September 2008

St. Paul’s Luthern Church will be hosting their annual Oktoberfest on Sunday, October 12, 2008. The Young(er) Adults intend to attend as a group. Tickets for adults are $8 in advance and $10 at the door and for Children $5 both in advance and at the door with proceeds going to benefit Genesis and Meals on Wheels. If you want to purchase tickets in advance but can’t make it to the St. Paul’s Church office, call or email me and I’ll bike over to pick some up for you.

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This was done a while back, but I forgot to mention it at the time. Previously we had a refrigerator running, but sitting empty and an old pop machine running full. The refrigerator will be more efficient running full and the pop machine will be more efficient running not at all, so we moved the pop from the machine to the fridge. The fridge is the big stainless steel one in the salad room.

The rhyming of the title of this post was unintentional.

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Jenny and I are starting a sermon series this Sunday called “Peculiar Treasures.” We got the idea from a book by the same title by Frederick Buechner. He seems to have gotten the idea from the book of Exodus in which God says to the people of Israel: “Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine.” The treasures are the people, the individuals of the Bible. I thought of titling this sermon series “Peculiar Characters,” because I’m not sure all the characters are treasures. But Exodus 19.5 says “treasure” so “Peculiar Treasures” it is. I’ll be starting things off with the prophet Jonah this Sunday.

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It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to [save] 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.

–Bono, rock star and anti-poverty activist.
(Source: The American Prospect blog)

This is a thought along the lines I’ve been thinking all week.

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We’ll be handing out 250 toothbrushes at this years Trunk-or-Treat. And, yes, we’ll also be handing out candy. Hopefully the toothbrushes will cancel out the candy.

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From the October edition of The Parish Visitor:

A View From the Pulpit
Rev. John R. Collins

If you are looking for new ways to advance the kingdom of God, we have several opportunities right here in Coffeyville (listed in no particular order).

Scholarship Program: we have a United Methodist Coffeyville Community College student who has been attending the 8:10 worship service. His name is Joshua Mendy and he is from Gambia. Just before he left Gambia to come to the United States his father died and he faced the hard choice of coming to CCC or staying home. His family decided that it would be best for him to complete his education. Joshua has five siblings and his father was the family’s breadwinner. He could really use our help with paying for his tuition, books, and fees so that money can be left for his brothers and sisters. Checks should be made out to First UMC with “Scholarship: Joshua Mendy” in the memo line.

Common Ground: a United Methodist layman named Roger Dressler will be spearheading
flood recovery efforts in Montgomery County for several months. We have a prioritized list of things to be done and Roger anticipates outside teams coming in. You can help by joining him in the work directly, or, because of the number of volunteers expected, opening your home as a “Volunteer in Mission Bed and Breakfast.” We will also be trying to provide one group meal a day for the teams at the church and volunteers would be more than welcome for this work also. Contact the church office at 620-251-3240 or linda@coffeyvillefirstumc.org if you’re willing to host, bake, cook, help serve, or do dishes.

St. James United Methodist Church: our sister church across town is in the midst of an ambitious project to renovate their sanctuary. The Outreach Committee recently voted $500 in assistance to buy primer and paint, but labor is needed also. Let me know if you’re willing and able and I’ll put you in touch with Pastor Steve Griffith.

Betty Battaglear’s: we still have some work to do on Betty’s basement. Most of it will be painting. If you’ve ever painted in your own house we’ll consider you experienced. If you’ve ever painted for someone else we’ll put you down as a master painter.

God calls us to be partners (very junior partners, but partners none-the-less) in bringing about the reign of Christ. We have our marching orders, and we have ample opportunities. Let’s get to work.

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From A Peculiar Prophet, the blog of Bishop Will Willimon:

Mercy Despite the Misery Among North Alabama Methodists
In the past month I’ve met with dozens of United Methodists individually and in groups discussing the future of their church, their discipleship and their response to the Conference Priorities. Our discussions were focused on church matters, but in the course of those discussions at dozens of locations throughout our Conference, mostly in small congregations, I became aware of other concerns.

From what I’ve heard I am becoming increasingly troubled about the economics of the middle class. Methodism is a mostly middle class movement, in our past and today as well. Something about the way we do church (maybe our middle-of-the-road theology?) appeals to folks in the middle. Today, folks in the middle are hurting. The “misery index” – inflation linked with the wages and jobs – is squeezing our people. Add soaring energy prices to this, as well as the housing crisis that is greatly reducing the value of homes, and it’s a crisis. It is downright un-American that our tax and wage structure have enabled the rich to get richer and the middle class to get squeezed. It’s ironic that we have chosen to wage the ill conceived “War on Terrorism,” borrowing most of the money for the war, charging it to our grandchildren, when the economy is hurting mid dle class Americans more than Islamic terrorists. For the first time in our nation’s history, the middle class is shrinking.

I heard little from either political party, at their conventions, that specifically addresses the problems that are engendered by our government related to the economy. Alabama has lagged behind the rest of the nation economically; now we are among the first to feel the middle class squeeze. Dozens of our congregations have programs to feed “the poor.” They report for the first time ever they are having members of their own congregations ask for help and they are having record numbers ask for help. Pastors are reporting an increased number of pastoral care cases that are directly attributable to economic pressures. A United Methodist student at Birmingham Southern told me last week that he could not go to college (because his mother and his father have been laid off from their once good paying jobs) if BSC had not given him a full scholarship. He thanked me for the church’s help. I sure don& rsquo;t have the answer to this increased misery, but let’s be sure to push our leaders to get out there and listen, learn, and pray that God will give them the political creativity and courage to act.

Of course, my major concern is the church. And my point is not the ineptitude and insensitivity of our national leaders, which is self evident. My point is that the current middle class squeeze makes all the more remarkable the response of the United Methodists of North Alabama . I thank God that I have the opportunity to see people in the middle show, even amid various levels of misery, the mercy of Christ. Last Sunday I dedicated a beautiful new building at little Hopewell Church in the Southeast District. Their pastor led them in doubling their space, building mostly with their own hands, debt free, AND paying more than their fair share of Conference obligations (apportionments)! (Cost of church buildings is the main excuse that pastors give for their congregations not paying 100% of their apportionments.) This summer the apportioned giving of the Northeast and the Southeast Districts has risen rather than fallen.

Alabama Christians are near the top of national percentage of income giving to charity and church. Last year our churches (filled with people in the middle class squeeze) gave millions of dollars to help people in need – two dozen Habitat Houses, 160 Volunteer in Mission teams, half a million dollars in Katrina relief, and more. It’s an amazing testimony to Christian generosity and gratitude to have such stewardship even in tight economic times. It is a sign that the mercy of Christ for those in need is astir among us. It’s evidence that good preaching and teaching, passionate worship and opportunities bear fruit. In a culture in which people are encouraged to look after themselves and their families, to vote their self-interest, and conspicuous display of affluence is praised as realization of “the American dream,” Christian stewardship has become a countercultural witness.&nb sp;

Average, middle class people made this country great. The promise of entrance to the middle class has been, at least until this last decade, part of the American dream. But more than any of that, the mercy being shown toward those in need among us by people who are themselves under economic stress, is a credit to the power of Jesus Christ to enable average, ordinary, people in the middle, to be spectacularly faithful.

So, this Sunday, when the offering plate is passed, or you are asked to make your yearly commitment to the work of the church, thanks for your witness. The world is seeing the mercy of Christ in you.

Will Willimon

I quoted the entire post because what he says of Methodists in Northern Alabama is true of Methodists in Coffeyville, Kansas. Thank you for your witness.

Link: willimon.blogspot.com/2008/09/mercy-despite-misery-among-north.html

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I was going to post this without comment, but I decided to comment. Biking into church for youth group yesterday evening, I saw the following on the First Christian Church signboard:

If your religion doesn’t take you to church, it is doubtful if it will take you to heaven!

I’m not completely sure how I feel about this, but I think that I agree for the most part. I don’t think our salvation is secured by “religion,” but rather by faith, so I would make that substitution (I think whoever put the sign up is probably not making that distinction, but rather means for faith and religion to be understood interchangeably). That being said, real faith reveals itself in faithfulness. Worship was one of the “ordinances of God” that John Wesley wanted the people called Methodists to “attend to” in order that they might remain in love with God. If your faith doesn’t lead you to worship God on a regular basis it may not remain with you for long.

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“Paul declares that the gospel has already been announced to every creature under heaven ([Colossians] 1.23). What has happened in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in other words, is by no means limited to its effects on those human beings who believe the gospel and thereby find new life here and hereafter. It resonates out, in ways that we can’t fully see or understand, into the vast recesses of the universe.”

–N. T. Wright,
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, 97.

This is a point I have long held, that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ have cosmic implications, but Wright does a better job of putting it into words than I ever have.

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