Appreciating the Forest and the Trees in 2014

A common type of expression when we feel we have drifted from what is important or have lost sight of the greater plans God has for us is, "We've lost the forest in the trees." We attend to so many smaller matters in life that awareness of being involved in broader movements of the Spirit or being part of a greater Body of Christ is missed. We may feel disconnected or feel that our efforts are not contributing to a greater whole.

Regaining that sense of community can be a powerful blessing and multiply the benefits of our work in individual areas of ministry. Reclaiming a view of the forest or big picture can reveal the local beauty of our congregation.

Each year in preparation for Church Conference with our Kalamazoo District Superintendent through the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee and Coordinating Council we create our Congregation's Profile. It describes us with information about the direction of ministry, church reputation, Hartford community and schools, desired pastoral skills, and a 10-year record of membership, worship and church school attendance, church expenditures and Ministry Shares paid. This is a word-picture of our forest, the big picture of who we are and where we are headed.

I offer these portions of the Congregation Profile as a guide for 2014. I want to know what you think about this bigger picture of our ministry. I will be sharing more about these dimensions in future newsletter articles and leadership meetings.

Congregational Core Beliefs

We are a moderate to conservative congregation with emphasis on fostering a biblical world view. We are mission oriented, worship oriented, pay our ministry shares, and have concern about the need to help build a relationship with Jesus Christ. We emphasize community outreach. We seek to apply biblical standards to social issues.

The main focus of congregational life is reflected in goals for the near future and the order in which to address them:

1. Our focus is to bring people together in small groups in a learning and caring environment, and to equip them to be disciples for Christ – we want social connection between people.
2. Our focus is also to promote growth in Christian education for children, youth and adults.
3. Our focus is to continue supporting and sustaining Senior Services luncheons and programs.

Congregational Mission Statement

It is our mission to follow the Holy Spirit through prayer, and our growing knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, in creating a ministry that draws others into dependence upon Christ’s Saving Grace and a lifestyle that is both obedient and pleasing to God. As a means to this end, we as individuals and as a congregation will engage in evangelism, teaching, mission and service to those in need so that others will both hear of and experience the Grace of Christ. Further, we also recognize the need to join with other congregations of like mission to establish any or all of these ministries.

Our mission belongs to the greater mission of The United Methodist Church "to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world."

May God bring us a renewed sense of purpose and inspiration as we love God, our neighbors and ourselves in this new year.

Saints, Thanks, Advent and Christmas 2013

The most recent government shutdown has been resolved. As I write this in late October we are experiencing the costs and confusion of re-starting. This past week I was part of a group of pastors and fruit/vegetable/flower growers who met with two of Representative Fred Upton's staff on the topic of Immigration Reform. Next week I plan to attend the informational meeting at the Hartford Library on the Affordable Care Act. Nothing seems to be working as it should or as we hoped it would. Our human ways of visioning, organizing, planning and acting more often than not come out distorted and dysfunctional. I smile as I remember my grandmother's wisdom in knowing the humanness and foolishness of politicians and leaders.

But, we carry on anyway because there are breaks in the storm clouds, moments of clarity, and more than random acts of kindness and compassion. There is something in us that continues longing and searching for meaning in this earthly life.

One way we live in this tension of hope and fear is to celebrate the seasons and Sundays of the Church year which concludes on November 24 and begins on December 1 with Advent. I also have found it helpful to recognize the unofficial spiritual season that begins November 1 with All Saints' Day and includes Thanksgiving.

Saints are those beloved children of God in whom we saw the Light of the World and who are no longer with us. The blessing we speak in worship is that they are "Absent from us. Present with God." Thanksgiving grounds us in healthy dependence upon God, the giver of all good gifts, and healthy interdependence with each other as we affirm the need we have for community and to follow Jesus together.

Advent and Christmas show us that the birth of our Savior begins with pregnancy, expectation and preparation. In our Advent worship we light a new candle each week and confirm the work we do in the season: Hope, Prepare, Rejoice and Love. At Christmas we remember that God did not crash land or mistakenly come into this world. But through a gentle, strong mother, Mary; a humble, respectful father, Joseph; and Holy Spirit presence and creativity Jesus entered this distorted, dysfunctional world to disrupt and deliver us from sin and despair.

By faith we return to the people and stories of these seasons so that we can return to a world that is not finally shut down, but transformed and made new. Praise God for sharing this life with us in Jesus.

Methodists in Ministry and Life

In responding to God's call to bear fruit we can benefit from organizing our lives to cultivate fertile soil (Mark 4:1-9); invest wisely the talents we have been given (Matthew 25:14-30); embody the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22); see what is good, and meet the Lord's requirements to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8).

We seek God's blessing as we enter a new school and ministry year. The quality of students' and educators' lives is deeply affected by the way they organize their time and work. John Wesley and his brother, Charles, were part of an original group at the University of Oxford in England called The Holy Club. Out of this experience of active, disciplined devotion came the derisive term, methodists.

The first work of the Holy Club was the study of the Bible. The new movement was spiritual, humanitarian, but, first and strongest of all, scriptural. The searching of the Scriptures was earnest, open-minded, devout, unceasing. Wesley himself said: "From the very beginning--from the time that four young men united together----each of them was homo ur, ius libri; a man of one book .... They had one, and only one rule of judgment .... They were continually reproached for this very thing, some terming them in derision Bible Bigots; others, Bible Moths; feeding, they said, upon the Bible as moths do on cloth (Chapter V: The Holy Club at Wesley Center Online)

I appreciate our strong desire for Bible study; "to follow the Holy Spirit through prayer, and our growing knowledge of the Holy Scriptures" according to our mission statement. An organized approach to discipleship training can have a ripple effect throughout our lives, that is we can be methodists in ministry and life.

A playful and appealing resource I am integrating in my ministry and life now is called "Getting Things Done." It's author, David Allen, has some powerfully practical suggestions about why we struggle with our work and how we can respond differently to the demands of daily living. He recommends getting everything out of our minds, deciding what the next actions are, and recording them in a trusted system that is regularly reviewed and refreshed.

Your mind will keep working on anything that's still in (an) undecided state. But there's a limit to how much unresolved "stuff" it can contain before it blows a fuse. The short-term-memory part of your mind--the part that tends to hold all the incomplete, undecided, and unorganized "stuff"--functions much like RAM on a personal computer. Your conscious mind, like the computer screen, is a focusing tool, not a storage place. You can think about only two or three things at once (my emphasis) (Getting Things Done, 22-23).

The power to focus, to have a singleness of mind and heart, or to commit to a common mission can be exhilarating. This power is a source of stability and peace from God. As we enter this new school and ministry year, we can seek the blessing of a well-organized life that is inspired by God and leads us to ask, "What's the next thing to do?"

We are an active congregation who responds to clearly defined invitations, challenges, projects and missions. So together let's seek the blessing of a methodist season of growing in the knowledge and love of God.

Peace, Pastor Jeff

Wesley Foundation of Kalamazoo's 90th Anniversary

Thank you, Lisa, current students, staff, Board members and supporting churches for planning Wesley's 90th anniversary celebration! It is a great joy to be reminded of the grace and love that filled our season of ministry from February 1993 to June 2002. I remember the passion and laughter and tears that were shared as we grew up together at WMU and Kalamazoo College.

The 75th anniversary theme in 1998 was "Threads of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," based on Ecclesiastes 3:11, "Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. God has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end." In campus ministry we are growing up and ultimately going somewhere else. There is blessed and burdensome instability, and the reminder that any one manifestation of ministry is both beautiful for its time, and not final.

One of the profound benefits of campus ministry is that we are intentionally and directly involved with the most concentrated population of young adults in our culture. We are in the right place and doing the right thing to be personally present with continuing support and the theological commitment to serve campus communities whose intellectual growth needs to be accompanied by God's call to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8).

Beverly and I along with Lindsey, Sarah and Amanda are grateful for all the love shared in our time together.

The Means of Grace Really Work

In our Wesleyan heritage the "means of grace" refer to those faith practices that are dependable sources of experiencing God's grace. The primary ones are prayer, searching the Scriptures and receiving open Holy Communion. John Wesley preached, "By 'means of grace' I understand outward signs, words, or actions, ordained of God, and appointed for this end, to be the ordinary channels whereby (God) might convey to (people), preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace."

Happy Anniversary, Hartford UMC.

Our 2-year anniversary is July 1.

As we enter our third year of shared ministry I enter my 25th year of ordained ministry in the West Michigan Conference of The United Methodist Church. As an ordained Deacon I began serving Center Park UMC in 1989. I was ordained Elder in 1991. I am an introvert and therefore enjoy times of reflection. So I returned to a statement I wrote for Bishop Don Ott on the five-year anniversary of my Elder ordination:

Some of the most profound experiences of God's movement in my life have come during worship and especially while celebrating the sacraments. One memory of communion is particularly clear and, I believe, indicative of what the Realm of God is like. I visited an elderly widow of our congregation in a nursing home and brought her communion. It so happened that her three remaining sisters (one had recently died), all widows themselves, were visiting her at the same time. We were together in the room, I finished saying the prayer of thanksgiving, and was ready to share the bread and juice when one of the sisters remarked that this would be the first time since they were children that they would be having communion together. They had grown up, married, started their own families, and been active in different churches for all the intervening years. But on that day they were re-gathered around the bed of one of their sisters.

A related area of grace has been prayer time shared with other people. I have found a great freedom of expression in the spirit of prayer that I often cannot share in ordinary conversation. I have sensed this during prayer with members of the congregation in their homes and hospital rooms, and around their tables. I have known the power of prayer in the midst of tense and conflicted times when I have been given words of peace and compassion that I would not normally have. Times of meditation, silence, and contemplation are growing in importance  for me as well.

Bishop Ott concluded his invitation by asking what we believe "success" in ministry is:

In two words, I believe success is incarnation and communion. By that I mean that success in ministry involves an enduring vulnerability to God's presence in Christ through the Spirit and an openness to meeting other people where they are. The quality of that success is loving-justice, a term I used to describe the relational nature of the Kingdom of God in my theological paper for ordination. I am aware of the times that I have not risked offering hospitality or reaching out to persons in need because I did not want to get involved. I also know that when I have been open to God in contemplation, solitude, and Scriptural reflection, I have been led to greater depth of feeling and connection within myself and with others.

I can witness that the means of grace really work. And I am grateful for your countless outward signs, words and actions that have conveyed God's grace to me and the Hartford community. Let's have an excellent third year of our shared journey with Christ, celebrate the many ways we are sustained by God's love, and move forward in ministry by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Seeking a God-Sized Vision

As Kari Unrath (Lay Member of Annual Conference), Del Troutman (Kalamazoo District Missions Coordinator) and I prepare for Annual Conference at Calvin College, May 29-June 1, we have been encouraged to read Bearing Fruit: Ministry with Real Results by Lovell H. Weems, Jr. and Tom Berlin.

Tom's brother is a landscape architect. He once donated a landscaping plan for a new parsonage that Tom's congregation was building. Looking at photos of the site and the foundation of the house that was being built, his brother drew up a plan that showed trees, shrubs, and flowers. After everything was planted, Tom called him and suggested that there had been a mistake. The shrubs were too far apart. The trees should be closer to the home. The flower beds were too wide for the small greenery that they were planting. There was silence on the other end of the line and then a question, "Tom, can't you see what this will look like in five years?" (Bearing Fruit, 37)

When we don't account for the power of growth, creativity and repentance in our life together with God, we are tempted to think we can fix everything all at once; demand complete, instantaneous change in another person or in the church; or mistakenly substitute our short-term vision for God's eternal vision.

By contrast, when we focus on God's calling to us and seek God's vision:

• we learn that God is faithful and will provide what we need for the service we are asked to render.
• we discover that God is expansive, leading us to things that are often far beyond what we think is possible.
• we find that God knows exactly what will bring us the greatest joy, the greatest significance, and that God knows our limitations (Bearing Fruit, 40).

The most important thing you can do in your ministry is to discern what God is asking you to do with your life. The most important aspect of planning in your church is to ask what God''s desire is for your congregation in its setting (Bearing Fruit, 44).

Because I am drawn to the activity of daily ministry I need a call to lift up my head and look to the horizon; a reminder to take a deep breath to focus on the most important things; and encouragement to press on in the midst of difficulties. I also understand my calling as pastor to include this kind of work.

I am thankful for the long-term vision and work that God is sustaining in us, and for the memory of fruitful persons and ministry in our history.

May we remember and appreciate the long-term value of our faith journeys, and continue to seek a God-sized vision for our future.

An overview of this year's West Michigan Annual Conference is here: http://westmichiganconference.org/news/detail/2869.

How Old Is Your Hope Anyhow?

"I just want to celebrate another day of livin'

I just want to celebrate another day of life

I put my faith in the people, and the people let me down

So I turned the other way and I carry on, anyhow."

("I Just Want to Celebrate", Rare Earth)

March gives us both Lent and Easter. We know that Easter has special appeal in our culture. It is a time, along with Christmas and Mother's Day, when our worshiping congregation is larger than at any other time of the year. It is great to celebrate this defining moment in the Christian story of Jesus' resurrection. It is clean and pure and powerful.

However, Easter is surrounded in Scripture and in our congregational life with all kinds of opposing forces and actions. Our Lenten sermon series and adult Sunday School class are organized around Mosaic: When God Uses All the Pieces by Shane Stanford. How God uses our restlessness, regret, rejection, responsibilities, resources and rage to make a masterpiece in Christ challenges us to find strength for living in the face of severe contradictions.

Jesus, in his life, death and resurrection, becomes God's other way to turn and re-turn to the Source of Life as we face the opposing forces of sin, despair and disappointment. Such love and power come to us packaged as "old hope."

How often have you used hope early or preemptively to avoid difficult passages in your journey? Such as, "Oh, I hope that doesn't happen to me..."

Instead of this early, untested hope, God gives us hope that comes after passing through the complications and contradictions of our existence. 

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings,

knowing that suffering produces endurance,

and endurance produces character,

and character produces hope,

and hope does not disappoint us,

because God’s love has been poured into our hearts

through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us (Romans 5:3-5)

Thank God, we can celebrate, appreciate all our days of life, and hope together in the surpassing power of love and forgiveness that God gives to the world in Jesus Christ. Let God raise Christ in your contradictions and broken pieces.

Holy Week Schedule

Palm/Passion Sunday, March 24: 9:30 am Sunday School for all ages; 10:30 am Worship

Maundy Thursday, March 28: 7:00 pm Worship with Open Communion

Good Friday, March 29: 9:30 am United Methodist Women's Breakfast; 7:00 pm Worship

EASTER SUNDAY, March 31: 8:30 am and 10:30 am Worship services with light breakfast served between services; No Sunday School

Can We Really Sing It That Way?

Here's one way it works:
     Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.
     I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.

Gilligan's Island and Amazing Grace can be sung to each other's tunes because they are both written using the same musical meter.

In 5th grade I took the music aptitude tests with the only thought of playing drums. The results came back and the band director told my mom something like this, "Well, Mrs. Williams, maybe with some lessons he might be able to learn to play the drums." I still remember lessons in flams, paradiddles and five-stroke rolls at Mr. Banning's home studio throughout 6th grade. I returned to drum set lessons in my late 40's for about a year. Even now a nice donated drum set is in the parsonage basement.

But my greater music education has come through marriage and the Church. I married well. Beverly, my wife, has a wonderful singing voice. As a congregation we have been blessed through the years by good musical leadership, and celebrate the current vocal/instrumental gifts of Bob Lightner, Jenna Johnson, Pete Laman, Mikha Sitorus, Tammy Kling, Beverly Williams and many special music vocalists.

Often times we sing along with the special music songs in worship. Finding ways of connecting through music deepens our experience of grace. It's even more fun to discover relationships among songs themselves.

Common meter is a 4-line poetic stanza with alternating lines of 8 and 6 syllables (86.86 in our United Methodist Hymnal). Amazing Grace; O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing; All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name; Gilligan's Island; and House of the Rising Sun all use common meter.

I appreciate learning the many ways we sing the Lord's songs in our congregation and the many ways we find to share our gifts for ministry.

Appreciating the relational power of common meter also can work theologically. As United Methodists these are the major beliefs and affirmations we hold in common with other Christians:

• Belief in the Triune God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit);
• Faith in the mystery of salvation in and through Jesus Christ;
• Belief that the reign of God is both a present and future reality;
• Belief in the authority of Scripture in matters of faith;
• Confession that our justification as sinners is by grace through faith;
• The sober realization that the church is in need of continual reformation and renewal;
• And affirmation of the general ministry of all baptized Christians who share responsibility for building up the church and reaching out in mission and service to the world.

"Nourished by common roots of this shared Christian heritage, the branches of Christ’s church have developed diverse traditions that enlarge our store of shared understandings" (Book of Discipline 2008, Paragraph 101, Section 1).

I hope 2013 is a year of singing and serving in new and inspiring ways. May we be open to the power of common, connecting gifts of God in our midst.