A fresh start

     Starting into my 22nd year of full time ministry, it is still great to have new beginnings. It was truly sad to leave the people at Deerfield UMC in Boone NC to make the transition to Chestnut Grove UMC in King NC.  However, the Lord has been faithful to strengthen my heart to grow more love inside of me for the new flock I am called to serve here.  We are off to a very busy start.  There have been several deaths in the month of July which makes for a pretty fast transition for a new preacher.  God has really been with us!  The church is looking at doing some renovations at the parsonage. So there has been a delay in my moving into the parsonage here in King.  We met with our DS Dr. Jeff Patterson last week here at the parsonage and he helped lay out a time frame for us of what kind of meeting needs to come and when.  We are a good 6 to 8 weeks out from being ready to present proposed renovations to the church.  In the meantime, our church parsonage committee and trustees are working with the church finance committee to make sure we have covered all the details of the proposal.  The DS suggested that we add having a conversation with Duke Endowment, and the District Committee on Building and Locations to our homework to do in getting ready to make a proposal to the church council, then to the church.  Already, I commend the parsonage committee and the trustees who have met at the parsonage twice in the last two weeks to go over all the details of the work to be done with a tour, taking the whole group through the whole house.  Right now, this team is working out the details of bids from three different contractors to make sure we are comparing apples with apples.  The trustees are putting together pictures of the work proposed for the parsonage in preparing to present the pictures to the church council and to the church.  Several folks met and did a lot of work on the parsonage on a Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago.  On top of the proposed renovations, upon close inspection, the trustees have found some problems with the foundation of the parsonage and have had to go get bids on having work done on the foundation as well. So all of the work regarding any renovations at the parsonage is at the committee level at this stage as they prepare a proposal to bring to the church council and then to the church through a church conference.
      In the mean time, as I arrived here to King with a stress fracture on my left foot, I wish I could say it has gone away, but the healing is slow in coming. So I do ask for continued prayer for a complete healing for my left foot. I am in the boot about half of the time now, and that is progress. I am not hurting as badly as I was, and that is my best indicator that I am indeed on the mend!
     In the life of our church, this week VBS is unfolding, and we will celebrate a summer's work with our children and youth ministry with them leading the worship service this coming Sunday morning. I look forward to this time of celebrating what God is doing through our children and youth for our community!
    When I arrived the first of July, the Anchor House youth project was well under construction. The leaders of that team meet tonight to look at all the details required to complete the whole project.  I see some of our men leaving late in the day covered with sheetrock dust, so I know there is some hard work going on there even now, to get the job done. We have met our financial goal on this project and that itself is a huge praise. We look forward to planning a service of dedication for this building soon.
     In ministry, we have tackled our prayer list published in the weekly bulletin as a springboard to use with the whole church to pray for the needs of our church family and community and to go out and minister to these needs. We have started meeting on Tuesdays at 10am to pray together and work on cards to mail out to let people know we have been lifting them in prayer.
     God is with us. God is really moving in the life of this church, and as your new pastor, I really do feel blessed so much by God to be here. I look forward to serving you.  Pastor Evelyn

A Time to Mourn for Charleston SC

      We stand in unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ who lost their lives in the church shooting at Mother Emmanuel in Charleston S.C. last week. The loss of lives was horrible. Our annual conference was gathering at Lake Junaluska during a time of worship when this horrible event took place, only about four hours travel south of us. Brothers and sisters in Christ who were studying the Bible and praying together. The very same thing I was doing along with over 1000 people from our annual conference, doing the same thing. Our hearts are crushed with the news of this horrible crime that has come to their church family. I would love to wrap my arms around the people who are hurting, but that is impossible. It is just too many people to hug. We pray that God's Holy Spirit will bring comfort, strength and healing during this time of deep grief. As a church, this is a tremendous opportunity to stand up and be the church united. We are a people of faith. We are a people that believe in the life saving live changing power of a resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. We are a people in the business of proclaiming the good news that God loves you. Our specific work is to help reconcile people to God through Christ and to each other. See II Corinthians 5: 11-21. It is time to show the world that one person, with one horrible act of violence on innocent people inside a church during a time when they came together to draw close to the Lord, will not change the course of the work of the church. If anything it should make us more determined to work harder to shout Jesus from the roof tops of the church, that the world needs Jesus now more than ever. Only Christ can help overcome hate with love, sin with forgiveness, apathy with a passion for peace, wayward hard-heartedness with repentance. We are determined more than ever to be the church united until Jesus comes back for us, and no one will be able to take away our hope for Christ to change our world.  Our simple prayer is Lord Jesus, we need you. Amen.

Living on less and get rid of the mess

      Back in January I made a decision to start simplifying my life some by de-cluttering the house. So little by little, taking one room at the time, I have been moving through my home, getting rid of stuff. Just stuff. Amazing how one can collect stuff without even realizing it. I should take a page from my sister Della's book who has this mastered! For real!  I didn't know what a blessing in disguise that decision was going to be. About two weeks ago, I learned that I am going to be moving from Deerfield UMC here in Boone, back to Stokes County, my home. I look forward to serving Chestnut Grove UMC in King.  So last Sunday, I gave the news to my congregation here in Boone. I so dreaded telling them, it pained me to give them any kind of news that I felt was going to hurt their hearts. At the same time, the congregation joins me in rejoicing that my time of commuting 107 miles each way back and forth home for the last five years is coming to an end. My husband is thrilled with the news.  Today in the lectionary scripture where Jesus talked about his disciples as friends and how he had not held anything back from them, it made me think of the beautiful love, the sacred love a pastor and congregation share if you get to do ministry together long enough. You really do become friends in Christ. God has so richly blessed the time Jeff and I have been in ministry in Boone with great friends, we only have wonderful things to say about the love the people here at Deerfield.  The people here have really set me up for success. If something big was going on several people would call to let me know, or just give me a call out of the blue and give me a tip that someone was really hurting so I could follow up with them. If you keep doing the same for the new pastor as he comes in, you will also set him up for success!
      As I went to meet the new SPRC team at Chestnut Grove this past week, one team member walked up to me with out stretched arms and simply said, "Welcome home!" The days now are filled with excitement of new ministries to come, and the grief of leaving old friends behind. On the same day, happy and sad. It is crazy making.   I am so thankful for God's call on my life to be a pastor, and for the time here at Deerfield. Our church has grown together to be a closer congregation, and we have faced much adversity together, both personally and as a church family. Through all of these challenges God has been our strength, together.  Now we are in the awkward time of saying good bye to one church while being excited about new possibilities with a new flock.  My mother in law Ruby Lemons and father in law Cleo Lemons are also so excited that I am coming home. She asked if there was any way she could tell the people how thankful and how happy she is to hear the news. So I am telling you now, she is one happy mother in law.  She told me this last week she hopes I don't have to move again as long as she lives. That is a pretty sweet request. Giving her the news I am coming to King was nothing like going to tell her face to face I had been appointed to Boone. It took weeks to convince her God's hand was in this. And now she also can see, indeed God's hand has been on us the whole time.
    I know there are hundreds of pastors who are in the same boat with us right now. Trying to figure out moving dates and how to make the preparations at the current and future appointments at the same time.  I have been doing a mental inventory of the fruit God has allowed me to witness as I have been serving him full time for 21 years.  I want to thank the Lord for delivering my from having to preach from a manuscript during my first appointment. The picture you see above are the files of sermons I have tossed that I have moved from place to place and never looked at them. When I did glance at them at the thought of giving them a toss, truthfully, they were pretty horrible. My first churches sure were generous.  So out with the pile of old sermons that have been collecting dust for years.  I want to urge my peers to take a little time to make your load a little lighter. I am getting ready to start the same process at the church office. Books that I have not opened in years are going to a brand new seminary student in a couple of weeks. They are going too.  This living on less seems like it is going to be a good thing. So far after all the trips to Good will, I have not missed a thing. I want to encourage you to take the time to not move everything, but sort and toss, then save what is really important to you.  I can say I have not arrived at a simple life, but I get one step closer with each trip to Good will.
God bless you if you are also in transition. Remember, God is for us, goes ahead of us, and is already preparing our way. God's grace is already working.  Receive that marvelous gift.  For all the readers, I want to thank you so much. Over 7300 views to my blog since I started. Thanks so much for reading. With God's encouragement, let us continue to lift up our hearts.
Best compliment of the day, "If I had a preacher like you, I would go to church three times a week."
Best compliment told to me on another random preacher which I thought was hilarious: "Our preacher can do "evathang" but preach."  God's peace to you. Evelyn

Baptism at the creek April12 2015

This past Sunday our church experienced something new and old in worship at the same time. Baptism at the creek by our church. We have a beautiful prayer garden and the creek that runs through our church property had a huge restoration project done about 6 years ago, and the whole area is a place of God's beauty that we have enjoyed because it is a beautiful setting to seek to be closer to the heart of God.  Last Sunday, Carrie Caviness joined our church, and Seth and Carrie's son Hank was baptized at the creek.  He was baptized by pouring with the church gathered by the banks of the creek. From talking with long time members, the best we could pull together was that our original charter members from 1960 when the church was started, were baptized by Rev. Joe McMurray in the creek.  We were not able to find any others who had been baptized at the creek since then. So after about 50 years, we came back to the same spot in the creek, to baptize Hank.  As a church family, we celebrate the wonder of baptism, and the full liturgy of what that means to us as God acts through that sacrament. We celebrate Hank being baptized. We celebrate Carrie joining the church where Seth was raised and he was already a member here.
     Another special layer of beauty was added for this family because in Carrie's work, the company that she works for did the restoration project for our church on the creek several years back.  She works to restore creeks for a living and did her doctoral work on this area of environmental work. Not a coincidence to have all these things come together for such a special day.  So to say having the baptism outside was a special day is so true on many levels. I have seen Hank's grandparents spend countless hours at the prayer garden pulling weeds over the last five years while I have been here at Deerfield.  The grandmother noted that she never dreamed she would have such a special memory to be added to this spot that was already close to her heart as well. Now when I go down to the creek, I can go sit on the rock where Hank was baptized and know this is the place where God meets with his people.
    We continue to look for the hand of God working in our midst and celebrate how only the Lord could pull together the details for this day is just the right way to touch so many hearts. We are so blessed!

New things coming in 2015!

PRIMED 4 U! 

We started out our new year together by digging deeper in the scriptural basis for our new church mission statement: PRIMED 4 U!  Last year, our strategic visioning team helped our church come up with our new mission statement. At that time last summer, our team came up with words that started with each letter that were words to describe who we believe God is calling our church to be and to emphasize if we are going to be a church in our prime again.  So we are taking the new mission statement and breaking it down, one letter at the time per Sunday since the beginning of the year.  Knowing that people may not be able to be in church every Sunday, and we all know there has been a ton of sickness around us, we have made a strong effort to put the weekly sermons on our new church website so if you have missed a Sunday, or at a later point in time you want to come back to these sermons, you will have online access to the sermon. Stephanie, our church secretary, has put a great deal of time into helping get our new church webpage going and functional. We still have more work to do, but we have started.  You can check out the progress so far at: www.deerfieldumcboone.org  and go to the tab for sermons.

            Here are a few of the really great things that are happening: 1) Deerfield is trying some new things this year.  2) God is moving in our church in an ever so gentle way. The nudge of the Lord is enough to let us know that God is leading us, but the Lord has not shoved us over the cliff of change in such a hurry that we have all been scared to death.  3) We are talking about the future of our church, praying about our future, and the Lord has helped us realize that to reach the next generation with the gospel some things are going to have to change, and that comes as really hard news for most of us who want things to stay the same.  We are not planning to change things randomly, but with prayer and God leading, we are willing to move in the direction that God is leading.  

            Our strategic visioning team met for the first time this year last week.  We will have different leaders on our team form committees to do the ground work in different areas that we are seeing a need that needs to be addressed.  Chris Burns is working on hospitality and may be contacting you soon if this is an area of interest to you or a place where you feel really gifted to serve, then tell Chris you want to help by being on this team of people who are willing to sit down and work out the nuts and bolts of how people experience hospitality when they come through the doors of our church.  This is just one example.  As our plan unfolds, we will share more with the congregation step by step. Hospitality is our first place that we are giving our attention in the new year.

            One change in worship for the new year:

            We have added a time of greeting your neighbor into the morning worship time.  We are going to try this out for a while.  The lay person who gives the opening prayer and announces the first hymn will be the person who asks you weekly to briefly turn and greet your neighbor.  The pianist will start playing through our opening hymn.  When our choir director Pat Lanno, gives us the cue that it is time to start singing the first verse, we are encouraging the congregation to be back at their pew and ready to start singing the opening hymn. Rather than this being a time of chaos that really looks like an intermission at a movie, let’s do this as an act of praise to the Lord.  Our first Sunday of adding in the greeting last week went great! We are truly glad to greet one another because God has blessed us with yet another opportunity to worship Him together. Please use this opportunity to say hello to your neighbor. If there is someone at the opposite end of the church that you do not get to greet, please remember to make an effort right after worship to seek that person out to speak to them.  So in the coming year we may see some changes that we hope are for the good of the work God is doing among us. Let’s be brave together, and watch for the hand of the Lord to lead us. We may not want to change anything, however God is calling us to prepare our church for a future with hope, and for us that will mean change.

Primed 4 U! Sermon on P for Prime

PRIMED 4 U!  Sermon Series starts January 11, 2015, Rev. Evelyn Lemons, Deerfield UMC

New Vision statement for our church: PRIMED 4 U!

We want to be a church in our PRIME in 2015!

Life Cycle of the church:

 Reference Dr. George Bullard

                                                         PRIME

BIRTH                                                                                                    DEATH

Prime:  Letter “P” Key Verse: Psalm 19:14

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (NRSV).

            Praise: Let the words of my mouth

                        293 verses speak to praise

            Prayer: Meditation of my heart

                        253 verses speak to prayer

            Perfection:  Be acceptable to you

39 verses speak to perfection, John Wesley Sermons: Sermon 76 “On Perfection, Sermon 40 “Christian Perfection”  Perfection equals holiness.

Aimed at the Lord:  O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Key verses:

Praise:

          Isaiah 25: 1 “O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you, I will praise your name; for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.”

          Jeremiah 17:14 “Heal me , O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved; for you are my praise.”

          Psalm: 7:17 “I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteiousness, and sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.”

          Psalm: 9:2 “ I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.”

          Psalm: 18: 3 “I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, so I shall be saved from my enemies.”

          Psalm: 22:22 “ I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”

          Psalm 150: 1 Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament!

          Psalm 150: 2 Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his surpassing greatness!

Prayer:

          Book of Psalms-the prayer book of the Bible

          Mt. 21:13 “My house shall be called a house of prayer;”

          Mt. 21:22 “Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.”

          Romans: 12:12 “ Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.”

          Ephesians 6: 18  “ Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.”

          Phillipians 4:6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

Perfection: God’s perfection:

          Deut. 32:4 “The Rock, his work is perfect and his ways are just. A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he;

          2 Sam. 22:31 “ This God-his way is perfect; the promise of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all who take refuge in him.”

          Psalm 19:7 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;

          Our call to perfection:

                    Mt. 5:48 “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
                   Mt. 19:21 “ Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

                    Romans 12: 2 “ Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God-what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

                    2 Cor. 12:9 “ My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

                   

Hebrews 5:9 “ and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

Hebrews 6: 1 “ Therefore let us go on toward perfection, leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ, and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith toward God.”

Hebrews 10:4 “ For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”

I John 2:5 “ but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him:

I John 4:12  “ No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

Primed 4 U! New sermon Series to start on Jan. 11 2015

Working draft 1/7/15 for preaching for the next 6 weeks from Evelyn

Sermon Series: PRIMED 4 U! Deerfield UMC new vision statement for 2015

You are invited to look for scriptures weekly that pertain to each theme and send them by email to me. You are being invited to participate in studying ahead to prepare for worship in the weeks to come. Thanks ahead of time for thinking about digging into the Bible with a purpose in 2015.

Jan. 11 Primed 4 U!

            Themes: Praise, Prayer, Perfection

            Look for scriptures for each theme:

Praise:

Prayer:

Perfection:

Jan. 18 “ R”:

Themes: Redemption

            Repent

Jan. 25: “ I”

Themes:

Inspirational

Inclusive

Feb. 1 Communion Sunday

Theme: “M”

Ministry

Missions

February 8: Theme: “E”

Elevate Christ, Christ’s mission in the world, Christ’s name above every name, seek Christ’s priority for the work our church is doing in our community and in our world

Exalt Christ: In what way is Christ being lifted up in our worship, our mission, our meetings, our planning, our daily work as a church together, and projects that our church has done for years?

Feb. 15: Theme “D”

Discipleship-forming disciples through teaching the Bible, teaching people to become like Christ

Feb. 18: Ash Wed Service, Time 6:00pm

Feb. 22: Theme: First Sunday in Lent

Start back with gospel selections from the lectionary

A New Start for 2015

As a spiritual discipline, for years I have taken an inventory of events of the past year and set goals or resolutions for the coming year. I thought about the great things our church did this past year. We started a strategic visioning team and came up with a new mission statement for our church, for the first time in 30 years, "Primed 4 you!"  Pretty significant shift for Deerfield UMC.  Our church found some Holy Spirit courage and tried some new things, like inviting the whole community to an Easter Egg Hunt, and we filled the fellowship hall. From that event, one family joined our church. We are so blessed to have Dennis and Rebecca O'Neal with us. We also tried more community outreach events called "Celebrate Summer" and invited the whole community again.  This fall the church hosted a prayer tent for the month of September and offered prayer for people who wanted to come by to have someone pray with them. We had several folks who came to ask for prayer. We were paying attention to the line of cars that back up in traffic in front of the driveway of the church every day. This fall we also launched an emergent worship service using contemporary music and ran the launch in October and November with between 30 to 50 people attending weekly. These are some of the new things we tried last year.
One of our speakers for the Prime Time worship event was Principal Costin from Parkway Elementary. She spoke on the impact our church had had on children that we had tutored in reading last year, and thanked us for wanting to continue to partner with their school.  The worship team took up food for the schools of Watauga County for our Thanksgiving mission and we delivered several boxes of food to be distributed to the schools in the most need in our county.
We continue to seek to be an obedient church in doing the will of the Lord in our community and we do look forward to all the good things and God things that are in store for our church in the coming year.