have been shaped and how we have been changed by our blessings. Another way our inheritance from God differs from our common understanding of inheritances is that it cannot be divvied up. It is not a treasured item such that heirs must decide who gets it and who doesn't. The inheritance of God is not something that is split into smaller chunks the more heirs there are. Being from God's kingdom, it grows even larger with every new heir, because part of the inheritance is the unity of all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. The danger in being an heir to such a lavish riches as God's grace is the temptation to squander. God blesses us so that we might become a blessing to others. Our of selfishness, we might use our blessings only to enrich ourselves and forget about others. Out of fear, we might hoard our blessings so that they are no longer a blessing to anyone. Out of vulnerability, we might contort our blessings to become a curse to those who are not like us. This is perhaps our greatest challenge in our divided world just as it was in the church in Ephesus to which Paul wrote this letter. He spoke of how the Gentile and Jewish Christans were made one as Christ destroyed the dividing wall between them. Yet they remained divided, thus rebuilding that wall. Today, we are tempted to draw lines between who's in and who's out, who's a true Christian and who's not, who's right and who's wrong. Yet Paul says God's purpose is to bring all in unity under Christ. God had told Abraham and Sarah that through them all families would be blessed. It is not up to us to determine who we share the inheritance of blessings with for God is calling us all. To avoid squandering our inheritance from God, we need to have the same humility as Paul in recognizing that God's blessings are not about how good we are but about how good God is. We need to praise God's glory not only in our words but in how we live our lives. We need to share the blessings given to us as freely they were given to us. What we do with the inheritance given to us by God and those who have gone before us is a part of the legacy we leave. Are we growing or squandering the inheritance that has been passed down to us? How is God calling us to grow our inheritance? What legacy does God want us to leave our children and children's children? Promises to GodOn Sunday, we witnessed the baptisms and confirmation of several of our youth. We heard as they made their vows to serve God, follow Jesus, and live in the Spirit, and we joined together in renewing the vows that we declared at our own baptisms. While we often talk about the promises of God - the promises that God has made to take care of and redeem us - we too have made promises to God in these vows. In the coming weeks, we are going to explore one of these vows that we have made and the series of life-changing promises held within its simple words. Join us this Sunday as we kick off our new worship series "Promises to God: Exploring Our Vow to Change the World!" Living in CommunityCongratulations to Madalyn, Grace, Gabe, and Chelsea on their baptisms and Amelia on her confirmation this past Sunday! We are so proud of you and know God has great things in store for each of you. Welcome to our new sisters and brother in Christ! This Week at Port ChurchWednesday, October 10 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours 6:00 pm - Wednesday at the Port Youth Trip to United Basketball Game 6:45 pm - Cantata Practice Thursday, October 11 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Saturday, October 13 12 noon - 2 pm - Confirmation Mission Fundraiser at 340 Quick Stop Come out to help our confirmation class support the SPCA's work for animals in our community! Sunday, October 14 9:30 am - Worship: "Promises to God: Participate" 11:00 am - Sunday School Wednesday, October 17 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Charge Conference Paperwork Deadline 6:00 pm - Wednesday at the Port 6:45 pm - Cantata Practice Looking AheadHarvest Table to benefit Food Pantry, October 14 - November 17
Charge Conference Paperwork Deadline - October 17 No Wednesday at the Port - October 31 Christmas Shoebox Packing Party - November 11 Charge Conference - November 12, 7 pm Drive-thru Nativity - December 14 & 15 |
News and UpdatesFind out what is going on at Port Republic UMC this week and in weeks to come! Archives
January 2019
Categories |
RSS Feed