Newsletter - January 3, 2011

In This January 3, 2011 edition:
Report on Sunday, Jan. 2
Looking Ahead
Community Concerns
The Church Door

Report on Sunday, Jan. 2
It was a painfully cold day outside but we started 2011 with an excellent worship experience inside!  We had 64 folks here and received an offering of $3751.14.  We have also collected quite a bit of food for Crosslines and additional donations of $160 towards food purchases.  Again, many thanks to Rob Martin for taking over our website management.  If you miss a sermon or newsletter just visit our website at www.spfccc.org.

Looking Ahead
This week and every week unless otherwise noted we'll have the Pastor's Cabinet meeting in the conference room on Tuesday at 4 p.m.
Our musicians meet in the sanctuary on Wednesday evenings to rehearse and plan future music selections.
On Thursdays we provide lunch for the homeless at Bill's Place and we are host an A.A. meeting in our conference room at 5:30 p.m.

Sunday, Jan. 9 - Col. Ron Hertenstein will be presenting in our 9:15 a.m. class on transactional analysis.  Our worship leader in the 10:30 service will be Jeremiah Moorhead, one of the case managers from Bill's Place.

Monday, Jan. 10 - Our volunteers will be serving commodities at Crosslines from 8:15 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.

Tuesday, Jan. 11 -  An execution vigil will be held at the cathedral with a candle light vigil on the front steps on Jefferson St. at 6:30 p.m. and a prayer vigil in the chapel at 7 p.m.

Sundays, Jan. 16, 23 and 30 - We welcome Dr. Charles Hedrick back to our sanctuary to lecture in the 9:15 class from a recent Jesus Seminar in which he spoke to the topic of Jesus as a wisdom teacher.

Community Concerns
We continue to be prayerfully concerned for Dan McKenzie and Jim Starkey, both of whom are receiving chemo treatments and are convalescing in their homes.  I know that an occasional sharing of some home made treats lets them and their families know that they are being remembered.

The Church Door
Launching into a new year, I spent some time in conversation with the pastoral cabinet last week about how we can best support the church's growth in the coming year. Finding new members of the church is always a challenge in this rather religiously conservative area but an equally challenging dilemma is the whole matter of retaining the folks we have.

It is, sadly, very easy to leave a new church because no one has very deep roots in the community.  Most of our members were not active in any church prior to coming to ours and it is very easy to return to the church of the Sunday paper or weekends on the lake.

In answer to the question of how to grow deeper, more committed relationships among our church members our cabinet had several ideas but most of them could come under a single heading of:  We need to have more fun.

Because we are committed to being a church which addresses both social justice and the inconvenient truths of our society we can come off as being rather "heavy" and as being always very serious.  In fact, I am aware that I have often been guilty of being so intense about the topics which seem important to me that it becomes rather telling that I'm not taking much time off to pursue such fundamentals of life as joy, health, entertainment and happiness.  

Like millions of other people at this time of year, I am making a new resolution to eat better and exercise more.  But I am also going to make it a point to schedule time for building friendships and having more fun.  My friend, Andrea Zamora, and I have decided that Monday evenings, when a Celtic band plays at Galloway Station, that we are going to try to be there from 7 till 9 every week.  We invite anyone else from our community who wants to engage in friendly conversation in a really hole-in-the-wall smoky bar to join us.

I also want to encourage more group dinners among members, at church or at our homes.   I would also love to participate in a regular book or movie discussion..... something which would, perhaps, be less formal than the classes we offer at church in which five or six or a dozen people meet in someone's home to watch and discuss an important movie or discuss a new book.

Others suggested more "get to know you" events at church.... something like a "speed dating" arrangement where we have a series of short "interviews" with other members in order to get to know them.

While I think it is great that we have both many young families and many seniors and I do not want to segregate our community based on age (or anything else) it may be that there are some really important social connections to be made by people who are in similar stages of life.  People with pre-school children really need the support of other parents with kids and people who are retired often have time and social needs which are unique to their situations.

What ideas do you have that you would like for me to share with our cabinet at our meeting tomorrow afternoon?  And if I put out a sign up sheet for another round of Dinners For 8 to be hosted in member homes, how many of you would like to participate?

Let me hear from you.

Newsletter - Christmas Week!

We had a great experience in worship yesterday made perfect by the blessing of Zayden Angelo-Hart Blankenship with his parents, Alexa Snodgrass and Cody Blankenship.  We had 88 folks in worship which included a lot of relatives of Zayden's.  Our offering just over $2000 with additional gifts for Crosslines purchases and KSMU sponsorships.

FRIDAY, CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICE IS AT 7 P.M.

We knew we were really lucky when we first met Jim and Debby Baugh who are relocating to Springfield in April from their current home in Texas.  They've been with us at least once a month since they first bought their retirement home in Springfield back in the summer.  What we did not know until recently is that Debby is bringing a tremendous amount of piano skills with her!  Barry has to be out of town on Christmas but Debby will step up and surprise you with just how good she really is!

Please bring canned goods or donations for Crosslines as an offering at this service..... gold, frankincense and myrrh also accepted. 

THE CHURCH DOOR

As 2010 comes to a close I look back on this past year with some mixed feelings.  When we gathered for Christmas Eve last year it was right after making the decision to purchase our church property.  We entered 2010 with the remarkable challenge and opportunity to raise the money to buy and then restore this facility.  We were blessed with remarkable generosity and Herculean volunteerism in getting the remodeling done.  The move has been a fabulous boost to our stability and longevity.

I have been, however, frequently disappointed in seeing how many people we did lose due to either distance or simple disagreement over the move.  A recurring nightmare in this pastor's life has been the discovery of just how disposable church affiliation can be in a new congregation.  On the other hand, I am tremendously encouraged by how important and vital the church is to many other people. 

We were first visited by Dan and Mary McKenzie after we had moved out to our Cherry St. property.  They were eager volunteers in the care of our property prior to their annual fishing trip in Alaska which had them away at the time we opened our charter in August for members to sign the membership book.  Sadly, on their way home Dan discovered that he had cancer and since they have been back in Springfield Dan has not been well enough to come back to church. 

In a recent conversation, I asked them if there was anything we could do to help support them.  Mary's answer was that she wanted me to bring their membership book to their home so that Dan could sign it, literally, from his bed.  They became members this morning and made a substantial gift to the church.  I'm always sorry to see the people leave who decide that this prophetic little church is not for them but I choose to dwell on those for whom it is already a vital part of their sense of personal faith and corporate witness.

In a recent e-mail exchange with the director of the Center for Progressive Christianity, Fred Plummer, he pointed out that more than 80% of the congregations in the United States have fewer than 60 people in worship every week.  It is a strange thing to celebrate but we were in the top 20% of American churches in our first year of existence!  

Still, we have yet to tap into what I believe is the huge reserve of people who would be a part of this congregation if they only knew about us and understood our mission.  Our KSMU adds and the web site management of one of our new members, Rob Martin, will help us to get the word out and yet most people first visit the church they join because they were invited to visit by a family member or a friend. 

The best hope we have for growing our congregation is for our current members to invite your unchurched friends who would be open to a progressive community of faith.  We don't want to convert anyone or drag anyone away from another congregation.  We're just looking for those like minded people who would benefit from being a part of our faith community.  I am convinced that there are thousands of progressive thinkers in our area who simply do not believe that there is a church around here which would not offend their sense of justice while insulting their intelligence.  We don't need to find all of them but a couple of hundred of them sure would help us to expand the work for social justice we are doing here in Jesus' name. 

I am glad to be among you as your pastor.  I am grateful that you have given me this opportunity to be in ministry.  I look forward to 2011 and the promises it holds for growth and good works.