“Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” ~ St Francis of Assisi
On September 8th Calvary will have the opportunity to put in to practice the values that we preach as Christians. On that day we will be joining the larger church body as we live out the ELCA motto: “God’s Work, Our Hands.” On the Day of Service we will strive to be the hands and feet that bring good news and light into the world of those who are under resourced. This is an opportunity for us to reach out to a group of people who may not feel comfortable darkening our door. We can be ambassadors of Christ’s love as we cheerfully and faithfully serve our neighbors. This event provides us the opportunity to come together as a congregation and interact with each other in ways that will benefit our Christian community as we benefit the community at large. Imagine all of the congregation members of all ages working together for a common purpose, with each person serving to the best of their ability and sharing their gifts. Events like this one serve as a reminder to children and youth that they are an important and vital part of the life of the congregation and they also provide the adults an opportunity to guide and mentor future leaders. Our cooperation with and inclusion of members of all ages in this activity will speak volumes to those encountering us for the first time. We will serve the community, work side by side, and have fun together in the name of the Lord. This event will also be a great way to invite those who have tenuous connections to the congregation to join us in serving a purpose larger than ourselves. Our actions will speak louder than any words we could read or proclaim from the pulpit. No long term commitment is required. We are asking for everyone to commit to one afternoon on Sunday the 8th, where each of us can share our gifts with a community in need. We will have carnival games, music, food, puppet shows, landscaping, flower potting, the library book-mobile, and a place where parents can get school uniforms for their children. Every journey always begins with a first step, and our first step will be to move from Calvary’s comfortable walls outside to a world of people who need the presence of a loving, living Christ embodied in each of those who will be serving on that day. This is a monumental task, but the rewards that will be reaped from our faithful interaction with each other and with a community in need will be well worth the investment. Joined together in the name of Christ and doing God’s work, we will be able to demonstrate to those we serve that we are more than people of faithful talk; we are people of faithful action. Matt Byrd
0 Comments
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 20:19)
Go and make disciples? Let’s face it, evangelism is scary. Most people would rather visit the dentist for a root canal rather than ask their neighbor to visit their church. It is frightening to think about exposing ourselves to ridicule and derision if we should happen to invite someone to join us at church and they are offended. With the negative (and sometimes deservedly so) press that Christians receive, it is no wonder that we can feel stereotyped as judgmental, close-minded, and a group of people who frown at any fun. We are viewed as a place with lots of rules and lots of things we tell people not to do. With these kinds of perceptions about Christians why then should we even try? Should we just be content with the numbers of people who worship with us on Sunday morning and hope that people are desperate enough for a relationship with Christ that they will wander through our doors? This is clearly not a biblical position to take since we are commissioned by Jesus to go in to the world and make disciples. We don’t need to stand on the street corner with a bible and a bullhorn shouting at passersby. But we do need to feel the urgency of sharing the good news. The Great Commission to go and make disciples is much more effective when the Great Commandment is also included with it. Love of God and love of neighbor should always be included in any evangelism we do. Evangelism is about relationship. God wanted renewed relationship with the whole world, and He sent His son Jesus so that we could experience true relationship and true love. Think about what first drew you to Calvary. It may have been the preaching and the music that attracted you, but it was the relationships that made you stick around. Our congregation is by no means an exclusive club. As a matter of fact we have no limits on the number of members we would like to have join us in relationship with God and one another. We have an obligation to our friends and family to be sure that they hear the message of life contained in the gospel. But we have to invite them first. Imagine if you had a birthday party but didn’t send out any invitations. No one would show up. This summer we have an opportunity to invite some friends and family members to events at Calvary that are a great “non-invasive” way to evangelize. The first will be our Interactive Film Series beginning on June 15th at 6:00 p.m. We will provide pizza, popcorn, and interactive props along with a guide for their use during the movie. On the back of the guide we will also provide some talking points that will help to explore the faith messages that are present in each of the movies. We will be watching The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Wizard of Oz, and The Incredibles this summer. Each of these movies are family friendly, appropriate for all ages, and will be made even more fun by the audience participation and interaction. These movies provide us with a great opportunity to show others how much fun we can have together as a group and can provide a way to share the gospel in a less frightening way. Vacation Bible School is another great evangelism tool. Do you have a friend or a neighbor who has a passion for crafts, or for preparing snacks, or who has some children who need to be entertained for a week? We need puppeteers, registration helpers, singers, bible study teachers, group leaders and more. Do you have friends with these skills? Invite them to join us. Registration forms for VBS are in the narthex and on our church website. Helper signups are in the narthex or you can e-mail me at matt.calvaryelca@comcast.net to ask about helping. These are great opportunities to dispel the stereotypes of who we are, and to show people all of the things we get to do. We get to have fun. We get to experience Godly play. We get to build relationships. We get to experience the unconditional love of God. We get to come together in a safe and secure environment where we can celebrate the many ways that God has created His people. Go ahead. Invite a friend to experience Calvary this summer. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose. In Christ, Matt Byrd I was lying in a hospital bed in the emergency room St. Paul, Minnesota talking fervently to God. Why would God allow this to happen to me? When would God deliver me from the excruciating pain I was suffering? After being poked and prodded, hooked up to an IV, passed through a CT scanner, and answering myriad questions about my personal habits, a diagnosis was reached. I had pancreatitis caused by gallstones. My gallbladder would have to come out once the inflammation to my pancreas went down. Great! A thousand miles from home and my family, and I had to suffer a major medical emergency in the company of strangers.
I asked God, “Lord, what I had done to deserve this?” Pancreatitis can be caused by excessive drinking, by scorpion stings, and by genetic factors. I have lived a fairly clean life. I rarely drink alcohol. Surely the two margaritas I enjoyed while watching the NFC and AFC championship games that Sunday hadn’t caused my affliction. I have never even seen a live scorpion in the wild. No one in my family has ever had pancreatitis. What could it have been? There is a saying amongst doctors that they can tell who is going to have problems with their gallbladder just by looking at them. Three things are a dead giveaway. People who are fair, forty, and fat. I fit the bill for all three. I am so pasty white that I glow in the dark. I was only two weeks away from my 40th birthday. My weight had been creeping up for several years. I refused to look at photos of myself, or would try to hide behind other people when the picture was taken. I only wanted to look at myself in “skinny” mirrors so that I wouldn’t feel bad about myself. I would promise myself that I would quit my fast food habit tomorrow, or the day after that. I would rather by shirts and pants a size larger than admit than admit that my burgeoning waistline was a growing problem. And now I was suffering the natural consequences of neglecting to take care of myself. I thought I could just ignore the problem, put it off for another time. And I was forced to face my health head on. My gallbladder made sure of that. What does all of this have to do with Lent and our study of the 10 Commandments? Simply put, the 10 Commandments act like a mirror. They provide us a true glimpse of ourselves as God sees us. There is no hiding behind anyone so that our sin looks smaller. There is no “skinny” mirror that we can look into to make ourselves feel better about what we have done. There is only honest reflection about where we fall short of living a Godly life, and about how many times we have fed ourselves spiritual fast food, giving ourselves empty promises to be better or do better tomorrow. I feel like God was giving me a health intervention by allowing my gallbladder and pancreas to behave in the way they did. Had I not suffered the pancreatitis attack, I probably would have died from high blood pressure or hardening of the arteries from all of the garbage I was eating. I still have a long way to go to get healthy, and I will never be perfect in following the doctor’s orders, but I am certainly going to try! I have to tell you that I like what I see in the mirror more and more as the weight is starting to come off. No one can follow the Ten Commandments perfectly, that’s why God had to stage an intervention for the whole world. God sent Jesus to fulfill the law, because we could not. We were going to die from our terminal diagnosis of sin, but Jesus took our place on the cross, and we have been given new life and new hope in Jesus’ resurrection on Easter morning. We still can’t follow the Ten Commandments perfectly, but we can try! Then we can feel a little better as we look into the mirror of the law. We will like what we see a little better, and we don’t have to be afraid because we know that we have been saved by the Grace of God through Jesus Christ. Matt Byrd 2 Corinthians 5:17
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 2013 is here and we mark the turning of another season, of another year. As we wait out the cold and soggy weather ahead, we look to the New Year as a time that is ripe with possibility and we know that winter’s dread will soon give way to the light and life that is spring. This is also the time of year for that honored tradition of making New Year’s resolutions. Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? What are you hoping for in the New Year? I gave up on making New Year’s resolutions years ago. I found that as resolute as I wanted to be, it was difficult for me to maintain the appropriate willpower to see my intentions through. Oh, I would always start out with energy and enthusiasm, ready to count my points on Weight Watchers or intending to exercise more and eat less. Then the siren song of a cheeseburger would call to me, and the treadmill would become a repository for clothes and stuff that didn’t fit on the shelf. One more episode of Mythbusters, one more bowl of ice-cream and I have completely blown all of the promises I have made to myself about becoming a newer, better person who watches less TV and eats less bad stuff. It’s not that I lack for enthusiasm. I want to change, it’s that my ability to make sweeping changes falters, and I find myself falling into my easy and comfortable routines once again. Plus, ice cream is delicious, and I can fool myself into thinking that TV is educational as well as entertaining. My lack of commitment to New Year’s resolutions serves to keep me from being disappointed in myself and my many failures. Why try if it’s not going to work? But commitment is exactly what God gives to us not just in the New Year, but all year long. God is committed to being with us. Immanuel, God with us, is born at Christmas time, and his greatness is revealed during Epiphany. The Christ Child puts on our frail human flesh and provides us with salvation. There is no act that we can do, no resolution we can keep, no work of our own that can cleanse us from sin. It is only through the power of Christ that we are made new, redeemed by His sacrifice on the cross and His resurrection on Easter morning. We are promised that if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation, and that the old will pass away. It’s difficult to let the old us die and embrace the new! No matter how good our intentions, or lofty our goals we can never rid ourselves of sin. Like my many efforts at New Year’s resolutions, we will be doomed to fail. It’s not that we don’t have enough enthusiasm or willpower, it’s that we are human. I think where I have failed most is not inviting God to walk alongside me when I am trying to make myself a better person, when I am trying to resolve my issues without asking for His help. So this year I resolve to invite the One who is there, who makes all things new, to help make me a new creation. Working on resolving it by myself hasn’t worked out so well! Yours in Christ, Matt Byrd |
Rev. Lori A. Cornell
Calvary's Pastor Jake Schumacher
Intern Pastor Archives
March 2017
Categories
All
|