A Practical Way to Help Feed the Hungry ...

Preparations are well under way for the Feed My Starving Children Mobilepack event that Church of the Saviour is hosting on May 18, 2013.  The Mobilepack is a day long church and community effort to purchase and pack 100,000 nutritionally balanced rice meals to be distributed to hungry children around the world.  It will take place in the Great Hall.

Teams are being formed to help with the preparations.  There are several teams already formed: a Disciple Class team, Contemporary Disciples team, a Cleveland Orchestra team.  Can you think of a team that you can put together? Maybe a Sunday School class team, a work team or a Family team.  Check out the website to see what is already being done.

from feedmystarvingchildren.org

Take time to think about how you can support this event financially.  We have raised about one third of the total amount needed so we still have more to raise.  Have you made your donation yet?  You can donate through the church office or through the website:

 http://fundraising.fmsc.org/ChurchoftheSaviour  

We know of several families that will be donating the money saved during their Lenten fast.  The children of Church of the Saviour will be hosting a pasta dinner fundraiser on April 5.  Do you have an idea of a way that you can help?

We are excited about this upcoming event.  We will make a difference to help the hungry.

from feedmystarvingchildren.org

Cindy Watson Sperl

Food Postcard from the Mission Field

Kevin Schaner is currently on a mission in Liberia on the African continent. Here is what she says about how Liberians eat:-

Liberians do not consider it a meal unless they have had rice. They eat white rice from China.

Meals are "soup" or we would call it a sauce of greens ( sweet potato, cassava), palm oil, cabbage over rice. Occasionally it may include chicken pieces, or whole pieces of fish with the head, tail, etc. 

Liberians eat one meal a day.  

Pineapples and butter pears (avacado) are in season. 

With no refrigeration, no dairy products.

A Prayer by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

O God, early in the morning I cry to you.

Help me to pray

And to concentrate my thoughts on you;

I cannot do this alone.

In me there is darkness,

But in you there is light;

I am lonely, but you do not leave me;

I am feeble in heart, but with you there is peace.

I am restless, but with you there is peace.

In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;

I do not understand your ways,

But you know the way for me…

Restore me to liberty,

And enable me to live now

That I may answer before you and before men.

Lord, whatever this day may bring,

Your name be praised.

Amen.



(From  http://tinyurl.com/butdyvk)

Leaving the C Zone

Lent is not an easy journey to take. If we've been fasting, whether from food or from Face Book, then we've experienced a self-denial in some form. So practicing Lent gives us pause, and takes us out of our comfort zone.

Joshua Davis

Wikipedia defines 'comfort zone' as, "a behavioural state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviours to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk."

Well, according to that definition, who would want to leave an 'anxiety-neutral' state? Who would want to choose 'risk' over 'no risk'? Who would want to step out of a culture that encourages self-absorption, concern with the frivolous, and avoidance of the needs of others?

In a very interesting article  Pau Vidal, a new priest working with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Kenya, talks about the three people Pope Benedict mentioned in his Ash Wednesday remarks. All three people were folks who stepped out of their comfort zones: Pavel Florensky, a brilliant Russian scientist who became an Orthodox priest and was eventually executed by the Russian State; Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew who was killed in Auschwitz, and Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. Vidal states, "these three provide a radical testimony of what it means to leave our comfort zones and let ourselves be transformed by the Spirit."

And, as Methodists, who better a role model of leaving our comfort zone than John Wesley himself. Wesley, an Anglican priest, had a good friend from college, George Whitfield. Whitfield was an evangelist who preached to the poor in England and America. After some persuasion, Wesley decided to join Whitfield preaching to coal miners, in the open, in Bristol. 

Wesley recounts,"I could scarce reconcile myself to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he [Whitefield] set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life till very lately so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church." (James M. Buckley, A History of Methodism in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1898), 88-89.)

It has to be noted that, "coal mining was the most undesirable job available to anybody in 18th century England. They and their families lived in abject poverty. They were considered dirty and dishonest and violent. They were not welcomed in respectable Anglican churches. 
George Whitfield preached to the coal miners in an open field in Bristol. Good respectable Anglicans considered this an embarrassingly tacky thing to do" (http://www.foundryumc.org/sermons/9_21_2003.pdf.)

http://tinyurl.com/a6axkk5

But from this point on Wesley's spiritual life takes a sharp turn. Once he stepped out of his comfort zone (preaching to the clean, decorous congregants in beautiful churches) and took to open fields to bring God to the unchurched, outcast, dirty coal-miners, things changed for him. “Up to this point (in his spiritual life) the story is full of anxiety, insecurity, futility. Hereafter, the instances of spiritual disturbances drop off sharply and rarely recur, even in the full records of a very candid man” (Albert Outler, Editor, “John Wesley” (Oxford University Press), p. 17.) Preaching as he did to the miners led to the demise of his career as an Anglican priest, but it led to a spiritual awakening for him and he began to experience what salvation, forgiveness, grace and peace truly mean.

So, again, why would we want to leave our comfort zone? It seems that when we do, the Holy Spirit can work in us, transform us, and great things happen in the Kingdom of God. Wesley found himself preaching to groups as large as 3,000, made up of people who would never have been welcomed in a church. He brought God, education and hope to many who had been overlooked and discounted as unworthy by the ruling classes, and even the church.

Certainly there are risks to this. Wesley was considered a traitor to his class, Anglican priests reviled and resisted him, violent mobs broke up meetings and attacked the preachers.

Will fasting this Lent bring risks for us? Will turning to God and opening up ourselves to the Holy Spirit by leaving our comfort zone change us? 

What would leaving your comfort zone look like?

Sue Palmer

Embracing Weakness - Reflection by Rev. Erik Marshall

The biggest struggle during this Lenten Fast thus far has been with the concept of “embracing weakness.”  This idea has already popped up in the daily devotions in the book A Place at the Table, as well as in the curriculum’s small group videos.  The struggle stems from the position that I’m in.  I’m a young pastor in a denomination that has been declining for 4 decades, a sting in the leg for baby boomers that now lead our tribe.  From the summoning for new, entrepreneurial leaders I arrived at a call to bring revival to the United Methodist Church.  Every Annual Conference proclaims the reality of our decline and the call for new, bold, strong leadership.  Much like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons, I tend to hear one sound: “strong, strong, strong….strong-edy strong-strong…strongiful stronging.”  And the truth is: I love it.  I like to think of myself as strong, I like to be told I’m strong.

This week I cleared a day of interviews with the Board of Ordained Ministry that focused on my strengths and weaknesses, but the environment was anything but the pep-rally at Annual Conference.  This time my strengths are ho-hum and my weaknesses are ballooned into an impression that gives pause.  And that’s the killer.  I’m all good with embracing weakness when it comes to me and God; it’s another thing to embrace others’ perception of my weaknesses.  It’s okay to be weak as long as you don’t know about it.

As Jesus was betrayed by his beloved disciple Judas and handed over to the authorities, the other eleven begin to fight back.  Peter, as it’s told in the book of Matthew, takes a sword and cuts off the ear of a soldier.  Then Jesus rebukes Peter and says: “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?”  That’s right Jesus.  Remind them how strong you are and how strong you are to submit to the authorities for sake of the cause.  That’s what I would do.  But then Jesus is taken to court.  One by one a Pharisee, Sadducee, or other accuser brings charges against Jesus…most of them contrived with the sole purpose of ruining his reputation.  Jesus doesn't defend himself or justify his ministry; he just sits there saying nothing.

http://www.jesus-story.net/caiaphas.htm

The paradox of the Christian life is that my effectiveness will be determined not on my strengths but on the ability to embrace weakness.  When I’m weak, God is strong. If I’m strong, people may say, “What a great, strong leader!”  But in my weakness people may say, “Look how God is working through him!”  I think I choose the latter.  In 1 Corinthians 1:20–31, Paul says it this way:

²⁰ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²² For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³ but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. ²⁶ Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷ But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸ God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, ²⁹ so that no one might boast in the presence of God. ³⁰ He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, ³¹ in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”