Sango’s Great Faith Experiment!

Sango’s Great Faith Experiment!

A chicken and a pig were walking down the road early one morning. After awhile the pig said, “I’m tired and it’s breakfast time. Let’s stop and eat somewhere.”

The chicken agreed and shortly they saw a diner. They paused at the door to read the menu posted there, where they saw the words, “Special Today, Ham and Eggs.”

“Sounds good,” said the chicken. “Let’s go on in.”

“Not me,” replied the pig. “For you, ham and eggs is a contribution, but for me it’s a commitment!”

Sometimes it does seem so much easier to make a contribution than a commitment. Yet I wonder where we’d be in terms of eternity if Jesus had decided that making a contribution was enough. Are we saved because Jesus made a contribution? Of course not. Jesus made a commitment to us, even to the point of death.

On Nov. 8, we will recognize the veterans of our congregation. Veterans Day is only three days later. Someone once defined our veterans as “those who once wrote a blank check made payable to the United States of America for an amount up to and including their lives.”

It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that churches usually mount stewardship campaigns during November, the same month that commemorates the commitments made by our veterans and celebrates a special day of Thanksgiving. Commitment arises out of thankfulness and the desire to preserve the blessings of the present for posterity.

And all that brings me back to Sango’s Great Faith Experiment.

When you receive your pledge packets for 2010 this month, you will easily notice that pledging is different this year than before. You may not have ever seen a pledge campaign like this.

We are calling it the Great Faith Experiment. We are still asking everyone to fill out a pledge card and bring it to church on Nov. 22. That Sunday we are calling Commitment Sunday, not pledge Sunday. We are asking everyone to make a commitment, not just a contribution.

But this time, we will make our commitments to God, not to the finance committee.

Your pledge packet includes a letter from Mike Dowdy, stewardship chairman, a pledge car and an envelope addressed to you. Please bring your completed pledge card and the self-addressed envelope, to church on Nov. 22. During the service there will be a time to come forward to lay your envelope, with the pledge sealed inside, on the altar as a gesture of solemn commitment to God and God’s work of redemption by our church.

Afterward, volunteers will collect the envelopes and pray for each person by name that God may grant each of us grace to remain faithful to the commitments we have made. Then they will mail the unopened envelope back to you.

In years past, pledges were opened by the stewards and an estimate of annual giving was made from the total. In fact, though, this method served no real purpose because the budget is built each fall based not on anticipated pledges but on best estimates of fixed costs and of the minimal money needed to do the works of discipleship of our church.

This year the finance committee has very carefully crafted a budget for 2010 that recognizes the recessionary times we are in. The budget to go before the church council is about 7 percent lower than 2009’s budget.

After the council approves the budget on Nov. 1, we will provide everyone with a copy that explains what each ministry area does and the resources needed next year to do it. You will have this document well before Nov. 22 so you may consider it while making your commitment.

We call this new way of pledging the Great Faith Experiment because we’ve never done pledging this way. It’s a matter of faith because the leadership of Sango UMC is filled with faith that the good people of the church will meet the financial needs of the church next year, and then some. And it’s great because, well, because being a part of our family of faith really is the greatest thing on earth!

Be committed – make a commitment on Nov. 22!

Update: The budget approved by the church council on Nov. 1 for 2010 amounts to $275,332, a decrease of $23,760 (-8.6%) from 2009.

Beggars for grace

There has been a lot of news coverage of “tea parties” and town hall meetings and the recent protest march in Washington, D.C. There is obviously a lot of disagreement over the part government should play in health care and the economy as well as other issues.

I do not think that the issues being debated in an open, democratic society should ever be held up as tests of Christian authenticity. On health care as on other issues, persons of genuine Christian faith will be found on all sides.

It is a grievous error to hold that any political party can bring in the Kingdom. (Actually, I’d say that both major parties of our country are very far from the Kingdom in almost every particular.) The Scriptures, after all, are not very approving of the idea of government no matter what form.

Instead, the calling of God is for people to live so wholly under his grace and so devotedly to his purposes that we form communities of divine love in which conflicts are resolved amicably among people who are concerned first with each other rather than themselves.

It may be that this vision can work only with groups as small as churches and can’t be adapted to whole nations, much less all the nations. In fact, the Bible seems to recognize this difficulty by saying in Revelation that the fullness of the kingdom won’t be realized until Christ returns and puts all things under his feet.

Yet that doesn’t mean that the Kingdom can’t be attained at all in the meantime. I visited Israel two years ago as one of a group of ten Methodist ministers sponsored by Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East. Another pastor, “Dave,” and I were pretty clearly not on the same page when it came to assessing the present-day issues of Israel and the Palestinians. Near the end of the trip our group visited Gallicantu Church in Jerusalem. There are good reasons to believe that the church is built over the dungeon where Jesus was held overnight before being sent to Pilate.

Seeing the remains of the dungeon was very sobering. More than any other site, it made real to me the suffering Jesus endured for my salvation. Suddenly I could not stay in that place. I quickly went outside, hardly watching where I was walking.
When I stopped I discovered Dave was standing right next to me. There were tears in his eyes also. It was a moment of spiritual communion. The personal disputes we had had faded to insignificance before the enormity of the love of Jesus.

No matter the issues that might divide us, either in our church life or national, let Christians remember that Jesus is much greater. Beggars for grace, that’s all we are, beggars for grace.

We already volunteered

Fall is almost here. Before we know it, Thanksgiving and Advent will be upon us! Another thing that fall brings is more mundane. Our district superintendent, Ron Lowery, will convene our annual charge conference is scheduled for Nov. 8 at 5 p.m. at our church. The charge conference is the highest decision-making body of our congregation. There are certain matters of our church that may be attended to only by the charge conference.

The charge conference looks ahead to the coming year in taking its decisions. The preparation for the conference always calls to my mind the opening of John Wesley’s Covenant Renewal Service:

Commit yourselves to Christ as his servants.

Give yourselves to him that you may belong to him.

Christ has many services to be done.

Some are more easy and honorable; others are more difficult and disgraceful.

Some are suitable to our inclinations and interests, others are contrary to both.

In some we may please Christ and please ourselves.

But then there are other works where we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves.

It is necessary, therefore, that we consider what it means to be a servant of Christ. Let us, therefore, go to Christ, and pray:

Let me be your servant, under your command. I will no longer be my own. I will give up myself to your will in all things.

One of the busy committees preparing for the charge conference is the committee on lay leadership, abbreviated “LLC.” The LLC is responsible for identifying lay members of the church to serve in the various offices and committees that make the church operate. This is a serious, sober job, so important, in fact, that the LLC’s own members may be elected only by the charge conference.

When we joined the church, we vowed to support the church with our prayers, our presence, our gifts and our service. These are not empty vows, but are somber commitments by each of us to do his or her part to help the church prosper.

As the LLC meets to prepare for the charge conference, we will consider the responsibilities of each office and committee as we discern who would be a good “fit” for them. We also will take note of the services being performed by other members of the same household. It’s all too easy for one person, or a husband and wife, to occupy more than one office at a time. This is usually not a good idea.

The typical term of service in Methodist churches is three years. This year several persons holding individual offices will graduate. As well, about one-third of each committee graduates every year.

It is crucial for the health of the church as a whole that the same people not serve over and over, rotating from one office or committee to another. It is crucial for their spiritual health, too!

Every member of the church is liable to be nominated by the LLC for an office or committee. Each person nominated by the LLC will be directly contacted by an LLC member. Nominees will be presented with an explanation of the duties of the office or committee.

I would like to point out, as tactfully as possible, that it is expected that persons nominated by the LLC will accept the nomination unless there are unusual reasons for declining. Each of us promised our service when we joined.

Service to the people of Sango is a privilege as well as a responsibility. Through service, yes, even on committees and individual offices, we are led by the Spirit to grow as disciples and work for the good of the entire community of faith. Serving is part of witnessing!

Let us remember the admonitions of the Wesleyan Covenant Service. Some services are easy, some are difficult. Some services seem agreeable to us, some do not. But they are all important for the good of our congregation and the work of Christ in the world through his church!

How are we learning?

I am one of those people who always has a book open in the house that I read from every day (in addition to Scripture studies, I mean). Some days I might read 30 pages or more, other days only a few pages.

For the past few weeks I have been reading the Oxford History of Christianity (alternating, I must confess, with an action novel by Clive Cussler of no socially redeeming value whatever).

The Oxford history is a collection of sections of various times and places of Christian history, arranged in chronological order, starting with the apostolic churches. I’ve just finished the section on the Protestant Reformation.

And it occurred to me that American Christians are returning to a pre-Reformation type of worship life. Not necessarily quickly, but surely nonetheless.

Here’s why I say this: For a few hundred years before the Reformation, religious life for church people (but not for monks or the church’s hierarchy) was oriented around high holy days, festivals and pageants. All of these were religious events. As Christianity had spread through Europe, it had glossed existing festival days with a Christian patina so that festivals originating in pagan times took on a Christian character, usually around a saint.

Like modern parades, the people built floats according to the theme of the pageant, often supervised by local monks. Parish priests would preach about the saints concerned.

All of this was done because most ordinary people could not read or were only barely literate. The floats, stained-glass windows in churches, religious statuary and icons, even the crucifix itself, were all teaching aids.

They were visual means of teaching the faith, accompanied by audio – religious music and preaching. That was how people learned.

The Reformation de-emphasized the audiovisual and made the Word, especially the written Word, the focus. Universal literacy was literally invented by the Reformers.
What has happened in America since the dawn of the television age, accelerated by the invention of home computers, is a return to audiovisual learning. The younger one is, the more s/he absorbs information through pictures, movies and sound. For the under-25 cohort, the Internet is a primary means of learning, while books and newspapers are secondary.

So how shall we teach Christian faith to children, teens and young adults? Probably not very successfully by emphasizing primarily reading and writing. Those more than 50, like me, should contemplate that our children don’t learn like we did and moreover, don’t want to. Successful teaching will mean adapting to how people learn today.

Easter and baptism

Easter is approaching fast! I announced on March 22 that we will have a special celebration on Easter this year. Here’s some background.

During the years of the early church – generally considered to be from the time of Jesus to the end of the final Roman persecution in the early 300s – it was a common practice to celebrate baptism on Easter Sunday. In fact, for a long time Easter was the only day that baptisms were conducted, and that only after up to a year of teaching new converts about Jesus and what Christian discipleship meant.

After the Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire under Constantine, the Church’s size ballooned dramatically. At the beginning of the fourth century, only about 10 percent of the empire was Christian. By century’s end, only 10 percent wasn’t.

This rapid expansion meant that, while Easter’s central importance to the faith was maintained, no longer could Easter serve as the only day of baptism. There were just too many converts! (Don’t we wish we had that problem?)

Yet baptism and its periodic reaffirmation remain so central to Christian faith and practice that their connection to Easter really should be re-established and maintained.

In Romans 6, Paul wrote,

3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Baptism was understood by the earliest Christians as personally entering the death and resurrection of Jesus, so it made perfect common sense and theological sense to baptize on Easter, the day Jesus was raised from the dead.

For this Easter, April 12, we shall revive this ancient custom at both the 8:30 service and the 11 o’clock service. If you have never been baptized and would like to be baptized on Easter, please contact me right away so I can meet with you before that date. (I am required by our denomination to counsel persons on the meaning of baptism before conducting it.) Also, if you would like to renew your baptismal vows and reaffirm your baptism, you will be able to do so in a liturgical setting during the service (I don’t need to meet with you before reaffirmation).

Here is a short guide to the UMC’s doctrine on baptism.

Easter is always the most special day is the life of the church – let’s renew our vows together this Easter to be Jesus’s disciples!

As March begins, so has the season of Lent. Lent is the period of time leading up to Easter Day. It commemorates the “road to Jeruslaem” that Jesus took and which ended finally in his arrest, condemnation and execution.
Lent is traditionally a time of spiritual introspection and reflection, a time of repentance and rededication to Jesus and the kingdom of God. So here is a Q & A about Lent, call it the “Lenten FAQs,” if you will.

Q: Why is Lent 40 days long?
A: The 40 days of Lent is derived from the 40 days the Jesus spent in the wilderness as he prepared himself spiritually for his earthly ministry.

Q: Lent began on Feb. 25, and that is more than 40 days before Easter’s date of April 12. Why is that?
A: The 40-day count does not include Sundays since every Sunday is a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. Counting 40 days back from Easter, not including the Sundays, results in Lent beginning on Feb. 25.

Q: What is the story behind fasting for Lent?
A: Fasting is an ancient spiritual practice, almost universal in the Middle East, that long predates the birth of Jesus. Fasting is not only part of Jewish practice, Muslims do also and so did many early churches. Lenten fasting is a spiritual discipline done in imitation of Christ, who fasted. It also commemorates Jesus’ sacrifice of himself on our behalf.

Dietary fasting traditionally means partaking only of liquids between sunup and sundown, eating solid food only after dark. Another practice is not dietary fasting but giving up a habit that is spiritually unhealthy. The object here is to renounce habits and pattern of sin for Lent with the object that they can be vanquished permanently.

Q: What about “giving up chocolate for Lent?”
A: If chocolate is a spiritual obstacle between oneself and godliness, then give it up! But if it is not, then giving up chocolate is probably not very meaningful. The Lenten fast or sacrifice should be spiritually formative; usually that means it will be challenging.

Q: What does the word, “Lent” really mean?
A: “Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word, “lencten,” meaning Spring, the season in which Easter occurs.

Q: Doesn’t Easter always occur on the Sunday after Passover?
A: The clear witness of the Gospels is that Jesus was crucified on the Friday after the day of Passover. This year, Passover begins at sunset on Wednesday, April 8. So this year the biblical relationship between Passover and Easter is maintained. However, the church calendar is a solar calendar while the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar. So that connection usually will not happen. Last year, Passover began on April 19 while Easter was on March 23.

A Lenten discipline for us – please come as you are able to the altar rail to pray during the closing hymn of Sunday services. I will build in time for that so that we can still end after an hour. Prayer is the foundation of spiritual formation!