Risk-Taking?

Today's blog was contributed by Joy Anderson, Associate Pastor of Missions

When I think of risk taking mission, I picture those experiences that call for sacrifice on the part of the participants or difficult situations for the volunteers or team members. I don’t necessarily think of any of our missions as risk-taking. But maybe we have been doing them so long that they have become routine and/ or normal to me. However, after reading the chapter on risk-taking mission in the book Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations and the devotionals in the book we are all reading, I realize that there is another way to look at risk-taking mission. Risk-taking pushes us out of our comfort zone into areas where we might not have been before. What might seem normal to me might be risk-taking for you. A couple of years ago when we were doing Body & Soul I had a church member tell me that he wasn’t comfortable going there to serve the homeless. Later he stepped out in faith and risk-taking service and started participating. For him that was moving beyond his comfort zone into a new area of service. He stretched himself and found that he enjoyed being a part of that ministry.
Mother Teresa spoke of “carrying our Lord to places where he has not walked before.” This means that the community of faith must always be a risk-taking community that is willing to move beyond the boundaries of safety and security. Christians must be willing to be there for those whom mainstream society may ignore, neglect, or even despise. We as Christians become the voice for the voiceless, a friend to the neglected, and an advocate for those who are treated unjustly. We are called to help in any way we can and to serve with love and compassion so that those whom we serve see Jesus.
It was risk-taking for FUMCR to underwrite the Sunday Body & Soul program financially and with volunteers. We stepped out in faith that the money would come through and people would volunteer. It was risk-taking to rush to New Orleans to help with the disaster recovery just after Katrina happened, because none of us had ever helped in that kind of situation previously and we didn’t know what we were getting into. It was risk-taking to start ESL classes last September not knowing if we would have anyone sign up for classes or not.
What is risk-taking for you? How can you stretch yourself to reach out and serve others? How can we do better as a church in our risk-taking mission? Where could we serve that we are not now serving?

Change?

Today's blog was contributed by Allyson George, Director of Children's Ministry.

After listening to Pastor Clayton preach on the subject of 'intentional Faith development, I realize that we are called to change. Change? It would be so much easier not to change, to just float along, not make waves, not dive into the word, stay static. However, this is not who God calls us to be. I joked in children's time about how 'I know everything there is to know about the Bible!' How far from the truth that is and the older I get the more I realize I have a lot to learn.

Grow and stretch and change. These are all words that Pastor Clayton discussed yesterday morning. But my nice comfortable 'couch potato' christianity is just right and I don't want to have to work hard on being a good Christian (make sure you said that in a whiny voice). Ok, not true, I love those moments when I am in a Bible Study and we all get excited about understanding a Bible passage a new way. I love the moment when a child answers my question in a way that challenges me to find a new way to explain a theological thought to a four year old. I love being challenged by my teenager about my faith and engaging in a dialogue that makes me realize how she is maturing spiritually. Yes, I also get frustrated when I cannot find words to communicate my faith to a friend, or I have had a tough week and yet it is time to 'go the extra mile' for a friend in need. It can be tough when I have ten children sitting in front of me in worship and they just don't seem to be 'getting' my wonderful teaching moment.

But as Robert Schnase wrote in 'Five Practices of Fruitful congregations,' "Christian faith is not static but dynamic." Just like a relationship with a friend, our relationship with God needs to be intentional and not an afterthought. In order to grow in our faith, we have to get up off the couch and keep trying, keep learning, keep studying, keep praying.

Intentional...

Today's blog was contributed by Rev. April Bristow, Associate Pastor of Caring Ministries

Do you ever look at a growing family member and ask “are you graduating from high school already?” or at the end of the month do you wonder…“where did my money go?” or you look down at the scale and ask yourself... “did I really eat that much over the holidays?” We learn, mostly the hard way, that if we do not keep a watchful eye on our time, resources or our energy they will slowly slip away from us. Plans and dreams will become remain unrealized unless we make a point to map out a plan and then follow through. If we do not identify goals, track progress and evaluate outcomes, we may find our lives spiraling out of control. To stay in tune and in pace with our lives, we need to be intentional about how we spend our most precious resources including our time, our money, our energy and our faith.

Being a Christian doesn’t just “happen”. If we are not intentional in investing in our faith through prayer, study, fellowship or service, time will go by and we may find ourselves in a spiritual rut and wondering “how did I get here?”

2 Peter 1:5-8 offers us these words to remind us that it is good to have faith, but your faith needs to be supported with intentional actions. It is a wonderful reminder that “all things work together for good”. ..

5 For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, 7and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. 8 For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The whole idea of intentionality is a theme that I am personally focusing on this year. I look forward to Sunday’s sermon and expect Pastor Clayton to challenge us to greater fruitfulness as we consider intentionally developing our faith.

Light Bulb Moments...

“The Word, Passionate, expresses an intense desire, an ardent spirit, strong feelings, and the sense of heightened importance,” says Bishop Robert Schnase in his book, Cultivating Fruitfulness (Abingdon Press, 2008 p. 25).

Worship could be described as intentional time given in community so that we might experience and encounter God.

I can say that I have been going to worship/church since I was born. My dad was a Methodist pastor and we were in worship every week and in worship multiple hours. I thought that was what everyone did. I was bored at times. I was sleepy at times. I was like every other kid, I thought. I sang in the children’s choir and rang bells. When I got older I went to youth group.

Worship wasn’t bad, in fact the music was familiar, and I liked to sing, but it wasn’t “fun.” (Except for children’s time) Worship was just something I did. Maybe you can relate… but by the time I was in High School things changed a little. I had been in a few pretty cool worship services… you know one of those services where everything just felt electric or like it was just for me. I remember some of those worship service were with special guest or special music where the music just lifted you out of your seat. Still others were on a retreat or mission trip. Most involved eating bread and sharing the common cup. Have you been there too?

I continued to go to church, throughout my college years. It was later in my life, I found myself longing for more of those moments, and I wondered why it wasn’t that way every week in worship. In talk with some of my friends about worship and how I just don’t get anything out of it some weeks, that The light bulb went off. One of my friends said, worship is not all about you and you get out of it what you put in. POW! What was my attitude like on those Sunday’s, how was I participating? Even later in my seminary training on leading worship, I was taught the audience of worship is not the congregation, but God. Everything we do in a worship service is done to give honor and glory to God.

Light Bulb… Passionate worship isn’t about the style of music! Passionate worship isn’t about being in a certain location! Passionate worship isn’t about the sermon!

Passionate worship is you and me, the whole church who have gathered in that space at that exact time, to encounter and experience God! The way I worship today, was changed by these light bulb moments…

What is one of your Light bulb moments about Passionate Worship?

Today's blog is written by Rev. Rodney Whitfield, Associate Pastor for Young Adult Ministries at FUMCR.

Passionate Worship??

I have never thought of using the word passionate in relation to the experience and practice of worship. At first it seems rather strange and uncomfortable.

I have heard passionate used in referring to emotions we need to keep under control meaning for example those whose rage is a danger to them and others. Passionate can mean one’s strong feelings might be expressed inappropriately. I can recall people using passionate regarding certain persons who are obsessed or infatuated with an idea or philosophy. I remember people saying that we need to get things back in balance because our zeal in this matter is out of bounds.

I have heard motivational speakers use the term passionate when asking the question, “What are you passionate about?” They mean what do you really care about, what matters to you when everything else fails? What will you give yourself to without reservation or what have you focused your life around? You need to answer this question because that is how you know, experience and express the reality of motivation. If you want to get motivated, you have to get down to basics or essentials. None of us are motivated about non essentials.

To apply passionate to worship is a new idea for me. However, after I reflect on it, I have to say that Schnase is right. Worship is alive and well in our lives when we care about it and it really matters to us. Worship is significant for us when we really believe something is at stake in that sacred time. If we expect to encounter God in these moments, it changes how we behave in preparation for it. We are passionate about something that is important and matters to us.

So how do we get there? How do we get passionate about worship both corporately, which we do as a church, and individually, which we do in our personal disciple walk? We have to do it, worship, that is. I believe we have to give ourselves fully to occasions for worship and we have to be open to receive those times when worship will touch us deeply. When I was a kid, comic books were the vogue. We did not have television or the internet. One of the ways comics illustrated an awakening moment was having a light bulb flash on brightly above a persons head. For worship to become a passion for us we need to have light bulb moments in worship. When such worship times happen for us, our life is changed and we are shaped differently. We meet a transcendence that pulls us out of ourselves, deepens our understanding of life, our relationship to God, and thereby makes us feel richer, stronger and truer to what God has created us to be.

Today's Blog was contributed by Rev. Ken Shamblin, Associate Pastor for Caring Ministries at FUMCR

Will You Leave the Huddle??

I’ve been here 13 years and I never thought I’d see today - our entire congregation (children, youth & adults) studying, worshiping, and praying through the same series of lessons. We are an independent bunch, so getting us all on the same page is amazing to me.

If we really engage over the next 5 weeks, I believe we’ll be blown away by what God can do in and through us.

Radical Hospitality - we all know it when we experience it, don’t we? Someone who goes out of their way to be sure we’re comfortable and have everything we need. The owner of a fine inn or bed & breakfast comes to my mind – someone who even anticipates what I need, being in a strange city and all. It’s often something we consume rather than something we offer. Heavens, we’re so busy, who’s got time – isn’t being nice, enough?

As I was thinking about Radical Hospitality today, I remembered Barbara. Barbara is someone from my childhood who I specifically remember acting differently from the rest of us. On Sunday mornings we’d huddle with our friends to catch up. Lots of Sundays Barbara would notice someone who was new or feeling a little out of place. She’d leave our huddle to go across the room and talk to them. Sometimes she’d even sit with them in worship. Occasionally she gave them a hug – on the first day! She even invited friends and neighbors to church.

When a guest came and Barbara wasn’t at church, no one left the huddle. We were comfortable with people we knew and it was Barbara’s thing anyway, right? It came natural for her.

Jesus said “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me (Matt. 18.5).” In Romans we read, “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God (15.7).”

Clayton said it on Sunday morning: we’ve been loved, invited and accepted by God. As Christians, we are called to extend that same welcome to others.

So, are you still in the huddle or are you ready to walk across the room?

-- Today's blog was written by Rev. Debra Hobbs Mason, Executive Associate Pastor at FUMCR