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Weekly Memo for January 26

1/26/2017

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Katie, my daughter Anna and myself are heading to St. Louis, MO.  My nephew Nathan is getting married to his longtime significant other Mindy, and they have asked me to do the wedding. 
 
My three brothers and all their families still live in the St. Louis Metro area, but I never get back home. I find it to be one of the great ironies of my life as a pastor. Here, I am surrounded by the closeness of families and talking about the importance of family, and yet personally my experience with my side of my family is very distant.
 
This week my brother David, who was the brother I was closest to growing up but whom I now talk to about once a year, has called me twice in two days to make sure I’m free on Friday afternoon and evening to “hang out.”  What is that…
 
After I talked with David, … I began to wonder how he is really doing and if we will get to that when we hang out or not. This set me to thinking… I’ll have a day to do whatever I want…  And so I’ve been making some plans to visit my hometown of Worden, Il.  I’ll visit the graves of my parents and brothers and grandparents, drive by the house I grew up in, and maybe sneak in a hello to my Aunt Jackie.
 
When you’re the distant member of a family you learn that …when you go back home… in one way or another, it’s a trip to reconnect with your roots…it’s about remembering you are a part of a family, no matter how distant you have become. 
 
Being a part of a family for me is about recognizing that there are some things about our lives that are so significant and yet remain so deep down in the trenches of our souls that sometimes it takes a physical connection to bring them to the surface.
 
I think being a member of a church family is a lot like that.  When people say, as they often do at Eden Prairie UMC, “this feels like home” we are recognizing what we might call our spiritual roots. And spiritual roots are important because whatever they are…they are a part of us… And isn’t the spiritual life really about being able to somehow reconnect with what is the deep down, very real part of ourselves… trusting that God will, embrace us and heal us and empower us all?
 
Keep the Faith,
Pastor Dan
 
 

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Weekly Memo for January 19

1/19/2017

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If you missed last Sunday, I want to encourage you to find the time to go to the homepage of our website and watch the film about our theme for 2017….”Opening Ourselves to the Holy Spirit.”  Click on the picture of the dandelion going to seed. If you scroll down underneath the “about us” tab to “sermons” you can also listen to what Don, Deb, Terri, Rick and I had to say about 2017.  There are several encouraging words there:  Our average worship attendance is up by nine.  Our budget finished in the black and our overall church membership is up by 10.
 
On Sunday there were so many other great things happening… the praise band playing while the chancel choir sang… kids coming up to lead us in our final song… that beautiful film I mentioned… all of you showing up…so many showed up for the fellowship meal that our overflow room was overflowing.  
 
At the end of my remarks I mentioned seven areas where I believe we can anticipate the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Take a look at all seven and consider where you might be called to give some input or where the wind of God is taking you.
  1. Create a Culture of Acceptance: How do we help each other, to believe in each other? How do we give others permission to be creative?
  2. Develop a Culture of Celebration.  A culture of celebration means that we take the time to recognize what others are doing and when we experience a burst of the wind of the Holy Spirit in our sails.
  3. We are not all in the same place but we are all moving together at the direction of the Holy Spirit in this time:  I’m concerned that we find language that speaks about how much we value each other beyond the us/them, new member/been here a while… distinctions.
  4. When we wanted to take a break God was ready to take off.  This is what we, as a staff, observed happening last year. What would it be like if at our traditional times of slowing down, we instead had times when we anticipated God showing up.
  5. Challenges of Vitality:  Last year we dropped the word volunteer. This year I want to suggest that whenever we have an issue to figure out around space or the number of people who are going to show up or anything else related to the culture of acceptance and celebration we are trying to build, I want to suggest that it is not a problem to be solved.  I want to invite us to see these things as Challenges of Vitality that we are glad we have to face.
  6. Read the book of Acts:  Read the book of Acts in the Bible… at your own pace.  It is what much of my preaching will be based upon this year. Let me know when you’ve finished.
  7. Goosebumps.  At our staff retreat all of us got “Goosebumps” as our leader told us that perhaps God has put us all together for such a time as this.  Goosebumps are a uncontrolled bodily response to the experience of connecting to something beyond our own making.  Let’s claim these experiences this year as a way God is moving among us.
 
It’s going to be a great year together as we “Open Ourselves to the Holy Spirit” together.
 
Keep the Faith,
Pastor Dan

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Weekly Memo For January 12

1/12/2017

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This Sunday is a very important day in the life of our church.  I’m usually not one to play up particular days or events as important.  I’m one of those guys who has spent a lot of his life trying to live at a more even keel. I’m willing to live with not as many “ups” in my life so that I don’t have the disappointment of the “down” times.  But not this Sunday; I’m very excited about this Sunday and I want to invite you to come to worship and stay for the fellowship meal with something of the same sense of expectation and eagerness.
 
This Sunday we when we gather at 10 a.m. we will launch our theme for Worship in 2017. Let me tell you a bit about how our leadership team, staff, and I have been led to follow a particular direction in 2017. 
 
2016 by any measure was an inspiring year to be a part of EPUMC.  We began to grow in the very areas that had concerned us: average worship attendance, financial support and membership.
 
Around June or July we as a staff observed that there was an even better energy, a more tangible sense of something that was so good, we began to ask….What is it……or What is that...We started trying to answer this question at staff meetings as we reviewed Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights and just the feel of the place.  It was as if there had been a shift, a change, a sort of tipping point to some deeper level of being church.
 
 I usually ask . ….‟How to keep this momentum going?” in response to this shift.  It’s a good question…if we believe all this is of our own making. But you see…
I believe what we experienced was an increased awareness and participation in the presence of God’s love among us.  In our faith tradition we have called that awareness, that presence, the Holy Spirit.       And so the question becomes how are we       
 
                                                   OPENING OURSELVES TO THE HOLY SPIRIT
 
This what we as a staff and leadership team have come to believe is the question to ask….it is the direction where we are being called to focus.
 
Now before you stop reading because you are uncomfortable or unfamiliar with the term the Holy Spirit, let me say one more thing.  On Sunday you will experience an inspirational… down-to-earth…meaningful way to hear this phrase and how it is what is behind the “new energy” so many of us have recognized.  I am committed personally as are Deb, Don, Terri, Becky, our entire staff and many others, to find meaningful, relevant and inspiring ways to define, claim and participate in the presence of God’s love that we call the Holy Spirit at EPUMC.
 
This year let’s begin to anticipate that whatever you call what is happening at EPUMC.  Let’s begin to anticipate that something extraordinary is going to happen in moments we may least expect…in ways where our only task is to be open to this presence of God blowing through us to change our lives, to transform the world, to blow in God’s kind of time to our times.
 
Keep the Faith,
Pastor



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Weekly Memo for January 5, 2017

1/5/2017

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Sometimes things happen that are just so precious, so moving, that you have to talk about them before you forget them.  Sometimes you keep talking about these moments because they are so moving, so important to you that each time you tell about them, you learn or experience something new and helpful.
 
As a pastor I’m very accustomed to both visiting people in the hospital and praying with all kinds of different people in many different moments of life.  The other day I was visiting someone from church in the hospital who has trouble hearing everything but loves to chat.  We both did our best and at the end of our visit I held her hand, bent down closer to her good ear, closed my eyes and began to pray.  I was coming to the conclusion of my prayer saying something like… “Gracious God, touch this one with…..”
 
In the middle of my sentence this lovely woman spoke over me and as quick as a cat pouncing, said, “In Jesus’ name, Amen.”  I’ve been around for a while and I knew this prayer was over, and so I immediately also said, “Amen.” I opened my eyes and she was looking right back at me with a smile and a gracious thank you for the prayer.….
 
I didn’t say anything to her.  Walking out to the elevator I was laughing to myself.  Waiting there, I had some time, and I began to wonder if she had heard a single word I had prayed.  (It was a pretty good prayer as I remember it.)  And then I thought you know, it really didn’t matter that she heard a word.  What mattered is that she felt my hand and that we closed our eyes together.  I think her saying “ In Jesus’ name, Amen,” prematurely was less about wanting the prayer to be over and more of a desire to let me know she was in that moment with me.
 
This morning I’ve been thinking about how is it that I am so predictable in my prayers that a lady who is hard of hearing and lying sick in a hospital bed can still guess when I’m about to say, “In Jesus’ name, Amen.”  This led me to think about why I say, “In Jesus’ name, Amen,” in the first place.
 
I don’t think there is anything enchanted about this phrase: As if God would not listen to our prayers unless we first clarified who it is or how it is we have come to pray to God in the first place. Neither do I think that we need to say it in order to prove ourselves to the one who is doing the listening part of the prayer.  At least for me, I end my prayers, “In Jesus’ name, Amen” because I need to recognize what happens to me when prayer is genuine, authentic… real. And what happens is that, well… Jesus shows up. 
 
I experience this often in these intimate settings where life and death seem to hang in the balance. When the veil between God’s kind of time and our moment of time is very thin.  When these moments occur and we utter this phrase, it is less a habit that we unconsciously tack on at the end of a few sentences and more an exclamation, almost of wonder.  In that sacred intention, in the holding of hands and the closing of eyes, or however it is that we create the space between people praying, Jesus does show up.  And although we cannot be as sure of the outcome of our petitions, we can trust the same presence we experienced together in whatever happens next.
 
Keep the Faith,
Pastor Dan
 

 
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