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2330 South Jefferson Street
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2330 South Jefferson Street
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THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER APRIL 10, 2005
Native American Ministries Sunday ORDER OF SERVICE 9:00 AND 11:00 A.M.
As Christ cares, we care…
We care about
all people. 9:00 A.M. PRAISE SERVICE ORDER OF SERVICE-11:00 A.M. + Indicates the people standing ENTRANCE
Words of Welcome, Registration of
Attendance and Announcements
Bill Davidson PROCLAMATION AND RESPONSE
Children’s
Time
Bill Davidson
Sermon
We
Believe in Love (1): Amazing Grace before You Were Born
Bill Davidson SENDING FORTH
+Hymn
408
The
Gift of Love
Gift of Love + Indicates the people standing
THOSE SERVING TODAY:
The Altar Flowers 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. NATIVE AMERICAN MINISTRIES SUNDAY reminds the Church of the gifts and contributions made by Native Americans to our church and society. It was first celebrated in 1989. The Special Offering received for Native American Ministries within the Virginia Conference was supported by our 2005 Lenten Offering this year. 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 FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE will meet on
Tuesday, April 12, at 10:30 a.m. in the Wimmer Classroom. Louise Miller,
District United Methodist Women President, will be the guest speaker. All
women of the church are
THE AFTERCARE SOCIAL CLUB will meet
on Tuesday, April 12, at 6:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall for dinner and
square dancing. If you would like more information about our Social Club
call bonnie dayton, THE COUNCIL ON MINISTRIES will meet on Tuesday, April 12 at 7:00 p.m. in the library/conference room. NEXT SUNDAY IS YOUTH SUNDAY! Our high school seniors will share their witness as our youth provide for our worship at both services in their own unique style April 17. THE ADULT FELLOWSHIP GROUP will meet for a catered lunch and “show and tell” on Thursday, April 21 at 12:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall. Check the Adult Fellowship Board for details or to sign. Cost of lunch is $7.00 per person. MUSIC SERVICE POSTPONED. The “Christian Year in Song” worship service announced in the April newsletter for 9:00 am April 27 has been cancelled. Rev. Davidson will preach at 9:00 am; 11:00 am service will feature the “Festival of Hymns” presented by our choirs. VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR MEAL PREPARATION, EVENING HOSTS AND OVERNIGHT STAYS. SRUMC is the host church for the Interfaith Hospitality Network the week of May 1st thru May 8th. The Interfaith Hospitality Network provides temporary housing and meals to families in need in the Roanoke Valley. Those interested in helping out please contact Jeff Huffman at 772-6912 for overnights, Nancy Cumins at 985-0265 for evening hosts and Ellie Clark at 721-3340 for meals. VBS--LOOKING FOR A ROARING GOOD TIME? Then join us for our Serengeti Trek, July 11-15, where kids are wild about God! If you’re interested in volunteering for this great VBS experience, contact Cameron Huffman at 772-6912 or Heidi Christopher at 774-3672. (Nursery will be provided for volunteers who need it.)
JUBILEE PROJECT is July 31—August
6. Cost is $200.00. Sign up with Paula to serve with this mission OUR 2005 LENTEN OFFERING goal was $15,500.00. To date we have received $10,740.84. This money will be used to help those in need in our community. If you have not yet contributed, and would like to please make your check payable to SRUMC, designate it as Lenten Offering, and place it in the offering plate. ANYONE WITH INFORMATION for the May Newsletter should contact Joe Kennedy at 344-4437, or email at joesrumc@aol.com NO LATER than April 15. SERMON SERIES: “WE
BELIEVE IN LOVE”
BLOOD DRIVE South Roanoke UMC will sponsor a blood drive in our Fellowship Hall on Tuesday, May 17 from 11:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Our goal is to collect 50 units of blood. If you are a regular blood donor, please wait until May 17 to donate. We will need lots of donors, as well as volunteers to help staff the event. The Red Cross will provide training for the various jobs available. You will be hearing more about this in the upcoming weeks.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ UNITED METHODIST MEN
The United Methodist Men will meet for breakfast and a program on Saturday, April 16, at 8:00 a.m. in the Fellowship Hall. If you would like to attend please sign below and place this form in the offering plate.
Name____________________________________________________________
Number attending___________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ April 10, 2005
3rd Sunday of Easter
We Believe in Love (1)— What do we believe? Is there a distinctive United Methodist character to our faith? If anybody asks you, “What does this church believe?” what do you tell them? Well, you tell them we believe in love. As a United Methodist minister I am called upon to answer this question quite a bit. Whenever I prepare to introduce United Methodist faith to persons for the very first time I invite them to share in a little exercise. If you have been a part of my “Pastor’s Inquiry Class” you have already experienced this exercise, but I believe it is an exercise worth revisiting from time to time in your spiritual life. I want you to imagine just now that you hear a knock at the door. It startles you and me, interrupting this service of worship as it does. There is obviously someone at the door. Imagine that someone knocks again. And finally one of our ushers discreetly goes to the door slowly opens the door and the person enters…and…it is God, God was knocking, wanting to come in. Imagine God looking all around at us gathered here and then stepping in the sanctuary to look for a place to sit. And wouldn’t you know it? God sits down right next to you. Imagine what that feels like. God, the Creator of all things, the One Who knows you very well, Who knows everything you have ever done, everything you have ever thought, the One Who made you, sitting right there next to you. How does that feel to you? Take just a moment now in silence and consider God sitting right next to you right now. Live with those feelings for just a moment in silence…… Now, let me ask you a question. With God sitting right there next to you, what does God really think of you? That’s gotta be the first place you go when we consider what we believe. What kind of God do we believe in? Who is this God? What does God really think of you? What do we as United Methodists really believe about God? Now one thing we
believe as United Methodists is whenever we have questions about God there
is only one place you can go to get the right answer. The Bible. The
Bible begins with these words: Have you ever wondered why God made a world? God never really needs anything. God is the only being ever who is truly self-sufficient—God doesn’t need a thing. But there is something about the very essence of God that brings forth the creation of the universe. The Bible revealed this in describing the Creator: “God is love.” (1 John 4:16) Love needs relationship. Out of nothingness,
then, love made a world. God planted love in the very heart of the
universe—love was the seed placed in the midst of that “formless void.”
Love is the very essence of creation. And God planted love right here in
the human heart. Love is what made you. Love is at the very heart
of your existence. Love is the very essence of who you are. That
love of God, that’s the image of God in which you were made—the image of
God that is still in your heart. The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah knew
this truth when they heard God say, In the garden, though, in the garden we acquired other tastes—the taste of that forbidden fruit on the tree God told us not to eat from. It’s an acquired taste, one that takes getting used to, a taste you don’t like at first because you weren’t born with the familiarity of its flavor in very fiber of your soul. You know what I’m talking about. When God tells you “don’t go there” and you go anyway, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And I don’t think I need to illustrate that very graphically for any of us this morning. You already know what that’s like, to go where God has told you not to. But it wasn’t long, was it, before we got very used to it. We even began to prefer the tastes we acquired. We denied love. We didn’t trust God anymore but trusted in ourselves. We didn’t believe in love any more and tried to build a life on our own resources, our own abilities, our own creation. We were afraid. We gave up on love and chose to cling to fear. We have spent our lives ever since acquiring all kinds of tastes for all kinds of other things when all along it is only the taste of love that truly satisfies. Who, then, is this God? What does God really think of you? What does the Bible say about all this? Brothers and sister, I have very good news for you today. I am so anxious to tell you this morning that God does not say this in here (the Bible): “OK, children, if you’re going to act that way, I’ve had it with you.” No, not in here. In here God says “My child, I know you better than you know yourself. I love you—I have always loved you. Nothing you ever do or say will ever change that.” Story after story after story in the Scripture we find God responding to human disobedience with patient, redeeming love. Time after time after time God even uses the very circumstances of human disobedience to fulfill the promise our disobedience intended to deny. At every difficult moment of human history when one might understand if God would simply give up on the whole thing, instead God reached out in love and deliverance. Why else would God come down to earth and become a human being in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Why else would the Son of God suffer and die and rise again? The life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus is a sure sign that God never gives up on us. God knows you too well. God knows what you need. God will not stop until you have it again. What does God really think of you? A man by the name of John Wesley struggled with that question in his own life. John Wesley, a priest of the Anglican Church (the Church of England), over 250 years ago founded the movement that became what we now know as the United Methodist Church. In his study of the Scripture and in his own relationship with God he discovered a very distinctive and unique answer to this question. That’s where he discovered grace—the amazing grace of God. John Wesley discovered that you and I were made for the taste of love. A little over nine years ago my mother died. Not a year goes by that I don’t miss her cooking. Stuffed green peppers, meatloaf, baked pork chops, homemade apple pie, cookies at Christmas…..oh, how I miss her cooking! It’s not that we don’t have her recipes. As a matter of fact I remember calling Ma more than once long distance just to figure out how to prepare a certain meal I remembered she knew how to do so well. I still have those 3X5 cards with her exact recipe as she dictated it to me over the telephone. Now it is a little difficult to measure exactly “a pinch of this and a dash of that and a palm full of something else,” but I’ve got it all written down. About once a week it’s Dad’s turn to cook in our house. When he doesn’t choose to take us to a restaurant he will prepare something from time to time just the way Ma used to make it. I have been known to take her recipes myself and follow them exactly. But you know what? When Dad fixes it or when I fix it, it just doesn’t taste the same. And I know what it should taste like because I was almost born with it! I guess I remember it so well because it really was my first taste of love. Whatever other tastes we acquire we never forget the taste of love. It is a grace given to you long before you were born. It is a part of your very nature. John Wesley called this “Prevenient Grace”—grace that “comes before—” the image of God, the love of God in you put there by God long before you were born. It is that longing, that yearning in you for relationship with God. It is the persistent calling of the image of God in you to center your life again upon God alone. That’s what John Wesley discovered in his search of the Scriptures and his experience of God in his own life. That’s what we believe. God loved you long before you were born. That is the distinctive United Methodist character to our faith. What do we believe? If anybody asks you, “What does this church believe?” what do you tell them? You tell them: “We believe in love!” William G. Davidson
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