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!

Can you believe that Thanksgiving is almost here? And that means that Advent and Christmas are close behind. I was shopping in Kohl’s the third week of October and saw a couple of sales associates putting up Christmas tinsel. Doesn’t it seem that the Christmas shopping season comes earlier every year? It still “officially” begins the day after Thanksgiving, but I guess the stores just want us to get in the shopping spirit earlier than that.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, did you know that the first post-Revolution Congressional Thanksgiving proclamation was in 1782, and it asked only for a one-time observance to be done on Thursday, Nov. 28 of that year? Congress at that time did not consider it had the authority to mandate holidays, so the proclamation only recommended that the States observe the day as requested.

The Congressional proclamation said that the day was to be one of,
… solemn THANKSGIVING to GOD for all his mercies: and they do further recommend to all ranks, to testify to their gratitude to GOD for his goodness, by a cheerful obedience of his laws, and by promoting, each in his station, and by his influence, the practice of true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.

Who can argue with that?

It was not until 1939 that Thanksgiving was set as the fourth Thursday of November. Since Lincoln’s day it had always been the last Thursday of the month. In 1939 that day fell on Nov. 30.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was still grappling with the Great Depression and decided to move the date to the fourth Thursday so that – you guessed it – consumer spending for Christmas would have an extra week. Congress did not approve this decision until 1941. And so Thanksgiving has been set as the fourth Thursday ever since.

This is a good time to remind everyone that our Community Thanksgiving Service will be held on Nov. 26 at 7 p.m., here at Sango UMC. We join every year with the good people of Bethel Cumberland Presbyterian Church, just a couple of blocks away, to “testify to their gratitude to GOD for his goodness,” just as the 1782 Congress recommended.

Brother Tom Wilkins, pastor of Bethel, will preach that evening. I hope everyone reading these words will come, remembering that our Christian faith “is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.”

Let me advise you as well of the church-office schedule for Thanksgiving week. We will be open Monday-Wednesday, Nov. 24-26 and closed Thanksgiving Day and the day after.

As we look ahead to December, please mark down to come to our Hanging of the Greens service at 7 p.m., Dec. 7.

The Chancel Choir will perform a cantata during both services on Dec. 14. The children’s musical will be on Dec. 17. The youth-group Christmas party will be Dec. 21. And finally, our Christmas Eve service will be held at 5 p.m. on, well, Christmas Eve.

A word about the Israel trip: Our Israeli tour director, Ari Marom, will be here at Sango to give information and answer questions on Nov. 11 at 6:30 p.m. If you have the slightest interest or hope of going on this trip, please come on Nov. 11 and feel free to invite others. The dates of the trip are June 19-28, 2009.

My closing thought is from the Psalms:

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me. – Psalm 50:14-15

Reflection for October

“Be still, and know that I am God,” says Psalm 46:10. There is something about activity that forms an obstacle to spiritual growth and knowing God.

It is so easy to confuse activity with productivity. I’ve known people who weren’t satisfied unless their calendars were crammed full. “See how busy I am? I must be doing some good!” We all agree that we have to tend to business, but we’ve made a false virtue out of tending to busyness.

Jesus never made that mistake. The Gospels record that from time to time Jesus “went private,” escaping the pressing demands of his very public ministry in order to be still and stay in close communion with God.

It takes time to be holy. It takes spiritual discipline and self discipline to be still and know that God is God. Every pianist knows that virtuoso performances can’t be done by thinking about playing. It takes practice! (You know the old joke about a tourist in New York who got lost and asked a hotel doorman, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" And the doorman answered, “Practice, practice, practice.”)

Likewise, the Tennessee Titans have to practice their plays over and over before they dare run them during a game.

Should we expect spiritual growth to be different? John Wesley admonished the people called Methodist that we are to “move on to perfection.” This process of being perfected in Christ is called sanctification, meaning to be made holy. It’s no coincidence that our denomination’s governing book is called the Discipline. Growing in holiness takes discipline, but not that kind imposed from outside. It must come from within.

Aristotle defined virtue as excellence made habitual. Spiritual growth and maturity are like that, too. Paul wrote of our need to move from being spiritual infants to grownups. This can only happen when we make spiritual self-discipline matters of habit rather than matters of exception.
And habits, as I am sure you know, dominate how we spend our time every day. So the Scriptures admonish us to make being still to know God a matter of habit, not exception.

John Wesley said that the discipline, or habits, of Christians should fall into two broad categories: works of mercy and works of piety. The former includes witnessing and evangelism, the latter is the personal reformation within oneself by the power of the Holy Spirit. Dr. David Lowes Watson explained it this way:

Works of mercy consist of acts of compassion, which are usually private and personal, and acts of justice, which are usually public and social. Witnessing is done in both contexts.

Works of piety consist of acts of devotion, meaning private or small-group prayers and devotions, and acts of worship, meaning Sunday services and especially receiving the sacraments whenever offered.

Individuals and churches alike get out of balance spiritually when they over-emphasize one or two of these disciplines.

A church that overemphasizes piety so much that witnessing and mercy are shut out becomes insular and self-focused. Its end is the same as the old monasteries that were found everywhere in Europe by the late Middle Ages – decline and disappearance. (Quick! Name three active, growing monasteries today.) To focus mostly on piety is in fact to decide to close.

A church that overemphasizes witnessing or good-deed-doing so much that the spiritual growth and health of its people are shut out becomes fleeting and impermanent. People are brought in only eating spiritual baby food, as Paul put it, but soon hunger for spiritual meat and drink. If the church won’t help them grow in discipleship, they’ll go elsewhere.

Like so many things in life, balance is the key. I hope you will ponder what the best balance is for Sango UMC so that we may become and do all that God wishes for us.

September will be a great month for our church!

We will enjoy the preaching of the Rev. Diana Dewitt for our days of spiritual renewal beginning at 7 p.m. Sept. 21. Diana is associate pastor at Hermitage UMC. I look forward to the fresh perspectives she will bring to how we may serve as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.

I urge you to make the evenings of Sept. 21-23 your top priority!

Then on Sept. 28 Tennessee Conference Bishop Dick Wills preach at the morning service. There will be only the 11 .m. service on Sept. 28. Bishop Wills is beginning his fifth year as our bishop.

As you know, I have been emphasizing in recent weeks two things. One is responding to the altar call for prayer during the closing hymn at our worship services. I have been deeply moved at your prayer devotion in recent weeks. Let us never be self-conscious about coming forward as you are able to pray for oneself, others and our church.

The other thing I have been emphasizing is our twin charges from Christ to carry out both his Great Commission and his Great Commandment. As I have said before, the people of Sango UMC take a back seat to no one in loving one another and our neighbors in fulfilling the Great Commandment. “By this shall people know you are my disciples” said Jesus, “that you love one another.”

Yet we are not so strong in carrying out the Great Commission, to “go and make disciples.” We warmly welcome all who come, but on the whole do not seek out people specifically to bring the Gospel to them. Yet Jesus’ command was not “wait for people to come to you,” but “go” to the world in his name.

Wouldn’t it be great to become the Go United Methodist Church? Think about what it would take to become the Church of Go!

The best way to begin is for us to continue to study and learn our Spiritual gifts. Discovering one’s spiritual gifts is the most liberating and most empowering things a Christian can do! I will lead a single-meeting discovery session on Sept. 14 from 2-5 p.m. We will meet in Fellowship Hall.

A deacon in a Baptist church recently wrote something both simple and profound. He said, “God is preparing us for what God is preparing for us.” Read that again, slow. God is preparing a wonderful future for any congregation that will follow where he leads.

Jeremiah prophesied, “ For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:11-13).

Let us seek God with the whole heart of our congregation! God is preparing us for what God is preparing for us!

So as we try to discern anew how to carry out the commandments of Christ, here is a theme that I use to focus my prayer life and pastoral ministry:

No plan but prayer.
No agenda but Jesus.
No desire but the Kingdom.

We should commit ourselves to a period of preparation by God before we try to plan projects for the church. I think God is “tilling the soil” of Sango UMC at this time, and will plant our Spirit-led future in a time to come.

But we must be willing to be tilled! Let us then open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, be devoted in worship, ceaseless in prayer and earnest in our desire, individually and congregationally, to call upon God, to seek him with all our hearts. For we have his promise that we will find him then.

But only then.

A spiritually enhancing summer ahead!

My, how time does fly! Already a year has gone by since I first stepped behind the pulpit inside our sanctuary. Cathy and I have been looking back over the last year with great fondness for the people of Sango church and the Sango area of the county. We feel well rooted here with you and our neighbors. Again, we thank you all for the wonderful hospitality you showed us after we arrived.

Speaking of hospitality,the UMC's Igniting Ministries says that,

Studies have shown that visitors make up their minds in the first 11 minutes whether or not they’re coming back to a church. Those 11 minutes are the time usually spent finding a parking place, locating the proper entrance, being greeted, and finding a seat.

What is your personal "welcoming quotient?" Take IM's short quiz to find out! Tom Bandy, one of America's foremost experts on church life and trends, says that there is nothing more important week to week than hospitality to newcomers if we are to grow our church.

A great summer is coming up for spiritual enhancement. We have Vacation Bible School's Beach Party Surfing' through the Scriptures coming up July 7-11. The VBS crew always does a splendid job with the material and the kids. Last year we had almost 200 kids participating!

On Sunday, July 13, one or more of our youth will deliver the message for the day, and some of the VBS kids will offer songs of praise.

Spiritual Gifts Discernment will be led by the Rev. Loyd Mabry on July 20 and 27. Loyd is the director of connectional ministries and congregational development for the Tennessee Conference. A former district superintendent, Loyd will lead a spiritual gifts discernment workshop on those two dates at 2 p.m.. Please note that this is one workshop on two dates. If you wish to attend, then you should plan on attending both days.

I believe that discerning our spiritual gifts is the most important thing we can do for the spiritual health of our church and its future. To learn more, read one (or all!) of the following:

• 1 Corinthians 12 (click here),
• My sermon, How to stop doing what you think you ought to do . . .,
• The UMC's own web site devoted to the gifts (click here),
• Bible.org's web page on the gifts (click here).

Bishop Wills to preach Sept. 21. Dick Wills, bishop of the Tennessee Conference, will preach at Sango at 11 a.m. Sept. 21. On June 15, the church council voted to consolidate our two services that day. Please plan on coming to hear his special message!

Spiritual Renewal Week begins that day, Sept. 21. That evening we will be blessed to welcome the Rev. Diana DeWitt for three evenings of spirited worship! Diana is associate pastor at Hermitage UMC and is an energetic proclaimer of the Word of God.

Daytime Bible Study will begin July 15 at 9 a.m. Our first topic will be, "Job, Jonah, Jesus and the Problem and Good and Evil." This study will correspond (perhaps fairly roughly) to my sermon series beginning July 27 on the same topic.

Anniversary Sunday will be August 17 with the Rev. Willie Lyle preaching. We will have one service that day at 10:30 a.m. with food and fellowship beginning at 9:30.

I pray everyone will stay safe this summer in travels and activities. It's a great time to be part of the Sango family! Spread the Good News!

And remember, whatever we do that is worthy to lay before the Lord will be done, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts.”

Bishop Wills to preach here Sept. 21

Our Bishop, Dick Wills, will preach at Sango on Sept. 21. However, he will preach at one service, not two. Sango’s witness team will recommend to the church council on June 15 whether we should hold just one, combined service that day. If we conduct both services, the bishop will preach only at 11. We’ll let you know what the council decides.

I have asked Bishop Wills to preach because he once asked a group of ministers, including me, to imagine that the legendary blues guitarist, B. B. King, moved in next door to my house. Every afternoon B.B. would walk onto his patio and play his famed guitar, Lucille, for an hour. Then imagine, said the bishop, that after a few days you got up the nerve to ask B.B. to teach you to play guitar.

B.B. agrees, so for the next year you spend an hour every day taking guitar lessons from B.B. King. At the end of the year you go to a big family reunion and one evening you take out your guitar and tell everyone you want to play a couple of pieces. Your relatives may scoff - when did you every learn to play guitar? - but they politely assent to your impending embarrassment and wait with not-very-high expectations for you to begin.

But your playing simply astounds them. When you are done, there is a short silence in the room, then your cousin exclaims, “Wow! You sound just like B.B. King!”

And why wouldn’t you? After all, you’ve spent the last year learning guitar from the King of Blues himself, in person.

What would it take for someone to say about each of us when we speak, “Man, you sound just like Jesus?” Or, “you act just like Jesus?”

Would it not take time spent with Jesus, being instructed by him personally? How do we do that?

Bishop Wills knows how to do that. So please come to church on Sept. 21 to hear him explain.

Moving on, please remember that June 22 is FRAN Sunday, a day we wish to specially welcome your Friends, Relatives, Acquaintances and Neighbors to our church. Worship services will take place as usual that day, as will the nursery and children’s Sunday School. We are asking all adults and youth to gather in the CLC during the Sunday School hour for fellowship and to welcome newcomers to our church. If your group has a display (such as the ones used on Anniversary Sunday), please set it up in the CLC.

Another thing I wish to emphasize is the Rev. Loyd Mabry’s preaching and teaching on July 20 and 27. Loyd is the Tenn. Conference’s director of connectional ministries and church development, as well as a former district superintendent. His subject will be discovering our spiritual gifts. He will lead a discovery workshop on the afternoon of both July 20 and 27. Please note that this is one workshop conducted in two sessions. The discovery process requires attending both sessions. Please make this workshop your priority for those days!

Confirmation and baptism

As I write this column, Confirmation Sunday is only five days away. Two days ago, I held the last Confirmation class with Sango’s 10 confirmands. They are Hayden Welch, Jake Hopkins, Rachel Dowlen, Ian Pope, Hunter Blake, Rebecca and Bryce Navarre, Sam Irwin and Sara Keel.

I am very impressed with the level of religious knowledge and education these young men and women exhibited. They began the classes at a level frankly considerably above all Confirmation classes I have led so far in my ministry. This speaks very well of their parents, the teachers at our church and Sango‘s congregation as a whole. You should be proud of these confirmands and have confidence that the future of our church is well placed in their hands.

Did you know that Confirmation is really an affirmation of baptism? It is a time when the confirmands confess for themselves the faith in Christ that was professed on their behalf when they were baptized as infants. Those not baptized earlier will be baptized during the service.

The United Methodist Church does not “re-baptize” people. We say that while the motions of baptism - the application of the water and the recitation of the liturgy - are carried out by the pastor and the congregation, the actual work of baptism is done by the Holy Spirit. Since the Holy Spirit makes no mistakes and leaves no element undone, re-baptism is never necessary.

However, baptized persons may and should reaffirm their baptism. As we grow and mature in our faith, we come to understand more deeply the significance of our baptism. Baptism is the portal to a sanctified life, the beginning point of “moving on to perfection.” John Wesley said that baptism is an “instituted means of grace,” meaning that its practice for Christians was initiated by Christ himself when he accepted baptism from John the Baptizer. Through our baptism, we receive a particular gift of grace that God makes available in no other way. While there are innumerable means of grace, only though baptism are we inaugurated into the body of Christ.

The Methodist doctrinal statement on baptism says that baptism is “the initiatory sacrament by which we enter into the covenant with God and are admitted as members of Christ’s Church.”
One is never too old to be baptized, so if other teens or adults who hold Christian confession in their hearts but have not been baptized, I urge you to speak with me about accepting baptism. The decision to do so is always an individual choice, but is so important to Christian growth and spiritual health. Likewise, the baptized are invited to affirm their baptism from time to time in a manner much like the Confirmation litany of April 6. I’ll make a time available for affirmation during a service later this spring.