Pastor’s Report for Pinehurst UMC (2006)

dorean elabote, dorean dote. Given Gifts – Give Gifts. (Matthew 10:8b).

I continue to offer this phrase, the motto of the Theological School of Drew University, as my personal mission statement. I am privileged to employ my gifts and talents among the United Methodists of Pinehurst, North Carolina. Our journey from small to larger membership church, from store-front to permanent facility, from predominantly retired persons to a diverse cross-section of ages, from charter visionaries to emerging leaders continues as we launch our second decade of ministry. This year we began refocusing our vision for ministry and we offer the following for our first steps in pulling together for God’s purposes:

Pinehurst UMC is pursuing the joyful, transforming, and connecting power of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

in our worship as we are embraced by God’s grace;
in our fellowship as we are shaped into Christ’s character;
in our missions as we are humbly led by the Holy Spirit.

Pinehurst UMC Values:

FELLOWSHIP: Building relationships with God and others.
CHARACTER: Learning to become like Christ.
GRACE: Experiencing God’s gifts of faith, hope, and love.
HUMILITY: Valuing God and others before self.
MISSION: Serving others in our community and beyond.

Pinehurst UMC Believes:

God created all things good and all creation needs redemption.
God loves us enough to give his Son as a sign of love and forgiveness.
Jesus is the means to an abundant life with the Triune God.
Jesus comes alive in believers through the Holy Spirit.
Scripture is the primary source for what we believe and do.
The church’s faith is expressed in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.
Members of the church are called to a life of discipleship.
Disciples grow as they share in the sacraments and other means of grace.
Disciples joyfully offer their prayers, presence, gifts, and service.
Disciples share in the Wesleyan emphasis on personal and social holiness.

In the coming year we will need to focus the energy of the above statements into creating concrete ways of describing our mission and specific action items to accomplish the same. As we move forward we will pay attention to the leading of our Bishop, Al Gwinn, who is inviting every church in our conference to consider becoming an “ACTS 2 Church.” This involves paying special attention to the following: Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Spiritual Formation, and Risk-Taking Mission and Ministry to the World. Below is his challenge:

… by the Annual Conference of 2008 I want us to be able to identify, by name, 200 Acts 2 Churches in this conference! Churches that have all four of these qualities functioning well in the life of the Body. Churches that have decided to reach the lost, the unchurched, the de-churched – to reach children, youth, Hispanics and Latinos – not counting the cost or sacrifice involved.
Churches that have prayer-based, Spirit-filled, quality worship services. By the way, our 2005 statistics also show that our average Sunday morning worship attendance is down 2,796 persons! That fact should cause us to ask ourselves several serious questions about how we do worship, what we are or are not teaching about commitment and if real relationships actually exist.
By 2008 we will name 200 churches that are teaching their members to go deeper and not just wider. Churches that are serious about every member being in small groups where they are supported, encouraged and challenged to grow in Christ. Churches that are helping their members understand the gifts of the Spirit and the role of those gifts in building up the Body of Christ. Churches that forge strong, full partnerships between the clergy and laity. Churches that want a leader to equip and empower them and not do their ministry for them. Churches that want to be challenged and not coddled.
In 2008 we want to name 200 churches that are risk-takers in attacking poverty, seeking justice, caring for the needy – eager to give a hand-up and not just a hand-out.

Bishop Al Gwinn, The State of the Church Address, Annual Conference 2006

As part of that work I offer the following as areas of emphasis for my ministry:

Refining and aligning our worship with the our values and beliefs,
Lead us in a disciplined approach to adult spiritual formation that recognizes that small groups are the way this church will accomplish fellowship and ministry together.
Create a systematic model for reaching out into the community to invite persons into our community of faith and helping them become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.
Continue refining our systems of congregational care to include the formation of a new congregational wellness team with a parish nurse and teaching our first team of Stephen Ministers for providing care at moments of specific need.

This year we have welcomed 40 persons into membership in the church (current membership is 503 persons). Our worship attendance is averaging 300 for the year, although we experienced some decline in worship during the Promised Land Campaign.

We celebrate the following results of our Promised Land Campaign

$585,000 pledged in cash.
$68,000 received through November 30, 2006.
Gift of Steinway Baby Grand Piano.
Gift of a Log Cabin Kit ($45,000).
Gift of two pieces of real estate (not yet valued).
Other specific gifts are being discussed.

In our community we support Friend to Friend, the Sandhills Interfaith Hospitality Network, the Coalition for Human Care, Habitat for Humanity, and Moore Housing. With our hands we have mowed lawns, weeded and planted flower beds, replaced roofs, provided meals to the homeless with Community Presbyterian Church, and served countless hours in thrift stores. We have sent four teams to work alongside victims of Hurricane Katrina in Bay Saint Louis. We have raised in excess of $30,000 for missions’ projects close at hand and at a distance. We are living into God’s promise to Abraham that we are blessed to be blessing.

I continue to challenge our church to remember with Paul that the work of a pastor is “to equip the saints for the work of ministry” (see Ephesians 4:11). I remain committed to setting each of us free for ministry in this place. Roger and Jean Hicks continue to invite God’s Spirit our worship life together. Stacy Pell, Stephanie Lind, and Bryan Fillettte are a breath of fresh air for our children’s and youth programs. I give thanks for Ellen Hertlein and Roberta Culver who provided valuable assistance to the administrative life of our church. Their able handling of the details enables me to spend more time with the members of our church and in prayer with Jesus. I am also blessed to work with my colleagues Lovell Aills, Jean Arthur, Bruce Carlson, Emil Johnson, Betsy Kugel, and Ronda Torres. May we find strength in the willingness “to become all things to all people so that by all means some might be saved” (1 Corinthians 9:22).

Pastor’s Report for Pinehurst UMC (2005)

dorean elabote, dorean dote. Given Gifts – Give Gifts. (Matthew 10:8b).

I continue to offer this phrase, the motto of the Theological School of Drew University, as my personal mission statement. I am privileged to employ my gifts and talents for planning for the future, teaching, and preaching among the United Methodists of Pinehurst, North Carolina.
Our journey from small to larger membership church, from store-front to permanent facility, from predominantly retired persons to a diverse cross-section of ages, from charter visionaries to emerging leaders continues. Perhaps this past week’s Tenth Anniversary Celebration did more than anything to launch our second decade of ministry.

So far this year we have welcomed 50 persons into membership in the church (current membership is 484 persons). Our worship attendance is averaging 335 persons since Labor Day and we anticipate welcoming 10-15 persons into membership in November. In January and February of this year we read, taught, prayed and worshipped our way through Maxie Dunnam and Kimberly Reisman’s The Workbook on Virtues & the Fruit of the Spirit. From Ash Wednesday through Easter we prayed and studied through Mark’s Gospel. A sermon series on the Holy Spirit in the season after Easter has been followed by an extended teaching and preaching series based on Reuben Job’s A Wesleyan Spiritual Reader. We have launched new weekly Bible studies centered on the Ten Commandments and an Invitation to the New Testament (from DISCIPLE Bible Studies).

In our community we support Friend to Friend, the Sandhills Interfaith Hospitality Network, the Coalition for Human Care, Habitat for Humanity, and Moore Housing. With our hands we have mowed lawns, weeded and planted flower beds, replaced roofs, provided meals to the homeless with Community Presbyterian Church, and served countless hours in thrift stores. We have raised in excess of $40,000 for missions’ projects close at hand and at a distance. We are living into God’s promise to Abraham that we are blessed to be blessing.

I continue to challenge our church to remember with Paul that the work of a pastor is “to equip the saints for the work of ministry” (see Ephesians 4:11). I remain committed to setting each of us free for ministry in this place. Roger and Jean Hicks continue to invite God’s Spirit our worship life together. Todd Ferguson and Stacy Pell are a breath of fresh air for our children’s and youth programs. I give thanks for Ellen Hertlein and Roberta Culver who provided valuable assistance to the administrative life of our church. Their able handling of the details enables me to spend more time with the members of our church and in prayer with Jesus. I am also blessed to work with my colleagues Lovell Aills, Jean Arthur, Bruce Carlson, Emil Johnson, Betsy Kugel, and Ronda Torres. May we find strength in the willingness “to become all things to all people so that by all means some might be saved” (1 Corinthians 9:22).

As we look forward to our second decade of ministry with God in this place I would claim the following promises:

Our parking lot construction will enable us to focus more on welcoming others at special events rather than “telling them where to go” to find more parking.
In the coming year we will streamline our volunteer process to be more welcoming of individuals of various availabilities to support our children and youth ministries.
Finally, we will strive to provide the tools and methods to help persons see themselves as gifted, talented, available, called, and fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

Going Public with Your Faith

Going Public with Your Faith: Becoming a Spiritual Influence at Work, by William Carr Peel and Walt Larimore (Zondervan: 2003).

From the authors:

Our proposition is simple: For most Christians these days, the workplace — not the church or a foreign mission field — is the primary setting for effective kingdom work. … We contend that the primary historical means God uses to spread the Good News and extend the influence of faith is to “send it to work” with ordinary people. This was our premise when we teamed up to develop “The Saline Solution,” with the goal of teaching doctors how to talk about their faith with their patients (p. 13).

Evangelism is organic, not mechanical. Interestingly, the Bible consistently chooses an agrarian model to describe evangelism. Evangelism, after all, is a process comparable to growing a crop: cultivation + planting ==> harvest. It takes time to cultivate a relationship in which seeds of biblical truth can be planted and can grow, resulting in an eventual harvest of eternal life (p. 14).

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Donald Miller – Blue Like Jazz

A friend of mine said I needed to read Blue Like Jazz. My young colleague often hypes things to the maximum, so I put off reading the book. Then I noticed the buzz in other circles, so I relented and wished I had been moved sooner. Donald Miller brings a winsome wit to the page and challenges current conventional categories … is he evangelical, post-modern, left coast, etc. … it doesn't matter.

Miller writes a string of essays that recount a journey of resolution.

I never like jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theatre in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxaphone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. Is as if they are showing the way.

I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened (page ix).

What a journey you take with Miller. He reveals his heart in so many dramatic ways. He also challenges us to reevaluate our assumptions. Take this quote on things he hates about churches:

First: I felt like people were trying to sell me Jesus. I was a salesman for a while, and we were taught that you were supposed to point out the benefits of a product when you are selling it. That is how I felt about some of the preachers I heard speak. They were always pointing out the benefits of Christian faith. That rubbed me wrong. It's not that there are not benefits, there are, but did they have to talk about spirituality like it's a vacuum cleaner. I never felt like Jesus was a product. I wanted Him to be a person. Not only that, but they were always pointing out how great the particular church was. The bulletin read like a brochure for Amway. They were always saying how life-changing some conference was going to be. Life-changing? What does that mean? It sounded very suspicious. I wish they would just tell it to me straight rather than trying to sell me on everything. I felt like I got bombarded with commercials all week and then I went to church and got even more.

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Michael Gelb – How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci is recognized as one of the greatest geniuses of all time. He excelled in many areas such as the creation of the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and other classic works. Besides art, Leonardo was an architect, mathematician, philosopher, and military planner. In How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci Michael Gelb reviews and explains Leonardo's notebooks, inventions, and works of art. He introduces readers to the Seven da Vincian Principles, essential elements of genius that can be developed. The book is a collection of illustrations, passages and exercises designed to stimulate anyone's awareness of their own creativity.

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Timothy Tyson – Blood Done Sign My Name

In Blood Done Sign My Name the death of Henry Marrow is conveyed to the ten-year old Timothy Tyson with the words "Daddy and Roger and 'em shot 'em a n*****." Timothy Tyson tells his first-hand experience of the story of the murder of this African-American
Vietnam veteran in the late spring of 1970 in Oxford, North Carolina. Tyson tells us what happens as the small town deals with the murder, the marches, the bombings, the trial, and the acquittal of those who killed Henry Marrow. As an eight year old growing up in the state capitol of Raleigh I was unaware of what was going on just an hour north of my universe in Granville county. Later, my first appointment as a pastor was to two United Methodist Churches about ten miles from Oxford. David Graybeal taught me at Drew University that a pastor has to "pay attention to the community." I wish I had Tyson's book in hand as I cared for God's people who lived along the Vance-Granville county line.

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Benefits of Church Membership

Recently someone asked me to clarify the “benefits” of being a member of the church (I think their question sounded more like “what’s in it for me?”). I suggested that my answer was “nothing” and that I am more inclined to talk about the “responsibilities” of being a fully devoted follower (aka disciple) of Jesus Christ . Reading Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Church several years ago helped me clarify the question of membership. So I pulled his book off the shelf, turned to the chapter “Turning Attenders into Members” and reacquainted myself with some valuable lessons (see pp. 309-329). Let’s explore …

First, let’s pay attention to the word member. “Member of what?” one might ask. We understand joining social clubs, country clubs, and civic organizations. Is membership in the church any different? Yes it is! C. S. Lewis reminds us that membership is not induction into a cold institution, but is becoming a vital organ in a living organism! Scripture teaches us:

“For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Romans 12:4-5).
“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 6:15a).
“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27).

Being a member of a living body is a difficult concept for USAmericans to grasp. We have been
raised on the Lone Ranger and far too often we think we can be Christians all by
ourselves. This is because we have confused “believing” with
“belonging,” that is, many see Christianity as a set of ideas, not as
discipleship (aka followership) of Jesus Christ as Lord. When we “member” ourselves into the church the organism adapts to welcome this addition of life! (Essentially when someone joins the church it re-members itself in a new way as the living body of Christ in the world.)

Membership in the church then involves making a commitment to another person or institution. Rick suggests that the following questions are probably on people’s minds as they explore making this commitment:

The question of acceptance: Do I belong here?
The question of friendship: Does anybody want to know me?
The question of value: Am I needed?
The question of benefit: What is the advantage of joining?
The question of expectation: What is required of members?

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Jesus’ Core Values and Bedrock Beliefs

As we are pursuing and praying through our Core Values, Bedrock Beliefs, Motivating Vision, and Key Mission a colleague asked the following question:

What are Jesus' Core Values?
What are Jesus' Bedrock Beliefs?
What is Jesus' Motivating Vision?
What is Jesus' Key Mission?

Our "coach" helped me remember why we are asking the question of or ourselves:

Now here we see the beginning of all Christian theology. There is a point
when the memory of the historical Jesus faded, and became reshaped and
recommunicated through the lives and perspectives and spiritual experiences of
the disciples. At some point, somebody asks these question … the whole history
of theology unfolds. How they answer these questions in Rome is somewhat
different from Antioch, or Alexandria, or Carthage, or Cleveland.

To what extent did the core values of Jesus reflect the behavioral
expectations of the Jewish community? The convictions of the Pharisees? The
political ideals of the Zealots? The insights of Socrates? The organizational
principles of Rome?

And yet, as diverse and complex as the answers to these questions might be,
it is incumbent upon Christian leader to answer them for me, for my context, for
this piece of God's mission that I lead. My values, beliefs, vision and mission
should reasonably and reliably align with Jesus. It is the essence of
"integrity".

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Following Disney into the Future?

In Leadership Journal Skie Jethani, teaching pastor of Blanchard Road Alliance Church in Wheaton, IL, describes the journey of Walt Disney's Tomorrowland. 50 years ago USAmericans were an optomistic bunch, convinced that technology would solve our problems. Disney said it this way:

"Tomorrowland is a vista into a world of wondrous ideas, signifying
man's achievements…a step into the future, with predictions of
constructive things to come … and the hope for a peaceful and united
world."

It has proven expensive to keep Tomorrowland ahead of our fast-paced culture (any investment in technology does not stay current for long). The result, Tomorrowland in recent years portrays "a tongue planted firmly in the cheek" version of the future that mirrors our jaded attitudes. At least one writer laments Disney's loss of their optimistic prophetic voice.

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Mike Slaughter on “First Doing … then Believing”

"The postmodern apologetic is first doing. . . then believing. It is not 'believing first and then doing.'" So says Mike Slaughter, Lead Pastor at Ginghamsburg United Methodist church in Tipp City, Ohio. To lead from the new apologetic, Slaughter offers several opportunities to show the love of Christ to their community through love and service. During the Christmas season, Slaughter asked those in his congregation to spend on others (in this case the Sudanese refugees) whatever they spend on themselves. "After all," Slaughter says, "it's not your birthday." The result was $300,000 given to the Sudanese. In the same spirit, he put forth an opportunity to help the victims of the tsunami disaster. Another $25,000 came pouring in. "God didn't call us, as pastors, to manage the church, but to be the hands and feet of Christ by winning the lost, healing the hurting and setting the captive free." In that spirit, Ginghamsburg began New Path Outreach ministries. Look at the description from their website:

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