Memphis & TN Conferences should be responding in prayer and financial aid in the early aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

You have no doubt been captured by the images in the news with regard to Hurricane Sandy and the devastation that is unfolding still. The East Coast has been turned upside down and the accompanied snowstorm that is following will also be deadly.

United Methodists have always responded to times of crisis with great energy and support. Our gift, in every natural disaster, though is Long Term Recovery. We discovered in Mississippi that UMCOR was the first on the scene and will be the last to leave.

Initial response
Some of you will want to respond quickly. Let me suggest that your first response is prayer. The second is to open your pocketbooks, your checkbooks and your heart and give. Your gifts will enable us to do the long-term recovery that will be on going. It would be appropriate to prepare cleaning buckets continually as those we have in storage will be deployed immediately. We will listen to our leaders among our UMCOR and UMVIM leadership to offer assistance as we are requested.

When the time is right, we will respond with work teams to participate in the recovery and rebuilding. We have among us gifted, talented and prepared teams to be a part of this faithful response.

Web and mobile donation
As you consider your response, financial gifts are needed now to ensure that our faithfulness can be sustained. You can donate now. Here’s how. Donate to UMCOR US Disaster Response, Advance #901670, and select Hurricanes 2012 from the drop-down menu. You can also text the word RESPONSE to 80888 to give an immediate $10 donation. I give thanks for all you are already doing. We in Tennessee are well acquainted with devastation from storms. May our response be strong!

> CLICK HERE to donate to UMCOR Advance #901670 now

Expecting Greater Things,
Bishop William T. McAlilly

> UMCOR: UMCOR reaches out to partners in Sandy’s path
> UMCOR: Millions fear storm – but the Church is there
> UMCOR: Within dark devastation, sparks hope

In the first 100 days
1. Be in every district for worship and conversation
2. Meet with Connectional ministry teams in each conference
3. Begin moving each annual conferences toward alignment
a. Between Cabinet, Connectional Ministry Teams and Board of Ministry
4. Reset the focus on Mission
5. Begin creating a culture of call
6. Begin creating a culture of leadership
7. With the cabinet, establish the foundation of understanding of
a. Candor with Compassion
b. Authenticity
c. Transparency
8. Discover where there will be pastoral changes in the coming 1-3 years.
a. Come to know both pastor and congregation
9. Work with Cabinet around Strengths Finder Indicator to achieve balance of leadership

In the first year
1. Discerned a shared vision for the Nashville Area
2. Focus our work on Healthy Congregations
3. Lay the ground work for a Center for Ministry creating alignment
a. Including Pastoral Formation
i. Focusing on First Order theology: Proclamation and practice of the Gospel
ii. Second Order theology: reflecting on situations under the gospel
iii. Deepen the culture of Wesleyan Theology
b. Equipping Laity for ministry
4. Focus the work of the Unity Committee on the Mission of the Nashville Area
a. Complete the FACT Team process
b. Engage Gil Rendle as Consultant to guide the process
5. Train PPRC/SPRC Committees and Pastors regarding Missional Appointment making
6. Focus Annual Conference Sessions on Inspiration and Celebration

By 2020
1. We will be reaching one new disciple for every member in the Nashville Area annually
2. Have started two or more new congregations for every congregation we close
3. Have recruited 10 new young clergy persons per year above our current average
4. Addressed ineffectiveness in clergy and congregations
5. Raised the number of healthy congregations by 50%

Exodus 3 tells the familiar story of Moses seeing the burning bush, turning aside and encountering God face to face. It was, for Moses, both frightening and life changing. God gives Moses his marching orders and from that moment on, Moses has clarity about his future. After Moses gathers his wits about him, he asks God for a name and then tells Moses to mark the spot at Mount Horeb often.

Over the first 40 days of my life among you, I’ve had the privilege of visiting some of those places where many of you have turned aside, changed directions, and have had your heart strangely warmed.  Places like Lakeshore, and Beersheba Springs, McKendree Memorial, Interfaith Campus Ministry at UT Martin, Martin Methodist College along with many, many local churches where God’s presence is being made real every week. There is something about the place where you know, when you go there, you are home. These are the places I know to be holy ground.

In my own faith journey two places stand tall: Camp Lake Stephens and First United Methodist Church, New Albany, MS. Camp Lake Stephens was the place from the time I was 8 years old until I was 19 that I went every chance I was given. As the son of a United Methodist Minister, in many ways, Lake Stephens became my church. It was the one constant, familiar, holy place. It was the place where my call to ministry became clear. It was the place where I preached my first sermon. Holy ground it was.

Beersheba Springs United Methodist Assembly | tnumcamps.org

If we are going to live into the promise of Jesus Christ to do Greater Things, we must reclaim a culture of call across the United Methodist Church and, in particular, the Nashville Area. Lakeshore, Beersheba Springs Assembly, and Cedar Crest are places positioned to facilitate students and young people hearingthat call to turn aside, change directions, and follow Jesus Christ.

Sunday, I remembered the many ways in which my call was shaped by those places that made the ground on which I stood holy. I remembered, too, the countless persons across more than a decade of my life who modeled a life that was the Gospel. Today I give thanks for Bessie Conner, Ed Woodall, and John Moore. Without their leadership in my life, I might never have known that God might name, claim, and call one like me.

Have you seen Jesus my Lord? He’s here in plain view.
Take a look, open your eyes, He’ll show it to you.

Thanks be to God that we are making space for people to see, to hear, to respond to God’s call across the Nashville Area.

I remember the first time I saw The River.  I was 10 or 11 years old. My father, brother and I were joining Bill Carroll and his sons, David and Bill along with Bill Lott and his sons Will and Forrest. We were camping on what we called the “Sycamore Cove” on the Tennessee River between Pickwick Dam and JP Coleman State Park.

I remember the small fishing boat. I remember the rain. I remember the waves. I remember the long boat ride in the dark and reaching out to touch my father for security. It was a frightening night.  So began my love for The River.

There would be other trips. Usually, one a year, in August, before school began, we would go.  We progressed from Sycamore Cove to a houseboat that belonged to Bill Carroll’s uncle. My brother and I contributed a ski boat. A 1957 Crosby with a 1958 50 horsepower Johnson motor which we bought for $300.00 with our lawn mowing profits. We didn’t know that in 1971 our boat was nearing antique status. We kept rebuilding the gears in the foot and pumping grease in to keep it going.

It would be that ski boat which brought us back to Sycamore Cove for a reunion with David Carroll, my brother and me upon my graduation from high school. It was our senior trip. No frills. The River. The fire. The campsite. The cove. Memory.

If you’ve never been on the Tennessee River when it turns ugly, you may not appreciate my fear. The winds blow, and it rains, and the waves reach ocean like proportions. The last time I was on The River in that old 57 Crosby, was one of those days when the storm came without warning. We were a long way from the campsite. We were a long way from my dad. There is nothing worse than being on a river under those conditions and commit the cardinal sin of shearing a propeller pin.

(Those were the days when a two inch steel pin made the propeller spin but if the propeller hit an immovable object, the pin would break to save ruining the propeller.) We committed the cardinal sin. We ran the boat aground on those immovable rocks on the bottom of the Tennessee River. The shear pin was now in three pieces and the only way to reach safety was to piece the pin back together and pray it would hold long enough to reach safety. We reached safety. We also never again ventured out without a spare shear pin.

It was one of the early times in my life when I found prayer to be answered in the midst of a stormy situation.

The Bible is full of rivers. There is the Nile where Moses was adopted. There is the Jordan where Jesus is baptized. And there is The river of life John of Patmos speaks of in Revelation 22. Water. River Water. Baptism. A river runs through us. I’m told that the Tennessee River is a dividing line in this world I’ve come to inhabit. I hear folks speak of the “other side of the river” and they mean the other Annual Conference, not theirs. But there is a song that has been sung on both sides of the river for longer than we care to remember, “Shall We Gather at the River.”

“I’ve got a river of life flowing in my soul,” my children sang upon returning from Camp Lake Stephens near Oxford, MS. That jingle is coming back to me. A River Runs through me. And you. And us.

Shall we gather at the River?