June 2011 Front Page

“Membership is about getting; discipleship is about giving.
Membership is about dues; discipleship is about stewardship.
Membership is about belonging to a select group with its privileges and prerogatives; discipleship is about changing and shaping lives by the grace of God.”  Michael Foss 

We are called by Jesus to go and make disciples, Matthew 28 19-20 says “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  Jesus tells us to go and make disciples not go and make members, so why are we so hung up on members and membership?

This summer we will embark on a journey of building disciples.  Starting on June 19 we will journey through a book written by Michael Foss, an ELCA pastor of St Marks Lutheran Church in West Des Moines, Iowa.  The book is titled Power Surge: Six Marks of Discipleship for Changing a Church.”  We will journey through the six marks and see how applying these principles to our own lives will in turn grow the church.  Because if you look for the Biblical witness of church growing, it is God that brings the growth.  In Acts, God added 3000 to their number, and Paul speaks of one planting, another watering and God bringing the growth. We can have an effect on the loves of others, and help to plant seeds and water what has been planted, but we do not bring growth. If we live in such a way that shows forth the abundant life we have in Christ, then the growth of God will come, through his living and working on our lives.

You can start incorporating these marks into your daily lives now.  They are easy to remember as the acronym for the six marks is the title of the book.

Pray Daily
O
Worship weekly
E
Read your Bible

Serve inside and outside your congregation
U
Relationships with those in the congregation and beyond
Give of your talents, time and money
E

If we can build disciples and not worry about members, God is going to light a fire here that will consume everything around us! So seek to be His disciple and give up being a member…

The Perfect Pastor!

Received this in an email and had to share!!!

The perfect pastor preaches exactly 10 minutes.
He or she condemns sin roundly but never hurts anyone’s feelings.
He or she works from 8am until midnight and is also the church janitor.
The perfect pastor makes $40 a week, wears good clothes, drives a good car,
buys good books, and donates $30 a week to the church.
He or she is 29 years old and has 40 years experience.
Above all, he is good looking.
The perfect pastor has a burning desire to work with teenagers,
and he or she spends most of his time with the senior citizens.
The perfect pastor smiles all the time with a straight face because he or she has a sense of humor
that keeps him or her seriously dedicated to the church.
The perfect pastor makes 15 home visits a day
and is always in his office to be handy when needed.
The perfect pastor always has time for church council and all of its committees.
He never misses the meeting of any church organization
and is always busy evangelizing the unchurched.
The perfect pastor is always in the next church over!
If your pastor does not measure up,
simply send this notice to six other churches that are tired of their pastor, too.
Then bundle up your pastor and send him or her to the church at the top of the list.
If everyone cooperates, in one week you will receive 1,643 pastors.
One of them should be perfect.
Have faith in this letter. One church broke the chain and got its old pastor back in less than three months.

Dave Sather’s Money Matters ~ Inflation: The Silent Killer

Dave Sather is a friend of mine and he sends out financial information to a group of people. I read this article from him this morning and thought I would share it with y’all. (after I asked him if it was ok of course!)

Ahead of the Memorial Day weekend, Carol and I stopped by HEB to pick up a few things. Although the basket was almost empty, the bill was triple digits. Evidently, while I wasn’t looking we picked up a package of solid gold hotdogs and diamond encrusted hamburgers.

Making matters worse, last week I put a new set of tires on my car. I actually needed to replace the tires nine months ago but the tightwad in me decided to squeeze a few more miles out of the old set. During that nine month period the replacement tires increased in price by 30%. So much for being a tightwad.

Although no one will ever send you a “bill” for inflation, it shows up in virtually everything we do.

If our experiences are somewhat normal, why is it that our government tells us that inflation is low—a mere 2%?

In analyzing this it helps to know that inflation can be calculated many ways. The government likes to quote the “core inflation” figure. Conveniently, this calculation excludes both food and energy with the explanation that these two categories are very volatile on a month to month basis.

While they are volatile one month to the next, all of our clients like to eat and put gas in their cars. As such, sooner or later you have to factor these items in.

Once you add in the things we all use on a daily basis a more accurate inflation rate is about 8% currently, according to Shadow Stats.

It is not too hard to believe this figure. In 2001 the average price for a barrel of oil was $23. Today the same barrel of oil sits around $100—a 15% annual increase. Furthermore, companies like McDonalds, Proctor & Gamble (Gillette razors, Duracell, Tide, Bounty) and Kimberly Clark (Kleenex, Huggies, Scott Towels) have all cited cost increases in their raw materials of 5% to 10%.

If inflation is so obvious, why does the government use such a flawed figure? Admitting that inflation is much higher would require an increase in cost of living adjustments for everyone living on Social Security or receiving a federal pension. It would also require a much higher interest rate paid on our national debt. Denying the obvious is a simple way to spend less as long as you can get away with it.

Since the 1920’s the rate of inflation has averaged a bit more than 3% per year. However, there have been decades when the rate eclipsed 6%.

From a planning and investment perspective, these things matter.

If we experience a mere 4% inflation over the next 25 years, the purchasing power of your cash will decrease by 56%. Worse yet, if we incur a 6% rate your purchasing power declines by 78%!

While we are young and working, hopefully pay raises and good cost controls can neutralize the impact of inflation. The people I worry about most are retirees. They get almost nothing on interest bearing accounts and are no longer bringing in a regular paycheck. Additionally, we are living longer in retirement.

Often, we see people who retire early do fine for the first 10 years. Unfortunately, beyond that point the impact of inflation really starts to hurt a portfolio’s purchasing power—at a time when it is too late to re-enter the workforce.

This should be a wakeup call to save more, spend less, work longer and to be more progressive when managing your investment portfolio.

Dave Sather, President
Certified Financial Planner

Sather Financial Group, Inc.
120 E. Constitution
Victoria, Texas 77901

GOD LIVES UNDER THE BED

I received this by email and thought it needed to be shared…

I envy Kevin. My brother, Kevin, thinks God lives under his bed. At least that’s what I heard him say one night.

He was praying out loud in his dark bedroom, and I stopped to listen, ‘Are you there, God?’ he said. ‘Where are you? Oh, I see. Under the bed…’

I giggled softly and tiptoed off to my own room. Kevin’s unique perspectives are often a source of amusement. But that night something else lingered long after the humor.  I realized for the first time the very different world Kevin lives in.

He was born 30 years ago, mentally disabled as a result of difficulties during labor. Apart from his size (he’s 6-foot-2), there are few ways in which he is an adult.
He reasons and communicates with the capabilities of a 7-year-old, and he always will. He will probably always believe that God lives under his bed, that Santa Claus is the one who fills the space under our tree every Christmas and that airplanes stay up in the sky because angels carry them.

I remember wondering if Kevin realizes he is different. Is he ever dissatisfied with his monotonous life?
Up before dawn each day, off to work at a workshop for the disabled, home to walk our cocker spaniel, return to eat his favorite macaroni-and-cheese for dinner, and later to bed.

The only variation in the entire scheme is laundry, when he hovers excitedly over the washing machine like a mother with her newborn child.

He does not seem dissatisfied.  He lopes out to the bus every morning at 7:05, eager for a day of simple work.

He wrings his hands excitedly while the water boils on the stove before dinner, and he stays up late twice a week to gather our dirty laundry for his next day’s laundry chores.

And Saturdays – oh, the bliss of Saturdays! That’s the day my Dad takes Kevin to the airport to have a soft drink, watch the planes land, and speculate loudly on the destination of each passenger inside. ‘That one’s goin’ to Chi-car-go! ‘ Kevin shouts as he claps his hands.

His anticipation is so great he can hardly sleep on Friday nights.

And so goes his world of daily rituals and weekend field trips.

He doesn’t know what it means to be discontent.

His life is simple.

He will never know the entanglements of wealth of power, and he does not care what brand of clothing he wears or what kind of food he eats. His needs have always been met, and he never worries that one day they may not be.

His hands are diligent. Kevin is never so happy as when he is working. When he unloads the dishwasher or vacuums the carpet, his heart is completely in it.

He does not shrink from a job when it is begun, and he does not leave a job until it is finished. But when his tasks are done, Kevin knows how to relax.

He is not obsessed with his work or the work of others. His heart is pure.

He still believes everyone tells the truth, promises must be kept, and when you are wrong, you apologize instead of argue.

Free from pride and unconcerned with appearances, Kevin is not afraid to cry when he is hurt, angry or sorry. He is always transparent, always sincere. And he trusts God.

Not confined by intellectual reasoning, when he comes to Christ, he comes as a child. Kevin  seems to know God – to really be friends with Him in a way that is difficult for an ‘educated’ person to grasp. God seems like his closest companion.

In my moments of doubt and frustrations with my Christianity, I envy the security Kevin has in his simple faith.

It is then that I am most willing to admit that he has some divine knowledge that rises above my mortal questions.

It is then I realize that perhaps he is not the one with the handicap. I am. My obligations, my fear, my pride, my circumstances – they all become disabilities when I do not trust them to God’s care.

Who knows if Kevin comprehends things I can never learn? After all, he has spent his whole life in that kind of innocence, praying after dark and soaking up the goodness and love of God.

And one day, when the mysteries of heaven are opened, and we are all amazed at how close God really is to our hearts, I’ll realize that God heard the simple prayers of a boy who believed that God lived under his bed.

Kevin won’t be surprised at all!

Paul Simon And A Moment Of Pure Sobbing Joy : All Songs Considered Blog : NPR

Paul Simon And A Moment Of Pure Sobbing Joy : All Songs Considered Blog : NPR.

Rayna Ford went to a Paul Simon concert on May 7, 2011…

She shouted for him to play the song Duncan.  She wanted to hear the song because this is the song she learned to play guitar on…  Well Paul invited her on stage to play the song.

She received a wonderful invitation from someone she obviously looked up to. She was invited into a dream that so few get to live…

Ahhh but don’t we all get to live in that dream every day? Jesus said he was the life, and he gives us life abundantly. How we live that life is in his hands if we allow ourselves to be lost in him.

Read the NPR article, and watch the video below of Rayna’s wonderful performance. And remember you are invited to a life more abundant in Jesus…

Bigger than ourselves…

“I read recently that 5% of the 159 million adults in the United States who identify themselves as Christians, attend a house church as their primary faith community.  5% might not sound like a lot, but if you break it down, those attending house churches make 7,950,000 of all adult Christians in the United States.  To give some perspective, the third largest denomination in the United States in 2011 is The United Methodist Church at 7,774,931 members (The Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention are the two largest at 68,503,456 and 16,160,088 respectively).  Our own denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America s 7th on the list with 4,542,868 members*.” Brian Spahr pastor Graceway Church.

This is a very interesting number and statistic.  I am one like Brian and do not get hung up on the numbers.  You can see patterns over time and how the ebb and flow of membership goes in some places, yet as Christians we have to remember it is more about discipleship than it is about membership.  It is about being connected to community, yet if it is more about the building and people you meet in and with, then maybe it is time to reevaluate what is your “god”…

This house church phenomenon is not something new, but is more coming to light as a way to worship.  Could this be the reason most denominations are seeing a decline of membership?  Church shoppers/hoppers do nothing for getting people connected to Christ, yet they play into the numbers.  According to Brian’s findings above the 3rd largest denomination in North America is house churches.  There could be one in your neighborhood, how do we connect with this part of the body?  How can we all be connected in the ministry that is God’s.  As Brian said in his blog, “we are part of a movement much bigger than what goes on in and through our simple UP, IN, and OUT gatherings with our missional community.  God is doing a mighty work in this time, and I simply wanted to highlight one picture of the enormity of what God is up to. These numbers only tell part of the story.  The real story is in the lives that are being changed (including my own) by what God is doing in and through communities like graceway.”  We are a part of something bigger.  Lives are changed, and disciples are growing.  Let us all be united in our Lord and go forth in His mission and ministry!

What does Jesus look like???

I have been reading Luke 24:13-35 and listening to Todd Agnew’s song My Jesus today, preparing to preach this weekend…

And it got me thinking, we all have a picture of Jesus we see in our minds when we hear about Jesus.  We all have a concept of what he looks like…

So I googled “pictures of Jesus” and I got about 31,900,000 results in 0.18 seconds in images. Here is the link to check it out for  yourself (http://www.google.com/search?q=Pictures+of+Jesus&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1168&bih=653).

Todd Agnew’s song My Jesus includes the lyrics “Pretty Blue Eyes and curly brown hair and a clear complexion.  Is how you see him as he dies for your sins.”  We see Jesus as a wonderfully kept person who was always well presentable.  We forget that he was human. We forget that he was just like us.  The song continues: “But the word says he was battered and scared or did you miss that part, sometimes I doubt we’d recognize him.”

Just like the disciples on the way in Luke were kept from seeing him.  They couldn’t recognize Jesus even though they probably walked with him for a while here on earth and followed him as he did ministry.  They said to Jesus, about Jesus “he was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people”  They were looking for the prophet they wanted, and Jesus was not fitting the bill.  How often do we place God in a box and when he does not fit our image we discount it as not being God.  We want it nice and neat so we are in control.  We want to be the masters of our universe.  Just like all of the disciples in the upper room from last week Gospel reading from John 20:19–31, none of them knew Jesus when he first said “Peace be with you”.  He had to show them his hands and his side and then they rejoiced!  Thomas only asked for what Jesus gave to the others, the opportunity to see him!  And if we don’t see him the way we expect to see him, then we do not accept that it is him!

So I wonder what does Jesus look like?  How does our image of Jesus, keep us from seeing Jesus?

Here is a video of Todd Agnew’s My Jesus