Outreach

My dear NUMC family, as we journey together in faith, it is imperative to recognize the profound impact of community outreach on our spiritual growth and the well-being of those around us. The essence of our faith lies not only in worship within these walls, but also in our ability to extend love, compassion, and joy beyond them. My hope this week is to convey the importance of seeing and fostering joy in our community outreach efforts, and the crucial role that each member plays in making a difference. Let’s, together, unleash the power of joy in Outreach!

A Reflection of God's Love: Community outreach is a reflection of God's boundless love for humanity. When we engage in acts of kindness, compassion, and service, we mirror the very nature of our Creator. The joy that accompanies these efforts is not only an emotional response but a spiritual connection to the divine love that flows through us.

Building a Bridge of Hope: As a church, our outreach opportunities essentially become bridges of hope, connecting people to the love of Christ. The joy experienced in community outreach is the manifestation of hope spreading like wildfire, igniting hearts and transforming lives. It is a powerful testimony to the life-changing impact of our faith.

Strengthening the Fabric of Community: Joy is the glue that binds a community together. When church members actively participate in outreach opportunities, they contribute to the strength and resilience of our collective spirit. Shared joy becomes a unifying force that transcends differences, fostering a sense of belonging and interconnectedness.

Church Members are essential in fostering Joyful outreach

Embracing a Servant Heart: Jesus taught us the importance of serving others with humility and love. Church members embody this servant-hearted approach in outreach, recognizing that true joy is found in selfless service to others.

Creating a Culture of Inclusion: Everyone has unique gifts and talents to offer. When church members participate in outreach opportunities, it creates a culture of inclusion. This is where each person feels valued and contributes to the overall impact of our endeavors. A byproduct of inclusion is the amplification of joy experienced in serving together.

Nurturing Relationships: Beyond the act of service itself, the relationships built during outreach efforts are invaluable. Church members play a vital role in nurturing these connections, fostering an environment where people feel loved, heard, and understood. The joy of community extends beyond the event, leaving lasting impressions on both givers and receivers.

Community outreach is not just a duty bestowed upon us by Jesus; it is an opportunity to witness and spread the joy that comes from living out our faith in tangible ways. As we engage in various outreach opportunities this year, let us remember that joy is not merely a byproduct, but an essential element of our collective spiritual journey. Together, as a church family, let's embrace the joy in community outreach and continue to be the hands and feet of Christ, making a lasting impact on the world around us. Christine has a few community outreach events planned this year, and we could use your help at all of them. We have a Valentine’s dance this Friday, Vacation Bible School, and Sleep in Heavenly Peace bed builds coming up - just to name a couple. None of these events require any “specialized” skill sets. Just let us know you’re coming and come as you are! We would absolutely love to have you!!

May the joy of the Lord be our strength as we step out in love and service!

Follow Me

Growing up as a child and young teenager, our family ritual on Sunday evenings was to eat dinner, wash the dishes, and then settle in to watch The Wonderful World of Disney. So many wonderful movies came on our television over those years. One of them was “Follow Me Boys”. It starred Fred McMurray, Vera Miles, and Kurt Russell. The main character, Lem Siddons, a saxophonist, wants to settle down and become a lawyer. He settles down in a small town and works at the general store. Trying to woo the lady at the bank, he volunteers to become the scoutmaster for the town’s rowdy group of boys. He picks up the scout manual, begins to read it and he and the boys set out to learn this Boy Scout thing together. They learn how to cook outdoors, set up tents, build and rebuild scout huts, patch canoes, and more. The town begins to see a change in these boys for the good (Spoiler alert, he does marry the lady from the bank).

The common thread throughout the movie, of course, is the phrase, “Follow Me Boys” which comes from the song the scouts sing as they march on their weekly; Saturday morning hikes (hikes that happen every Saturday for twenty-plus years). Lem has laid out for the boys what is expected for them to succeed as scouts and to succeed in life. As these boys step out and follow this man, wonderful things happen. Boys’ lives are transformed as are many others in the town. Hoodoo, the boy who had no sense of direction eventually became the governor of the state. Whitey, a boy who was seen as a bully and had a hard family life was taken in by Lem and his wife when his father died and he became a doctor. For twenty-plus years boys and others followed this man whom they loved and respected.

The lyrics to the movie theme song go like this:

Follow me boys, follow me.
When you think you’re really beat 
That’s the time to lift your feet,
And follow me boys, follow me.
Pick ’em up, put ’em down and follow me,
Pick ‘em up, put ‘em down pick ‘em up.
There’s a job to do,
There’s a fight to win,
Follow me boys, follow me.
And it won’t be time till we all pitch in,
Lift your chin with a grin and follow me.

Jesus never promised that life would be easy, but he is inviting us into something big and meaningful that will change your life forever. Follow me all, follow me. Pick em up and put em down and follow me.

Making A Difference

At the Good Neighbor Thrift Store and We Care office we stay busy. Very, very busy. From dating cans of green beans, to shining glassware, to hanging up shirts, to testing blenders, we do it all. Every day. And with a super big smile. Somehow, hard work never seemed like so much fun. Meeting new people, finding treasures, discovering new talents, and eating stale pastries are all in a day's work here. 

But where does this urge to get up in the morning and come to do this come from? Why spend valuable time, risking life and limb, to drive on hwy 98 to go somewhere and work and not get paid? 

I remember watching a video series with my son, not so long ago, haha, when he was young, called  "The Donut Man ''. The underlying message of this program is that each of us is made by God, and we are kinda like a donut. Each of us has a God given hole that needs to be filled. The catch is that only one thing can fill it. We can try to fill it with sports, work, tv. and lots of fun stuff, but that just won't do it. God made the hole, and only letting God back in can fill it. When we let God in and choose to work for Him, things change. I mean really change. That is when working for him is no longer work. It is service. And it is fun. That is what we do here. We work together and serve Him. And that makes us complete. With out a hole. 

In 1492...

A little over 500 years ago a captain was forced to beach his two ships on the island of Jamaica. His crew and he would have starved to death except for the generosity of the indigenous people. They brought the stranded sailors food in exchange for little trinkets, but once half of his crew went wild and killed some of the locals, the food supply understandably stopped. Faced with starvation, the captain went onto his ship and pulled out his almanac. He checked a few charts and then went to speak to the local chief. Columbus, (yes that Columbus) told the chief that God was very angry that they had stopped giving them food. If the chief didn’t bring them more food then God was going to blot of the moon as a warning sign of what He would do to the people. Three nights later, right on schedule, there was a full lunar eclipse. As the locals started to freak out over their doom, Columbus offered to intercede in exchange for a steady food supply. The locals jumped at the chance to escape their doom, and Columbus went back to his cabin for the 40 minutes of the full eclipse. Just before the moon started to escape Earth’s shadow, Columbus came back out and told the locals that God had forgiven them. This nifty little trick saved the lives of Columbus and his crew, who continued to eat well until they were rescued 4 months later.

This is an incredible story. There’s a part of me that can’t believe that Columbus had the guts and knowledge to pull off a con of this magnitude. But every bit of awe and good impressions is immediately overwhelmed by the knowledge that this trick led to the deaths of several natives who were subsistence farmers, who only grew enough for them to eat, not enough to feed all the extra people. Not only that, but Columbus used God as a weapon by lying and manipulating people.

This level of manipulation is, hopefully, obviously wrong. But how many times do we weaponize God for our own purposes? Several years ago when one of my kids got in trouble, Hannah was having her chat with him about how different people knew what he had done and that they were disappointed in him. Then she said “And God knows what you did too.” My kid lost it. He had been holding back tears before but once he knew that God knew what he did it was over. I was the horrible parent trying not to visibly laugh.

While I don’t really know if that was crossing a line or not, I don’t have to look very hard or far to see examples where Christians have used the concept of God to augment their own arguments or point of view. Its an election year, just wait for all the candidates to interject God into policies that are anything but based on God.

Look at your own life. How have you used the concept of God as a tool? Better yet, how many times have you let God use you as an instrument to do His will? This isn’t a feel good story, but maybe we can learn from it and do better ourselves.

Lot's Wife

It’s a new year, and January is often the time when we have big hopes and aspirations for the year ahead. "I’m going to eat better, I’m going to exercise more," you know the drill. If you are still blazing ahead on your New Year’s resolution, good for you! I think it’s valuable for us to try and do better, and setting goals is a good way to do that and to hold ourselves accountable. It’s good for us to look back and review how things have gone so that we can improve and do better in the future. But what happens when we can’t stop looking back?

My family and I recently went on a trip around Christmas, and we had a long drive back home in the car. To kill the time, I scrolled through social media. With every scroll through my feed, I started to remark to my husband Chris about things that were going on with a former season of our lives. What was happening, who was doing what, can you believe that’s the direction things are going… you know, just thinking out loud. He then asked me why I still followed all those social media pages. That’s something I had never really given much thought to… why wouldn’t I want to know all the ins and outs of my former seasons of life? He then said, well, you don’t want to turn into Lot’s wife. I was a little miffed at the time with that remark. How was I going to turn into a pillar of salt for scrolling through Facebook… but as time passed, the drive, the days, and even the weeks after, I could not help but think about that comment. Do I truly have an unhealthy attachment to my past?

I started to see ads on my phone for books about “Don’t look back” and Bible studies about Lot’s wife. I kid you not. Maybe it was my phone listening in and eavesdropping, maybe the Lord was trying to tell me something; honestly, it was probably a little bit of both. So here we are, what can be learned about Lot’s wife as we move into 2024?

To give you some Biblical background, let’s head to Genesis 19. Abraham’s nephew, Lot, and his family lived in Sodom and Gomorrah. God had determined to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness. Two angels warned Lot to evacuate the city so he and his family would not be destroyed. The next morning the angels rushed Lot and his family out of the city, by the hand, before it was destroyed. They were instructed in Genesis 19:16-17 to “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!” As the city had burning sulfur rain down, Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt. On the surface, this seems like an extremely harsh ending for someone taking a glance over their shoulder. But it was so much more than a glance. She not only looked, but she looked back longingly. “But Lot’s wife, from behind him, [foolishly, longingly] looked [back toward Sodom in an act of disobedience], and she became a pillar of salt.” Genesis 19:26. The very thing she was told not to do, she did. But why would she do that? Could it be that she was living her life as usual, everything was going great, and suddenly she must pack up and abandon everything? I don’t know how I would react in that scenario either. I can speak to the times when I’ve had to make a sudden change I wasn’t expecting- 2020, anyone? The seeming whiplash from abrupt changes have been difficult for me. I’m a creature of habit; I want to know when a turn is coming on life’s highway and want ample notice. But that’s not always how it works, is it?

Let’s skip ahead to the New Testament, to the book of Luke 17. Jesus is in the middle of giving a prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, or an Eschatological Discourse if you want to get technical… and he mentions these words (that are easy to miss!); he says: “Remember Lot’s Wife” (Luke 17:32). If Jesus said it, you better believe it’s important.

Looking back didn’t go well for Lot’s wife, nor does it for us. It’s impossible for us to move forward when our feet are firmly planted in the past. We become stuck. It could be in a memory, a place, a time, a mindset – anything that is preventing us from moving forward in the direction that God has called us right now. Now, I personally love looking back at fond memories: my wedding, the birth of our children, our recent Disney Cruise. I love looking back to see how God has intervened for me in seemingly impossible situations, where he’s provided, where he’s protected. The problem is when we look back, longing to return to a place or a season that God has called us out of and moved us on from. There are seasons for everything, right? The author of Ecclesiastes tells us “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). How can I be effective for the season of NOW if my heart and mind are stuck in a place where I no longer reside - physically, emotionally, and spiritually? It’s easy to do, believe me. I didn’t realize the degree in which I found myself longingly looking back without even realizing it. If we are being honest, we don’t always recall things exactly as they were either. We can risk idealizing a distorted version of what really was. Longing to go back to something we are not even remembering correctly. Remember the Israelites wanting to return to Egypt? Could it be that I find myself not trusting God as I should? I know he is good, but do I not trust his plans for where he has me at this moment? This has been quite an eye-opening journey for me to begin a mental course correction. But thankfully, God has grace upon grace for me, and for you, during these times we veer off course.

It's important for me, for the church, for all of us to keep moving forward into the next season. What God is doing now - let’s not miss it. I think all of us have experienced change that has caught us off guard, even within our church. But how we keep moving forward is by keeping our eyes on Jesus. It’s how we stay on track and move in the correct direction. Have you ever ridden a bike? Have you ever tried to turn around and look back while doing so? You were likely met with wobbly tires while you quickly tried to balance yourself again. You move towards where you are looking!  Eyes forward, on Jesus, my friends! Psalm 123:1 tells us: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”

If you find yourself stuck, or offtrack, prayer and reflection can help provide clarity for those areas. Seeking support from friends, joining a small group, or opting for pastoral or Christian counseling are valuable steps toward moving forward. As we enter 2024, let's step out of the past and into the future, embracing new beginnings, new seasons, and new opportunities to radiate the life, light, and love of Christ to the world."

God bless, friends!

-Christine