The Message of Jesus Christ Blog

Discipleship Factory!

      Sometimes I like to think of the church as a discipleship factory…a place where people come to be called, equipped, transformed, and then sent back out into the world.  Discipleship comes in many different forms.  Even the first disciples were a diverse lot of imperfect men, most of them in their 20’s.  The apostles in their early days seemed like a nondescript group headed for oblivion, but through association with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, they eventually turned the world upside down.

      I am constantly amazed at the many ways that the people of Lakewood UMC answer and fulfill their calling as disciples of Jesus Christ.  Just this past week, there has been a flurry of activity and ministry!  So much so, that to name all of the people individually that seek, serve, and share the message of Jesus Christ in and through these doors would almost be impossible!  Please allow me to lift up just a few recent examples:

• Mother’s Day Out recently graduated thirty 4-year-olds and Wesley Hall was packed with parents, grandparents, and friends to celebrate this joyful occasion!  We have many faithful disciples who are called to teach and work with children.
• Last Sunday we had a Red Cross Blood Drive with many donors and a great number of dedicated volunteers, disciples who are called in ministries regarding health and welfare.
• Last Saturday I attended the LUMC Expand the Light Golf Tournament with 48 players and lots of sponsors and volunteers.  The money raised will benefit ministries to fight hunger in Central Arkansas and I witnessed disciples using their gifts of administration and fundraising to satisfy a need in our community.
• Last night I attended a concert in the sanctuary that was very diverse and entertaining and I was blessed by disciples using and sharing their gifts of music.
• Yesterday 18 senior high youth attended training for Ozark Mission Project and learned skills that will equip them in discipleship as they share God with their hands and hearts.
• Furthermore, I know that there are disciples seeking, serving, and sharing in their workplace, with their families, in the community, and beyond the boundaries of this campus in ways that we don’t even know or recognize.  But God does!!!

      The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  We’re supposed to be a discipleship factory!  Through our relationship with God we are called to holy living in the world and I’d say that with God’s help we are making great strides!                         

            Serving with you…Cindy

Catch the Wind!

My favorite movie is Forrest Gump.  In the opening scene, a feather gently floats through the sky…destiny drifting…the Spirit moving.  The feather lands at the feet of Forrest and he picks it up, embraces it, and sweetly savors the moment he is about to encounter.  This Sunday is Pentecost Sunday and we are going to look at the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives today.I once heard a professor say that one of the biggest problems with The United Methodist Church is that it has numophobia or a fear of the Holy Spirit.  We don’t talk much about the Holy Spirit these days in the UMC.  Maybe we don’t want to be too evangelical but in the early days of Methodism, that was not the case.  John Wesley was always open to manifestations of the Spirit.  He believed in the continuing presence and activity of the Spirit and recognized the reality of special gifts of the Holy Spirit. 

The focus of his belief was that every Christian was called to holiness of life through the sovereign presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  All were to strive for this state with the confident expectation that what they could never accomplish in their own power alone would be given to them by the grace of God.  For Wesley, one could not have an experience of grace without having an experience of the Holy Spirit.  

Pentecost Sunday is the conclusion of the 50 days of Easter and the commemoration of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus Christ as depicted in the Book of Acts.  The Apostle Peter preached his first sermon on that very day and over 3000 people were baptized and became the people of God.  The church was born! 

So how do we “catch the wind” of the Holy Spirit in the church today?  Is God really active in our lives, sometimes in ways that we don’t even recognize?  Absolutely!    

Remember to wear red this Sunday for Pentecost, participate in the Save-A-Life Blood Drive from 8 a.m. – 12 noon in Gibson Hall, and bring our change for the “noisy offering” for the Central Conference Pension Initiative.

I don’t know about you, but I could use a fresh breeze! See you Sunday!

                -- Rev. Cindy Henry Russell

"Tickled in the Absolutes"

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, “Honor your father and your mother’ and ‘Whoever speaks evil of father and mother must surely die.’ But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God.’  Then that person need not honor the father. So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said:

      ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;
            in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines”   (Matthew 15:1-9)
 

      Ever so often someone comes along and monkeys with our traditions. Conflict results. As the late Dr. Christie of Hendrix College was fond of saying, “Nobody likes to be tickled in the area of their Absolutes.”

      So the “worship wars” of the current age seem to be perpetuated. One group thinks that the folks meeting in the gym with the guitars and drums are committing sacrilege.

      The praise folks look at the folks in the sanctuary as stuffy, sanctimonious, and without the real Spirit.

      Then someone like Jesus comes along and monkeys with the whole mess. He explodes our human paradigms.

      In his day the fuss was with hand washing. Then, hand washing was not just for hygiene as in our day when folks worry about swine flu. It was ceremonial hand washing. It was a ritual.

      Jesus did not require ritual hand washing of his followers and they were taken to task for it. “Why do your disciples break tradition?”

      Jesus turns it back on them: “Why do you bread the commandment of God for the sake of tradition?” he asks. He cites the case of the commandment of honoring father and mother. One of the Ten Commandments, it carries weight. Yet, the commandment could be circumvented and support for elderly parents could be avoided by dedicating part of one’s estate “to the temple” and to “God.”

      Sometimes it is silly what we do for the sake of appearing to uphold principles. We go through contortions to avoid the very responsibility that we want to uphold!

      Jesus names it: not only silly, but hypocritical!

      So, when it comes to the “worship wars” or any other “tradition”  perhaps we ought to hear what Jesus thinks is the heart of the matter: It is about the heart.

      It is not style that really matters. What matters is where we stand in relationship to God and to one another. What would it be like if we were more concerned to love God and one another and freely give ourselves to worship – in both gym and sanctuary?

      Let’s focus on keeping the “main thing” the “main thing.”

      Jesus didn’t call it the Great Commandment for nothing!

                      --- Rev. Richard Lancaster