Friday, July 31, 2020

An Hour of Prayer # 6

Dear Church Family

 

   I continue to write to let you know you are all in my prayers several times a day.

 

   An Hour of Prayer number 6, half way through the list, today is Petitions, you get to ask for things you need. Jesus taught in the sermon on the mount, Ask, Seek, Knock, and give us this day our daily bread. We have permission to pray for those things, as a part of others.

 

   On that note, I am asking you to pray about our petition to you for your financial support, and being generous. Especially in this difficult time, we really need everyone to increase their giving. We can continue to make a difference and change people’s lives for the better. There is more to come about this really soon. Watch your mail boxes.

 

   It looks like this pandemic is going to be with us at least through the rest of the calendar year, so I want to offer small group support to as many as would be interested. For August, we will do an old fashioned John Wesley small band/class idea. More details to come,

 

   When September rolls around I would like you to sign up for a small group study, daytime or night time versions, on Think Like Jesus, ways to grow in your faith and understanding for living in a world where we really need to know for ourselves what our faith is all about. It’s the first of a three part series going for about 8 weeks each of Think Like Jesus, Be Like Jesus, Act Like Jesus. This study will match the sermon series in the fall.

 

   We would love to share your talents with our church family. If any of you have recordings of something that happened at our church, it would be great if you send them to me, so I can use them in our zoom worship experiences. Let me know if you have something you would like to share. We can certainly add them to our You Tube Channel.

 

   I’m afraid that we are not going to get back to the way things were in February, so we have to learn new ways of being a church family. It is more difficult than we first imagined, and so we are trying to be a church, much like the first century, that met in small groups, since there weren’t any church buildings until nearly 300 years into Christianity, when Emperor Constantine declared that Christianity would be the official faith of the Roman Empire and designated buildings for that purpose. Partly to make sure that all the citizens where actually going to worship. We don’t live in that kind of world anymore.

 

   I used to joke that being the pastor of a church was like playing chess on three different levels at a time. I saw that once on Star Trek, but now I’m convinced it’s even harder than that because we can’t do church the way we had gotten into the habit of doing. We are letting the Holy Spirit, show us a whole new way of thinking. We are still in the business of making disciples. So your thoughts on how can I help you be a better follower of Christ is what I’m trying to figure out, and then help you with that.

 

Blessings and Peace,                        Pastor Jeff    

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