Hello Blog followers. Pardon my interruption to the flow of the reading from Luke. Several things have happened in the last two weeks and it has diverted all of my attention. Let me try to catch you up. I hope you don't mind this little side tracking from our regular sharing of the chapters in Luke.
A few days ago, and it will seem like a lot longer very shortly, the Bishop of the Baltimore Washington Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, of which I have been a part of for almost 50 years between youth delegate/member to Annual Conference sessions and forty years under appointment to be a pastor, has re-appointed me to the North Bethesda United Methodist Church beginning on July 1, 2014. That has meant a great deal of prayer, visits to the church, meetings with the personnel committees of both congregations and the announcements in each church on the same day. This has also meant a great deal of reflection and conversation with the people at Liberty Grove who are having a hard time understanding how all of this works.
To try to explain, with apologies to John Wesley and Francis Asbury, how the UMC does this. John Wesley believed that an overall plan or vision for the growth of disciples for Jesus Christ, would take several people to accomplish. The idea of rotating pastors was to provide a congregation with an overall more thorough training for ministry with several pastors than just one for a long time. The belief was each pastor was good at somethings, blessed with certain gifts of the spirit for the ministry, but not all of the gifts. If we switched pastors around, the local church would benefit from a good preacher onetime, a good administrator, at another, a good educationally focused pastor, a good mission minded pastor, a good social service pastor, etc. The local church would then be encouraged by a step in the right direction under the leadership of each pastor.
One way to look at this is to consider a barrel. The barrel has many staves, (the up and down parts of the barrel) and each stave could be at a different height. If the church was a barrel and only had one tall stave, the others would be much lower and wouldn't hold much in the barrel. So if the church only got encouragement and growth in one area, it would be a funny looking barrel. But with rotation of pastors, a good administrator would raise that stave. A building pastor would enlarge the building for ministry, a good fund raiser would help bring in the resources for ministry, a good evangelist, would bring in more members. A good teacher would help develop the spiritual life of the members, and after a while they would be a much taller staved barrel, capable of holding more in the barrel. That's the way it was seen in John Wesley and Francis Asbury's day. And as the country grew, it would take an appointment to move across the mountain and start a new church, because some pastors would like to stay put once they got to know everybody. But then the church would not expand and it would eventually be left alone. So Methodists covered the country and by the Civil War nearly a third of the country had a Methodist connection. We had more churches with our name on the door, than there were post offices.
The country and the culture have changed but our way of doing church has not so much. So the Bishop still makes the changes, and they are supposed to be strategic, helping the churches and the Church grow in faithfulness. It doesn't work as well and since all pastors are not trained the same way and people have learned to be consumers with their own choices for almost everything, the connection to a church is much harder to do. And with so many churches under the responsibility of the Bishop, it is harder to be able to fit every situation and every congregation and every expectation of what their pastor is supposed to be like.
So now you can see why it's a challenge. And it needs much prayer. And I can use your prayers. For a church loses a pastor and lots of people grieve the loss of their spiritual shepherd. The shepherd on the other hand loses a whole congregation which includes many really good relationships and experiences and suddenly the grief and loss can be overwhelming when you think about that. So I am grieving the loss of many of my friends all at once. I am wrestling with the challenges of moving to another church and learning to love them and provide the kind of ministry and leadership they need, not knowing them yet. So keep me in your prayers.
I too am on a journey of faith, called by God to leave the comfort of familiar and travel, like Abraham, to a new place God will show me. Like Jonah, there are times we would rather not, but God will track us down and help us to see clearly that we are going to Nineveh and share the good news. Best of all, God is with us.
Thanks for your prayers
Pastor Jeff
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Luke ch. 9
Chapter 9 of Luke, which we are reading a chapter at a time, gives us a great view of the turning point in Jesus' ministry. He is preparing his disciples to carry on the work bringing the kingdom of God to our world, when he won't be physically present with them. So to discover if they are ready, and they aren't, but that's another story like ours, he sends them out to tell others the good news.
We are reminded by this event that all of us have a part to play in the work of the church, the church is not a building or a social club with a religious theme, or a social service agency motivated by our faith, but a way for God to change lives to bring people who are separated from God into a relationship with God. He sends his disciples out to get them some experience in sharing the good news, of helping people who are overwhelmed in life to find the help God can give. They cast out demons, heal the sick and tell the good news, which they have been seeing Jesus do all along. That's our mission too, tell people, help people when they are having troubles, that God wants to heal and restore and connect to them for their wholeness.
They come back and apparently a whole group of people are coming with them so that suddenly there are five thousand men and their families sitting on the hill side listening to Jesus and being healed and taught. It get's late and the disciples feel that the people should leave now, or they will be hungry. Jesus suggests that the disciples feed them. Once again, Jesus is asking us to be helping people as a part of their learning and growing in faith. The disciples still haven't developed the faith they need and wonder how on earth we are going to feed all these people. Someone suggests that there isn't enough money in the treasury for all of them to have food. Someone else found a small lunch, consisting of 5 loaves of bread and two fish. The loaves are about the size of a dinner roll or hamburger bun. How will that feed this many people?
Once again Jesus gets to show us that our faith can be a whole lot bigger than it is. Jesus asks the people to sit down in groups of about fifty, and then he lifts the bread toward heaven, and gives thanks for them and then breaks them and passes the bread to the disciples, who pass the bread to the people. He does the same with the fish. And lo and behold, a dramatic expression when we see God at work, there is enough food for everyone and a collection of 12 baskets of left overs! God has a way of doing far more than we can even imagine.
The next part of the story invites us to wrestle with what all of this means. So after the people are gone and they have traveled some more, Jesus starts to ask them, "Who do people say that I am?" This question is still asked today. Who do people think Jesus is? well some say, you are a prophet, or John the Baptist come back to life, or some other great rabbi. It sounds like the same answer by people today. Jesus is a great teacher, a miracle worker, a religious leader from the first century, a person we have heard about from a long time ago. Even today we have many answers to what we and our friends think of Jesus. We will explore that in more detail later. Stay tuned.
Then to make sure that Jesus can move toward his purpose of dying in Jerusalem to accomplish the forgiveness of sins and prove who he really is with his Resurrection, he asks the disciples and he really is asking us. "Who do you say that I am?" The reality comes to us, how do we answer that question. Who is Jesus? Peter blurts out that he is the Son of God, the Christ, the Messiah of God. And Jesus thanks him for the revelation that was not a human concoction, but a divine revelation.
Yes, Jesus is the Son of God, yes, Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah of God. Which is pretty unbelievable sometimes. And when Jesus says that this revelation is right and that as the Son of God we are going to have the same challenges he has, we have a hard time with that. He tells them that the Son of God will be betrayed, arrested, tried, crucified and buried. But on the third day be raised back to life. And as a matter of fact each of us, if we want to be a true disciple, must surrender our own wills and take up the cross of obedience and follow him to that difficult end.
The disciples, and us included, have a hard time with Jesus announcing such a horrible event coming to him and they begin to doubt his divinity and his purpose. He will need to show them something else to help keep them on track, and that's what comes next. He takes Peter, James and John up on a mountain top for a time for prayer.
I pray you will continue to read the gospel of Luke for more details, and continue to struggle with and decide for yourself, who Jesus is and what you will do to stay with him for your whole life and beyond. Come back and we will share what happens next in a future Blog report.
Blessings
Pastor Jeff
We are reminded by this event that all of us have a part to play in the work of the church, the church is not a building or a social club with a religious theme, or a social service agency motivated by our faith, but a way for God to change lives to bring people who are separated from God into a relationship with God. He sends his disciples out to get them some experience in sharing the good news, of helping people who are overwhelmed in life to find the help God can give. They cast out demons, heal the sick and tell the good news, which they have been seeing Jesus do all along. That's our mission too, tell people, help people when they are having troubles, that God wants to heal and restore and connect to them for their wholeness.
They come back and apparently a whole group of people are coming with them so that suddenly there are five thousand men and their families sitting on the hill side listening to Jesus and being healed and taught. It get's late and the disciples feel that the people should leave now, or they will be hungry. Jesus suggests that the disciples feed them. Once again, Jesus is asking us to be helping people as a part of their learning and growing in faith. The disciples still haven't developed the faith they need and wonder how on earth we are going to feed all these people. Someone suggests that there isn't enough money in the treasury for all of them to have food. Someone else found a small lunch, consisting of 5 loaves of bread and two fish. The loaves are about the size of a dinner roll or hamburger bun. How will that feed this many people?
Once again Jesus gets to show us that our faith can be a whole lot bigger than it is. Jesus asks the people to sit down in groups of about fifty, and then he lifts the bread toward heaven, and gives thanks for them and then breaks them and passes the bread to the disciples, who pass the bread to the people. He does the same with the fish. And lo and behold, a dramatic expression when we see God at work, there is enough food for everyone and a collection of 12 baskets of left overs! God has a way of doing far more than we can even imagine.
The next part of the story invites us to wrestle with what all of this means. So after the people are gone and they have traveled some more, Jesus starts to ask them, "Who do people say that I am?" This question is still asked today. Who do people think Jesus is? well some say, you are a prophet, or John the Baptist come back to life, or some other great rabbi. It sounds like the same answer by people today. Jesus is a great teacher, a miracle worker, a religious leader from the first century, a person we have heard about from a long time ago. Even today we have many answers to what we and our friends think of Jesus. We will explore that in more detail later. Stay tuned.
Then to make sure that Jesus can move toward his purpose of dying in Jerusalem to accomplish the forgiveness of sins and prove who he really is with his Resurrection, he asks the disciples and he really is asking us. "Who do you say that I am?" The reality comes to us, how do we answer that question. Who is Jesus? Peter blurts out that he is the Son of God, the Christ, the Messiah of God. And Jesus thanks him for the revelation that was not a human concoction, but a divine revelation.
Yes, Jesus is the Son of God, yes, Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah of God. Which is pretty unbelievable sometimes. And when Jesus says that this revelation is right and that as the Son of God we are going to have the same challenges he has, we have a hard time with that. He tells them that the Son of God will be betrayed, arrested, tried, crucified and buried. But on the third day be raised back to life. And as a matter of fact each of us, if we want to be a true disciple, must surrender our own wills and take up the cross of obedience and follow him to that difficult end.
The disciples, and us included, have a hard time with Jesus announcing such a horrible event coming to him and they begin to doubt his divinity and his purpose. He will need to show them something else to help keep them on track, and that's what comes next. He takes Peter, James and John up on a mountain top for a time for prayer.
I pray you will continue to read the gospel of Luke for more details, and continue to struggle with and decide for yourself, who Jesus is and what you will do to stay with him for your whole life and beyond. Come back and we will share what happens next in a future Blog report.
Blessings
Pastor Jeff
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