Help a Marine Returning from Afghanistan

Sargent Nathan Zello with the US Marine Corps has been fighting in Afghanistan for the past year.

His father Keith has been a member of Timberlake UMC and as a master carpenter has led and helped with many building projects, locally and in Mississippi following Katrina.

While Keith's son, Nathan was away, his wife left him, his baby is now being raised by Keith and Carrie. In addition the house was badly trashed. As you read the email below, you will see that Nathan is coming home soon. Nathan has seen extreme action and will have difficult adjustments to make. He also may have to go back sometime soon.

Nathan needs our help. Would you read the email below and pray about ways we could get involved. Keith needs one group to join him at the home in North Carolina and help clean up the mess and do light jobs such as painting. Another group can help with the more serious repairs listed in the email.

Just so you know the house is approximately 4 to 5 hours drive away from Lynchburg in North Carolina.

Read the email below and if you can help, please let me know.

From: zello1@aol.com [mailto:zello1@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 5:58 PM
To: larrydavies@sowingseedsoffaith.com
Subject: Sargent Zello's home repair

Larry:

Thanks again for your assistance in this manner.

His home needs all the carpet replaced, interior doors replaced, drywall work to patch holes in the wall, inside of the whole house needs painted do to the filth on the walls, the yard cleaned up due to all the trash left astray, loose toilets reset, front porch rail painted, curtains and blinds replaced from the dog damage, all the kitchen appliances deep cleaned and hopefully saved, if time permits put siding on the shed in the back yard.

I will get a portable storage unit to put his belongings in while the work is being done, I will have my tool trailer there, and I will be at the house until the job is done. I will go down there on the 29^th or the 30^th.

He is expected back between the 9^th – 13^th of May.

No service member should ever have to come home to such an awful situation. I have hard copy pictures of the house. Let’s welcome him home with a blessing from God.

Keith Zello

Prayer for Palm Sunday: A Bigger Picture

Prayers

Mission team in Jamaica

Palm Sunday starts our Holy Week

Pastors and Churches in the midst of leadership change

------------------------------

During this past week… a lot of important decisions were made by the Bishop and the District Superintendents of the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church. All week we participated in worship together, prayed together and finally made critical decisions together concerning our pastors and churches throughout Virginia.

Most pastors will not be moving and will be offered another year to continue their ministry where they are. Using what they have learned in the past to help their congregation move toward a future filled with God’s grace.

Most churches will not be receiving a new pastor so they are challenged within their stability to look for new opportunities to be the church in the midst of a hurting world.

Some pastors will be moving to another church and will leave one ministry behind to start anew.

Some churches will be saying good-bye to one pastor and will be looking toward a new pastor and a new future.

Most pastors will be very happy about the decisions made. Some will not.

Most church members will be very happy about the decisions made. Some will not.

On a more personal level, as I drove home, I knew that overall many of our pastors and church members will be pleased.

I also knew that some of our decisions would not be popular and that a few of our pastors and church members will not be pleased.

But, I have the opportunity to see a bigger picture.

Overall, I know we made the best decisions that could be made under difficult circumstances. I will face the smiles and the tears confident that we are creating the best possible opportunities for our pastors and our churches to offer the grace of Jesus Christ to our community and to our world.

Why am I writing this?

Because this morning as I read what all of us will be using today as we prepare our churches for Palm Sunday, I saw the Scripture with new eyes. I was reading the same verses but because of what I experienced, I understood what happened in a different way.

Jesus knew.

Jesus knew what was going to happen next.

He knew that he would receive the adulation of the crowd as he rode into Jerusalem. He knew the same crowd now singing “Hosanna!” would soon be shouting, “Crucify him!”

Here is the story from the Gospel of Luke.

As he rode along, the crowds spread out their garments on the road ahead of him. When they reached the place where the road started down the Mount of Olives, all of his followers began to shout and sing as they walked along, praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen. 

“Blessings on the King who comes in the name of the LORD!

Peace in heaven, and glory in highest heaven!”

But some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, “Teacher, rebuke your followers for saying things like that!”

He replied, “If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!”

But as they came closer to Jerusalem and Jesus saw the city ahead, he began to weep. (Luke 19:36-41)

In the midst of the adulation, Jesus wept because he knew what was coming.

So, why did he do it?

Because he too, saw a bigger picture and believed in the decisions that were made. Jesus knew that Palm Sunday, the last supper, the agonizing prayer in the garden, the betrayal, the arrest, the trials, the whipping, the crown of thorns, the carrying of the cross through the city streets, the nailing of his hands and feet to the wood, the agonizing hours of not only physical pain but the emotional agony of being abandoned all leading to a seemingly senseless death.

He knew. Jesus continued to see a bigger picture.

Today, this week, I more fully understand the depth of what Jesus must have endured during the final hours of his life.

So, I now more fully understand why Jesus wept.

I also more fully understand why Jesus did it? He knew but he did it anyway.

Jesus endured the agony of the cross because he knew resurrection would not be far behind.

Seeing the bigger picture would cause Jesus to weep in the midst of Palm Sunday.

Seeing the bigger picture would allow Jesus to endure the cross on Friday.

Seeing the bigger picture allows me to celebrate the joy of pastors and churches.

Seeing the bigger picture will cause me to weep in the midst of pastors and churches who will struggle.

Here is the biggest picture of all.

In the midst of our joys and yes, our pain Jesus Christ is working miracles.

So, at times we celebrate over Palm Sunday.

At times we weep over Good Friday.

In the end, we anticipate – Easter Sunday.

Next Sunday morning, just like we do every year, we will all remember that our celebrations and our joys all serve a greater purpose.

Easter Sunday makes it all worthwhile.

Jesus knew so in the midst of the celebration, he wept.

Jesus knew so in the midst of the cross, he endured.

Jesus knew so on Easter Sunday – he arose.

This morning we sing Hosanna but we also prepare to weep.

Next Sunday we celebrate what it really means to be a Christian.

As I pray this morning, I pray as someone who sees a bigger picture.

As I pray this morning, I pray you will join me in lifting up pastors and churches as they prepare for the future.

As I pray this morning, I celebrate and weep over the decisions that were made.

As I pray this morning, I am filled with eager anticipation of the Easter that is promised for us all.

May God fill you with the power and grace of the Holy Spirit so that Palm Sunday and Good Friday all lead to a glorious Easter morning.

Missions not Worship may be What Attracts New People

Mission as the Emerging Entry Point for New People by Lovett Weems

It is intriguing that the first connection people have with a congregation tends to change from time to time.

For churches with struggling adult Sunday Schools, it may be hard to imagine that for a long time the Sunday School was the most likely church entry point for most adults, as well as children and youth. Well into the 1950s in many denominations and regions, the most common invitation church members gave their new neighbors or co-workers was to attend their Sunday School class with them. It was not uncommon for church school attendance to run higher than worship attendance. In fact, the Sunday School sometimes seemed to receive more loyalty than the worship experience. This was particularly true on circuits where the Sunday School was an every Sunday experience while "preaching" occurred on a rotating schedule among the churches on the charge.

Most of us are more familiar with the pattern that came next, in which the most likely first connection with a congregation was a worship service. People looking for a church on their own no longer came early to ask which Sunday School class they should attend but came first to a worship service. And church members inviting others to attend their church would now more likely invite newcomers to "worship" with us at our church. In this period the worship attendance in most churches pulled ahead, sometimes well ahead, of Sunday School attendance.

We may be on the verge of another change, in which the entry point to a congregation for more and more people is through service and mission. This seems especially true for the young. For many young people, inviting their friends who don't attend church to "come to my church" may not be the most comfortable invitation to make or the one most likely to receive a positive response. On the other hand, few young people would be reluctant to invite any of their friends to join them for a service project sponsored by the church, and few young people will turn down such an invitation. The sense of commitment to help others among young adults is as strong as their excitement about most churches is weak.

It is too early to know if mission as an entry point to church will take hold in the way that Sunday School and worship did in prior times. But we do know that for increasing numbers of persons with a passion to serve and some disillusionment with the church, mission may be their most likely entry point – if churches are actually serving others and including new people in such service. We also know that, in this time when "belonging leads to believing," it is often only after a person comes to trust a community and to feel accepted by that community that there is much interest in what the community believes.

Lovett H. Weems, Jr.

What Does A Pastor Do?

From "Leading Ideas" By Elizabeth Evans Hagan

I've been a part of several conversations lately with new church attendees and community members where I have been asked the question: "Now, I know you work on your sermons, but what do you do the rest of the week?"

It's a timeless question that generations of pastors before me and beside me have been asked and have answered each in his or her own way; for there is no rule book about how a pastor structures his or her day. It's usually based both on the personality of the pastor and expectations of the congregation. It's a unique job with some deadlines (Sunday is always coming, for example), but it is also a job with a lot of unspecified responsibilities that can be attended to at a pace according to congregational needs. I always say that no day of the week is ever the same, and I never have reason to get bored!

But these are some of the "doing" tasks that my last week has included:

• One-on-one meetings with parishioners going through times of crisis, including taking communion to a church member in the hospital
• One-on-one meetings with families or individuals interested in learning more about the church or becoming official members of the congregation
• Follow-up conversations or emails with visitors from Sunday morning
• Planning meetings and phone conversations with church leaders about new initiatives for growth in congregational life
• Attending to the administrative tasks of the church office by supervising two other staff members, overseeing communication coming from the church office, and planning the church calendar with the church administrator
• Attending to church outreach by updating the Facebook fan page, twittering about important events, working with church administrator to update contact list for weekly email, making sure the website is up to date, and of course blogging when new ideas come for posts
• Meeting with church members who come into the office to ask questions or say hello
• Representing the church at community functions
• Preparing for upcoming Bible studies
• Planning for worship and editing the bulletin
• Connecting with colleagues in the area for meals for shared learning and support
• And, of course, preparing for sermons by researching, meditating, and sitting still long enough for God to have the opportunity to form my thoughts in the direction of the message the congregation most needs to hear

And the list could go on. It also could record things that I wish I had more time for – additional parishioners I would like to have contacted, more study time I wished I had. When I think about what I do and don't, I always try to give myself grace to embrace the possibilities found in the next week.

While I can't answer the "What does a pastor do?" question for all my colleagues, know this: there's so much more to the pastoral life than what you see on Sundays. Sundays are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the focus tasks of our job.

Yet, I wouldn't have it any other way! I get surprised daily by something new. I am and will continue to be grateful for this wonderful opportunity to put my energy and time into an organization with a great future because, in the end, church life is not about the pastor. It's always about the congregation. This is why we work so hard. Pastors are just the catalyst for helping congregations reach their potential as we are transformed together into the community of faith that God would have us be.

Maybe, then, another good question for us to ask is: "What do congregation members do to enrich and support the lives of their faith community?"

Elizabeth Evans Hagan is pastor of Washington Plaza Baptist Church in Reston, Virginia. Hagan is an alumna of the Lewis Center's Lewis Fellows leadership development program for young clergy. This article originally appeared on her blog found at http://preacherontheplaza.wordpress.com.

Salem UMC Mission Team in Nashville TN

On Friday, I received word from the Tennessee Conference Disaster Coordinator, that our team had been reassigned to Dickson, Tennessee. Dickson of a town of just over 19,000 people 40 miles west of Nashville. Our team is staying at First United Methodist Church in Dickson, in the "Church Hospitality House. This year for the first time, many groups in the town are providing for us. Last night First UMC fed us supper, and tonight the local Rotary Club provided us with a BBQ feast. Every night a different group from this town is providing us with a meal. Yet the real blessing is in the ministry that is taking place here.

Each day, the fifteen of us split up into two groups. One group is working on a house that received three feet of water in the basement, which contained the kitchen and a living area. We are tearing out and reinstalling insulation, sheet rock, and a bathroom at this house. This lady works at a Psychiatric Hospital, and has provided lunch for our group each day. The Red Cross, and the Tennessee Conference are helping her with the cost of materials.

The second group is working on the home of a family of nine. Yes I said a family of nine. This family lost everything in the flood. Amazingly, this same family had lost everything a few years before to a tornado. They received some money from FEMA, that  they had used to purchase a lot on higher ground. Someone had then given them a 1970 model two bedroom mobile home. The father who is legally blind has taken the trailer and built around it, in an attempt to provide room for his large family.   

This family is in such need, their cabinets are empty, their living room is bare, and their children do not have beds. All the appliances in their trailer are original equipment from 1970, and show their age. The father apologized, when we purchased a $48.00 breaker box for him. He does not know that by the end of the week we plan to provide the children with beds, and possibly new appliances for their kitchen.

We welcome your continued prayers, and praise the Lord for the chance to serve Him in Tennessee.  

Blessings, Charles Schooler, Salem UMC

Evington, VA.

Welcoming Newcomers -- Recruiting Volunteers

Top 10 Learnings about Welcoming Newcomers -- By Keith Anderson – From Leading Ideas

Churches often define their success in welcoming newcomers by the number of people who become members of their church. At Redeemer we have shifted our focus to improving the quality of our welcome, and it feels like maybe we're on to something. We've found our way mostly through trial and error — and listening carefully to the feedback of our visitors and newest members. These are the top ten things we have learned about welcoming newcomers to our church over the last five years:

1. Everyone is different and nothing is ever straightforward. This is our mantra. There is no one pattern for the way people enter, engage, and join our congregation. Every person and every situation is different. We try to honor that and not insist on uniformity. This requires flexibility and improvisation on our part, but it enriches our understanding of welcoming and the beauty and diversity of the Body of Christ.
2. Expect new members. We used to wait until we had a critical mass of newcomers to schedule a day to welcome new members. Now, at the start of the year, we schedule two dates a year to welcome newcomers - one in the fall and one in the spring. This has helped us move from a mindset of "if people come" to "when people come." That approach has extended into Sunday mornings as well. We confidently expect that there will be someone new and plan accordingly.
3. Hold no classes. We don't have newcomers classes. Our only welcoming event is a newcomers brunch that we have a few weeks before welcoming new members in the spring and fall. The brunch is always a graceful event. Newcomers can meet each other and meet current members of the congregation. We find that the inculcation that congregations try to instill at newcomers classes happens more naturally and more fruitfully through conversation, visitation, involvement, and developing relationships. People don't want to hear about it; they want to experience it.
4. Maintain an expansive idea of community. You don't have to be a member of our congregation to be part of our community. Thanks to the internet and social media, people are part of our community long before they arrive at church — if they ever come. They have a sense of who we are, what we do, and how we live the Gospel through our website, Facebook Page and Sermon Blog.
5. Understand people's passions. Listen for the way God is calling people to live their faith — at work, home, and/or in the church. Set people free to follow God's call.
6. Enable people to participate right away. Our congregation used to have an unspoken waiting period for participation. People would regularly be members for months or years before being asked to take a leadership role. Now, we encourage people to get involved before they are members. We believe that you don't need to be a "member" before you can start living out God's calling in your life.
7. Know that it's not a failure if someone does not join. The end result of welcoming is not necessarily membership. If someone only comes for one Sunday, then we have ministered to them in some way. If people are with us for a while and decide not to join, we feel we've contributed to their discernment process. If you make welcoming about membership, it's a set up for disappointment. Not everyone will join, and there will never be enough new members. Make it about ministry instead and decide how you will measure success.
8. Expect that the individual will transform the institution, not the other way around. We have a dream that one day, when we tell the stories of our congregation, we won't tell time by when pastors came and left, but when people came to our church — not "And then Pastor Anderson was called...," but rather, "Then Karen and Katie joined the congregation...." We expect newcomers to transform us, not for the church to make everyone the same.
9. Everyone is a greeter. One of the best things we did to be more welcoming was no longer to have official greeters — those people churches place near the front door to welcome people. By designating certain people, it let everyone off the hook. Now, it's a shared responsibility. Every Sunday after church, as I greet people leaving the sanctuary, there are several members engaging visitors in conversation after church. It is a beautiful scene.
10. Decide to be assertive. There's always a fear that you will drive people away if you are too assertive. That's a risk we are willing to take. Except for one or two exceptions in five years, this has never been a problem. Indifference and indecisiveness are far worse than assertiveness.

Keith Anderson is pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Woburn, Massachusetts. He blogs at pastorkeithanderson.net, where this article first appeared.

Ministry Minute: Ideas for Recruiting Volunteers

n  Written by Sue Brage

Permalink: http://www.churchvolunteerdaily.com/?p=2390

Take a minute to invite someone into ministry... we make it easy! This unique resource is a great team activity for your next staff or leaders meeting! Simply follow the three steps below and you'll have everything you need to recruit new volunteers in a personal and creative way.

It seems like a no-brainer, but statistics show the number one reason people volunteer is because someone asked them! Here are 3 quick steps for inviting someone into ministry. Think of it as having a party - and your prospective volunteers are the very important guests...

Step 1 - The Guest List
Make a list of people with the right qualities. Need someone friendly? Organized? Someone tech-savvy?

Step 2 - The Invitation
When it comes to inviting people - get personal. A handwritten invitation or note will really get their attention! In your note, share how they will make a difference and describe why you enjoy serving. End with a personal invitation to meet up and talk about the possibilities! (Download our Ministry Minute invitation to use with your team.)

Step 3 - The Party - a face to face meeting
Be sure to follow-up to arrange a time to meet face-to-face and share what God is doing in your ministry, and how your guest could benefit from getting involved. If they are not ready to commit, invite them to a casual event where they could simply be around the people and see the ministry in action. There's nothing like experiencing ministry first-hand!

Tragedy in Japan: What can we do?

Like you, I have been watching with horror the news from Japan. I’ve also received feedback from a member of our family in Hawaii and from my mother who is attending a funeral in Los Angeles. In addition, several of my Facebook friends are reporting stories from relatives or friends in Japan.

So far, damage in Hawaii and on the West Coast seems moderate but the damage in Japan is far more severe. Over the next few days, I expect we will hear of considerably more destruction than is being reported now. Now, the danger of a nuclear meltdown seems likely. I can’t begin to imagine what that would do.

How can we help?

Because Japan is not a third-world country I anticipate they will have more specialized needs. I’m waiting to hear from UMCOR within the United Methodist Church and from other mission contacts as to what those needs are.

So, what should we do now?

Pray. We can pray for the people who are going through so much misery. We can also pray for God to guide our congregations for an appropriate response.

Special Offering. I would suggest giving a special offering this Sunday to store within your church until we hear more ideas. Within a few days, we should be receiving more information.

Email Suggestions. This is where all of us working together can help each other. Some of you are better at doing online research and some of you have great mission contacts of your own. Please find out what you can and offer suggestions over the next few days.

As I hear more ideas on how we can provide help, I will gladly share them.

I believe we are never stronger than when we reach out to help those caught in the grip of a disaster. May God guide us all as we seek to do our part to help those in need.

Psalm 56 has a verse that offers comfort in the midst of our tragedy. In the midst of his own tragedy David writes: “But when I am afraid, I will put my trust in you.” (Verse 3)

I pray that the people of Japan and all the rest of us will find God in the midst of our fear. May we feel God’s holy and protective presence in the midst of our anguish. May the people of Japan see in us the comforting hands and feet of God.

God bless, Larry

From UMC.org – An article from UMCOR our relief agency.

http://www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=lwL4KnN1LtH&b=5723451&ct=9172069&notoc=1