Thoughts and Musings from My Faith Journey
Dan Dick has a great post on learning to love as God loves. An excerpt:
“to love as God loves, we must learn to give as God gives – not conditionally or when it is convenient, but sacrificially, consistently, and abundantly.”
The post is well worth your time.
As predicted, hurricane Sandy is turning out to be devastating. We’ll receive a special offering this Sunday, but there’s no need to wait until then. UMCOR has the following instructions for donating online:
“Donate to UMCOR US Disaster Response, Advance #901670, and select Hurricanes 2012 from the drop-down menu. You can alsotext the word RESPONSE to 80888 to give an immediate $10 donation.”
If you choose to donate through one of these means we would love to know about it. We won’t ask the amount.
We have signs available to advertise Trunk-or-Treat at your place of business, or to place on your front door at home to tell trick-or-treaters where you are. They were already printed up and ready to go yesterday, but I forgot to announce them.
I misread the scores and began to prepare myself for a lot of disappointed K-State fans tomorrow. But I looked again and realized I’m going to have a church filled with happy people.
We have a record number of people signed up to help with Trunk-or-Treat this year. I’m looking forward to filling up the front parking lot and then wrapping around the building, but by my count there still won’t be enough spaces. If you have a truck or another vehicle you feel comfortable driving on the east lot, I would encourage you to park on the west lot, just north of the brick sidewalk. This way we should have enough space. If you’ve signed up to help we encourage you to come at 5 pm so we can have everything in place by 5:30 pm on October 31.
Every now and then we have a request from someone without a car for transportation to church for worship and other meetings. Let us know if you’re willing to help.
The next time you visit the church building you’ll probably notice two brand new, permanent handicapped parking spaces out front. How did this happen? Let me tell you the story. We are looking forward to a record number of people parking outside and handing out treats for Trunk-or-Treat this year. So many people that I thought it would be helpful if we had additional parking spaces. There were two handicap parking spaces at the northeast corner of the church’s lot close to the old elevator that exists to the back alley. Since those spots no longer get used, I thought it would be a great way to reclaim additional parking spaces. However, I wasn’t sure if the signs were ours or the cities so I called to make sure we could take them down. Next thing I know, members from the city’s maintenance department show up and take the signs down for us. They also informed us that by law we have to have handicapped parking spots for the ramp we have in the front. They then proceeded to provide the signs, the paint, and the labor. We’re thankful for the help and the service that went well beyond anything I would have expected.
Just in case you hear something, we wanted you to hear it from us first. We’re planning on doing a short-term study of the book Created by God: Tweens, Faith, and Human Sexuality with students in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. The book was written by Dr. James H. Ritchie, a United Methodist Pastor and published by the United Methodist Publishing House. The short-term study will be for both youth and their parents to attend. Both Jenny and I have read the book and would recommend it (and the study) to youth and their parents. Let either of us know if you are interested.
“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Hat Tip: Sojourners
A ceiling tile replacement party (read: work day) has been scheduled for this Saturday, October 27, 2012) at 9 am. As you can see from the unaltered photograph on the right the old ones have yellowed considerably since they were installed. The white tiles in the picture were put in place by David Larimore who is taking on the task of installing all the hard to fit ones. The plan is to be finished or stop by noon.
This past Sunday evening we took took 6 girls (grades 4-7) to Kurt and Kate Long’s farm. The Longs were wonderful hosts and the girls had a great time picking pears, feeding the chickens, grooming the miniature horses, taking a nature walk, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, and riding on the hayrack.
I forgot to make this announcement at the 8:10 service, so I’m posting it here for anyone who missed the question on the back of the attendance insert. The question is: what do you love about our church? Jenny plans to make the answers part of next Sunday’s sermon. You can email jenny@revcollins.com with your answer.