Newsletter articles - October 2012

Pastora
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Matthew 7:21

Dear All,
One of the books I read on continuing education was about how to establish churches that make disciples, not just church members. It was a book that made me appropriately uncomfortable about what I have done or need to still do as a pastor in my church because too often we are interested only in getting attendance up, offerings up, and the building in its best shape... and that we think THAT is the measurement of our ministry.

Discipleship is different.

Jesus called us to make disciples, not church members. Disciples are students, followers, and friends of Jesus. It is placing all of our trust and obedience to him and not in our own will. It is letting go of what we desire, and our security, and placing our hearts in what Jesus desires for us.

For how many of us is Jesus Lord? For how many of us is Jesus our best friend? How many of us would be willing to give up anything for Jesus? For how many of us are we unwilling to do anything without checking with Him first?

To call Jesus Lord in his time, was akin to rejecting the Roman Emperor. To call Jesus Lord in Jesus’ time meant that you were willing to give up your citizenship. In this tense time of elections, how many of us would be willing to do that? In this tense time of immigration challenges, how many of us would be willing to give up a legal right to live in the US if we have it?

In one of the books I read, Glen McDonald claimed that American culture is one where we place our priorities clearly on possessions, pleasures, and power. Those are our gods. Those are our lords. We live in a society that longs for security... and we find it in certain places, and Jesus is most often secondary.

So in this time of patriotism with the elections at hand, and in this time of stewardship when we decide what our offering pledges will be to the church, and in this time of planning for ministries for 2013, and making choices about school year commitments, I ask, who is your Lord? What are you willing to give up for Jesus?

And if you are daringly honest enough to admit that many days Jesus isn’t your Lord, that many days you do seek out certain “stuff” (<cough iphone 5>), certain “pleasures” (<I just want to be happy>), or certain “power” (<my side is right and the other side is... >)... are you willing to start to reorganize your life into one of a disciple?

Jesus is Lord. It’s a bold statement... let’s make sure we mean it.

Blessings,
Rev. Lindsay

The session
The session will be meeting at their October meeting with Josephine Lopez Paul, community organizer with ACT to be trained in one on one relational meetings and small group meetings. This training is incredibly practical in 1 - evangelism, 2 - strengthening our congregation so that we can do ministry better together and make sure all ideas and voices are heard (especially God’s), 3 - building relationships and identifying issues important to us and our ESL students and our communities so that we can seek God’s justice together. We hope that you will attend with us. October 15, 7:15 pm.

Nominating Committee
The nominating committee: George Rodrigues, Arturo Peña, Rebecca Williams, Paula Rodriguez, and Doug Williamson will be meetin October 21st following the 11 am service to begin discernment about nominating ruling elders to serve on session starting in January 2013. Please begin praying now for their discernment of God’s will for our congregation.

Buildings and Grounds
We are busy bees working on all kinds of research to help keep our building up and running to support our ministries. As we receive the budget, keep in mind that the building expenses are necessary to support our ministries... without a good building, we cannot worship, have Sunday School, have VBS, teach others in the Academia. But, without doing all of those ministries well, our building is just that... a building. Help us be good stewards of what we have, by using our facilities to further God’s kingdom, and by maintaining those facilities so that we can do the ministries we do well.

Christian Education
We give thanks to Oakhurst Presbyterian Church for their donations to our children’s room: a set of shelves, two sets of bible book blocks, and a Noah’s Ark.

We also want to remind the congregation of our Child Protective Policy. We have the rule of 3 in this congregation... that at any time there should be either two children (of speaking age) and one adult, or two non-married adults and one child in any classroom. Kids cannot be allowed to play in the “blue” room unattended because it is unsafe. We encourage as many of our adults as possible to have a current background check on file. Please speak with Rev. Lindsay to have this done. It is free and allows new parents to feel more comfortable having their children participate in our programs. Thanks.

Evangelism and Mission
We continue to work on the garden. We will be having another weeding day this month, to be announced in worship.
We continue to seek out 2 volunteers for childcare for the Academia. Currently, we have had to stop the children’s program because of lack of volunteers.

Fellowship and Care
Our Fall Festival is scheduled for October 26th, from 6:30-9 pm. Please bring cupcakes, candy, decorations for trunk or treat, and other dinner food to share. We will be using some of our VBS materials for this festival and hope to have another wonderful time. More details to come.

We also give thanks that the ladies (and some gentlemen) of the church had such a wonderful time in MoRanch.

Stewardship, Administration, and Personnel
We give thanks to God for another successful year in financial stewardship! We finished our fiscal year with another surplus, the 7th year in a row. This new fiscal year marks our first year with Rev. Lindsay where we will not be receiving any outside support from the denomination in the form of a grant. That means 2012-2013 will hopefully be our first year in a very long time with a balanced budget and a full-time pastor, without any outside support. This speaks volumes to how we as a congregation have grown in our understanding of tithing and ministry together.

We are working on upgrading a lot of our computer systems and projector systems. Please be patient as there will be weeks where we are working out the kinks. This does mean that eventually we will be better able to make sure everyone can see what is being projected, that we can do better video and sound clips on our computers, and we can continue to share creative ideas on how to improve our worship and Sunday school and fellowship experiences.

Finally, we will start working on an annual report this year to celebrate the stewardship of our time and talents. Please send in pictures and memories from all of the ministry we have done in 2012... this may be Women’s Group, Men’s group, Academia, VBS, Sunday School, Garden, etc. Tell your story so we can celebrate and discern together how to do even greater ministry in 2013.

Worship
We give thanks for Polly Williams preaching last month, and for the special help in our creative sermon/worship for World Communion Sunday this month. We are already looking forward to Thanksgiving, Advent, and Christmas festivities. If you have creative ideas for this special season, please speak with Margot Williamson or Rev. Lindsay ASAP.