Monthly Archives: May 2013
Day 38: Congregational excellence
Colossians 3:17 (Read verses 12-17)
Whatever you do, whether in speech or action, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus and give thanks to God the Father through him.
I was walking along the sidewalk and noticed a little boy playing in a yard under the watchful eye of his grandfather. The little boy had a stick in his hand which he was obviously using as a sword. It was also obvious that he was winning this mock battle. As I reached him, he offered me the stick. I told him that he could keep it for himself. He ran over to his grandfather, they talked, the grandfather said, “He really wants you to have this stick.” I dropped to my knees in front of the boy, extended my hands to receive my gift. As he handed it to me he said, “This is a magic sword. It will keep dragons away.” I thanked him for the gift. He was happy and so was I, for I haven’t had a dragon problem since that day.
We have been given a powerful gift to help make our congregations healthy. It isn’t magic, but it is effective. Listen prayerfully to what Paul said: “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17).
If we incorporate these two things into our planning and our prayers, greater things can happen. If everything we do is done in the name of Jesus Christ, our ministry will be focused. Any program, any activity, which doesn’t meet this criteria wouldn’t be done, freeing up time for needful things.
Our gratitude will open our hearts and lives to a deeper experience of God’s grace. Gratitude is our response to the love God has given us through Jesus the Christ.
No, it isn’t magic, but this gift of God can keep a congregation healthy and fruitful.
Prayer Focus: Look at all the activities your congregation leads or takes part in and raise this question, “Does everything we do fit the mission of making disciples?” and, how much of your prayer time is spent expressing gratitude to god? How much “thank you,” as compared to, “give me.”
The Rev. Harrell Nation, Jr.
Brownsville District Superintendent,-Memphis Conference
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REFLECTIONS FOR THE DAY | Use a program on your computer, a traditional journal, or feel free to use the comment section of this blog post to record your reflections as a conversation with others…
READ – What spoke to me as I read today’s meditation?
REPENT – Where is God showing me that I have failed to be obedient to the call to discipleship today?
RECEIVE – What words of redemption and grace is God offering to me?
REMEMBER – Who and what is God calling me to remember in prayer related to today’s reading?
RESPOND – How is God calling me to respond today?
RESOURCES:
> DOWNLOADS – 40 Day Walk prayer guide (.PDF), 40 Days of Doodles kids journal (.PDF)
> CLICK HERE for sermon starters/suggestions
Day 37: Missional excellence
Genesis 1:1-2
When God began to create the heavens and the earth—the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters—
As a child, I learned this verse as “God sweeping over the chaos the water.” Over time I replaced the phrase “the face of water” with “the chaos of water.” The word chaos grows as an apt metaphor for my life.
Monday morning dawns reflecting on the sermon delivered, just hours ago. But the reflection is replaced by the revelation the next sermon is due in a few days. Looking into the weekly calendar, I find Bible studies, prayer services, and committee meetings. These fill the columns and set time aside. Hospital, nursing home, and home visiting needs attention. Oh, and the phone will ring for an unavoidable crisis.
The family calendar is no lighter. Doctor visits, PTA meetings, and afterschool activities will require time. I haven’t called mom and the dog needs to go to the vet. This is the normal weekly chaos of life. What do I do with this chaos?
Perhaps it is a good thing I learned the first two verses as God swept over “chaos.” Perhaps I should reflect on what God was doing while sweeping over “chaos.” God was creating. God is still creating. Just as God led me through the last sermon, so shall I be led for the next. My cluttered calendar of responsibilities and requirements are reminders, God through Jesus is with me and leading me.
The Good News is this: in all times, even the chaotic times, God through Jesus is with us, loves us, and saves us. Could there be any greater thing than to lead someone through the chaos of life into the peace of Jesus Christ?
Prayer: May I accept God’s presence in the midst of my chaos. May I see each event, requirement, or responsibility as an opportunity to share the Good News and to do greater things.
The Rev. C. Kevin Marston
Chairperson, Fellowship of Local Pastors & Associate Members-TN Conference
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REFLECTIONS FOR THE DAY | Use a program on your computer, a traditional journal, or feel free to use the comment section of this blog post to record your reflections as a conversation with others…
READ – What spoke to me as I read today’s meditation?
REPENT – Where is God showing me that I have failed to be obedient to the call to discipleship today?
RECEIVE – What words of redemption and grace is God offering to me?
REMEMBER – Who and what is God calling me to remember in prayer related to today’s reading?
RESPOND – How is God calling me to respond today?
RESOURCES:
> DOWNLOADS – 40 Day Walk prayer guide (.PDF), 40 Days of Doodles kids journal (.PDF)
> CLICK HERE for sermon starters/suggestions
Day 36: Transformational presence
John 1:29
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
Our final morning in Jerusalem took us to the Garden Tomb. My spirit was heavy on this last day of our pilgrimage. What a beautiful place! What a heavy heart I carried! As we walked, I noticed along the side of the pathway that there was a young, mid-thirtyish man kneeling next to a tree in the garden and praying. He was stocky built, wearing a blue shirt, Middle Eastern in his skin tones. His hands were resting on the tree with his head bowed in prayer. I noticed a shiny gold wedding ring on his left hand. I don’t know why I noticed him. He was being quite unobtrusive in his quiet sanctuary.
I sought a path to a deeper garden spot to be alone for a quiet moment of meditation before re-boarding our bus. I sat down on a single concrete bench. In a few moments, I was distracted by the sound of a hedge cutter being started immediately behind me. As I turned toward the sound of the noise, I saw the young man who had been knelt in prayer beside the tree along the pathway when we had entered the garden. Although I never saw his face either time, it was the same shirt, the same mid-thirtyish stocky build, the Middle Eastern skin tones and the shiny gold ring on his left hand. My heart was strangely warmed as I realized that it had been the caretaker of the garden whom I had seen knelt in prayer. That was a precious thought to me. I got up from my seat and moved back toward my group to get on the bus to depart for our next stop.
The next day after arriving home, while thinking and praying, I heard clearly and distinctly a statement that would change my life forever, “Diana, Mary thought I was the gardener, too.” Oh, my goodness! I can’t begin to find words to describe what I felt at that point. I cried the rest of that day, and into the next. I saw Jesus! It was Him! I actually saw my risen Lord in the garden near the tomb where His body had been laid over 2000 years ago; along the path where Mary had encountered her risen Lord, mistaking Him to be the gardener, until He spoke to her and her eyes were opened, as had been mine (John 20:15-16).
Prayer: Lord, open our eyes to see your Presence. Open our ears to hear your voice. Open our hearts to be transformed by your love. In Jesus’ name. AMEN.
The Rev. Dr. Diana M. DeWitt
Chairperson, Spiritual Formation Team-TN Conference
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REFLECTIONS FOR THE DAY | Use a program on your computer, a traditional journal, or feel free to use the comment section of this blog post to record your reflections as a conversation with others…
READ – What spoke to me as I read today’s meditation?
REPENT – Where is God showing me that I have failed to be obedient to the call to discipleship today?
RECEIVE – What words of redemption and grace is God offering to me?
REMEMBER – Who and what is God calling me to remember in prayer related to today’s reading?
RESPOND – How is God calling me to respond today?
RESOURCES:
> DOWNLOADS – 40 Day Walk prayer guide (.PDF), 40 Days of Doodles kids journal (.PDF)
> CLICK HERE for sermon starters/suggestions
Day 35: Pastoral excellence
Matthew 1:23
Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will call him, Emmanuel.
Emmanuel—“God with us.” Neither God with me, nor God with you, rather “God with us” together. Pastoral excellence and church vitality grow out of this holy plurality. As surely as God is triune, so does God work in spirited relationships. God with me or you alone grows too easily into a God who looks and acts too much like our own pet emphases and projects.
“God with us” requires much checking-in with God and with each other. “God with us” understands that deepest renewal arises out of deepest relationships, and that God’s full image can only be borne relationally.
“God with us” insists that what we do together, while more difficult, remains most lasting and substantial. “God with us” invites us to explore the relationships that God places along our journey, especially welcoming the strangers as friends whom God gives us to serve. “God with us” refuses a lone ranger model and resists every temptation to clutch too tightly the many gifts God provides.
“God with us” depends on a trusted conference conferring what John Wesley pointed out as a means of grace and on which he built the practical disciplines of Methodism. As we approach this Annual Conference, may we anticipate it as amazing treasure—a three-day gathering with trusted Methodist neighbors in order to listen to God as we worship, commune, study the scripture, pray, fast/feast, and puzzle over vexing issues of faithfulness, confident that God promises to show up with truth that sets us free!
Prayer Focus: Pray for the communion of saints, living and dead, on whom you count for wisdom, courage, clarity, and correction. Pray for that cluster of people out of which your life of faith arises and flourishes. Pray for the gathering of saints which constitutes the Annual Conference towards which we now point.
The Rev. Gregory Waldrop
Co-Chairperson, Order of Elders-Memphis Conference
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REFLECTIONS FOR THE DAY | Use a program on your computer, a traditional journal, or feel free to use the comment section of this blog post to record your reflections as a conversation with others…
READ – What spoke to me as I read today’s meditation?
REPENT – Where is God showing me that I have failed to be obedient to the call to discipleship today?
RECEIVE – What words of redemption and grace is God offering to me?
REMEMBER – Who and what is God calling me to remember in prayer related to today’s reading?
RESPOND – How is God calling me to respond today?
RESOURCES:
> DOWNLOADS – 40 Day Walk prayer guide (.PDF), 40 Days of Doodles kids journal (.PDF)
> CLICK HERE for sermon starters/suggestions
Day 34: God’s Transforming Presence- Offering Christ to a Hurting World
2 Corinthians 5:17
So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!
I’m a person who likes change. But what does a change experience mean to someone who likes things the way they are? It can be painful. Moments of creativity seem less divine and more like hardship.
Where is God when change needs to happen inside and outside of us?
Change is uncomfortable. Change can also bring doubt, fear, and uncertainty. Change may mean death. If you’re not one to seek out change, you’re not alone. Change is hard. Christ says to be new in Him everything must be re-created. It must not stay the same.Change, faith and death connect us to God and allow us to know true presence of transforming power in Christ. If it weren’t for change, faith and death there would be no hope in resurrection and new life.
I believe faith is what gets us up in the morning. Hope and love are what pushes and pulls us through life. A life full of faith experience prepares us for death. Death sometimes happens while we are still alive. Death of our old self allows us to live a new eternal life. Change prepares us to meet God. Re- creation changes who we look like in Christ, because Christ makes all things new.
Are you “old” or are you “new”?
Are you “changing” or are you “staying”?
May you experience change, death of the old and life of the new, in and through Christ.
O God, be in me, and everything that needs to be new in me. May the re-creations you have planned for all your people and your church be realized through servant-hood, compassion and change. AMEN.
The Rev. Regina Proctor
Spiritual Formation Team-TN Conference
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REFLECTIONS FOR THE DAY | Use a program on your computer, a traditional journal, or feel free to use the comment section of this blog post to record your reflections as a conversation with others…
READ – What spoke to me as I read today’s meditation?
REPENT – Where is God showing me that I have failed to be obedient to the call to discipleship today?
RECEIVE – What words of redemption and grace is God offering to me?
REMEMBER – Who and what is God calling me to remember in prayer related to today’s reading?
RESPOND – How is God calling me to respond today?
RESOURCES:
> DOWNLOADS – 40 Day Walk prayer guide (.PDF), 40 Days of Doodles kids journal (.PDF)
> CLICK HERE for sermon starters/suggestions
Day 33: Offering Christ to a Hurting World
After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, the one who called you into his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will himself restore, empower, strengthen, and establish you.
How long is “a little while?” When you are healthy, waiting “a little while” can be mildly uncomfortable. When you are suffering, enduring “a little while” can be excruciatingly painful.
How about the woman in Luke 13, who suffered for eighteen years with back issues?
Prayer: Thank you, God of all grace, for restoring, supporting, strengthening, and establishing each of us and our churches. Amen.
Executive Director, Aldersgate Renewal Ministries
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REFLECTIONS FOR THE DAY | Use a program on your computer, a traditional journal, or feel free to use the comment section of this blog post to record your reflections as a conversation with others…
READ – What spoke to me as I read today’s meditation?
REPENT – Where is God showing me that I have failed to be obedient to the call to discipleship today?
RECEIVE – What words of redemption and grace is God offering to me?
REMEMBER – Who and what is God calling me to remember in prayer related to today’s reading?
RESPOND – How is God calling me to respond today?
RESOURCES:
> DOWNLOADS – 40 Day Walk prayer guide (.PDF), 40 Days of Doodles kids journal (.PDF)
> CLICK HERE for sermon starters/suggestions
Day 32: Missional Excellence
Galatians 5:13-15
You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love. All the Law has been fulfilled in a single statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour each other, be careful that you don’t get eaten up by each other!
God has created us with the ability to make many choices about our lives, including how we reach out to those who do not know Christ. Our role is to take what we’ve learned from God and pass it on to others.
Why? Because there is a hurting world out there. It is a world where the majority of people don’t know Christ, and don’t think they want to know Christ.
And we all get to choose what we are going to do (or not do) about the people in our own communities and throughout the world who don’t know Christ. We get to choose how we will reach out to offer help to those who need assistance, to those who need to know someone loves them and that someone cares.
When Jesus was being talked about by the villagers in Jericho for befriending Zacchaeus, note what Jesus said to the crowd on that day, “The Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
This captures the heart and ministry of Jesus. Can we say the same? Is this our focus? We might ask ourselves the following: If people followed me – would they get to Jesus?
Prayer: God, give us a heart like the compassionate and caring heart of Jesus. Stir within us a passion and burden for those who do not know you. Help us to get out of our comfortable places and begin to see people like you see people. AMEN
The Rev. Daphne Moses
Chairperson, Order of Deacons-Memphis Conference
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REFLECTIONS FOR THE DAY | Use a program on your computer, a traditional journal, or feel free to use the comment section of this blog post to record your reflections as a conversation with others…
READ – What spoke to me as I read today’s meditation?
REPENT – Where is God showing me that I have failed to be obedient to the call to discipleship today?
RECEIVE – What words of redemption and grace is God offering to me?
REMEMBER – Who and what is God calling me to remember in prayer related to today’s reading?
RESPOND – How is God calling me to respond today?
RESOURCES:
> DOWNLOADS – 40 Day Walk prayer guide (.PDF), 40 Days of Doodles kids journal (.PDF)
> CLICK HERE for sermon starters/suggestions
Day 31: Congregational Excellence
Colossians 3:12-14 (Read verses 12-17)
Therefore, as God’s choice, holy and loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Be tolerant with each other and, if someone has a complaint against anyone, forgive each other. As the Lord forgave you, so also forgiveeachother. Andoverallthesethingsputonlove,whichistheperfectbond of unity.
Henri Nouwen’s book, The Return of the Prodigal was my companion through the season of Lent this year. Reflecting on his personal experience of the parable and Rembrandt’s painting, Nouwen invited me to encounter “Love Divine” anew. For me, personally, the most captivating element in Rembrandt’s composition is the younger son tenderly embraced by the loving father; hands covering, comforting, receiving, and restoring. It seems to me the primary task of the church is to become the Father who runs from the house to receive and restore the wounded and broken.
“James” called our church and asked, “If I come to your church, will you love me?” As he arrived the following Sunday, I was struck and intimidated by his physical appearance. He was 6’4, wears a kafia (Arabic head-covering), a military vest, and carried a black bag. Others had received him, long before I met him, which created for me worry as to the actual answer to his question, “Will you love me?” Did we love him?
A few weeks later, while visiting James in his home following a hospitalization, I noticed a framed bulletin on the wall over his chair. “James, tell me about that.” “That’s the bulletin from my first Sunday at our church. That’s the day I found my family. That’s the day I found love.”
It seems to me that vital congregations answer the question, “Will you love me?” with a resounding, “Yes!” We, the Church, offer through our hands the comforting, restoring, and tender embrace of “Love Divine”. Our churches have been placed in communities where people are asking us, “Will you love me?”
Prayer: O, Love Divine, all loves excelling, renew in us ears to hear, eyes to see, and hands to receive those in our communities who long for your tender embrace. Clothe us with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, and may the deep mystery of your grace be revealed in and through our lives. In the name of Jesus the Christ. AMEN.
The Rev. Max Mayo
Cookeville First UMC- TN Conference
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REFLECTIONS FOR THE DAY | Use a program on your computer, a traditional journal, or feel free to use the comment section of this blog post to record your reflections as a conversation with others…
READ – What spoke to me as I read today’s meditation?
REPENT – Where is God showing me that I have failed to be obedient to the call to discipleship today?
RECEIVE – What words of redemption and grace is God offering to me?
REMEMBER – Who and what is God calling me to remember in prayer related to today’s reading?
RESPOND – How is God calling me to respond today?
RESOURCES:
> DOWNLOADS – 40 Day Walk prayer guide (.PDF), 40 Days of Doodles kids journal (.PDF)
> CLICK HERE for sermon starters/suggestions
Day 30: Missional Excellence
Matthew 28:20b
“Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age.”
A commercial for the Arby’s Fast Food Restaurant shows a man running down a street. The city looks like a ghost town. The only sound that can be heard is an eerie blowing of the wind that scatters paper between the high rise buildings. As the man runs wildly down the street, he cries out, “Where is everybody?” A few moments later he frantically screams again, “Where has everybody gone?” Then he sees a stranger dressed in a long black coat and walking slowing down the street with his back turned. In exasperation he runs up to the stranger, grabs him by his shoulders, and says, “Where is everybody?” The stranger slowly turns around while eating a sandwich and says, “To Arby’s – roast beef sandwich sale.”
How often do we find ourselves like the man in the commercial? In times of crises how often have we felt alone, fearful and desperate? It seems as if everyone has gone to Arby’s or to a party, but we have not been invited. Instead we are left all alone with our violent thoughts, alone with our grief, alone with our uncertainties that rob us of our energies. Moreover, in recognizing our loneliness and despair how can we not remember others who are dying without a circle of support, children who are neglected, persons who are poor, hungry and depressed, those who are assaulted and left to die. In the midst of this pang of loneliness it may appear that God has abandoned us.
However, let us not lose heart. Let us not grow weary. Through the quiet and unrelenting presence of God’s Spirit, working through us, Jesus invades our lonely, yearning and bleeding world. Jesus becomes “Word made flesh” in the touch of a hand, in acts of compassion, in a hot and nutritious meal, in clothing the naked, in visiting the imprisoned, even in words of healing and sympathy. Jesus’ presence is made real to us in the ordinary day-to-day occurrences of life in order that we may know what the Gospel writer Matthew knows: God’s grace is with us, and Jesus is “with you always, to the end of the age.”
Prayer: Holy and Gracious God, what a blessed assurance to know that in the midst of our struggles, when the pressures of life mount from day to day, you will be with us, always. Thank you for your promise that you will never leave us all alone and forsaken. May your Spirit renew us with your everlasting grace and love. AMEN.
The Rev. Bettye P. Lewis
Director of Connectional Ministries – TN Conference
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REFLECTIONS FOR THE DAY | Use a program on your computer, a traditional journal, or feel free to use the comment section of this blog post to record your reflections as a conversation with others…
READ – What spoke to me as I read today’s meditation?
REPENT – Where is God showing me that I have failed to be obedient to the call to discipleship today?
RECEIVE – What words of redemption and grace is God offering to me?
REMEMBER – Who and what is God calling me to remember in prayer related to today’s reading?
RESPOND – How is God calling me to respond today?
RESOURCES:
> DOWNLOADS – 40 Day Walk prayer guide (.PDF), 40 Days of Doodles kids journal (.PDF)
> CLICK HERE for sermon starters/suggestions
Day 29: Offering Christ to a Hurting World
“What do you think? Which one of these three was a neighbor to the man who encountered thieves?” Then the legal expert said, “The one who demonstrated mercy toward him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
When I was a girl my father on several occasions asked me to go with him to his clinic on a weekend afternoon to assist him with a patient who had sustained a cut that needed to be sutured, or a fishhook that needed to be extracted.As the only doctor in our county during my early childhood, he worked at the hours when his patients needed him.I recall my own inner struggle with the impulse to look away from the wounds, to avoid eye contact with the suffering patient who might be holding back their own tears. But most vividly, I realize that my father was cultivating my capacity for compassion: getting past the fear or revulsion about another person’s suffering or injury, moving into a helpful form of assistance that would promote healing, and leading me to meet Jesus Christ—the one my father had decided to serve long before he trained as a physician.
The suffering of Jesus as he was tried, abused and executed was difficult for his disciples and his followers to confront. We see several responses, from hiding to standing by in anguish. We are called to follow Jesus into the suffering of our own journeys and to be present in love to the suffering of others. By not looking away, we grow the courage to address the suffering of our own neighbors in this world.
Together, all of us who follow Jesus are invited to behold His suffering in the events of Holy Week. We are invited to resist looking away, and then, beyond horror or curiosity, we are invited to behold with love and hope the suffering in our own families, communities and global human family.Where have you and I recently been tempted “to look away” or to escape from the wounds of our neighbors? As we follow this invitation of Jesus, let us pray that we will share in the resurrection power of new life and hope, as we bring the transforming presence of Christ into every situation.Prayer: Jesus, where can I behold you in the world I inhabit? Give me courage to love and serve you with compassion. In Your grace. AMEN.
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REFLECTIONS FOR THE DAY | Use a program on your computer, a traditional journal, or feel free to use the comment section of this blog post to record your reflections as a conversation with others…
READ – What spoke to me as I read today’s meditation?
REPENT – Where is God showing me that I have failed to be obedient to the call to discipleship today?
RECEIVE – What words of redemption and grace is God offering to me?
REMEMBER – Who and what is God calling me to remember in prayer related to today’s reading?
RESPOND – How is God calling me to respond today?
RESOURCES:
> DOWNLOADS – 40 Day Walk prayer guide (.PDF), 40 Days of Doodles kids journal (.PDF)
> CLICK HERE for sermon starters/suggestions
