Cheering the Handoff

This will be my last article to the Stratmoor community as your Shepherd (the meaning of the word Pastor.)

 

I cannot tell you how proud I am to have been the pastor of this flock for more than eight years.  My initial conversation with key saints in 2003 told me that God wasn’t finished with Stratmoor yet, and they were open to the idea of change and new things.  Jerry Zoebisch and Bonna Campbell were two of the critical elements in the openness to different ideas being planted and nurtured.  We have been fruitful and I am proud to have been part of the nurturers of that fruitfulness.  The pronoun is “WE.” 

You should be proud of many things.  A few are:

• Seeing the future in Easter (resurrection) terms and rejecting a theology that would call for you to be stuck at Calvary with death and loss.  Hopeful!
• Reclaiming Sunday morning in 2007 and using the existing space to grow in new membership for the kingdom and to allow the economics to follow rather than lead.  Impressive! 
• Thinking outside of the walls and boldly launching the food pantry on B-Street and Fox Meadow Middle School tutoring.  Jesus didn’t say “I’ll meet you at the temple” and rather He journeyed out in the wilderness to nurture those whom the temple community had forgotten.  Biblical!
• Moving from a worshipping community composed largely of older adults with no children present to an exciting, vibrant community with an excellent blend of various ages and spiritual maturity.  Children’s time at Stratmoor, particularly at the non-traditional service is joyous and spirit-filled.  Exciting! 

Those are illustrative and not exhaustive.  At the end of John the author suggests to tell the entire story of Jesus would require far more space and time than he had available.  I, too, am so constrained.

 

This has been an exciting time to be at Stratmoor.  Christ the Lord is Risen Today! 

Marilyn and I leave with mixed emotions.  Excited for the new opportunities that lie ahead, prayerful that Stratmoor will continue to flourish and grow and sad that so many we love will not be in our daily lives. 

I am proud to have been your pastor this past eight plus years.  It will be a time in our story of joy, hope and affirmation.

 

Marilyn and I are so grateful for so many for so much, for your faithfulness, your support, and your grace.

 

I pray you shower Pastor David and his wife Donna with the same love you have showered on us.  God continues to do a “new thing” with Stratmoor and he most assuredly is not finished with you yet. 

God bless,

Pastor Dennis

Resurrection People

We celebrate Easter every Sunday.

This has been a critical part of our self-identity for my time at Stratmoor.  I developed the phrase by combining ideas that Sunday worship should be a celebration and every Sunday is to be understood in terms of Easter.  It wasn’t hard to meld those two ideas into a phrase that spoke volumes about who I hoped we could and would be:  celebratory people finding hope in the resurrection story.

We are now in the midst of the seven week period that is named Easter. 

Easter at its core is faith in the related ideas that death does not define us and that God will roll away the stones which separates us from wholeness.

It is my prayer and hope that those related ideas continue to be part of the Stratmoor self-identity. The hope that was Jesus appeared to die on Good Friday and the disciples and his followers mourned:  hope was dead.  They discovered on Easter that hope was not dead, but very much alive.  Faith in the resurrection was the engine that powered the growth of Christianity.  The power of the idea that death does not define us gave so many previously without hope … hope.

I invite us in the Season of Easter to hold to the faith that we do celebrate Easter every Sunday. Every Sunday is a little Easter, and every Easter is a great Sunday and whether a little Easter or a great Sunday, we are to come into worship to celebrate.

We celebrate Easter every Sunday.  Let’s embody that phrase every week!  

Selah

Pastor Dennis

God Calls Us from Places of Safety

On March 11th, the suggested material for the church year deposited grist on my mill (on behalf of God) John 2 and Jesus "cleansing" the temple.

The text in John is different from Matthew, Mark and Luke.  For example, in John, this scene happens at the start of Jesus ministry rather than at the end in Matthew, Mark and Luke.  Perhaps a demonstration for the disciples of what this new rabbi was going to expect of them?  

          I wondered if John wasn't inviting us to see Jesus in terms of a new and different relationship with God.  

               I wondered if God wasn't perhaps calling us to leave the safety of the status quo (the temple) which included honoring our traditional ideas of what God expects of us and follow Jesus (the new "temple") as the embodiment of that different relationship with God.  

There was irony in this theme:  this was the Sunday of the announcement of my move from Stratmoor (in Colorado, my home for fifteen of my adult years) to Hilltop (in Utah, a place I have never lived.)

C. S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, answers the question if the Jesus character (Aslan the Lion) is safe:  "Safe?  Of course he isn't safe, but he's good."

Don't you wonder what the new disciples must have been wondering as Jesus is "cleansing the temple:"  'what have I gotten myself into with this Jesus guy?  Maybe I need to get back to dad tending those nets.'  

     Maybe.  

          But maybe, moving from a place of safety to a new and different place is exactly what God expects of us at a time of God's choosing, not our own!

Harvey Martz is the Senior Pastor at St. Andrew UMC in Highlands Ranch, CO.  He observes that it is challenging for us as leaders to espouse a change through us until it happens to us.  

To preach a message of leaving a place of safety where we think we understand our world to a different place requires understanding this Jesus might not be safe, but remembering he is most certainly, good.  

Selah.  

Pastor Dennis Resume

Current Appointment:  Stratmoor Hills United Methodist Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado:  Dennis has been the Senior Pastor since 2003 to one of the three fastest growing congregations in the Rocky Mountain Conference.  Stratmoor consists of over 250 multi-cultural members, constituents, youth and children in an area of high residential turbulence.  As a result of his and the congregation's prayers, faithfulness, and hard work, attendance, membership, and stewardship have tripled in the last eight years.  The Reverend Doctor Melanie Rosa, the District Superintendent, describes Stratmoor as the poster child for a Vital Congregation in the Mile High-Pikes Peak District. 

Dennis has been in ministry within the Rocky Mountain Conference of the UMC since 2000 in a variety of appointments.  He serves as an officer of the Conference through his duties as the Conference Statistician.  He is also Vice President of the Council on Finance and Administration. 

In 1994 Dennis retired as a Regular Army Lieutenant Colonel and was awarded a Legion of Merit, the second highest peacetime award upon retirement.  Military responsibilities included light infantry, human resource management, and cost analysis.  His assignments took him to Alaska, Colorado, New York, Virginia, Kansas, Korea and Germany with brief excursions to other European countries and Japan.  He attended the Airborne School (yes, exiting a perfectly good airplane while still in flight) and U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, among others.  At various times he was the first-line supervisor to as many as fifteen field grade officers as well as more than a 150 enlisted soldiers. 

Dennis has been an ardent student and practitioner of leadership his entire adult life.

Dennis has been published as an author of articles and letters-to-the-editor in 1776 (Army’s Human Resource Magazine), Army Magazine, Army Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post on a wide range of personnel, theological, and resource related topics.  He is competent in conversational Spanish spending eight weeks in Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, and Guatemala practicing.  He was the 2006 recipient of The Spirit of Rotary award in the Rotary Club of Colorado Springs.  He has served as the local board president for both Westside CARES and Family Promise (formerly Interfaith Hospitality Network.) 

Education is a core family value and as a result, he has an eclectic education focused on excellence with two degrees from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC:  a Doctor of Ministry, to be awarded May 7, 2012, and a Master of Divinity, 1999 (Summa Cum Laude) in addition to a Master in Business Administration (1979) from Rochester (N.Y). Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor of Music (1971) from Georgia State University in his hometown of Atlanta.  

Between 1982 and 1989, Dennis ran seven marathons (26 Miles, 385 Yards.) He qualified for and competed in the prestigious Boston Marathon in 1988.  He has skied in North and South America, Asia, and Europe.  He has golf clubs and spends time on a golf course, but to call it golf is a stretch.  His goal before he dies is to visit every Major League baseball stadium.  To say he's a baseball fan is an understatement.  There is theological meaning in a game with an objective to get home safe.

Dennis and Marilyn White have been married for nearly 25 years and are parents to a blended family with four adult children living in Virginia, Colorado and Texas.  Praise God!

Note Number 1 to Hilltop UMC

Sisters and Brothers in Christ at Hilltop United Methodist in Sandy, Utah!  

Marilyn and I are excited about becoming part of what God is doing at Hilltop United Methodist. 

In Matthew 28:20 Jesus gathers the remaining disciples on a mountain and uses these verbs:  “go … make … baptize … teach.”  That passage and those verbs are key elements of Marilyn’s and my spiritual formation.  In order to “go” we must leave places of safety and boldly and confidently answer God’s call.  Our Christian vocation is the intentional creation of new life-long students of the gospel realized through our relinquishment of worldly ways.  Everything we understand about Hilltop communicates Hilltop is a community with that spiritual grounding. 

I told the Hilltop Staff Parish Relations Committee that if we had been asked to write a description of a church where we would feel called, the description Hilltop provided was one we would have written.

We are impressed with what you are already doing. 

We are excited about joining the Hilltop Christian family on this journey.

We look forward to being at Hilltop in July! 

We see this as a sacred opportunity God has placed before us. 

We both ask you to be in prayer for churches relinquishing their pastors to other churches this year.  This is a time of anxiety you uniquely understand.  Your collective prayers for patience and assurance are powerful, knowing that God is at work and will provide. 

Yours in Christ,

Dennis Shaw

Attendance and Stewardship

This blog post is about the relationship between attendance and stewardship at Stratmoor.

In 2003, when the congregation was averaging 34 in attendance, stewardship from within the church was about $40K.

In 2011, the church is averaging about 100 in attendance; our stewardship looks like it will finish the year in the $115K or so range.

Using Algebra I a simple extrapolation from the 2003 attendance number of 34 and the corresponding $40K says we should expect given an attendance of 100 to have a total income of about $117K or so, or just a little over what we expect to achieve. 

We have done extremely well over the last seven years.  For example, we’ve been able to do without the rent from two other congregations using our building on Sundays which has given us worship versatility.  We’ve paid off the loan on our new windows.  We’ve been able to have a musician dedicated to each service.  We’ve been able to fix up the Fellowship Hall and the classrooms.   That said, we are financially still at a fragile place.  I believe our operational income needs to be in the $150K range in order for us to meet the minimum baseline requirements for our existing building and ministry expectations.

We need to continue focusing our attention on:  (1) vibrant and meaningful worship; (2) thinking missionally outside of our doors; and (3) discernment of God’s call on our lives through discipleship.  These are the three critical elements of our continued growth.  The impact of these three foci will, I believe, lead to increased attendance, more small groups, more people involved in mission, and more resources for us to reinvest in the world through the connectional church (nationally) and to reinvest locally (Food Pantry.) 

If the Algebra I extrapolation holds true for the future, I believe the path to long-term financial viability at Stratmoor rests in the continued growth in attendance.  The target attendance number for the $150K annual income level is about 130 to 135.  (That is a minimum, it should not be our ultimate goal.)  

Attendance growth naturally leads to more people participating in mission projects while at the same time growing in their discipleship.   

Vital Congregations

The United Methodist Church is taking a long, and in some cases, hard look at the slow but steady decline in numbers for the church.

Our leaders are most concerned about how a decline in membership and attendance, which has been matched or exceeded by most of what are called “The Mainlines” i.e. Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Disciples of Christ, etc., impacts the viability of local churches.  I applaud the willingness of the national church to suggest there is a problem, and to organize a reasonably common approach to dealing with it.  That said, context matters, and our individual local church contexts are different locally and across the country.  Our stories are different united by a common focus.    

There are about 35,000 United Methodist (UM) churches spread across the fifty states.  There are a little fewer than eight million “members.”  However, most of us consider attendance to be the true indicator of vitality. 

A few years ago, the median for attendance (half-way down the rank ordering of all UM churches) was 65 in worship.  Our average attendance is 100 so we are about 35 over the median. 

The approach taken is that worship and involvement in the community are key elements of congregational vitality.  Think of that as if it is our body.  That is quite biblical as Paul talks in 1^st Corinthians 12 as the church as a body (Greek:  soma).  We track the health of our body by looking at temperature, blood pressure, pulse, respiration, cholesterol, and other indicators.  Many of these I just listed can be modified through exercise, weight control, stress reduction, and the like.  They are medical indicators of the health of our body. 

The Vital Congregations project is using a set of five indicators as measures of the health of our churches.  They are:  Average Weekly Attendance, Professions of Faith, Small Groups, Members in Mission, and Dollars given to Mission. 

We have been asked to provide to our district superintendent, The Reverend Doctor Melanie Rosa, a picture of where we believe we will be with these health indictors at our Church Conference on December 4, 2011 (at Good Shepherd UMC in Security at 4:00 PM). She will accept our input at that conference and then "lock it".  We will be able to edit our goals over time.    

Stratmoor Hills History	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Avg. Weekly Attendance	62	65	81	92	100
Professions of Faith	1	6	1	1	2
Small Groups				8	8
Members in Mission	0	0	0	0	0
Dollars Given to Mission	$7,034	$ 11,489	$ 11,668	$ 18,658	$ 8,161

Our Last Five Years

Stratmoor Hills Future Story?	2012	2013	2014	2015
Avg. Weekly Attendance	105	110	115	120
Professions of Faith	4	1	5	1
Small Groups	10	11	12	12
Members in Mission	10	12	14	16
Dollars Given to Mission	$ 15,000	$ 17,000	$ 21,000	$ 25,000

A Potential Next Four Years?

Average Weekly Attendance is shown here as increasing by about 5% per year.  My next blog will be on the minimum number we need to get to in order to be economically viable in the minimum baseline case.  As I said, my next blog will deal with this.

Professions of Faith are new Christians.  I am showing two confirmation classes in the four years:  one in 2012 and a second one in 2014.  A person who belonged to a church in 1971 and then lapsed for 40 years is a restored by affirmation, not a profession of faith. 

Small Groups at the national level is double counting.  Three different classes with the same people in the class was shown by us in the national report as three.  Given the definition of what they want to see as a small group, that is really one.  That said, they didn’t count the choirs, our United Methodist Women (UMW), our youth, the group supporting the food pantry, etc. 

Members in Mission are those engaged in local, national or international outreach ministries.  This I think could include the UMW Tuesday morning prayer shawls, the B-Street Food Pantry, our Fox Meadow Middle School tutoring, and our Youth to Salt Lake (last year) and the Lakota tribe (this year).  They do want individuals.  This will take a little work on our end. 

Dollars given to mission is our apportionment and special offerings to the conference plus other resources we provide outside of the Methodist connection.  The rent we pay on the B-Street food pantry is clearly a dollar given to mission.  The same is true with what the UMW sends to various ministries.  We frankly overreached in this area in 2009 and we made a pretty significant retrenchment in 2010 and 2011.  The “bump” in the forecast is driven by suggesting we get to a full payment of our apportionment (we are about 80% now) in 2014.  Send me a note if this number concerns you. 

Please look over the proposal.  Again, we need to approve this as a community of faith on December 4.  I see this as a statement that we realize this body of Christ is willing to provide an assessment of our health and vitality, and that setting these goals is appropriate in our commitment to continued growth. We are showing increasing vitality on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

Alane Sheaves has graciously said "Here I Am" and will provide the input on this (weekly) national data call come January.  The means by how we will gather this data internally is yet to be developed.  We are working on it.

I am proud to be the Pastor at Stratmoor Hills!   

Selah,

Pastor Dennis 

Leadership 201

Last night, at the church, twelve souls gathered and we talked about leadership.

(I can send you a copy of the presentation if you would like to see it ... click  here and send me a note ..and let me know if you have PowerPoint or not.  If yes, I will send you the PowerPoint version.  Otherwise, I will send you a ubiquitous link that will allow you to see it in a continuous run mode you will have to start and stop if you want to slow it down.)  

We reviewed what we had said was important six months ago.  We went to John Kotter (Kotter Change Principles) and reviewed his Eight Principles of Change.  Finally, we came back and went over the areas of people, programs, building, and finances.

What did we "learn"?

• Most important, we have people who desire that Stratmoor be a positive force in the Community.  Ideas of branching out into the community and sustaining programs we have were blessed by the group.  
• We embraced Kotter and Jim Collins (Good to Great) in our quest for understanding and insight.  We went over the eight principles, and repeatedly we tried to engage their guidance on the quest we have in front of us.  For example, we are swimming in a river of information.  We must use every opportunity and medium possible to tell our story.  Clearly, communication was an area that has so many answers and so many challenges for us.  More work here.  
• Key elements of Collins are 'getting the right people on the bus, the right people off the bus, and getting the right people in the right seat on the bus' and the idea of foxes as opposed to hedgehogs.  Collins says companies, and by implication churches, that went from Good to Great are led by hedgehogs -- rock steady and diligent in the central idea that is the key and essential core of the change paradigm.
• We are following the Collins/Kotter model of getting the right people (i.e. coalition) together before the key issue of exactly where we are going to go is formulated.  That is not to remotely suggest that we are not moving:  we most assuredly are.  Some of our moves now are a combination of obvious and intuitive (i.e. community focus) along with pragmatic (i.e. air conditioning) that our precise end-state is secondary.  
• A continued core value is that we are reluctant to mortgage ourselves very much, if at all.  It is not off the table as an option, but some kind of combination of grants, potential sale of land, and internal fund raising is the preferred approach.  Debt is an option, but one we have to get to after some other things are done first. 
• We all got excited about an opportunity for ministry expansion w/in our demographic and community that warrants exploration.  Details to follow.   

The group was left with a homework assignment -- look over the landscape at Stratmoor and decide who is a hedgehog, present last night or not, whom we need to provide leadership:  talk to them and then talk to our Lay Leader -- Nell Grindstaff (Nell Email).  The role of Church Council Chair comes open in November/December time-frame and getting the right person on that seat in the bus is key and essential to us moving ahead.  But leadership opportunities exists in multiple areas

Good food complemented our conversations:  Ms Marilyn provided us a repast that was quality and quantity.

Selah.    

Small Groups

Yesterday was our annual United Methodist Women's Sunday.  

My reflection yesterday could be broken down into three major parts.

First I offered a history, as best one can offer five different stories that meld into one story in 1968, of what is now the United Methodist Women (or as they are commonly called -- The UMW).  The critical points here were that women at one time went to the early versions of the UMW because the church was run by men and this was a place for women to be independent of that male dominance.  Their focus then was places like India, Africa, the Philippines, etc.  Notice much of this is outside our normal national boundaries  Thinking of service only within our country is not how the UMW started, and they are not defined that way today. 

Within this framework I commented that our UMW was increasing in numbers and was younger in age, noting three young women who are now active here.  In so many ways, Stratmoor is a special place that is doing things positively different, and our UMW (growing and younger) is illustrative of that difference.   

The biblical text framing the discussion was from John 20: 19-23 (NIV).

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. 

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”  And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

The UMW perceived its mission as being sent.  I used this passage to reinforce the idea that what the UMW is doing is biblical and should be sustained.

The second point I made was focused on small groups.  How did the disciples know what to do as they were "deployed" out in to the world (I used deployed as a substitute for "sent" as my image, knowing that in a military based population, this would resonate)?  They had learned it in the small group that was Jesus and his Disciples.  The UMW is in effect a small group, a classically Wesleyan accountability group that helps its members grow in their discipleship through various means, not the least of which is accountability.  I lifted up the UMW as an example of what I hope to see everyone at Stratmoor become part of in some kind of way:  a small group.  I mentioned that I ask our choirs and mission ministries to be ministries that include growth in discipleship and holding people accountable (in a loving, caring way).  This is an important part of our growth as Christians.  

The last part of my reflection was drawn extensively from this 10 minute presentation by the Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries (UMW Mission and Vision).  This is quite good.  I encourage all to view it.  

I am proud to be the pastor of a church with a strong UMW.  Those who worship at Stratmoor should be proud of our UMW.  I pray that other groups will be as effective in small group ministry that includes growth of discipleship and accountability.  

Selah.    

Healing Beauty

My theme for Sunday was beauty and how beauty heals. 

The scene from the Tom Hanks/Denzel Washington movie, Philadelphia, framed the first part of the sermon.  I quickly communicated enough of the story to have this scene make sense, and then described the scene in some detail.  My concluding remark was that Denzel had been transformed by the beauty of the opera:  something that at the beginning of the scene he acknowledged did not particularly interest him.  I told the story yesterday, but you may link to the clip here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b0p9mTJOJI 

All beauty in the world is either a memory of Paradise or a prophecy of the transfigured world.  —Nicholas Berdyaev, Russian religious and political philosopher (1874–1948)

Beauty surely is in the eye of the beholder.  For me two of the most beautiful moments in my life were when I got to see pink and blue squirming lumps covered with blood that had just emerged into our world.  It is a feeling I have not had since but it was a moment of transcendent beauty: they were, and are, prophecies of a transfigured world.

Beauty can take many forms.  Literature, drama, art, photograph are just examples.  I confess for me, music is a special place, a special moment.  I can truly feel whatever is physiologically going on with my body enzymes when I am surrounded by music I like.  Love of the created beauty is also clearly something that engenders moments of transcendence.

I wonder if Jennie’s question to Forrest Gump, near the end of her life isn’t an inquiry into how he dealt with his own fear.  She asks were you ever afraid in Viet Nam?  And Forrest, begins to talk of the beauty of God’s creation:  night skies, sun on the bayou as it is getting ready to go to bed, the skies reflection on a lake where it looks like two lakes, and finally, in the desert mountain west, where the sky and earth seem to come together and one doesn’t know ‘where heaven ends and the earth begins.’  Jennie laments to Forrest that she wishes she ‘could have been there with you’ and Forrest says to her, ‘you were.’  In a moment of intense fear of the unknown, Jennie is showered with a narrative of beauty and a reminder, like the Philadelphia opera excerpt, that love allows us to see that beauty around us.  

Beauty is something that we can and should seek out at moments when we are feeling awful so that we can be full of awe – awe-full. 

Psalm 8 might help to frame for us how we can biblically grasp that moment of  awe-full transcendence. 

LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!   You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants 
   you have established a stronghold against your enemies, 
   to silence the foe and the avenger. 
   you have established a stronghold against your enemies,     to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, 
   the work of your fingers, 
the moon and the stars, 
   which you have set in place, 
   the work of your fingers,  the moon and the stars,     which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them,    human beings that you care for them?

That transcendence can lead to transformation.


Francis Collins in his book The Language of God speaks to how beauty moved him to take a leap of faith. You can hear him talk to this on how beauty transformed his soul ...  He talks to it here:  Collins and his transcendent moment of beauty.

There are clearly times we all have holes in our souls.  Beauty is one of the things that can surely be used to fill those holes.  Seek beauty when we experience moments of brokenness, point to it when others are shattered.  Beauty is a 'foretaste of Paradise or an opportunity to see the world as it can be.' 

Beauty is something that we can and should seek out at moments when we are feeling awful so that we can be full of awe – awe-full. 

Selah.