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2330 South Jefferson Street
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2330 South Jefferson Street
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ASCENSION SUNDAY MAY 8, 2005
Mother’s Day, Festival of the Christian Home
As Christ cares, we care…
We care about
all people.
ORDER OF SERVICE-11:00 A.M. + Indicates the people standing ENTRANCE
Words of Welcome, Registration of
Attendance and Announcements
Bill Davidson
SENDING FORTH + Indicates the people standing
THOSE SERVING TODAY: *CHILDREN (AGES 3 through 1st GRADE), at the 11:00 a.m. service 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. NEXT WEEK’S SERMON, We Believe in Love Without Losing Your Head, will be based on Acts 2:1-21. Please read and study this text this week. THE FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE will meet on Tuesday, May 10, at 10:30 a.m. in the Wimmer Classroom. All women of the church are invited. THE AFTERCARE SOCIAL CLUB will meet on Tuesday, May 10, at 6:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall for game night with the Steffe’s (balloon volleyball, shuffleboard, etc.). If you would like more information about our Social Club call bonnie dayton, 981-0237. THE ADULT FELLOWSHIP GROUP will meet for a catered lunch on Thursday, May 19 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. 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 $150.00. Sign up with Paula to serve with this mission ANYONE WITH INFORMATION for the June Newsletter should contact Joe Kennedy at 344-4437, or email at joesrumc@aol.com NO LATER than May 15. CREATING HEALTHY CONGREGATIONS WORKSHOP: SUNDAY, June 5, 12:30-5:30 (rescheduled from January snow postponement!). All are invited! This experience has proven to be very helpful in our continuing effort to enhance communication and unity here at South Roanoke Church. If you have not yet shared in this workshop please note that all church leaders, members of committees, councils, boards as well as all interested church members are encouraged to attend. Led by our Senior Pastor, the cost for lunch and materials is $12.00. Please register in the church office, 344-4437 by Sunday, May 29. ON SATURDAY, MAY 14 AT 9:00 A.M. Joe Kennedy will conduct a bus driving skills for those who will be driving the new church bus. Everyone who drives the bus will be REQUIRED to participate in these driving skills. If you would like to be considered as a driver please contact Joe Kennedy, 344-4437, to let him know you will be here.
SERMON SERIES: “WE BELIEVE IN LOVE” OUR YOUTH NEED A PING PONG TABLE AND POOL TABLE! If you have a ping pong table or pool table that you would like to donate for our youth’s use, please call the church office, 344-4437. We will arrange for pickup if necessary. KITS FOR CONFERENCE: Local churches are encouraged to gather items for HEALTH KITS AND SCHOOL KITS to aid tsunami victims through Church World Service. Kit contents are listed in the May newsletter (can also be viewed on the church website www.srumc.com) or equivalent donations ($12 one Health Kit; $11 one School Kit) can be contributed. Prepared kits and donations should be delivered to the church office by Sunday, June 5.
SERMON SERIES: “WE BELIEVE IN LOVE” OUR YOUTH NEED A PING PONG TABLE AND POOL TABLE! If you have a ping pong table or pool table that you would like to donate for our youth’s use, please call the church office, 344-4437. We will arrange for pickup if necessary. KITS FOR CONFERENCE: Local churches are encouraged to gather items for HEALTH KITS AND SCHOOL KITS to aid tsunami victims through Church World Service. Kit contents are listed in the May newsletter (can also be viewed on the church website www.srumc.com) or equivalent donations ($12 one Health Kit; $11 one School Kit) can be contributed. Prepared kits and donations should be delivered to the church office by Sunday, June 5.
__________________________________ SERMON
May 8, 2005 Ascension Sunday
We Believe in Love
(3) that According to a Jewish
proverb, Any mother who has ever sent her child off to school alone for the first time, or helped her son unload his stuff into that first dormitory room and kissed him goodbye, or rose to stand in her place at the front of the sanctuary as father accompanied her daughter down the aisle on her wedding day, knows something of what was in the heart of our Lord Jesus as he ascended into heaven leaving his disciples to be the body of Christ in the world. It had been 40 days since Jesus rose from the dead. 40 days after Easter Jesus gathered his disciples together at Bethany, a city just outside Jerusalem. There he lifted his hands, blessed them, and was carried up into heaven. His final earthly instructions accompanied his blessing as he entrusted the message and the power of the Gospel to his church. He commissions them to carry on his work in the world. As a mother trusts her children to keep the truth and values she has worked so diligently to instill in their hearts, so you and I as followers of Jesus are entrusted with the love of God in us. The question on Ascension Day, the question on the heart and mind of every mother who first sends her children out on their own, is the question the church has struggled with ever since Jesus ascended into heaven. How do followers of Jesus remain faithful to the truth and values of the Gospel? How do we maintain, nurture, and grow that love the Gospel of Jesus Christ has restored in us? How do we keep the image of God in which we were created at the very center of our hearts? The image of God in your heart….it’s what called you back into relationship with God to begin with. The image of God in you is that yearning, that longing in you that is never satisfied until your relationship with God is restored. This is the grace of God John Wesley, the founder of the 18th century movement in England that became our United Methodist Church, identified as Prevenient Grace—the love of God in you before you were born. That image of God was restored in you by God’s justifying grace, as again John Wesley described it. But once you heed the longing in your heart, once you accept again the gift of life God gives you, how do you stay centered? When mother sends her children out on their own, how can they stay true to mother’s love? John Wesley is again so very helpful here as we consider yet another distinctive witness of our United Methodist faith. He believed that God’s grace did not begin and end at our justification. God’s grace does not complete its task in us once our relationship with God is restored at our conversion. John Wesley believed that the work of God’s Prevenient and Justifying Grace is but the first fruits of the blessing of God’s grace in our lives. He believed that God never stops working in us until we are completely restored into the image of God we were first created. He called this grace of God Sanctifying Grace. Every mother I know hopes with all
her soul that her children will remember the truth and values she has
taught them not just in here (the mind), but in here (the heart). For
example, doesn’t every mother want her children to know the ten
commandments at least as well as they know their “ABC’s?” Every mother I
know wants her children to face life with more than just the ability to
recite the Ten Commandments from memory, or even to merely accept them as
true. Every mother I know tries with every fiber of her love to instill
the wisdom of the Ten Commandments in her children’s very hearts. That’s why we United
Methodists believe that love makes you change your heart not just change
your mind. To believe is not just to understand in your mind and assent
to a set of intellectually objective truths. Life is not about simply
adopting a list of correct “beliefs,” a list of correct beliefs or
doctrine that John Wesley called by the name “orthodoxy.” He spoke about
this in his sermon called “The Way to the Kingdom:” In this respect, United Methodists believe love never gives easy answers to the hard questions of life. It is always the very real temptation for the church to offer the list of 5 beliefs or the 7 spiritual laws which, if you simply assent to them, will make life whole, happy, and reasonable. Love knows all too well that life is just not that simple. Love calls you into the midst of the challenges of life armed with the faith and the heart of one who ultimately believes in love. When you believe in love you know deep in your own heart that no matter what may happen or what my come love will always prevail. Now a mother’s worse fear is that her children will forget—they will stray from the love they experienced and learned in her home and act and behave in so many ways opposite to what she taught them. They do that because we are all victims of the Fall—we always prefer to go our own way, disobey God, and take life into our own hands. We do that because we always know better than God does! So we all make wrong choices and, rather than build life on promise and hope, we surrender to a life of fear. When you stray so far from love even after love has been restored, how does love ever get you back? A mother’s love always seeks to love her children back to love if they ever go astray. In the same way United Methodists believe love does not threaten, frighten, or scare you back into love. A God of love does not hold over our heads the threat of punishment, evil, or natural disaster to force us back into relationship. This is just one thing love does not do. You see, this love planted in the human heart in the beginning—it’s always there (in your heart). That love, placed there by God, continues to call to you—it is a love you can never forget. If you already follow fear then fear is not going to win you back to love. Only love can do that. Now this is not to say we don’t believe in sin. No, John Wesley looked at the sin of his day straight in the eye. He denounced slavery, exploitation of workers, child labor, economic injustice, unfaithful relationships, and all the rest. We stand firmly in that tradition. He knew though that it is the heart that needs to change. Only love can change a heart. For this reason we believe God doesn’t try to scare us back but, rather, God loves us back to love, for God still believes in love. Such is the working of God’s sanctifying grace. In 1710 six year old John Wesley was
rescued from a burning house. As his mother Susannah Wesley, who had lost
9 of her 19 children at very early ages, held in her arms her fifteenth
child that was almost taken from her in a fire, she prayed, As he later was considering becoming
a minister, his mother advised him, At his ascension our Lord Jesus entrusted his followers to the love of God as he blessed them. This love is the sanctifying work of God in your life and in our world. This is God’s sanctifying grace continually molding, shaping, and renewing you. Dorothy Fisher could have easily had
Susannah Wesley in mind when she said
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