Weekly eNote from Senior Pastor Adam Hamilton from The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, United States for Friday, 17 June 2016

Friday, June 17, 2016
Weekly eNote from Senior Pastor Adam Hamilton from The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, United States for Friday, 17 June 2016
Dear Resurrection Family,
I know you’ve been following, as I have, the shooting in Orlando last Sunday and praying for the families of those who died, for those who survived and are recovering and for all who were affected by this, the worst mass shooting in US history. I’ll say a bit more about this at the end of my enote.
This weekend is Father’s Day (have you bought your card yet? Mine went in the mail yesterday and I’m hoping the USPS gets it to Seattle by tomorrow!). We’ll celebrate Dads in worship, including sharing pics of Dads that many of you sent in (these will show during the prelude and postlude). At Leawood we’ll have things of interest to dads including classic cars around the entrances to the church, sign up for sports teams, our motorcycle club and information about our men’s ministries. Invite your dads, or kids, to join you for worship this weekend!
I’ll kick-off a two-part sermon series on The Gospel According to Dogs: Spiritual Lessons from our Four-Legged Friends. Click here to see the one-minute video promo and share it with others on Facebook. The sermon series, though light-hearted, will point to some important truths about God and about us as humans. If you have a friend who is not involved in church but loves dogs (or even cats), I promise this weekend’s sermon will speak to them and they’ll be glad you invited them to attend.
In the first of the two sermons I’ll look at how dogs teach us about God. We'll look at one of the defining characteristic of God in the Old Testament – the Hebrew word for it is hesed (sometimes spelled chesed) – a word that is hard to define in English but which dogs illustrate so well. Hesed refers to God’s faithfulness, loyalty, kindness, and love. Next week we’ll look at how dogs illustrate so many things about us as people and how they paint a picture for us of what it means to be a Christian.
I’m pumped about tonight – over 1,400 Resurrection members from all of our campuses will descend together on Kauffman Stadium to watch the Royals play the Detroit Tigers! My kids and granddaughter will be joining me for the game (LaVon’s out of town). Wear your Royals gear or, if you’ve got one, your 25th Anniversary t-shirt.
This coming week is our annual Bless the School when Resurrection members from across campuses will work at Garfield Elementary School at 436 Prospect in Kansas City, Missouri. It has 500 students, most of whom are on the free or reduced lunch program. There are a large number of immigrants at the school – children from 15 different countries attend. We’ll paint, install a playground and perform other repair and improvement work. Garfield has received the Bronze Award for Achievement in the past. It is one of the oldest elementary schools in Kansas City. LaVon and I will be working on Tuesday night. We have spots for volunteers to work each day next week – we have morning, afternoon and evening shifts. We still need volunteers. I’m so proud of this work we do and Garfield is a new partner for us. Click here to sign up – and invite your family or friends to join you!
Did you know that Jennifer Ross, our Director of Matthew’s Ministry, just returned from a trip to Moscow? The trip was funded by the US Embassy in Russia and was aimed at helping agencies there implement educational programs for children with special needs in the public schools. Jennifer joined a team from the Down Syndrome Guild of Kansas City and she was there to teach about our Matthew’s Ministry. I’m so grateful for, and proud of, our Matthew’s Ministry. It is a national leader in the field of special needs ministry and Jennifer has been called upon not only to teach others about this, but to testify before Congress related to special needs programming.
As we approach the Republican and Democratic National Conventions next month, and the election campaign this fall, Church of the Resurrection and Abingdon Press are offering a leader’s guide to utilize our January-February sermon series, The Issues That Divide, to help small groups discuss some of the key issues related to politics and faith. It will include links for small groups to watch the sermons from that series, a blog post that introduces the topic, and a free downloadable leader’s guide. Three of the topics seem particularly pertinent this week after Orlando: Immigration, Islamic Extremism, and Christianity and Guns. The other two topics are Christianity and Healthcare and Practicing Politics while Keeping the Faith. If your church or small group is interested in this free resources, click here to visit my blog and to sign up for the emails from the blog that will give instructions for engaging these topics in your small group.
Vacation Bible School is happening at all of our campuses this summer focused on the theme Meet the Royals. While using a baseball theme, our kids are learning about some of the kings and queens of the Bible, climaxing in our focus on Jesus, the King of Kings. The kids are also taking up offerings for supplies and money to benefit other children both in the heart of our city and in Honduras. I loved seeing over 1,000 kids here at Leawood as they sang, prayed, played and learned together. Thank you to each of our over 400 volunteers who made this possible!
I want to end with a word about Orlando. I’ve been finding it difficult to make sense of the shootings last Sunday, the largest mass murder in our nation’s history. We Americans, politicians and the media have a tendency to oversimplify and over-generalize when making our assessments of what happened, why it happened, and who or what is to blame.
This tragedy touches on several issues about which Americans are divided: guns, human sexuality, Islam and immigration. Regarding guns, we’ll once more hear the call to restrict access, to tougher gun laws and at the same time, and in response to this call, we’ll see a surge in sales of semi-automatic weapons. Neither of these will likely have an impact that would stop another Orlando shooting. What might is for public spaces including churches, nightclubs, ball games and schools to assess what happened there, to learn from it, and to do what they can to have trained and armed security who can stop a shooter like this before harming so many people, or better, to keep them from entering the venue to begin with.
Regarding human sexuality, was the shooter only homophobic, or was he personally struggling with his own sexuality? We don’t know yet. What we do know is that we live in a society where for much of our history gay and lesbian people have been picked on, teased, bullied, discriminated against and condemned. What role has faith played in fostering this and how do we as Christians do our part to see that gay and lesbian people are no longer subject to this?
The shooter considered himself a Muslim. Was it his faith that motivated him to commit these terrible atrocities? Or was his connection to Islam similar to the Klan’s connection to Christianity – a distortion of the faith? Is Islamic extremism best addressed by isolating all Muslims or does that simply breed more radicalism?
These are all questions that have been going through my mind as I’ve been reflecting on the events of last Sunday in Orlando. I don’t have a profound statement, but questions that linger, alongside my grief for parents and families who’ve lost loved ones, and a concern for the gay and lesbian people I know who were left afraid after this act of violence that was focused on gay and lesbian people.
I’ve got to run, I’m getting ready for the Royals game tonight! I am looking forward to this weekend as we celebrate Fathers’ Day and we have fun exploring the Gospel According to Dogs!
In Christ’s Love,
Adam
The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection
13720 Roe Avenue

Leawood, Kansas 66224, United States
913.897.0120

www.cor.org
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