October 17, 2014
Dear Resurrection Family,
Wow, what a week! I'm still smiling thinking of the Royals sweeping the Orioles after sweeping the Angels and making it to the World Series. I tend to root for the underdog, but when the underdog is your own team, and they break a record in winning 8 straight in the playoffs, playing the best teams in baseball, it's pretty amazing. Wear your blue or white again this weekend! By the way, congratulations to Resurrection member, Gracie Schram, who sang at the seventh inning stretch this week at the K! How cool!
In this weekend's sermon I'll take you to Ephesus on the western coast of Turkey. The ruins of Ephesus are some of the most spectacular in the ancient world. Paul spent two years and three months in Ephesus on his third missionary journey - longer than he spent in any city on his three missionary journeys. After Paul's death in Rome in AD 64, Luke was said to have lived out his days in Ephesus; Timothy and the Apostle John also. One tradition says that Mary, the mother of Jesus spent her final years there was well. Paul wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus. Revelation was written to Ephesus and several other churches.
By using video we filmed in Ephesus this summer, I'll take you on a tour of the ruins. Just for fun I'll even show you the public toilets and tell you a bit about bathroom etiquette in Paul's day. In the sermon we'll consider the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, the need at times to get rid of things in our lives that are incompatible with our faith, and the way faith came to affect the economy in first century Ephesus. I'm pretty excited to share this with you.
Last weekend we gave Bibles to our third graders at our various campuses. The third graders are reading through the Acts of the Apostles as our congregation also reads through the book. We're very excited about our children learning the stories of Paul and the early church!
Also last Sunday, I had to cut from my Saturday night sermon a section on Paul's visit to Athens and the video showing what Paul saw in Athens. It is about 4 minutes long. If you'd like to see what the Saturday night service saw, click on this link.
This week I spent three days mentoring 50 outstanding young clergy and 15 of their spouses in our Young Pastor's Network. This program is co-sponsored by our church and Ginghamsburg UMC in Ohio. Bishops nominate young clergy they believe will be the future leaders of the denomination. This is our third class, so, in the last 5 years, we've mentored 150 of the 900 pastors in our denomination under age 35. This is one of the most important things we do in working to renew the United Methodist Church - we share our best practices and the most important ideas from around the church, and then invite these clergy to work for the renewal not only of their own churches but others as well. Here's a picture of the Young Pastor's Network (several participants had to leave by the time the picture was taken).
This week construction will begin on a temporary playground just south of the current narthex in front of Building C. This is our first step in preparing for ground breaking and construction of our new building this coming Spring - the current playground is located in what will become our future narthex. I can't recall if I shared that last week the Leawood City Council unanimously approved our final plat and plans. All of these are the steps needed in preparation for building.
Finally, we want to let you know that we're moving to electronic giving statements for everyone who has shared your email with us. If you'd prefer to still receive a paper statement, that's no problem - you should have received an email this week that links you to a form and once you fill out that form and submit it, we'll continue to send your contribution statements through the mail. If you haven't received that email, that means we don't have an email address for you and you'll continue to receive your statements through the mail - but if you'd like to receive those electronically - you can do that by sharing an email address with us. You will also be receiving a "pin" number in the mail. Keep this in a safe place, it will be your secure password to access your electronic statement. If you have any questions about this, you can contact our finance office. Please contact Lori Hisle in the Finance Office at lori.hisle@cor.org or 913-544-0778. This move will save the church thousands of dollars each year that can be devoted to mission and ministry rather than paper, envelopes and postage.
Resurrection, as always, I am grateful and proud of you. See you in Ephesus!
Adam
The Church of the Resurrection
The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection
13720 Roe Avenue
Leawood, Kansas 66224 United States
|
No comments:
Post a Comment