Supporting the Connectional Church

Supporting the Connectional Church: Why, Why Not & Because

Reverend Doctor C. Dennis Shaw, Retired Elder in the Mountain Sky Conference and a member of the Conference Council on Finance and Administration

This is a first in a series of thought pieces addressing elements of why and towards what end we are asked to support the United Methodist church beyond the local church.

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A frequent question in discussions of how we support the United Methodist Church beyond the local church is: “what does our church get back for paying our Mission Shares and Apportionment?”

I hear in the “what does our church get back” question, a “why” question. Help us understand “why” we support the Conference and levels beyond? Illustration: a university philosophy class had a one-word final exam: Why? A passing answer was “why not” but excellence was recognized when the answer was “Because.”

My answer to the “why” question is “because”, but I offer you more than one word.

Our “because” is we United Methodists are a connectional people. Connection is defined by the United Methodist Church as: “The principle, basic to The United Methodist Church, that all leaders and congregations are connected in a network of loyalties and commitments that support, yet supersede, local concerns.[1]” [Note:  footnotes do not automatically move you to the reference.  You will need to scroll down.  Sorry.]

Why do we support activities beyond the local church? “Because” it is who we are. We are a network, and within this network, we show loyalties and commitments to other United Methodist churches and other expressions of Methodism in other countries. Interestingly, this principle acknowledges that it both supports local concerns, but at times, supersede those same local concerns. I will return to this in another article, but not here.

As I read that UM definition of “connection” echoes of Jesus speaking of himself from John 15 as the true vine and how we are to remain in him merges in my head with Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 reminding us we are part of the body of Christ. If we remain in Christ and acknowledge we are part of the body of Christ, then the logic of connectedness through our denominational network suggests to me that our connectional understanding is grounded biblically. I will return to a biblical grounding in each article in this series.

Therefore, my “because” is because it is who we are: a connectional people, with a scriptural emphasis, and this principle was true in our creation story.

Duke theologian Laceye Warner writes: “The … heritage of Wesleyan, Methodists, and Evangelical United Brethren … emerged from a missional imperative ... This is distinctive since other denominational traditions often trace their roots to disagreements regarding confessional or doctrinal matters.”[2] Because it is who we are. It is a principle within the “method” that makes us “Methodists.”

I am mindful that “why not” in my philosophy illustration gets a passing grade and “why not” must be dealt with.

“Why not” and trust, most often the lack of trust, are related. Lack of trust rarely appears explicitly named in the unwillingness to share conversation. However, trust is in short supply across our nation and within our church. Laceye Warner, quoted earlier, observes that trust is presumed present in our overall connection, but “when trust is low, this becomes a weakness since there are few, if any clear structures for accountability that almost maintain the connection.”[3] I agree and expand that it is my take that what we don’t understand and when trust is not present there is an assumption of waste and lack of need. As I mentioned earlier, it is my plan that this piece will establish a baseline for discussion, but I will follow it up with other pieces addressing more specifically what the local church gets back. I believe it is considerable.

Our Book of Discipline places great emphasis missionally on both the local church and the Conference. The local church is “the basic unit in the connectional system” while at the same time, the Conference is understood as “the fundamental body.” Our mission statement reminds us that “Local churches and extension ministries of the Church provide the most significant arenas through which disciple-making occurs.”[4]

Disciple-making takes place at the local church (and extension ministries) but the equipping for that action is facilitated through development and deployment of leaders by the Conference. I believe the missional imperative for the Conference is leadership development and deployment and discuss it a little here.  My next article will focus on this more specifically. 

Fundamentally, the Wesleyan movement has understood sharing as a vital part of who we are. A favorite image of mine is a comparison of the Sea of Galilee with the Dead Sea. Both are nurtured by inflows of water from the River Jordan. But the Sea of Galilee releases what is received and gives back. The Dead Sea is not capable of this release, and the water that flows in, stays, to become brackish and filled with minerals. The Sea of Galilee teems with life, sustaining villages around its shores. The Dead Sea is just that: dead.

The Sea of Galilee is compelled to share, it is part of what it is. The Dead Sea is compelled to hoard, it is part of what it is. Part of who we are as Methodists, people who are part of a connection, says we are a people “connected in a network of loyalties and commitments that support, yet supersede, local concerns.” Our support is a both/and – both local and global. There are places around our world where the connection teems with life, sustaining others around its shore.

Again, I plan for this article to be an intellectual grounding in “why” and will unpack in a series to follow more specifically what is it the local church gets back from Mission Shares and Apportionments. Again, I think considerable.

References (and all will be linked to their URL):

Barbara Carroll -- Minnesota Annual Conference – “What Does My Church Get Back from Apportionments”

Dennis Shaw – Mountain Sky Conference – “Defining our Mission Around Leadership Development”

Erik Alsgaard -- Baltimore-Washington Conference – “Connection makes the UMC Work”

Laceye Warner -- UM-Insight “Sent in Love”

Laura Rainwater -- “What does my church ‘get back’ from our apportionments”

North Carolina Annual Conference (and adapted from Minnesota article) – “Faith and Money: What do churches get from paying apportionment?”

The 2016 Book of Discipline

This article as a PDF on Mountain Sky Website.   

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[1] Source: Sharing God's Gifts Glossary of United Methodist Terms. And I plan in a future piece to discuss a little about “supersede.”  My take on that is that there are times the greater good is superior to the local church, but for now, let’s not dwell on this. 

[2] UM-Insight by Laceye Warner

[3] Quoted in a Baltimore-Washington Conference News article from May-June 2017. Link is HERE.

[4]¶ 120. The Mission—The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Local churches and extension ministries of the Church provide the most significant arenas through which disciple-making occurs. United Methodist Book of Discipline, 2016.

Children's Ministry

Congregational Pledge 2 at Baptism of Children (from former Methodist Church) found on page 44 of United Methodist Hymnal (UMH):  With God’s help, we will so order our lives after the example of Christ that these children, surrounded by steadfast love, may be established in the faith, and confirmed and strengthened in the way that leads to life eternal.

Communion Confession UMH page 12:  We have failed to be an obedient church … Free us for joyful obedience. 

Sacramental Importance

Baptism and Communion are our two sacraments. Other denominations have more, but United Methodists, just has these two. They are important statements. Both have community implications.

 

In infant baptism, we pledge to “so order our lives after the example of Christ” to help confirm and strengthen children. During that ritual, I often remind the congregation that we are making a community commitment to this child.

 

Communion without confession should be rare. Confession isn’t to shame us, but to offer a thought or seven about the example of Christ and an acknowledgement that we are works in progress, inspired by Christ. The ritual includes the idea that through Christ we are forgiven.

 

Joyful Obedience

I want to write to you freeing some of you to respond in joyful obedience.

 

We need adult participation in our Children’s Ministry. As a community, we are not being obedient to our baptismal covenant. We are not, as a community, so ordering our lives to establish, confirm and strengthen our children. We are limping along here in our fulfillment of our sacramental responsibility, when this ought to be a core strength.

 

The current situation is not new. When we look over the minutes of children’s ministry back to 2004, variations on this theme are revealed: we need more, reliable, and not stop gap temporarily patched on volunteers.

 

I have had more than one volunteer in this area urge us, sometimes quite strongly, that every family who has a child in Children’s Ministry should be told it is an expectation that they help in this ministry.  I frankly have resisted that because I think every situation is different, and I traditionally resist one size fits all, cookie cutter solutions. I know there are powerful volunteers in the areas of church music and scouting for example who have children in our Children’s Ministry program. Do I have to tell them to sacrifice their choice of using their spiritual gifts in music or scouting to devote time on Sunday morning? That is just one clear example; others abound. The covenant we entered into through baptism doesn’t say the parents will do this, it says the church will do this.  We sing:  “I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together.”  The baptismal banners we hang are to remind us of our community commitment, not solely the parents commitment.  

Children's Church

We are declaring, briefly I hope, a pause in Children’s Church at the 10:30 service. This is not an arbitrary decision, but is in fact one reached only after much discussion, prayer, anguish, and many invitations to the congregation. We are mindful that there is potentially an impact on evangelism and worship attendance, but we needed to make the failure here a shared failure and to stop limping along without a coherent or clear strategy for fixing this. I said in my April Newsletter that I am a person of hope, and I am.  But I am also pragmatic: I think we need to fail, in order to build the elements of success.

 

I have instructed Caitlin Collins, your staff member leading in the area of Children’s Ministries, to receive volunteers into Children’s Ministries within the current structure, and to examine over the summer the very framework of how we provide this service. At this point, I do not wish to entertain good ideas while trying to address a fundamental shortfall in volunteers. I am prepared to believe that a different model might be beneficial in the long term, but no model is going to work without volunteers.

 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

A Prayer for January 12, 2017

O God of the past, present and future ages, we are mindful of your promises to be with us in this world and the next as you have been in the past.  Still our humanness balks at the untimely and early death of Saints.  Be with us in our pain and remind us that there will come a time when the former things do indeed pass away, but until it does, mourning, crying and pain, are still part of this age.  Amen.

Revelation 21: 4
John 3: 16
John 11:26

Gifts of the Spirit

1^st Corinthians 12: Verses 4–7: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Galatians 5:22-23: By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

Galatians 5:19-21: Now the works of the flesh are obvious:…impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

 Scripture is NRSV

Paul is big on the idea of the Spirit. The Spirit is clearly an important theological idea for Paul. References to the Spirit fill Paul’s letters as he coaches his far flung flock. Three are quoted here. Paul was having trouble with both Corinth First UMC and Galatians Community UMC. Things had fallen apart after he had left.

 

Things are not falling apart at Hilltop UMC, let me assure you. We are doing well.  We can do better. 

I personally like to think of the two Galatians readings in terms of car dashboard lights. When we are in proper relationship with God, our fellow co-laborers in the church and ourselves, our dashboard lights are green. Love, joy, peace and other good things are displayed consistent with what Paul enumerates in Galatians 5: 22-23. The machine should work well when the lights are all green. However, we need to check our spiritual engines when the dashboard lights are red with strife, anger, factions, envy and the like. In the car dashboard world, green is normally good, red is normally a problem. Fruits of the Spirit are good; Works of the Flesh are not. Galatians 5 helps us understand and measure how we are doing with this relationship stuff. The passage is an indicator of relationship.

 

If Galatians 5 is about how we are doing, 1^st Corinthians 12 helps us frame what it is we should be doing.

 

Paul’s specificity in Galatians is largely absent in the Corinthians. In Galatians Paul gives us the names of lights we can read as green or red. In Corinthians Paul resorts to an illustration of the church as a body and points to body parts as how the body should function. An ear listens but it does not see. His illustration is very good.  I augment the body illustration from Paul in terms of team, and as a baseball fan, I see it in terms of baseball. You need a variety of different skill types to play baseball, and a team made up of Yogi Berra’s, a Hall of Fame catcher and pontificator, might be a good one for providing pithy quotations, but it might have trouble pitching effectively. 

The church, like a team, like the human body, needs different skills, as given to us by the Spirit, to be put to labor on behalf of the Kingdom of God.

 

What are your God-given gifts? Sometimes we know what they are: I am good at numbers, and I am not particularly good at small engine repair. But I didn’t know I was good at numbers until I got dropped into a position in 1973 that called for me to be a numerical analyst. I struggled for a while but mentors and coaches helped me and turned that struggle into strength. What we now see as a gift was at one time not a gift. It was honed and developed by others, enhanced by my own willingness to be coached to success. I had to be a numbers disciple, a student, for a while. In reality, I am still a numbers disciple, constantly looking at web sites and articles about how to better display data so that it becomes information, but I digress.

 

I had to trust others to see that gift in me that I didn’t know that I possessed. 

In my learning and growing here, I didn’t become angry or exercise poor self-control. In fact, this endeavor became an object that lead to joy. When it comes to being a numerical analyst, my dashboard lights here were never red, always green.

 

Here are some thoughts:

• Gift Assessment Axiom: When you don’t think something is a gift, you might be mistaken. 
• The Converse to that Axiom: When you think something is a gift, you might be mistaken. 
• The Corollary to that Axiom: Listen to others about your gifts. Another might see your gifts more clearly than you. 

Look to the dashboard lights and crosscheck them against Galatians 5.  Green is good.  Red is not good.  Listen to your heart.  Listen to others.  Listen for God.  Remember that God sometimes speaks in a small, still, voice, except when small, still isn’t working. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Pastor's Musings for November

Ecclesiastes 3: 1, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”

Our newsletter theme for November is “Growing in Faith Together” and as I roll the idea around in my head, I hear echoes of the idea found in “Hilltop: a place to belong, believe and become.” The Ecclesiastes 3 with the sounds of Pete Seeger and the Byrds echoing in my brain, fingers, and ruminations. 

On November 30 at 9:00 AM, we are going to return to being a church with multiple worship opportunities. Prior to my arrival, Hilltop took an extremely bold and courageous step to move from three different worship opportunities to one. At least part of the motivation centered on bringing unity to the Body of Christ. Sadly, in our journeys to unity there is always the possibility we might have to pass through a little disunity. For example, we lost a few long time members. There was no one constant reason but in our unity quest, we got to a season where we belonged, believed, and became. But seasons are rarely, if ever, static. A church is a living organism and in our belonging, there are Ecclesiastes 3 seasons of contrasts for “every matter under heaven.” 

We are about to embark on a new season in the Hilltop story. 

We intentionally chose to return to multiple services as the start of a new season in the church year: Advent. Laurence Hull Stookey in his seminal look at the church year, Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church writes: “the primary focus of Advent is on what is popularly called ‘the second coming’ … Advent is the celebration of the promise that Christ will bring an end to all that is contrary to the ways of God.” So, in this new season of the church year, we look forward, in hopeful anticipation to a time when the ideas of seasons disappear into the mist. But until that ‘second coming’ becomes, we have to focus, or perhaps, refocus, on our beliefs and our belonging. A new season emerges, and we get a chance to reexamine God’s divine purpose for us, and perhaps more importantly, our role in God’s divine purpose. 

We exist, at least in part, in order to make God’s reign, just a little more obvious, a little more visible, a little more real. Our purpose in going to a new service, at least in part, is to reach a group of people who might not be with us at the present time. One group is those who might want to celebrate their praise of God a little earlier in the day, and then “beat the Baptist to the Buffet” or to the trailhead or ski slope or … you get the idea. We know there are people who want to use the Sabbath as a time for family and reconnecting in various ways and the solitary 10:30 AM option sends them elsewhere, or maybe even, nowhere. A second group is those who want to have their children receive Christian Education while they are in worship. We know they exist. We are mindful that a few believe that we should be developing children who understand worship with more intentionality than this model presents, but we have elected to accept that a parent will know when their child can be better informed and grow spiritually through worship. They know their child’s season. 

I do not know how long the season of getting this service to fruitfulness will be. The Greek of the New Testament has at least two words that both mean time and one is about what we might think of as “clock” time but the other one means “the fullness of time.” It is, I think, about the idea of seasons. I don’t know the precise day that good skiing will occur in the Wasatch Mountains, but sometime this season, skiing will be an option and an opportunity. I believe that the 9:00 service will organically take on its own unique characteristic, style, charm, and approach. I just don’t know what they all are right now. I think cherishing elements of what we have done at 10:30 which is a style that encourages a certain amount of congregational work is where we will be, but at the end of the day, I no more know precisely what this service will be anymore than I knew precisely what the 10:30 service would precisely look like on July 1st, 2012, my first Sunday at Hilltop. I am prepared to allow the season to unfold in the fullness of God’s time. 

A key element of my personal ethos is that the church is the means by which God’s mission of transformation is deployed in the world. It follows that we are the church in order to meet God’s needs in the world, rather than our own needs. We are not alone: we stand in continuity with generations of women and men who found the Good News of God’s Grace through Jesus Christ to be transformative. Grace truly experienced moves them from a season of self loathing to a season of humble appreciation. I believe there are people who will know the peace we know through the threefold fullness of Grace we represent that will not find spiritual wholeness elsewhere. Through Wesley, we offer unconditional grace to all of God’s broken children. 

I do see this new season as a chance for us to ‘grow, in faith, together.’ We are setting out on a new adventure wrapping up one season of unity, and starting a new one of opportunity. I am excited. I pray you are as well. I invite everyone who calls Hilltop their spiritual home to plan to be at one of the two services on November 30th. In particular, I pray that those who plan to make the new service their spiritual connection to Hilltop plan to be here. I am going to be there. Join us. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

November Pastor Musings

Dear ones:

We live in a world of constant sensory bombardment.  Sights and sounds of the world around us, wash over us and, frankly, at times, we are numb to them.  Unsettling news is broadcast on the radio or television or on the home page of our browser and we spin a cocoon around ourselves and sleep insulated from what is going on around us.  At least, that happens to me anyway. 

Then along comes Isaiah.  The status quo is being ripped apart, barbarians are at the gate.  But in the midst of that invasion, God provides words of assurance to the chosen people.  For example in Isaiah 43: 19, the prophet reports that God prophetically proclaims:  “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”  

Starting with November 17^th, for five out of six Sundays in November and December, my primary source text will be Isaiah. 

One of those Sundays I will use the following text from Isaiah 65:17 – 18:  “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight” to speak to the new creation going on at Hilltop. 

Our worship experience has a different look and feel.  I see that as part of the new creation described prophetically in Isaiah.

The way we do our budgeting and income assessment is going to change.  I see that as part of the new creation described prophetically in Isaiah.

We have new leaders getting ready to emerge into their new leadership roles for 2014.  I see that as part of the new creation described prophetically in Isaiah.

God’s prophetic words were intended to pull the chosen people out of their own sensory bombardment of conquest and barbarians and see the new that was going on in front of them – and a new perception about a new reality was being invited.  That invitation is just as true today. 

God’s reminder is that in the newness, the New Jerusalem is to be a “joy” and a “delight.”  I confess, that sometimes, change and newness is not universally seen as “joy” or a “delight.”  Perspective matters.  I pray that we can see the new with a joyful, delightful perspective.  The past and future both matter.  It is my view that the historical Bingham Canyon, Midvale and Hilltop epic narrative frames our theological discourse about the future. 

I am proud to be the pastor of a church that has so readily embraced the concept of change grounded in the historical narrative. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis

Renewing Hilltop -- April Pastor's Musings

Renewing Hilltop

Because Christianity grew from roots that were Judaism, it should not surprise us that Jesus was firmly rooted in the Jewish tradition.  Examples abound:  his followers acknowledge him as “rabbi” (teacher) and his preaching is drawn from material in the Hebrew Bible.  The Passion narrative is best understood within a context of Passover.  Pentecost is a spiritual “first fruit” built on the idea of a Jewish “first fruit” festival.  Jesus’ ministry was a renewal movement, not one to create a new religion, but one to introduce spiritual renewal among God’s chosen people.   Our calling here at Hilltop is about spiritual renewal to all who come through our doors.

I talk at times about “The New Hilltop.”  I wrote in our annual church conference report as a goal for 2013:

  

Define The New Hilltop:  Acknowledge that a “new” Hilltop is being created before our eyes and we are creating it with God’s help.  How do we use the various metrics of Vital Congregations augmented by our own metrics to measure that vitality?  We will, as a community, identify what it means to be a church that wants to grow through an intentional and concerted focus on families with children and youth?   This time next year we should be able to align our resources, i.e. building, people, and budget with that identity. 

While those words focused on the idea of “families with children and youth,” the idea was in reality more than a “New” Hilltop; it is about a “Renewed Hilltop” full of people of all ages and backgrounds who are renewed in the Spirit.  I want to focus on one result of the “The Renewed Hilltop” -- the need to add a second worship service.

 

How can we best provide meaningful, spiritual worship as our faith community expands?

For many years Hilltop had three worship services.  Hilltop made an important decision last year to move to one.  This decision was bold.  Part of the covenant to consolidate into one service included revisiting that decision at a future date.  At the March Church Council a proposal to create the paradigm for a second service was presented by the Worship Committee and me.  The simple idea of the proposal was that when a six-week moving average (not including Easter or Cantata Sunday) reached more than 275 worshippers and when we had 100 members in covenant to support the second service, we would launch at a future, yet-to-be-determined date (but not immediately.)  

Discussion from the council encouraged us to go back and re-think some basic assumptions.

It is always important to ask: “how do you know what you know?”  When that question emerged this past month, we were not precisely sure what we knew, why we knew it, or how we knew it.  We did know facts, e.g., attendance at the three services, attendance since the merger.  Even though the leaders have talked to various groups about going to a second service, we do not know exactly what the congregation as a whole thinks.  We agreed that it would be good for us in our continuing attempt to “renew” Hilltop to take some focused time to ask the congregation very specific, directed, and targeted questions about worship and, importantly, Christian Education.

 

We plan to discuss some of this following worship on April 21^st if at all possible, and between April 21^st and May 19^th present a questionnaire (or survey instrument) in which the congregation can express their wisdom and insight.  I heard loud and clear during last summer’s “ice breakers” that we had done enough “surveys.”  That said, I think the critical element of that lament was the congregation saw little relationship between any survey and direction of the church.  Your church leadership believes for us to understand renewal at Hilltop, we need to receive congregational feedback about options and potential directions of renewal at Hilltop first.

 

Paul in his 1^st Letter to the Church in Corinth focused on an idea of “the body” and how each part of the body was important to the whole.  It was an entreaty to the idea of “oneness” and an appeal for genuine appreciation of the other.  I pray that our need to go through the process of discussion and planning for expansion to another service at some future date enhances the “oneness” we have felt since going to one service.  I pray that our quest for “oneness” produces fruit for Hilltop’s spiritual “renewal” and our own.

Selah.  Pastor Dennis

My Personal Story

I was asked to write a little about who I am in story form.  This was my effort.

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The river that is Dennis Shaw was created by different streams of varying intensity, width, depth and color.

I am a musician, soldier, nursing attendant, holder and practitioner of graduate degrees in business and theology, son, brother, husband, father, and, at one time, a well trained elite level athlete. Several of the streams that formed me storied that hard work and education can overcome almost any life obstacle. Those same education and industriousness streams understood that what might appear to be fords and crossing points for possible entry into those life streams for me might be denied to others based on gender and race. Justice oozes from the springs of a particular familial creek, diluted at times by less justice based waters, but the minerals and nutrients from that spring are rich and have not been easily diminished. Fairness and equity are core values that have been and are part of my story, in the river I am, in the streams that came to me, and the rivers I flow into.

At 62, I continue to be a student and adult learner. I have learned to speak Spanish in the last ten years. I have a UCC pastor who provides me monthly “supervision”. I am blessed by experienced pastors who said “if you need help, call me” and I called. I confess, I reluctantly responded to God’s call into pastoral ministry. My primary problem was one of unworthiness for the task not understanding that my own life story may be of value to the creator of all life stories. As with all of us, our stories provide us unique and specialized wisdom. I have been well equipped to be a current within the flow of this wondrous river called pastoral leadership, but in truth I am probably only a leaf upon that surface moved at one and the same time by the springs, streams and rain that created and sustained me, buoyed by God’s three-fold fullness of Grace.

This position at Stratmoor Hills may be the most meaningful leadership role I will ever be called upon to accept.

It is both intensely exhilarating and profoundly humbling.

Our Creation Story

In Hebrews 11: 1 and 2 we are told that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.”

That story is our own story here at Stratmoor Hills.

It is faith in addressing the spiritual need of a new neighborhood and a vision of answering that need by those founding saints that is a core value of the Stratmoor Hills United Methodist story.

It is faith that caused some members and clergy of First Methodist Church in Colorado Springs to approach the developer of the new neighborhood of Stratmoor Hills near Fort Carson with the idea of starting a new church.

It is faith that has been the foundation on the vision and the mortar which held the congregation together in hard and yes, occasionally desperate times.

It is by such an act of faith that less than ten adults gathered at Gorman Middle School to call into existence out of the creation raw materials the Stratmoor Hills Methodist Church.

It is by such an act of faith that Gladys and Fred Abrahamson donated the land and the building we use today.

It is by such an act of faith that the Reverend Paul Murphy went to Mississippi in 1964 facing death and jail in order to seek justice for the least of our brothers and sisters, a prophetic act for which, in the opinion of some then, too much truth was spoken too clearly to power, which saw a congregational rejection of that faith story which set the congregation on its own wilderness journey.

It was by faith the congregation was sustained in that wilderness journey by the blessings of leadership quail, manna and water.

It was by such an act of faith in that wilderness journey that the congregation was tested and refined to be resurrected in a new Century as an Easter Congregation.

It was by such an act of faith that Kenny and Wilma Carpenter sustained the building and the property and it was by such an act of faith that Bonna Campbell and Jerry Zoebisch as well as other saints that the congregation held together the congregation during parts of the wilderness journey by their labor of true love.

We could go on but we don’t have the time to hear the entire story of all of the saints who have faithfully done so much for our little church! Their faithful story is our faith story, and their faith in the future, a faith in each of us.

A new story of old faith is being created by the new Saints who have joined us in our journey in the past five years and are walking to Jerusalem with us now.

Do we really understand what this means? Those saints who went before us were pioneers who blazed the way. Many of these pioneers have finished their race, but stand in that heavenly grandstand cheering us on. Our faith story calls upon us to understand that the race is one of relays, the baton being handed off over and over again: a handoff of faith in faith. These Saints call upon us to take the baton from them and to run our own good faithful race with strength and endurance in order to hand it off again to those who come behind us, having run our own good and faithful race. Look at that word faithful – faith full!

This means we have their faith to inspire us and we are asked to run our own faithful race. Their example is before us. The next verse in Hebrews tells us that we are to: “Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it.” (Peterson, Hebrews 12: 3) We have the biblical faith story; we have the story of those who have gone before us here, and the story of all the Saints who have run this race in all of the Churches of all of the world. When we find ourselves growing tired in our faith and losing our energy or our focus, we should go over our own creation story again, name by name. That will surely give us that dose of Starbucks’ coffee we need for our tired souls!

We are certain of what we do not yet see, and we know that by our faith in what is as yet unseen, we will surely call that unseen into our world. Our eyes are truly fixed with the Saints, on Jesus! Amen.