Dear Friends

   I'm the associate pastor at Mill Creek Parish in Derwood, MD these days. I have just completed the four Sundays serving in worship while our Pastor Rev. Joan Carter-Rimbach was on vacation.

   I offer the four sermons that I preached there this summer for you to look at if you would like by going to Mill Creek Parish. org. follow the Worship button and see sermons.

   The series is on the vision of Mill Creek Parish, Disciples are MADE at Mill Creek. The four letters represent the ways Discipleship, students of Jesus develop and are encouraged at Mill Creek Parish.

   M stands for Mission

   A stands for Adoration

   D stands for Discipleship

   E stand for Embrace your neighbor

   The four week series of sermons was to high light the four letters and to give encouragement for being involved in each of those areas as those who are developing their following Jesus.

   I recommend you go and watch them.

Thank you, and blessings to you all.

Pastor Jeff

Do I Stay Christian?

    The other day I had lunch with Brian McLaren, an author of many books, and a former neighboring pastor. Our lunch the other day was with 135 of his friends, via zoom, but it did bring back memories of our occasional lunches back in the days when our churches were close by. Brian was presenting his latest book Do I Stay Christian?, coming out next week, on the issues facing Christians who are aware of how much negative publicity and public opinion have come upon Christians lately. It was a fascinating conversation, and I will put that book in my Kindle as soon as it's available. Perhaps I'll do more blogging when I've had a chance read it and reflect upon it.

   The main point is that for some followers of Jesus, the problem is the label "Christian" rather than the commitment to follow Jesus. This problem has occurred over time in other cultures, and in other times in history. We may just face more backlash now because of Social Media and piles of news and stories about fallen Christian leaders. For many very conscientious followers it is very difficult to find ourselves in so much pain. Christian has been a good label for a long time, now not so much.

   If you haven't confronted anyone who says they don't know whether to be Christian or not, or they say they are not religious, but they are spiritual, that's a part of the conversation that I am talking about. I would have to agree, it's a very tough time to be a pastor trying to encourage people to be followers of Jesus, and not be "Christians" because of the negativity associated with this word.

   To give you some ideas, the label gets put with some who attacked the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. For some the label goes with the news that Jerry Falwell has been ousted from his leadership of the largest Christian University because of sexual scandals and objectionable behavior for a Christian University leader. Or maybe it's in the face of several major mega church leaders who have fallen from grace because of sexual unfaithfulness or other accusations of inappropriate behavior as a church leader.

   In other cases it's that there is now an association with"Christian" and racial hatred especially anti non-white people. Whether it be African Americans who have been here over 400 years or new immigrants who have fled the horrors of persecution to come to a better life in the US. Or even toward native American, who have been here for thousands of years, after coming across the land bridge between Russia and Alaska, and then wandering down the coast and across the nations. Many have decried and complained and hurt people who are not white in the name of religion. And yet, our faith is very, very clear we are to welcome the stranger, and to support immigrants as people of faith, because we are to remember, as Scripture reminds us often, that we too were immigrants in Egypt before Moses led the people to freedom.

   In still other cases, the wanting to distance ourselves from the name of Christian, is because there is a lot of anti-science and anti acceptance of truth from scientific resources. Over 1 million citizens died because of Covid. The best prevention is vaccination and yet many church pastors have spoken out in their pulpits against vaccinations. Those outside the church, yet believers, don't want to be connected to that kind of attitude if it represents their faith. Global warming is another topic which some Christians are trying to deny exists, yet Scripture clearly demands that we are responsible and stewards of our mother earth. It becomes the difference between what our Scripture teaches us and what we say and do. The farther apart this is, the more likely people are going to want to get away from Christians.

   Love One Another, is the summary of what Jesus taught. In the years before Christianity changed from being persecuted by the Romans, to making it the official faith of the Empire, was the discovery of how much Christians loved one another, and loved their neighbors, especially in difficult times. Christians nursed sick Romans back to health, when the healthy Romans fled the disease. When the sick recovered, they realized what a blessing being cared for by one who practiced loving one another really meant. It changed the world.

   Now we are in a similar opportunity. With so much strife, hatred, confusion, grief and lack of hope, we need to love one another, more than ever. Maybe we just need to figure out a better way to put a label on our love. Follower of Jesus, may work for a while, and we choose not to mention Christian, so that we don't put a barrier up to being able to share the faith. St. Paul had a lot to say about doing what is needed in order to win some who doubt, over to the Jesus follower side. Try it, you'll like it!

    Blessings

    Pastor Jeff

The Struggle of Low Morale in Churches

 Do you agree that clergy morale is currently at a low ebb? If so, what factors are contributing to this low morale? 

   I would have to agree that clergy morale is low for several reasons. The cartoon/photos of a person juggling a couple of balls to represent Seminary and the photo of several balls in the air to represent the actual church, and the hands reaching out of the ball pit representing the current situation is right on. It was on facebook, I believe.

   One of my contributing factors is that the resources we have to do the ministry we were trained to do has shriveled up. People to volunteer, money to do ministry, and the training to operate in the current situations are all extremely volatile. I was trained 45 years ago by teachers who were themselves in ministry 30 years prior to that teaching. What worked for them has not spanned the distance from their experience to ours in the world today. They taught us what succeeded for them, which I appreciated, but realized, especially recently that mindset is not really available anymore. As the church participants aged, and we are in the most vulnerable to be sick profile, they held back their participation. The loss of gathering for obvious reasons, affected the income sources. The givers in the church responded after a while, but the rental income was severely cut off. Right after the book published to help churches to diversify their income streams to rentals came out, by the way.

   Another major factor in reducing morale, I think, was the challenges related to the political atmosphere and the racial tension in the air. We've probably not been good at those, but the news and the tension in the air, certainly pushed those issues to the surface more readily. The Covid pandemic and the response, or lack of support for the common sense vaccinations and common decency to all wear masks, added to the difficulty of creating a supportive community we once knew was the congregation. The lack of support from media and the highly publicized controversy from religious leaders as well, doomed our chances of working together and hope of seeing any kind of progress. since we are being "results oriented" for so long, can really take its toll on you when all your numbers are going down and look like they will for a while as well.

   Producing quality online services required a great deal of flexibility and a change from a verbal to a visual skill, I think that hurt some who were more verbally skilled and couldn't quite get the hang of everything needed to do quality visuals. Too much was just talking heads for the online experience, rather than the amount of video that was available to help in worship. The abundance of that material required an exorbitant amount of time to review and get permission to use in an online worship experience.

   Another factor is the shriveling of the attention span for most adults. We were trained that a 30 minute sermon was required, especially to use all the background resources and research. Today 7 minutes of attention span or less is available to the average human, camera angles, changes in scenery on all forms of media makes talking to people a burden, if you are not conscious of the need to change focus every 6 or 7 minutes. Being creative in the sermon/message slot took on a whole different approach and not having real comfort in that ability has lowered the morale of preachers.

Finally, what strategies can clergy engage in to help them deal with low morale?

   Our clergy cluster group, all UMC pastors in a region, found that we needed/wanted more time together to help each other, to be a listening and supportive colleague so much more important than just gathering to coordinate church calendars and the requests from the conference for agenda and support items. We offered each other what was working and became less competitive than we had previously.

   I think we are going to need a lot more resources given to us to train us in dealing with the ever changing world views among our communities and parish participants. In our UMC world, we are going to need a great deal more support for the loss of certifiable progress, we have been so numbers conscious, baptism, conversion, small group participation, volunteers, worship attendance, finances, that are all not very good in comparison to former years, can really hurt morale. It is hard for a supervisor to say well done thou good and faithful servant, when it looks like you are seeing the destruction of Jerusalem going on all around you.

   Anyhow, enough ranting and raving. I retired, thinking I could help my church recover some of the income they were paying me. I had a promise of another appointment, thinking I could offer a whole package of ministry for a lot less being retired, that hasn't happened yet, which is affecting my morale too, is all a part of the scene.

   Thank you for listening to all of this.

Pastor Jeff

And When's the Shift Over?

 And When is the Shift over?

Thoughts on a recent Seth Grodin blog

“If you sell your time as the measure of the work you do, the work is over when the shift ends. Clock in, clock out.

If you sell your output as the measure of the work, your work is over when the inbox is empty. Once you’ve made all the pizzas that were ordered, you’re done.

But more and more, our work can be endless. One more sales call might lead to one more sale. One more cycle of innovation might lead to the breakthrough we’ve been looking for. One more post might get you the traffic you’re on the hook for.

In a competitive marketplace, self-regulating the length of our shift is a lot to ask. Given that the list of things to do is intentionally endless, it’s on each of us to decide what ‘enough’ looks like. Because more time isn’t always the answer.”  Seth Godin blog 12/16/21

This got me thinking, especially as a retired UMC pastor in this crazy Advent Season.

So much of our time and responsibility is dictated by our church expectations. Perhaps as the lone pastor almost everything falls upon you. You never get to the end of the list or the task, and you never get to invest in something new that might break the cycle, or bring you much needed help, or a new direction that brings forth spiritual life and health. Clock in, clock out. And the pandemic has added a whole new set of tasks of some kind.

We’ve just come through the Charge Conference season, the measure of our work, how many people, how are the finances, how many disciples, how many baptisms or new commitments, what’s your attendance at worship? And then on top of that, there is the evaluation, by your hand and by your SPRC and all your efforts boils down to “meets expectations” or “needs improvement”. Because that’s all the time we really have. Once, you’ve made all the pizzas, sermons, visits, meetings, you’re done.

More and more that can be endless. And yet, in reading or listening to a blog, or attending a seminar or hearing an inspiring speaker, a pastor who made great strides, you suddenly know it, the one more, call, visit, blog, program, new idea that might just be what’s going to get you above the last year’s numbers. But where does that time come from? How do we break out of the past and move forward into new life?

I have to confess that I would cheat on the to do list, because I knew the something new would make a bigger difference. Adding a mid-week worship and Bible Study would involve a lot of time, that would have to come away from some visiting, or little meetings that didn’t improve the Realm and Community of God at all. And the skipping some of those parts to bring new life, would cost me dearly in the complaints department, he/she is not doing their job, they haven’t such and such. And the new people that are coming are sitting in my seat, so it’s time to get the Bishop to move the pastor, before they ruin everything.

As Seth reminds us, we are in a competitive marketplace, and self regulating our shift or our to do list, is a lot to ask. And since the expectations are endless, it’s up to us to decide what the appropriate effort looks like. Now if we could only have support for the changes from someone who sees the bigger picture, and not just silencing the cranky SPRC person who demands a change. We might even see a new year and progress and new people blessed.

That’s my prayer, may it be yours as well.

Jeff Jones

Retired and still willing to make a difference.

Can Gratitude Help you Change?

 Day 5

Has something in your life been changed by being grateful?

This is a tough question at first glance. I don’t know that something specific has happened because I’m grateful. But looking back over life, even these two very difficult years, I’ve found plenty to be grateful for. I think the gratitude component has kept me from going too deeply into discouragement. I find that most of life is not what we conjure up in our own vivid imaginations. When we go with what we imagined, it will always disappoint us. Too much emphasis on the what "didn’t happen" can drag you down tremendously.

One of my antidotes to that kind of discouragement is a list of thanksgiving hymns and songs, and listening to them has been a great relief. May I recommend you spend some time over this weekend to look up some of your favorite hymns and songs of thanksgiving using YouTube as your source. Many churches and Christian artists have posted their versions of the hymns on YouTube. Use the search box, and type in your hymn and be prepared to see a long list and some songs that might go along with your search. Listen to a few, and it will give you a sense of gratitude that could help you change your emotional state, at least at the moment. Go ahead and try it. Don’t be afraid of newer versions or instrumentation either. Some of the videos are gorgeous in their depictions of the words and thoughts of the hymns as well. 

My shortened list includes: We Gather Together, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, The Doxology, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, Come Ye Thankful people, come, Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart, and To God Be The Glory. You are welcomed to add your own. I’m also a big fan of Apple Music and have found many instrumentally rendered versions of these songs that you can listen to. My sound track has a bunch of Thanksgiving Dinner background albums to play while I’m working and writing and answering emails, especially this week. In a few days, I’ll switch over to Christmas Music.

Since the topic is change, I’ll wrestle with what kinds of things do I want to do differently moving forward? Can I show more gratitude to people who touch my life somehow? I read recently how important it is to verbalize our thanks to people we encounter on a daily basis. You might want to try and thank the cashier at the grocery store, or thank the delivery person, by going out of your way to say something. I’m sure you can think of people you might encounter who could be really blessed by your thanking them. McDonald’s window people? Another change for gratitude reasons would be to develop your meditation time, devotional reading, going to church or watching church if you can't go or shouldn't go. Extend how much time you actually spend in prayer. Time it sometime and see how long you do pray. This will shock you at how little it actually is sometimes. So in gratitude to God, pray more, and remember Anne Lamot's advice your prayer should include Help, Thanks, and Wow.

As promised early on in this blog series, here is a complete worship service from last year at my church, when we were on zoom and recording them. You are welcome to advance to the parts you are really interested in. You might find that slowing down to worship will help your soul a whole lot more. I know you have a dozen things you have to do still, but sometimes you can get more done after you are refreshed, than pushing through just to do them.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving.

Pastor Jeff

Here is a complete Thanksgiving Worship service

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkw1Ed6n1rI&t=200s

NBUMC Worship 11 22 2020 - YouTube

Discover Gratitude Within

 Day 4    Where have you discovered gratitude within? 

We so often jump to what I need or want when we pray, that finding time to be grateful within, for the answers to prayer from previous occasions, takes some doing. We have to force ourselves sometimes to slow down and think about what we are truly thankful for.

“Tomorrow start spending five minutes each morning looking at God alone, giving all glory and worship to Him. List as many attributes as you can remember. List His creations. It gets much easier the more you do it. Soon you won’t have to set your timer. I promised  your life will never be the same again.” (Teaching Kids Authentic Worship) 

In this lesson on worship, I’ve begun setting my watch for a five minute period to start with gratitude.I also name as many things as I can be thankful for. Some days I look at each decade of my life to remember where God has blessed me in difficult circumstances. Some days I think and name the people who have touched my life, for which I am grateful. Sometimes I begin with favorite hymns that have blessed my life. This hymn from Carolyn Winfrey Gillette sums up an element of giving thanks in this difficult period of time too.

A hymn for Thanksgiving

God, Your Blessings Overflow

DIX 7.7.7.7.7.7 ("For the Beauty of the Earth")

God, your blessings overflow! What can we begin to say?
How can we begin to show, All our gratitude this day?
God, we join to worship you, Giving thanks for all you do.

Thank you for the life you give, For each friend and family,
For the land in which we live, For your love that sets us free.
Thank you, God, for daily bread, And for feasts of joy you spread.

Yet at tables where we share, Sometimes there is also pain.
There may be an empty chair: When will we feel whole again?
When our days of grief are long, Thank you that your love is strong.

So we join in thanks this day, So your gifts we freely share,
So we follow Christ the Way, Loving, serving everywhere.
Spirit, may our lives express, All our daily thankfulness.

Tune: Conrad Kocher, 1838, in chorale Treuer Heiland ("For the Beauty of the Earth")  (MIDI)
Text: Copyright © 1998 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved.
Copied from Gifts of Love: New Hymns for Today's Worship by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette (Geneva Press, 2000).

I also have begun to collect books on gratitude and thanksgiving. If you struggle with wanting to be more grateful within, I would recommend these books. I am grateful that Kindle has made my book buying so much easier. My mother was a librarian and taught me to love books. I always needed support for an idea and I would forget where I got it, but thankfully the books were nearby. My Doctor of Ministry taught me to save my books, heavily underlined, so that I could defend my dissertation easily. Hoarding can be a result of that attitude. Now I struggle to get rid of books in retirement., a story for another day, back to recommendations.

Deborah Norville Thank You Power. Great beginning to see the power and blessings of gratitude. Margaret Visser The Gift of Thanks: The roots and rituals of Gratitude can point you in several directions. Diane Butler Bass Grateful can be another way to develop a grateful heart. Anne Lamott Help Thanks Wow is more about prayer, but it essentially reminds us of how much gratitude and thanks giving should be done related to our time with God. Dallas Willard, a great resource for developing your whole spiritual life has a book on the 23rd Psalm that helps us see gratitude as well. Life Without Lack.

As my mother reminded me of how important sending thank you cards were after receiving gifts, we need to apply that to God’s touch upon our lives. Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart.

Tomorrow I’m going to share a link to a thanksgiving service for you to use either Wednesday night or Thursday morning to help you spend time with gratitude. I hope that the music, the prayers and the sharing of gratitude included in it will develop your gratitude within muscles.

Thank you for joining me in this journey of gratitude and thanksgiving. I am truly grateful that you stopped by to read this as well. Share with a friend who may need some encouragement and hope, especially now. We have been talking about the empty seats at the table this year. Like the hymn above, we remember those who cannot join us at the table and pause to remember them. May the Holy Spirit comfort you when you do that as a sign of gratitude for their footprint on your life.

Blessings

Pastor Jeff

To be continued….

Gratitude with Others

 Have you been grateful With Others?

Day 3 of my Attitude of Gratitude series leading up to Thanksgiving, I want to reflect on those moments when I have been grateful with others. I take this question from Diane Butler Bass, to mean celebrations that included other people in the gratitude.

Growing up, my family would head to Quakertown PA each thanksgiving to gather with my mother’s family. She had 2 brothers and a sister, and they would all gather at the oldest brother’s old country house for a weekend of feasting and family time. It was the one time a year, I would see all my cousins. There would be 12 of us cousins, I was the oldest by just a couple of months, we would get our own table, as many families do and remember I didn’t get to join the adult table until I was in 9th grade.

We pretended we were a poor Kennedy clan. Kelly and Irish after all, it was fun. There were three seminary graduates in the mix, a business man, and entrepreneur and a couple of school teachers among the adults. My other aunt was a secretary for my uncle. The host uncle was a former Pan Am pilot, had his own plane, and would fly us places on Friday just for fun. We buzzed the Statue of Liberty, kind of, once.

When I became a pastor there were Thanksgiving Eve services each year and those were always a chance to be grateful with others. My grandmother on my dad’s side always said we were descendants of William Bradford and the pilgrims. I developed a William Bradford story of Plymouth Plantation sermon in costume for those Wednesday night services. I even had the chance to camp in a trailer on Cape Cod and visit Plymouth a couple of times to help with the character development. I’ve done William Bradford for school thanksgiving events and for Elaine’s apartment complexes on occasions of Thanksgiving feasts for the residents.

Giving thanks with others, reminds us of how important community is. This pandemic has broken those apart, and I look forward to a chance to reconnect with community in those feasts and services in the coming future post pandemic. We truly need each other, and our gifts and experiences involve others, so saying thank you to God for that gift of fellowship is very important.

I’m also very aware how different everyone’s experiences are as well. For some Thanksgiving is a very lonely time, especially if you don’t have that kind of family or they are spread far apart and travel is difficult or impossible. For others in this particular environment we are in now, Thanksgiving may be extremely difficult because we want to avoid the class of ideologies, political persuasions, and comments on the current events. It’s so sad that a time of looking outward toward our Creator, has become such an inward focus for many. WE must find a way to change to focus back to God to enable us to get through some of this acrimony we are experiencing.

So your mission, should you decide to accept it? Is to focus on sharing God’s love with others. Looking for ways to help others experience Thanksgiving to the Creator. Maybe you can give money to an organization feeding others. Perhaps you can go and feed the hungry in community and homeless shelters. Perhaps you can focus on remembering the blessings of community and give thanks for that. You might even want to extend an invitation to your own meal to people who might be alone at this time.

If you are traveling in order to give thanks with others, be careful. Pray for safe journeys and good gatherings. Be patient with fellow travelers, please. These are very hectic times for the travel industry as well as those who want to get someplace special for the Thanksgiving celebration. Say thank you to the ticket agents, the baggage handlers, the travel assistants you may encounter. They are feeling very anxious, considering how many anger and violent issues have surfaced lately. Please be careful out there.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. Especially those with others in gratitude.

Pastor Jeff

Tomorrow, gratitude within explored.