Easter – More than a Sunday Spectator Event
When I was young in the 70s, we sang an Easter song by Donald Marsh with the refrain:
Ev’ry morning is Easter morning, from now on!
Ev’ry day’s resurrection day, the past is over and gone!
Goodbye guilt, goodbye fear, good riddance. Hello Lord, Hello sun!
I am one of the Easter People! My new life has begun!
It was kind of campy but also kind of catchy – the kind of song that had you snapping your fingers or tapping your toes because it just made you smile and feel good! I think my longer-term appreciation for the song came however from its longer-term theological truth: ev’ry morning is Easter morning, from now on! More than a once-a-year event, Christ’s resurrection from the dead created an every-day reality that gave the believers a new perspective on everything around them. Biblically, that new reality of Jesus kept emerging to different people in different ways for 50 days until Pentecost. And it gave the believers still another and eternal reality: living their faith together in the Spirit as the church, reaching out to others in need – just as Jesus had done. The church at various times has lost sight of those essential truths. Every year, FUMC Plano intentionally places those truths squarely in front of ourselves:
We joyously worship the risen Christ on Easter Sunday.
We joyously go out in service to others the next Sunday.
It’s why we call it, “Mission Together.” It enables us to live out our Easter days together … for others. We think the “together” piece is so important that we hold only one worship service – this time with communion – so that we can worship with those in our church family we don’t normally see, and then go serve with them.
So let go of any fear and guilt and instead, wear (or buy) your church t-shirt and blue jeans, worship together and then GO, as one of the Easter people … together, confident that Jesus will be waiting ahead of us wherever and in whomever we go to serve.
Connecting God and Grace to Self and Community,
Invite Someone for Dinner … or Donuts
Always a good idea, right? But an especially good idea when it comes to church.
We are having conversations about best practices to get “our brand” – “out there.” We have together discussed yard signs around Easter, catchy phrases on our corner LED sign (people seem to like the humorous ones), stand-out feather flag signs at our entrances, the right look on Facebook and Instagram, and upping our worship live-stream game (which we have done well). All of these are worthy of reflection, conscious effort, and investment.
However, the most effective practice is still the personal one where, like Jesus said to the young men (John 1:39) and Philip said to Nathanael (John 1:46), “Come and see.” We simply are more inclined to believe the experience of another whom we trust than any advertisement. Christmas Eve surprised us three months ago when, on a rainy day, we packed the Sanctuary at the 7 p.m. service, welcoming in total some 40-50% more people than we anticipated. Easter will likely be similar, especially if YOU are doing the inviting.
Times together are always a bit more special over a meal shared, especially when someone invites us to that meal. Invite someone you know to come for “dinner” next week on Maundy Thursday in our Gathering Area (RSVP here). It will be intimate and special as we remember together the first Last Supper. Invite someone you know to come for donuts (and a whole lot more) on Easter for the Sunrise service at 7 a.m., 9 a.m. for Modern service, and the 11 a.m. Traditional service.
Don’t assume people have a place to go during Holy Week – many do not; and even if they do, they will greatly appreciate your grace in thinking about them. So invite someone for dinner … or donuts next week to come and see and enjoy a double-blessing.
"Does it get any better than Easter?"
Yes! It does when we commune with Christ and one another on the Thursday and Friday before Easter.
In a repeat of last year, our Maundy Thursday service will be a different type of worship service. “Passover Around the Table” will be held in the Gathering Area around tables where we will have a service of scripture, song, and samplings of a Seder meal. We will reenact the words spoken the last evening Jesus Christ spent with his disciples and share Holy Communion just like Jesus did in the Upper Room. You can RSVP for this event here!
By participating in worship on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, we more keenly feel the deep love Jesus had for his disciples and for us. Few of us have been to the Holy Land, but all of us can walk more personally with Jesus as he agonized and suffered for us on Thursday and Friday.
These plus the continuous Prayer Vigil that we will have from Good Friday night to the Easter Sunrise service (sign up for your one-hour time slot here!) prepare us to experience the Easter triumph in a deeper way that is not possible without experiencing Maundy Thursday's and Good Friday's setback and loss. I encourage you to try them this year. Life is better when we share significant moments in intimate settings with people who care for one another. I promise you that your Holy Week will be better for it.
Connecting God and Grace to self and community,
The Answer, My Friend, is Blowing in the Wind
“ The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
We went from 94 degrees one day with wildfires in the panhandle to freezing temps and snow. I shook my head thinking about what this portends for our summer. Thankfully, the National Weather Services says there is little correlation.
The difference-maker is how much rain we get in the next three months (now you know what to pray for!). Beyond thinking with empathy about our allergy-sufferers, I have thought about the correlation with the text from John stated above: like the weather in Texas, the appearance of the Spirit is one that no one can predict but you know it when he shows up! As a mentor pastor said to me years ago, if it walks like a goose, sounds like a goose, then …
I reported to our Staff-Parish Relations Committee last night that we hit again a new high, in-house attendance of 367 last Sunday. We continue to welcome and engage new persons and new families into our connections. We have five persons signed up for our #BeUMC 101 membership class. 143 people have bought tickets for the Wellspring fun-raising dinner Saturday night. A major new mission project is being tackled by our Mission Service Group. A new Construction Management Team has been formed to oversee the work that is coming this year. A new investment team has been formed on our Finance Committee to oversee our newly invested capital monies from the recent land sale. All of these I attribute to the Spirit blowing amongst us, creating new and life-giving opportunities for so many, including ourselves in the process. I had another mentor once say, “Church is what we do six days a week; Sunday is when we celebrate.”
This Sunday, we celebrate Jesus the Christ with song, liturgy, word and holy communion. We will remember how the Spirit blazed within him and through him when he showed up at the Temple in Jerusalem, loudly reminding us of what the main thing is: paying attention to where the Spirit it blowing … minus the allergens! See you in worship!
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
That’s the more Presbyterian version of the line in The Lord’s Prayer. With the closing and funding of our land sale, this line took on a new meaning for me in this season of Lent and confession.
With the stroke of a pen, the $3.5 million of long-term debt that we were carrying as a church was reduced to $750,000 – a long-held desire by our church for 20 years since the purchase of this property and the construction of its buildings. Without the sale and with higher interest rates, our debt service for 2024 would have been more than $210,000. With the reduction of debt, our debt service will be $64,500. A portion of the sale will go toward the costs of a new Yardbird shed and storage space, architectural fees, and incidental costs like temporary storage. The remainder of the sales will remain in an interest-bearing account with Texas Methodist Foundation which we can use only for capital replacement or new work. It is NOT money we can use for our budget, i.e. personnel, program costs, utilities, etc.
What is the upshot of this?
Though Easter/Christmas has come early for FUMC Plano, the impact on our budget is small and the need for all of us to maintain our giving remains. The proceeds buy us time as a church while we work to create a new “business model” that is sustainable long-term. Our Futurist Team and Finance Team will be studying the issues involved, such as greater rental use, in the months ahead as we want to be God’s very best stewards of this good gift and of all our gifts that enable Christ’s love to be shared in effective and transformative ways. Thank you for your prayers, thank you for your support, and thank God from whom all blessings flow!
Carrying Whole Blood with Us
Having a son who is an EMT, I was fascinated recently reading an excellent series in the Dallas Morning News entitled, “Bleeding Out.” It was about the lessons learned on the battlefields and taking those lessons to the scenes of trauma care, as in a car accident. Thousands of people die every year in the U.S. because they lose too much blood before rescue personnel can get them to a hospital. What we have known from the battlefield for years is that if whole blood is available immediately, the odds are good that the person will live.
Only a few emergency services carry whole blood with them on ambulance runs which sometimes take them hours away from a hospital. Because of the Dallas Morning News series, conversations are now being had about what it would take for more emergency services to carry whole blood with them. The Dallas Fire Department is now discussing this earnestly. The challenge of course is a limited supply of whole blood since most blood donations are broken down into their component parts for use, e.g., serum and platelets.
I write this coincidentally before our Blood Drive this Sunday but not primarily for that reason (btw, you can sign up to give blood this Sunday here). The notion of carrying whole blood makes me wonder what it would look like if we carried whole love instead of component parts to people in traumatic distress? A third of the population reports loneliness and depression, so the need for whole love is acute. We can become quite reserved in what kind and how much love we will parse to people we encounter when what they desperately need is the full-on attention of our time, a listening ear, and maybe even a hug. It could be a family member, a friend, or even a stranger.
There is a great deal of emotional trauma going on all around us. My hope during this Lenten season is that, like Jesus, we will keep our hearts attuned to those around us, and when we witness a severe, or even less than severe wound, we will respond with the full attention of an EMT or Paramedic and bring our whole love with us to the scene.
Connecting God and Grace to Self and Community,
UR Dust
I saw this playful wording on one of those small candy hearts in a meme on social media recently. It points to the rare coincidence of Ash Wednesday in the Christian year landing on Valentine’s Day of the calendar year. Yet, while they are seeming distinct from one another, there actually is an overlap in their significance.
Saint Valentine was a third-century Roman saint, commemorated in Western Christianity on February 14 (and in Eastern Orthodoxy on July 6). Since the High Middle Ages, his Saint’s Days have been associated with a tradition of courtly love. Saint Valentine was a clergyman – either a priest or a bishop – in the Roman Empire who ministered to persecuted Christians. He was martyred and his body buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14, which has been observed as the Feast of Saint Valentine since at least the eighth century. (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine). He properly understood that his life was temporary and given in love to be in service to Christ and to Christ’s people.
On Ash Wednesday, we are given to remember that our life – like Jesus’ life – is temporary and given in love by God to be in service to others.
During our Ash Wednesday service, we will read scripture and engage in responsive readings and silent prayer all allowing us to confess our sin that gets in the way of our living out the mandate Christ has given us for our lives: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34). You will not receive a little candy heart, but instead ashes imposed upon your forehead with these words, “From dust you came; to dust you shall return.” It’s a reminder in part that Christ’s life and our faith in that life put to death the sin within us. The words also remind us that we have a finite amount of time on this earth to live out every day the love of that same Christ, placed in us by the Holy Spirit to share with all. It’s a quieter, reflective and darker experience that begins the Lenten journey of prayer and preparation for the Easter triumph.
I invite you to come for worship on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 14, at 7 p.m. in the Sanctuary , not in spite of Valentine’s Day, but because of it.
Connecting God and Grace to Self and Community,
Oh, NOW it Makes Sense!
The most satisfying piece of writing I have ever completed was the 30 pages I wrote in seminary called a “Credo.” Over the course of two semesters, we immersed ourselves in what theologians said about the various doctrines of the church (fun fact: one of those was member Marty Deschner’s father, John). However, the final project was to write our own credo about what we believed.
Though my beliefs have evolved somewhat since that writing 35 years ago, I can still say with reasoned and experiential confidence, This I believe! It feels now like it did then: a place to stand and claim my source of being and my reason for the way I move through life. My credo gives me a grounded sense of worth and purpose, regardless of what comes my way in life.
The Apostles’ Creed gave its writers and hearers that same sense of being, worth, and purpose. As we have stepped through our Apostles’ Creed series, I have been humbled by the comments of many who have found insight, joy, and strength in this sermon series about this ancient credo as we have visited the doctrines of God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and the church. One example: I learned of a member’s father who, at 97, never said the Apostles’ Creed because he didn’t “believe in the holy catholic church!” How sad that no one taught him along the way what that line in the Creed actually meant (universal church) … a hundred years before the Roman Catholic Church was created! For others who have recited the Creed all their lives, there have been new realizations that, “Oh, NOW it makes sense.”
This week, the Rev. Dr. Gayle Landis will be preaching on the ”forgiveness of sins.” She has also created a helpful study guide for class or personal use. It is available at our Welcome Center. My hope with this series is that we will feel even more strongly grounded in our faith and proud to say our own credo, This I believe! with our sisters and brothers in Christ at FUMC Plano.
Connecting God and Grace to Self and Community,
It’s Not a Budget; It’s a Ministry Investment
Our Minister to Youth and Families, Sarah Henson, and I were discussing the value of a Summer Intern position and the aid it provides for ministry for a summer season at FUMC Plano.
The person will assist and participate in camps and trips for youth and children. She or he will learn skill sets of time-management, planning, recruiting, and follow-through on details. But the intern will also be participating in spiritual practices of prayer, Bible study, accountability groups, worship, and worship leadership. In short, the intern will be exploring a possible call to ministry within the church, as a layperson or a pastor at some point. That discernment is what our investment helps provide for the future of the church.
I just returned from a week of interviews of persons called of God to set-apart ministry within the UMC as an Elder or a Deacon. In nearly all of their stories, there is a church who saw the call of God within them, nurtured them in that calling, and invested in opportunities for them to explore that calling within the life of the church. It is holy work, and I am proud that FUMC Plano is a church that not only looks for persons with gifts for ministry, but also invests in their calling and their discernment. It is so much more than a budget that we are building for 2024. It is an investment in people’s lives and their ministries – both lay and clergy – working together to extend the love of Jesus Christ in so many varied and wonderful ways. Thank you for supporting that investment.
Connecting God and Grace to Self and Community,