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Launching Summer Online Bible Study

     For the last few months, I have been leading the youth at our church, Chestnut Grove United Methodist in King NC.  This past week our youth were taken on a mission trip to Louisville Kentucky by three adults from our church.  Today as of the witing of this post, they are somewhere on a river in West Virginia white water rafting before they will travel home later today.  I am so excited to hear their stories of how they experienced doing missions this week, some of them for the first time.  I am thrilled the youth have had this opportunity to grow together, to grow towards God, and to serve people in need.  Missions make up an important piece of our work with the youth and with our church.  One other important ministry with the youth is teaching discipleship.
     We are preparing to launch an online Bible study through this blog on July 11.  Our first text will be from the book of Mark.  Start with chapter one.  If you want to join our youth in this Bible study, you are welcome to study with us.  Here is our simple format.  We invite our whole church to read the Bible every day.  One day a week, we meet face to face to read scripture, to study together, and to build into our gathering time, “community time.”  Community time is the time where youth are invited to share prayer concerns or praises with the rest of the group.  Sometimes the youth have a lot to say. Sometimes they are quiet.  We close with prayer. During our face to face time, our new structure is meant to be user friendly.  Using our Bibles, digging into the Gospel of Mark, we will look for what the passage teaches us about  four things : God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and the church?  From all of these points we invite you to reflect on your main take away from this passge today.  Write it down.  If you want to share your insight, you are invited to write it below in the comment section.  We look forward to launching into Mark starting on July 11.  We will read one chapter a day.  So Mark has 16 chapters which means this study will run 16 days. While we have long summer days, let’s give the Lord a little more time.  You are invited to start with us and hang with us for 16 days in the Gospel of Mark. Our whole congregation will be invited.  Join us in this deeper study of the Holy word.  We believe in the authority of scripture and as Wesley said, the word contains all we need to find salvation.  We challenge you to turn up the heat on your daily walk with God and join us.  God is with us. God is for you!

Praying our Way Forward

    A few nights ago, I was sitting with my husband at a local restaurant and we were just finishing our meal.  He asked me if I was ready to go, but he did not seem to be in any hurry.  So I told him, "Yes, let's go now and I will tell you why in a minute."  So he paid and we walked outside.  Rather than continuing a pleasant conversation at the table, as usual, I had nudged him to move our conversation outside.  Why? The couple in the booth next to us looked like they were heading into a fight.  No a physical fight, but a verbal, cold battle.  A man and woman were exchanging bitter remarks, cold body language, and from what I had heard in a few minutes, they may have been at the point of breaking up.  All that was very quietly going on behind my husband's back where he could not see what was happening, nor hear what was being said.  I could both see and hear, and it was mean and ugly, and very quietly being exchanged like verbal ice.  I did not want to watch a couple fight as I was enjoying the very few moments of precious time I get to spend with my husband over a nice meal. So we left to go home and have peace the rest of the day.
     I share this story because I have been thinking these days a lot about people fighting and about peace.  I am not in the middle of a fight, but I see unrest in the world around me and that turmoil pushes me to the scripture to look for my role in the peace making.  I have been studying John 17:20-21 and I want to include it now:  "I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message.  I pray that they will all be one just as you and I are one-as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me."  These verses remind us that Christ himself prays for his followers.  That means Jesus is praying for his church.  The knowledge that Jesus is praying for me is strengthening and comforting.  It renews my hope for a better day to come tomorrow.  The sweet unity that Jesus asks for his disciples to experience I believe to be two fold. The message was aimed at the first disciples, but this message has been aimed for all disciples who have come to faith in Christ after hearing the good news from the very beginning of the life of the church.  Jesus is praying for a closeness between his followers and our Heavenly Father like he experienced the closeness of the very real presence of God with him daily.
     The sad truth about the life of the church today is that the one thing that is one of the best things about being a Christian is to have a close fellowship with God daily and peace with God in our heart, and hope for a future forever with Christ both on the earth and in heaven seems to get very little press.  This is the good news.  This is the life changing, life saving, addiction healing, cancer stomping, power of God made available to each of us through Jesus Christ every day.  The Holy Spirit fills our heart with love and peace and gives us the opportunity every new day to live close to our living God.  Rather than putting this at the top of the page and on the front cover story, we have let other news take the lead.  I opened with a sad story about a couple that may have been on the verge of breaking up.  As we read that story it seems so familiar.  It is not a huge leap for us to be able to imagine some kind of unpleasant conversation we have heard recently.  Maybe even at church, or about church.
     Today I share with you a picture of unity that is posted above this story.  I don't have the answer to every problem, for every church, or for our denomination.  I do have a picture to share with you that I do believe falls in line with the scripture today.  When the church can stand shoulder to should to pray for the needs of the church and community like the children pictured here from our worship service last Sunday, we give a strong witness to our world that we are at peace and the Lord's business is most important to us.  Whatever is the running story at your church, or within our denomination, our challenge is to hold that narrative up to the light of Christ's call from the scripture to be one so the world will know Christ.  Souls are on the line.  What must we do to become one so the world will truly see the Christ was sent for our salvation and for the salvation of all who will believe in him?  We are starting by living into God's call to be a praying church.  Just as I was quick to move on out of the restaurant to not be in the middle of a fight over supper, just think about people who do not yet believe in Christ.  Our unity as a church is essential to our effective witness to draw people to Christ.  Pray God will restore unity, peace, and passion to fuel the effective witness of every church to lead yet one more soul to Jesus Christ.  Pray for God's hedge of protection around the unity of the witness of your church.  We submit to the authority of scripture as God's holy word.  We truly believe that Christ is praying for us daily.  Where there is peace, there is power in our witness. 

We serve the one who can roll the stone away

     As we made our way through the season of Lent, there was a sense of anticipation that somehow on the other side of Lent, the burden would be lifted.  We are relieved that the Lenten disciplines are completed.  So for the lectionary passage for Easter Sunday, what a great scripture we find in the gospel of Mark 16:1-8.  The good news does not ever get to be old news.  For Christians, and many of us who have been Christians a long time, we note that we have read the story of the good news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ many times.  Over the years, we put all of the details from each gospel into one story as it unfolds in our own imagination.  But, the gospel of Mark has the distinction of being short and to the point. So for this great story of the resurrection of Jesus Christ on that first Easter morning, Mark, the writer, slows down the story to real time, and gives the kind of detail that allows the reader to enter into the story.  What captured my attention this year, after hearing and proclaiming this good news for 52 years, was the good news yes that Jesus was not in the grave, but also this year, I noticed the conversation between two women named Mary who were walking on their way to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus and prepare his body for burial.  I thought about what an unpleasant task they had in front of them and how they moved towards that task with courage.  This sentence about the women took root for me this year.  It was the casual conversation these two women were having on the way to the tomb, very early in the morning, to do this unpleasant task of anointing the body of Jesus, that stuck with me.  The details of caring for the body of someone they loved that was about to be buried was the picture that stuck.  "Who will roll away the stone for us?"  This statement helps us see that the women were prepared to find the tomb like it had been left, sealed with a large stone.  Knowing the weight of the stone was more than they could move, even together, they simply asked one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us?"  And they kept walking.  There was going to be an obstacle when they got to the tomb, yet they kept walking.  They did not wait to get a plan together about how they were going to get some people together to help them get the stone moved, they simply kept walking.  We have read the story and it does all work out.  When they arrived the stone was rolled away, and the Lord had a representative waiting for them.  The angel was able to field the question about where was the body of Jesus.  Then the next great statement of this text, "He's not here; he is risen."  With those simple words, the world was not prepared for the impact of what this meant.  That meant that Jesus rose from the grave.  Death did not have the victory, God Almighty did have the final say over death and the grave and the power to raise the dead.  As believers we embrace this life changing news as truth to hold for the rest of our lives.  So what makes this Easter different, the perspective of the two women named Mary who walked towards the tomb that first Easter morning.  There was going to be a stone to be moved when they arrived at the tomb to do their work, but they kept on walking.  Today we know that it was the power of the living God that moved the stone.  God rolled away the stone.  They would not have probably guessed how their lives were getting ready to change because God rolled away the stone.  Our lesson this Easter, is to keep walking towards the work that God has given us to do.  There will be bumps along the way, some times even stones in the way of the work.  Take heart, God will move your stone too.  We serve a living savior, Christ our Lord, who knows all about what we need before we even ask.  Call on God to bring on the power to move the stone that is needed right now, in your marriage, in a relationship with a friend, with a health issue, with a mental health problem, with dealing with loss that has been devastating.  The same God who moved that first stone away for Jesus Christ to show the world he lives, will move your stone too.  Every day, on regular days, we could all use some resurrection power.  Call on the Lord, He will move your stone.

Who joins the church on a Tuesday? Who will be next?

  God is moving in new and fresh waves in the life of our church.  Chestnut Grove UMC is a little over 150 years old.  We are a pretty traditional church in a rural community in Stokes County NC, Yadkin Valley District.  Our church is growing! The great news we have to share is that God is working on a daily basis in the life of our church and we want to be quick to give the Lord the praise.  On October 22, 2017 we had 11 young people make professions of faith, on that same day, also three parents.  On a later day three more youth joined.  A few days later on a Tuesday, a couple, one a patient at Baptist, joined the church from their hospital room.  One young couple who witnessed the professions of faith on October 22 on a visit to our church kept coming back.  Soon they indicated to me by email that they were ready to join and will be joining the church on Christmas Eve.  A very close friend, and long time supporter of our church will be joining on Christmas Eve as well.  This week, on a Tuesday, a member called and told me that a dear friend who is very ill called him and asked if he knew anyone that could baptize him.  My member called me, we worked out the time the next day and went to the man's home and did the baptism.  At the same time, on behalf of our church we offered membership into our church based on their profession of faith in Christ and on their baptism.  Both of them wanted to join and we received them into the full membership of the church.
     Our youth just ran a mission project to help a family with 4 children in our community who suffered the loss of their home recently.  We delivered the gifts to this family this week.  They were moved deeply to see that people cared so much for their family. Generosity is flowing.
     On a weekly basis, our church gets a good volume of brand new prayer requests from friends, family and the community.  The church prays, the prayer team meets and we distribute prayer shawls on a weekly basis when there is a request. Generosity flows in our prayer life.
    The common theme running through the heart beat of our church is that God is at work here.  One person cannot take the credit for this huge pouring out of God's Spirit on our church.  We watch in astounding ways in anticipation to see how God is going to move next.  This is an exciting time for our church and we are so glad this Christmas to be able to share some good news with you.  So yes you can join the church on a Tuesday, or any day.  Every day is God's day and the church is open for God's business.  Saving souls for Jesus Christ.  God is with us.  God is for his church. God is for you.  Merry Christmas from our heart to yours. God's most generous gift, his baby boy.
Rev. Dr. Evelyn Lemons, Pastor