Lunenburg United Methodist Charge
Antioch UMC Williams UMC
On our walk. . . . .
May 22, 2008
Are you proud to be a United Methodist?
Don't hide the fact that you are a United Methodist Church! Methodist have the HIGHEST POSITIVE RATINGS of religious and spiritual groups in the United States, new research by the Gallop Panel shows, ranking higher than Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Evangelicals or Fundamentalists.
Other new church starts may want to hide their denominational or para-church affiliations, and perhaps rightly so. You may have new church starts in your community who are only known as "The Living Church" or "The Family Church" or "First Church Memphis."
However, as United Methodists, if we want to be the most effective inviting new people to become Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World, we should proudly display the cross and flame, and the word Methodist, on all our signs, printing and marketing. With such a positive and winsome public image across the nation, why would any United Methodist Church desire to hide its true identity?
In a telephone interview today, Jim Griffith said, "United Methodist are one of the rare church bodies with a positive image. It's just a bad idea to keep your Methodist affiliation a secret."
Only four percent of the United States population give Methodists a negative rating.
Ninety-six percent of the 1,005 persons (adults 18 and older) interviewed during the March, 2008 poll, had either a positive or neutral view of Methodists. The survey used the broader category of Methodist rather than United Methodist.
Methodists are one of the four U.S. religious groups with strongly positive ratings. The others are Jews, Baptists and Catholics. Broader groups of "evangelical Christians" with 16 percent positive and "fundamentalist Christians" with a 10 percent positive did not fare as well, according to an analysis of the survey.
Methodists received the highest marks in the total positive categories of the survey of "Americans' Views of U.S. Religious and Spiritual Groups," with a 45 percent positive rating. Forty-seven percent of the respondents gave Methodists a "neutral" rating.
As a matter of comparison, Jews had a 42 percent positive rating, Baptists 35 percent, and Catholics 32 percent.
The random, demographically weighted poll was conducted March 24-27, 2008, asking a representative sample of Americans whether they had a positive, negative, or neutral view of each of 10 spiritual or religious groups in the United States. The Gallop Panel is weighted so that it is demographically representative of the U.S. adult population. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Your Friend in Jesus Christ, Bob Crossman, Director, New Church Leadership Institute
Have a blessed week Rev. Ed
This Weeks Event:
Saturday, May 24
100th Anniversary of Kenbridge
Monday, May 26
No Bible Study @ Antioch @ 7:00 PM
Tuesday, May 27
Bible Study @ Audrey Smith’s @ 10:00 AM
Wednesday, May 28
Prayer Meeting @ Williams @ 5:45 PM
Choir Practice @ Williams @ 6:30 PM
Worship Events –May 25, 2008
Service Theme: Memorial Day
This week’s reading will be: Sermon Text – Col: 2:6-14
Hebrew Text – Deut 10:12-13, 17-21
Pianists: Diane Bacon, Roger Reese
GRADUATION SUNDAY
We will be celebrating all the new graduates in our churches on Sunday, June 8th. Please plan on attending this special occasion to help us lift up all of the graduates who have worked so hard through the years. Let’s make sure they know we are proud of their accomplishment. If you have someone who is graduating, please be sure to let me know by June 1st.
William’s Women’s Tea
The monthly Women’s Tea will be held on May 30th at 3:PM at William’s UMC. Debbie Blue will be presenting the program this month. If you are looking for a great time of fellowship, good food and an inspirational program please join the. Watch for news on the June Tea as they are going to foreign countries.
Sunday School is available each Sunday morning. The importance of Sunday School is that, though you may think hearing the word will suffice for you, you really need to be in attendance at Sunday School to gather all the information that you can in an open discussion classroom. Jesus’ word cannot be totally understood just by listening to a sermon. You have to interact with it and with other Christians to learn what He was saying to us. This is a life long study and you should take part. There is a class for every age so please plan on joining us to learn more about our Lord, Jesus Christ. Sunday School at Williams begins at 10:45 AM and at Antioch at 10:00 AM.
Evening Bible Study Due to the holiday on Monday, May 26 there will be no class. Evening Bible study will continue on June 2 at 7:00PM at Antioch. We will be reviewing II Samuel. We will discuss the events depicted in the book. If you are looking for a study of God’s word join us not only for the study, but good fellowship.
Morning Bible Study. Morning Bible study will continue on May 27th at 10:00AM at Audrey Smith’s house. We will be reviewing ll Samuel. We will discuss the events depicted in the book. If you are looking for a study of God’s word join us not only for the study, but good fellowship.
If you cannot reach Rev. Ed at the parsonage, you may call him on his cell phone: 252-532-0952. He can also be reached via e-mail at revedumc@yahoo.com . If you would like to receive e-mail messages from the pastor send an e-mail to him at revedumc@yahoo.com and we will add you to our list.
Please keep the following families in your prayers:
Marjorie Thompson
Christian Sutton
Bertha Arthur
Sarah Agnes Callis
Sheila Cage
Edith Tanner
Phyllis Staples Briel
Sara Sutton
Jeff Hendricks
Earl "Chucky” Barnes
Our Military
Nathan Hendricks
Family of Wilson Bagley
Mae Overby
Maria Kay
Dorothy Shields
June Watson
Frances Hawthorne
Ellen & John Gentry
Rooster Wells
Elizabeth Biggerstaff
Becky Eades & boys
Gertrude Hite
Bernard Bottoms
Unspoken
Tommy Cage
Susan Pernell
Jason Mc Reynolds
Faye Seamster
Harry Smith
Lydia & Jimmy Payne
Grace DiStefano
Wanda Chumney
Argy & Paul Turner
Joe Coleman
Alicia Clary
Aubrey & Allen Green.
Junior McHenry
Layton Powell
Margaret Smith
Mildred Carter
Dawn Bacon
CV & Agnes Thompson
Walter B. Moseley
Jackie Griffith
Cynthia Peebles
Betty Reese
Just a Note: When I was appointed to this charge one of the requests that was made of me was to keep the Antioch Men’s Breakfast going. Now as I enter my third year we have experienced a dramatic drop in the number of men who attend the breakfast. If you would like to join us for breakfast and fellowship please do! We meet the first Saturday of each month at 8:00 AM and we are willing to cook if there are enough men to join the five or six regulars who attend. If you would like to join us please contact Earl Callis, Tommy Barnes, Wayne Hendicks or me. Hope to see you there!!
Prayer Gram.
Please, when putting somebody’s name on our prayer list, PRINT their names and addresses if you have them. This will help us get the prayer grams out sooner and it will also make it easier to read during services.
The Methodist Way –
John Wesley wrote that “prayer is the lifting up of the heart to God: all words of prayer without this are mere hypocrisy. Whenever therefore thou attemptest to pray, see that it be thy one design to commune with God, to lift thy heart to him, to pour out thy soul before him.” Corporate prayer and private prayer are means of grace. Prayer is not, however, an occasion of bringing God up to date on our needs. As John Wesley wrote, “So that the end of your praying is not to inform God, as though he knew not your wants already…not so much to move God…as to move yourselves, that you may be willing and ready to receive the good things he has prepared for you.
Marjorie Suchocki, a United Methodist theologian, has said, “How God uses our prayers is up to God; our work is not to control what happens as a result of our praying, but to offer prayer faithfully for God to use as God can and will.” Prayer is a discipline, not done casually or trivially, but with openness to “Your will, not mine.”
Methodists frequently pray in unison printed prayers. Sometimes these are written for special occasions; sometimes they are ancient prayers used by Christians for centuries. Praying aloud together creates community (or expresses the community that already exists). Not to draw upon prayers prayed by the faithful for centuries is what might be called “an arrogance of the contemporary.” What a gift to be able to have our prayers join the saints of ages past!
Family prayer is specifically mentioned in the General Rules. The early American Methodist circuit riders would be in a different home almost every night, but they always joined the family for prayer. It is difficult in today’s fragmented and dispersed life to find common family time. Some families have simply agreed on a time when each one will pause for a moment of family prayer no matter where he or she might be scattered at that particular moment. At the throne of God’s grace, the family is still together.
Fasting is a part of Methodist discipline. From the days of John Wesley, those who would be ordained in full connection have been asked, “Will you recommend fasting or abstinence, both by precept and example?” Although Mr. Wesley outlined several reasons for fasting, he lifted up two as primary: (1) it helps in prayer, and (2) God commands it and rewards it.
John Wesley’s habit was to fast from sunrise until midafternoon on Wednesday and Friday. Methodist have often lost that practice, a fact that caused Mr. Wesley to observe, “The man that never fasts is no more on the way to heaven than the man that never prays.” Ouch!
These means of grace (the public worship of God, the ministry of the Word, either read or expounded, the Supper of the Lord, family and private prayer, searching the Scriptures, fasting or abstinence) have been instituted by God in order to bless God’s people. Thanks be to God!
Being Methodist in the Bible Belt” F. Belton Joyner, Jr.
A short story:
There is a story of two friends who were walking through a desert. At a certain point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one right across the face. The one who got slapped was very hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand: "Today my closest friend slapped me."
The two friends kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to go into the water. The one, who had been slapped, got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but his friend saved him. After the friend recovered from near drowning, he carved out on a stone: "Today my closest friend saved my life."
The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?"
The other friend replied: "When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it."
Have a Blessed Week!!!!
