The Wisdom of our Elders

Each time our Session meets we have a detailed agenda befitting our practice of doing things “decently and in order”, as the Apostle Paul teaches us. We begin our meetings with a brief lesson and devotion, followed by prayer. If our meeting is in the evening, we share an enthusiastic thank-you to Audrey Little for preparing a delicious dinner for us. Our Clerk, Jo Ann Staebler, updates us on Presbytery activities and changes in membership.

We then move on to reports from our Ministry Teams. We now have 9 teams: Administration & Finance, Christian Education, Early Learning Center, Membership (combining Fellowship and Evangelism & Assimilation), Mission, Personnel, Property, Stewardship, and Worship & Music.

We don’t always hear from every Team at every meeting. We are trying to focus on different Teams throughout the year to help us all develop a better understanding of each Team’s ministry. In April we will hear detailed reports from two Teams.

First, we will hear from the staff and Board of our Early Learning Center. Did you know that each week hundreds of 2, 3, and 4-year-old boys and girls participate in different programs our ELC provides? Under the leadership of Linda Lindamood and Chris Fox, the children play, learn, and sing, all in a very compact 3 hours. It is a ministry that is easy to miss because it happens on weekday mornings in rooms that we think of as Sunday School classrooms, but it is a vital ministry and one we strongly support.

We will also hear a more detailed report from our Mission Ministry Team. This Team spends long hours wrestling with how we can best and faithfully respond to the overwhelming needs we see all around us, stretching from within our own church family, to places and people thousands of miles from us. The needs will always exceed our abilities and resources, so Mission has the difficult task of assessing where and how we as a community of faith are called to respond.

Mission has also been working to lead us in becoming more faithful stewards of God’s creation. The Team has developed an environmental stewardship policy that all Elders have adopted. We will implement the policy in all that we do here at MPC to help us reduce, recycle, reuse and tread more lightly on this beautiful creation. God reminds us in the Pentateuch that the earth belongs to him, and that we are to look after it for future generations.

I encourage you to pray for our Elders, that they be graced with wisdom, energy, and faithfulness. Our Elders work hard to serve God and this church. In all we do as the Session of our church, we are guided by the prayer offered by our Lord, that we seek to do God’s will, and not our own, and that makes our service a joy.

Grace & peace,
Pastor Skip

What Do They Do?

A question I am often asked is, “what is the Session?” The follow-up is usually, “what do our Elders do?” It often seems that our Session does its work so quietly that most folks are not even aware of its presence. Yet our Elders work very hard as members of the Session called to lead our congregation.

Our most recent meeting reflected the broad expanse of our calling and our work. We spent quite a bit of time discussing a new policy for building use: what outside groups may use our building, under what circumstances, and if we charge the group, how much we should charge. We have lots of requests for our space; more than we can handle, so we need to have a policy.

Did you know, for example, that every week the BEACON program is here teaching English as a second language? Did you know that we host Girl Scout leadership teams? Or that we are the meeting space for Toastmasters? Support groups have used our space in the past, and we currently host a Brazilian Church congregation that worships here twice each week. All this is in addition to the many programs that are run directly by our church.

Our Property Ministry Team is also scheduling a number of large maintenance projects for this year, including repaving the front parking lot, cleaning and painting the cross on the steeple, and painting more interior spaces.

We decided to merge the Fellowship Ministry Team with the Evangelism & Assimilation Ministry Team into a newly named Membership Ministry Team. The new Team, chaired by Spence Curtis and Susan Simmons, will take responsibility for all aspects of membership: welcoming new members, organizing fellowship activities, and working with the Deacons to look after all our members. Membership will also oversee a newly created Task Force that will help us redesign our website this summer.

Over the new few months we will focus on our Early Learning Center, a vital ministry we offer to our community. The demographics in our neighborhood and community are changing and we need to adapt to those changes. We are also working on new ideas for Stewardship; we are still eager to find the financial resources to allow us to restore the position of Associate Pastor.

I plan to share more information about our Session in the months ahead, but if you have questions, just ask me or any of our Elders. We post minutes of Session meetings on the bulletin board across from the church office, along with information about our Deacons. Both groups work faithfully remembering the words of our Lord, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.” Our Elders and our Deacons work with great dedication to bear fruit for all in this Body of Christ.

Grace & peace,
Pastor Skip

Our Officers' Retreat

Our Elders and our Deacons gathered last weekend for our annual Officers’ Retreat at Massanetta Springs. It was a wonderful weekend as we learned together, prayed together, shared stories with one another, and grew in faith.

We began our time on Friday evening with an exercise that divided the group into teams, with each team on a variation of a scavenger hunt. Teams were given numerous passages from our Book of Order, Directory of Worship, and Book of Confessions with blanks and they had to locate the passages and fill in the blanks. The books that make up our Constitution are rich with the history and theology of the Reformed tradition, along with the beliefs and practices that distinguish us as Presbyterians.

As we reviewed our responses on Saturday morning, there were lots of questions, and the questions led to wonderful, thoughtful conversations about why we do things the way we do. We learned especially how important the Bible is to us: reading it, studying it, and seeking understanding with God’s help through the Holy Spirit.

After lunch the Board of Deacons and the Session went off to separate room so each group could meet. On the Session’s agenda was passing the Budget for 2008. We are in the process of changing and updating much of our financial reporting with our new Financial Administrator, Lisa Faust. We also made the decision to hire an outside Accounting firm to review our reports and practices, something we have not done in quite a few years.

We also agreed to restore a practice our church had not that long ago, one that many other churches use with great success: designating one night a month as Ministry Team Meeting Night. We want to improve communication about our Teams, as we all work within this Body of Christ. Making the Meeting Night work will require some schedule adjustments from most of us, including me, but churches that follow this practice all find it well worth the effort.

We ended our time on Sunday morning with a worship service. What made it truly special was that everyone was involved, from Call to Worship through the Benediction. When it came time for the Lord’s Supper, we took a common cup and a loaf of bread and passed it around the circle, each person served, each person serving. We were gathered in a meeting room in the beautiful setting of Massanetta Springs, but we were also spiritually gathered in that Upper Room.

I find it such a joy to work with our leadership groups. Our Elders and our Deacons work hard and work faithfully serving God and this church. I encourage you to learn more about their work, pray for them, support them, and thank them, remembering that we are all called to the work of “promoting the Body’s growth in building itself up in love.”

Grace & peace,
Pastor Skip

It's Finally Here!

It’s started. It’s not even Thanksgiving as I write this, and yet I am already listening to Christmas hymns and carols and I have already begun to get out the Christmas decorations. Just a few, of course – I try to wait until after Thanksgiving, but when a new nativity I had ordered from a catalog arrived the other day, it seemed a shame to box it back up for just a few weeks, so out on the table it went, ready for the season.

I am not sure who sprints out of the gate earlier: me or the stores in the mall. I love everything about Christmas: the lights, the scents, the sparkle of tinsel, the greenery, the ornaments, children filled with excitement, the carols, the sense of wonder. I am always eager to step over the threshold that leads into the wonderful room we call December as we await the coming of our Lord.

Yes, the season brings with it a rush of activities; it is certainly the busiest month at the church. Still, the season brings with it a sense of peace that falls so gently upon us, like snowflakes drifting down touching us, filling us, stopping us even for moment in the midst of the crush, calling us to pause, to remember, to wait. The peace reminds us, as the composer John Rutter wrote in one of his beautiful hymns, that love came down from heaven on that first Christmas Day.

But even as I look forward to Advent and Christmas, I am also already looking ahead to the New Year, as we begin our 141st year. Our Session and Board of Deacons will begin the new year together with their annual retreat at Massanetta Springs, where we will continue working on what it means to be leaders in the church, work we began last spring. Our Book of Order reminds us that Elders are called to lead us “continually to discover what God is doing in the world and to plan for change, renewal and reformation under the Word of God.” It is exciting and challenging work, as we seek to discern the will of God as we follow Jesus.

We will take the wonder, the glory, the peace, and the Spirit of the Christmas season into the New Year, as we should. The Spirit of Christmas should fill us all year round, for the Spirit of Christmas is, after all, the Spirit of Christ. My hope and my prayer is that the Spirit will blaze in your hearts throughout the Season and throughout the year ahead.

Glory to God in Highest Heaven!

Pastor Skip

Thanks Be To God

This is the time of year when we are filled with thoughts of thanksgiving. We have so many things to be thankful for, so many blessings for which a prayer of gratitude is appropriate.

What are you thankful for? Your family? Your home? Your health? Counting our blessings may prove too formidable a task, but still, naming things we are thankful for is a wonderful exercise to do all year round. Here are just some of the things that are on my list:

I am thankful for my family: for my wife, my sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins. I am thankful for wonderful friends, many scattered in far distant lands. I am thankful for good health, my home, for having food and clothing.

I am thankful for the colors of the rainbow, colors created by God to give us beauty. I am thankful for the magnificent colors that come with autumn. I am thankful for the rains that refresh the earth and wash things clean. I am thankful for the squirrels, whose antics seem so amusing this time of year as they prepare themselves for winter.

I am thankful for men and women who have been called to serve: called to serve as firefighters; police officers; utility workers who restore power even in the worst weather; men and women who endure heat, cold, loneliness, and fear as they serve in our military. I am thankful for men and women who serve in hospitals, in every capacity, twenty-fours a day, to care for others.

I am thankful for our church as we close our 140^th year and look to our 141^st year filled with such promise and hope. I am thankful for the wonderful staff I work with each day. I am thankful for our special ministry in the Early Learning Center and the staff and teachers who embrace each child we welcome each day with warmth and love.

I am thankful for the season that lies before us, the season of Advent, a time of watching and waiting. I am thankful for those who have written so many wonderful hymns and carols that help us to focus on the coming of our Lord. I am thankful for the talents of countless artists who have captured that radiant, peace-filled scene of the birth of our Lord in so many ways to bring us the mystery and the hope of God with us.

This is my list today. It may be different tomorrow, and different yet again the day after that. But one thing will remain the same each day: my gratitude to God. The Psalmist said it so many times with good reason, “O give thanks to the Lord.” And so I will, and not just in November, but every day.

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip

You Want Me To Serve On WHAT Committee?

Twenty years ago I served as co-chair of the annual Stewardship campaign at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Buffalo. I was an active member of the church, the third generation of my family to worship there, but I was not at all interested in serving on the Stewardship Committee, much less take the co-chair’s role. The pastor would not take “no” for an answer, however, (and no: we don’t learn that skill at Seminary!) and so I found myself helping to lead the annual campaign.

Six months later, after an effort that we all considered successful, I concluded that God had blessed me richly by calling me to serve on the Stewardship Committee. My eyes had been opened in a way that never would have happened had I not helped with our campaign. Serving on the Stewardship Committee helped me to think about not just what I was giving to the church, but why I was giving, and who was calling me to give.

I realized that I was not making a donation to the church. I wasn’t making a gift. I was simply returning a part of what God had blessed me with. And it wasn’t the Committee that was asking for the pledge, nor was it the Session, nor the minister; it was God who was putting the pledge card in my hand. It was God who calling me to respond. God was gracing me with the opportunity to bring my “first fruits” to his table to do his work.

I think everyone should serve a two-year term on the Stewardship Ministry Team. In fact, I think we should require it of every active member. Your eyes will be opened in ways you might not have thought possible. You’ll develop a better appreciation for where and how we spend our funds on all the ministries we do here at our church. Indeed, you will see how everything we do is ministry. You will see how even painting a door or shoveling the walk is ministry.

In this month of thanksgiving, make sure you thank those who have helped with our Stewardship efforts this year. It was a small core Team led by Elders Mishelle Noble-Blair and Jim Crane. But there were many helping hands. Find them, and then, after you have expressed your gratitude, offer to serve on the Team next year. And don’t be surprised if, at the end of two years, you find that you have been “enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God…”

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip

The Light on the Horizon

Pat and I thank you all for your words, your notes, your cards, and your prayers these past few weeks since my mother died. Every word, every thought, every gesture has been a great comfort to us and our hearts are filled with gratitude.

The presence of Mom’s absence has become apparent in countless ways. I have noticed it each afternoon. As her health deteriorated this past year, the late afternoon was usually her best time of the day, so I would telephone her and talk with her while I drove home. I have felt her absence even more acutely on Sunday afternoons. For more than 30 years that was our time to talk, a routine we fell into when I first went off to college and long-distance calls were something done sparingly.

But even as I feel the presence of her absence, I am also filled with a sense of relief: relief that she is beyond the reach of cancer, relief that no pain can touch her, relief that she no longer needs to fear yet another trip to the hospital, relief at knowing that she is at peace, bathed in love in the presence of God.

How blessed we are to have the promise of eternal life in God’s Heavenly Kingdom awaiting us at the end of our journey here on earth. At the end of our mortal lives it is not death that comes for us, but Christ himself. So, as Paul reminds us, “if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

I took comfort in knowing that my mother embraced this promise as she neared the end of her life. She knew where she was going. Her faith gave her the strength and courage to bear her final few months with grace and peace. The twinkle never faded from her eye.

“Death be not proud”, wrote the poet John Donne. “Mighty and dreadful: thou are not so… One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.” This is the promise we take on faith, for it is the promise we have in Jesus Christ.

The absence is real and the grief deeply felt when a loved one dies. Yet even in death there is hope, a ray of light that shimmers over the horizon that reminds us that our lives here are only a prelude for what awaits us: eternal life in the presence of our Lord. Thanks be to God!

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip