Sunday is “Bible Sunday” at EPUMC. On Bible Sunday we give Bibles to 3rd graders and to 9th graders. I’m encouraging you to bring your Bible from home with you to worship.  There are a lot of churches where folks make a habit of bringing their Bibles to worship.  Some folks underline and highlight stuff, take notes in the margins, put sticky notes in it and generally use their Bibles as a filing cabinet for all things helpful.  I’ve known folks whose view of someone’s faith is based on how stuffed and used their Bible looks.

I’m not one of the folks who think you have to fill your Bible with every helpful thing you’ve ever read and then always carry around your Bible with you for the message of the Bible to be the focus of your life. I agree with C.S. Lewis and others who make the point that, “It is Christ, not the Bible, who is the true word of God.”

I do think it is very important to read the Bible for yourself to experience the love of God in its fullest. We live in a very literate culture. And since the Bible is still the largest selling single volume, not to mention you can download the app to your computer or phone, not reading the Bible is a choice we make.

I encourage you … right now…to make a couple choices: Go over to where your Bible is (if you are at work you can download the app or wait until you get home.  You can even Google it.) and turn or scroll down or choose Matthew 22:34-40. Then read this scripture for Bible Sunday. And then come to worship at 10 on Sunday, and we’ll talk about it together.

The point of reading the Bible together is not always to understand exactly what it is saying for us to do, it is to claim the desire to be led together to the Christ the Bible points towards.

Keep the Faith,

Pastor Dan

It was a great Rally Sunday last Sunday. It was a great first night of all the Wednesday night activity at church last night.  Both times someone said to me, “It’s great to hear all the noise in here again.”  I was thinking about this today when I read a Facebook post of a friend of mine who was at the Twins game last night and said, “I stayed to watch the Twins last night.  It's a library atmosphere here, which is very sad, don’t people realize we’re in a pennant race.”  With respect to libraries and librarians and others who recognize our need for quiet spaces and times… this guy is right; it’s great to hear noise at a ball game. It’s also great to hear noise in our church.

The noise, of course, last night was the hustle and bustle of kids running around with three different groups to get to, pizza to eat, and friends to see. When you take the tables and chairs out of our fellowship hall, even on a rather hot and sticky night… you can run around for a long way in there.  On Sunday the “noise” was the choir was back, Sunday School was back, a lot of you were back.  With respect to the choir (who may be offended by the word “noise” to describe their beautiful anthems), we all made a lot of good noise together.

On days like Sunday and Wednesday, far from being distracting or even irritating, the noise was encouraging and inspiring.  On days like these the noise is a sign of health and vitality and if you listen closely, hope. There are a lot of great things happening here; sometimes you have to look and listen closely to hear the sound they create, sometimes… thankfully… like Sunday and Wednesday they are so noisy we can’t help but hear them.  It’s important in these days and times in our lives and in the life of EPUMC for us to listen for hope.  

Keep the Faith,

Pastor Dan

We call this Sunday “Rally Sunday,” but it could just as well be “Fall Program Kick Off Sunday” or “Regular Sunday School is Back Sunday” or “We’re having a Big Party With Lots of Different Foods And Things for Everybody To Do Following Worship Sunday.” The one I prefer is “We’re having the Big Blow Up Bouncy Thing and Some Games in our Yard Sunday.”

“Rally” is a word that I associate with baseball.  In baseball a rally describes a time when a team is behind and “rallies” or comes from behind to win the game.  This reminds me that Sunday is also “The Beginning of a New Sermon Series Called, ‘Games People Play,’ Sunday.”  We’ll look at how even the best games illustrate parts of our human nature that Jesus asks us to look at a little differently.  For instance on Sunday we’ll explore the game Connect Four and how we so often block another instead of collaborating with one another.

As I mentioned, our ministry teams are working together to entice you to come to worship and stay afterwards. They will be at different tables with different treats.  This year they will also have something for you to do.  One thing you can do is go to a computer and “like” the EPUMC Facebook page.  Another thing we hope you all do is put together a little something to put on your backpack.  This reminds me that Sunday is also, “Blessing of the Backpacks Sunday.”

You don’t have to be a kid to have something like a backpack; maybe you have a briefcase or a big bag that you carry around everyday.  We are hoping kids and the rest of us will bring our backpacks to church so that we can bless them. Deb has also put together a great little something for you to assemble and attach to your backpack.  It has beads that signify different things to remind anyone who puts it together that God loves us whenever, wherever we are.

This Sunday, whatever you call it, is going to be a pretty full Sunday.  One last thing as a reminder to all of us; what fills each and every Sunday beyond blow up bouncy things and sermon series and blessing backpacks is the love of God we experience in Jesus Christ when we are together as God’s people.  I am so grateful to serve a congregation where we can claim that each and every Sunday of the year. 

Keep the Faith,

Pastor Dan

How will we do this?  It’s simple, more of us will need to show up at worship (that’s 10 o’clock on Sunday morning) more often.  This may not be the best weekend to express this brilliant deduction and yet it might be the perfect time.  I know for me, when I’m away on vacation I most often “sleep in” on Sundays.  And then when I wake up and move around a little, I miss worship. It’s not a guilt thing as much as it is that worship is something that is just an important part of my life. The break from something or the absence of someone can help us to realize or understand a need we have in our lives. 

Being in worship is also a part of Big Enough to Make a Difference, Small Enough to Care.  We’ve pointed out before that “small enough” means that we are an intimate congregation; the needs of individuals cannot be ignored.  Intimate also means that everyone is needed.  What you have to offer will be noticed, appreciated, used for God’s good purpose. 

 Keep the Faith, 

Pastor Dan

With Labor Day weekend upon us, I thought it would be a good idea to report on one of the goals we talked about at our Annual Meeting in January.  Back in January we talked a lot about the importance of stemming the tide of our decline in worship attendance. Our average attendance in 2014 was 161. This was just two less than the 163 for 2013.  In these days for churches like ours, that is a victory.  All year we have been focused on doing our best to stay very close to that number.    

We are a bit behind in our quest.  As of the end of August our average worship attendance is 153.  That is just a number, I know.  It doesn’t say how we are above our average for all but two months.  It doesn’t say anything about some of the changes in our worship that many of us are finding inspiring and moving us out into the world.  It does say that if this goal is important to us, which I believe it is, we have something of a challenge ahead of us.  To reach our goal we need to average around 175 each Sunday for the remaining Sundays of the year. We can do this!