|
|
2330 South Jefferson Street
|
|
|
2330 South Jefferson Street
|
|
|
|
TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST NOVEMBER 16, 2003 Welcome to South Roanoke United Methodist Church. Our mission is to bring persons to know the love of Jesus Christ, to provide opportunities for a growing personal relationship with God, and to provide biblical and theological training in order that persons may discover and develop their talents to serve Christ and share His love in our world. ORDER OF SERVICE-11:00 A.M. + Indicates the people standing ENTRANCE
Gathering
Music
Folk Tune
Whitlock +Indicates the people standing THOSE SERVING TODAY:
The Altar Flowers Are Given
The Flowers in the Narthex Are Given CHILDREN (AGES 3 through 1st GRADE), may meet the acolyte to recess to Children’s Church. Please ask your child to line up behind the acolyte who will lead all children out together. After the worship service, parents must pick up their child in the Children’s Department; children will not be allowed to leave the room until their parents arrive. WELCOME! We're glad to have all who have joined us for this time of worship. Especially to our guests and visitors, we welcome you to South Roanoke and to our fellowship. We invite those who have no church home to make South Roanoke your church and add your witness to ours. THE ROSE ON THE ALTAR is in honor of the birth of Lillian Bradley Jamison, born Saturday, November 1, 2003 to Jennifer and Troy Jamison of Chicago, IL. The proud grandparents are Dick and Sandi Clemmer. NEW MEMBERS will be received on November 23. Anyone who would like to unite with South Roanoke United Methodist Church at this time should speak to the pastor today, or call the church office, 344-4437. There will be a new member orientation class TODAY at 2:00 p.m. DOLLS AND STOCKINGS FOR THE SALVATION ARMY are in the library. If you would like to stuff a stocking or dress a doll, please sign them out in the library. All dolls and stockings need to be returned to the library by November 30. NEXT WEEK’S SERMON, God Is Enough, will be based on Joel 2:21-27; I Timothy 2:1-7 and Matthew 6:25-33. Please read and study these texts this week. THE DISTRICT CONFERENCE AND LEADERSHIP TRAINING EVENT will be held TODAY at 2:30 p.m. at Cave Spring United Methodist Church. All leaders and officers of the church are urged to attend. THERE WILL BE a meeting of the Administrative Board TONIGHT at 7:30 p.m. in the Wimmer Classroom. THERE WILL BE a meeting of the Weekday Preschool Committee on Wednesday, November 19, at 7:45 p.m. in the preschool office. THE ADULT FELLOWSHIP GROUP will meet for a catered lunch in the Fellowship Hall on Thursday, November 20 when Debby Rattenbury, the preschool director, will talk about her life and give an update on the preschool. All adults of the church (of every age) are welcomed to these programs/trips. Sign up on the board by the church office if you would like to come to lunch on the 20th. THE ANGELS ARE COMING! The Advent Angel tree will be up by November 20. We will have almost 100 angels. Angels on the tree are one gift only. Call Terry Wilkinson, 772-0490 or Dawn Long, 989-2837 for more information. Our youth will be shopping for their angels next Sunday, November 23. Please bring $10.00. THE KNIGHT TYME CIRCLE will meet on Tuesday, November 18, at 7:30 p.m. at the home of Mooney Cox; 5828 Merriman Road SW. Any women of our church who would like a night time circle are invited to attend. THE WEEKDAY PRESCHOOL is collecting non-perishable items for the Ronald McDonald House. If you would like to make a donation please bring your items to the preschool office during office hours Monday-Friday. They will be collection these items until December 15. INTERNATIONAL CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS NEEDED FOR UNITED METHODIST CENTER. This year the United Methodist Center in Glen Allen will be decorating a special Christmas tree that celebrates the diversity of Christians from around the world. This tree will be decorated with multi-cultural Christmas ornaments reflecting different cultures, races, and ethnic groups. If you have been on a Volunteers in Mission trip or a vacation abroad and brought back Christmas ornaments from another part of the world, would you be willing to donate one to the center? They are looking for ornaments that are approximately 4” or smaller in diameter. These ornaments would become a permanent part of the United Methodist Center’s Christmas display and therefore, would not be returned. If you have such an ornament to share, please mail/ship/bring it to the center by November 24. If mailing, mail to: Communications Office at 10330 Staples Mill Road—PO Box 1719, Glen Allen, VA 23060. Please mark the words, “Christmas Ornament,” on your box. VA UM CONFERENCE RETREAT: November 14-16. Sixteen of our youth and adults are attending our United Methodist Conference Retreat in Lynchburg, VA. Brian Bear and Katherine Witt were chosen to lead 800 youth in worship and study at the retreat. THERE WILL BE a breakfast for all of the Sunday school teachers and their families on Sunday, November 23 at 9:30 a.m. in the Fellowship Hall. Please join us! YOUR NEXT OPPORTUNITY FOR WORSHIP will be Wednesday, November 19 at 7:00 p.m. for the Contemporary Worship Service. The Junior High Youth Group will be the speakers. MISSION TRIP! We’ve been asked by the Virginia Methodist Conference to organize a team to go to Poquoson, VA to help with the cleanup from hurricane Isabel. We are planning to go on Friday, November 21 and return late the next day on November 22. Poquoson’s district will provide us with a place to sleep in one of their churches and make arrangements to use the YMCA for showers before traveling home. Contact Diane D’Orazio, 725-9886 or 797-9886, if you are interested. Poquson is still in the cleanup phase so please consider being an extension of our church in this opportunity to show the love of Jesus. THERE WILL BE NO Contemporary Worship Service on November 26 due to the Thanksgiving Holiday. We hope everyone will take this time to be with your families. THERE WILL BE a meeting of the Charge Conference on Sunday, November 23, at 8:00 p.m. in the Wimmer Classroom.
CHURCH CALENDAR
___________________ Sermon: What I Have Learned about South Roanoke ChurchHeb. 10:23-25; Mark 13:1-8 As you know Cheryl and I have been meeting with most of you over the past several weeks in a series of “Neighborhood Gatherings.” In these informal settings, graciously hosted in the homes of the members of your Staff-Parish Relations Committee, we visited together in groups of 5 to 20. 128 of you attended 10 such gatherings as we shared a moment together getting to know one another better. I also took the opportunity to hear from you what you think of your church and her future. Early on I knew I wanted to summarize in a sermon what I have learned from you about South Roanoke Church. God has a wonderful sense of humor. I hope you know that. That has certainly been my experience. I discovered that again as I prepared for this message this morning. Let me tell you why. When I turned to the Scripture texts suggested to be read for today, the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, I was heartened to discover these words of encouragement to the church from the letter to the Hebrews. But when I read the Gospel lesson for today where Jesus speaks of the throwing down of the temple and warns of wars and rumors of wars, I began to wonder exactly what it is I am supposed to assume about the church this morning! Yet again I discovered what a wonderful sense of humor our God has. But the more I pondered these texts and what you have said about your church, I believe I am beginning to sense the message of the Gospel that the church needs to hear today. I want to suggest to you this morning that the Scripture and your own hopes, concerns, and dreams for South Roanoke Church can find appropriate expression this morning even in the form of the Word of God through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That surely is my intention today. So would you walk with me as we consider God’s Word and your hopes, concerns, and dreams for your church? As those of you who attended the “Neighborhood Gatherings” will remember, I asked two basic questions of each of you to share with all of us gathered in the small group that met together. Those two questions were these:
Now, it was my experience that the person who was brave enough to go first in answering these questions often found himself quoted by just about everyone else in the group as they responded (when it became their turn to answer these two questions!), “I agree with him!” But I learned after awhile not to let you get away with that! Seriously, I discovered a rich variety of perspectives within this community of faith as I listened to 128 answers to these questions. Let me then address these two questions in general as I heard you responding to them. 1) What is your best hope for South Roanoke Church? This question, obviously the easier of the two to answer, elicited a variety of responses, as you can imagine. You dream of a congregation where everyone is involved in one aspect of ministry or another, especially among the younger and newer members of our church. You hope for a community where everyone can experience God in a personal way through worship, finding inspiration, courage, and hope for living the Christian life. The Sunday School is named as one of the best hopes for the church, and you have taken heart in its recent growth. I heard from so many of you how proud you are of our children and youth ministries with the hope that these vital church programs will continue to flourish, including Peanut M&M’s (which is our weekly pre-youth group program), United Methodist Youth, and our Preschool, just to name a few. Our music program is especially valued in its various expressions, from bells to voice to guitar to organ, and I know you are especially proud of our recent growth in the vocal choirs we celebrated just last week. There is genuine gratitude to God for the rich tradition and history of this congregation that was most appropriately celebrated at our recent Homecoming and Anniversary. Our senior citizens among us especially cherish this community of faith and find such renewal of spirit and care for the soul in its fellowship, especially through the ministry of the Adult Fellowship. There is also a deep longing in the very heart of the church for mission that has expressed itself in a long history of outreach to the needs of those beyond ourselves in our local community, in the nation, and in the world. This outreach has found generous financial support as well as active volunteer involvement through programs and ministries like Aftercare (where we host a community of mentally retarded persons once a month here at the church), Interfaith Hospitality Network (homeless persons are housed and fed here once a quarter), the Trinity Outreach Program (an urban ministry in Roanoke), as well as volunteer in mission trips to Africa, Alaska, and Appalachia, to name just a few of those. You also hope for a refreshing and new movement of the spirit of God among us. That desire finds ideas for possible new opportunities:
These and more are the expressions of your best hope for South Roanoke Church as we shared them with one another. I find in these expressions the very essence of the life that the letter to the Hebrews seeks to encourage: Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.. Now I have served churches before where the folks seemed to have learned very well how to provoke one another! And I believe I sense that South Roanoke, like most churches, well, we also have our own way of doing exactly that depending on what the issue is that being considered! But the Scripture this morning calls us to provoke one another to love and good deeds. As I have listened carefully to your best hope for us, I believe that this same love is a part of the very fabric of this community of faith called South Roanoke Church. I believe that because more than anything else I have heard you say, your hope for your church is for unity. This, then, leads us to consider your answers to the next question: 2) What do you believe is the greatest challenge South Roanoke Church faces right now? As I heard you sharing your perspectives on this question it became clear that this was surely the more difficult of the two to answer. Your answers more often than not invited genuine and open discussion of matters that are very important to the life of the church. Your pastor especially appreciated these spontaneous discussions, and I believe you did, too. These opportunities seemed to provide a moment for us to contemplate together before God the challenges that face us right now. I also believe it provided us a moment to begin to let God shape our community of faith according to divine intention. If I can at all
accurately summarize what you have shared I believe you believe the
greatest challenge that South Roanoke faces right now has to do with two
things: Those who have
studied the church for a long time suggest to us that the church is like a
family, a system of relationship where we all inevitably affect one
another as we experience our common life together. Like any family,
communication is key to its health. When communication is clear and
direct and genuine and persons stay connected with one another, that
promotes health in the family and in the church. If I have learned
anything from those who have studied the family and the church for a long
time I have learned that genuine communication is the key—that’s the place
to start on your way to unity. It has been well-documented that when
members of a family always say to one another what they say
about one another, communication is clear and genuine, people stay
connected together, and unity is nurtured. For example, if a sister is
irritated by her brother’s behavior toward her and she is encouraged to
say to her brother just as much as she complains to her parents
about him, relationship begins to find healing, love is nurtured, and
unity is enhanced. So, if it is true (and I believe it is) that a church
is like a family, and communication and unity is a challenge for us right
now, I want to propose a covenant with you this morning. This is a
covenant I believe every healthy family and every healthy church
implicitly, naturally commits to in their relationship with one another if
they want to have a healthy family or a healthy church. That covenant,
that promise, that pledge is this: If communication and unity are the greatest challenges our congregation faces right now, we are in very good company. When Jesus spoke of the falling of the temple and of rumors of wars, what did he call these things? He called them “but the beginning of the birth pangs.” What is being born in the midst of all of this? Jesus believed the Kingdom of God was coming to life right there. He believed that even when his own disciples argued with one another about who would be first or who would sit at his right hand. The early church had to believe it when they experienced great conflict over the place of the Gentiles in the early predominately Jewish Christian movement. We have to believe it as we study the history of the Christian Church even to the present day. You see, God knew all along that we would make a complete mess of life, but God gave us life anyway. And God has patiently worked with humanity, and families, the people of God, and the church ever since we fell flat on our face in the Garden of Eden. And God is not about to give up on us now. The Scripture brings
us such word of encouragement and hope this morning: William G. Davidson |
|
|
