Beta-Vitality Update : Strengths and Assets

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This past Sunday we had the pleasure of meeting our coach, Reverend John Haller who will be leading us through the Beta-Vitality process for the next two years. Reverend Haller is a retired pastor from the Texas Southwest Annual Conference, significantly a graduate of the University of Texas. He and his spouse moved to Bellingham for her health reasons and they attend Garden Street UMC in Bellingham. We are blessed to have him working with us.

During the meeting after the second service, Reverend Haller led us in a process of discovering what we see as our strengths and assets. (Despite an attempt to distinguish strengths and assets it got a little muddled. Christy Herman, who is an accountant told me one way to think of assets is as a balance sheet – what we have that helps us accomplish our mission.) The task force is taking in all the sheets of paper that were filled out and putting them on an Excel spreadsheet – we will eventually be sharing them with everyone.

This information is only one part of what we have been asked to collect for the beginning assessment in t his process. On August 25 many of you took the survey – we are waiting for the results of that too – we must make assessments of our building, finances, provide 20 years of statistics and review the demographics of our area. From all of this information we will garner a better sense of who we are and what our potential is. On September 29 the task force will meet with Reverend Haller and undertake discussion of our first “module” (read, area of ministry). This first module will be chosen by Gail Grossman and Curtis Brown who are administering the project, based upon the information we provide them. After that we choose the modules.

That’s where we stand with Beta-vitality. It is our hope to keep everyone informed all through the process. If you have any questions please feel free to ask a member of the task force: Pastor Jim, Ellen Morehouse, Taryn Oestreich, Mark Glover, Mark Wilder, Miriam Molver, Janet Church and Jocelyn Matheny.

Heart of the Matter

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“This is the religion we long to see established in the world, religion of love and joy and peace, having its seat n the heart, in the inmost soul.” –John Wesley

John Wesley believed in a Religion of the Heart. He was a learned man, son of a clergyman, a graduate of Oxford, but all his learning didn’t sustain his faith. His learning was essential to his faith, but he still needed for his “heart to be strangely warmed.” Wesley lived in the time called the Age of Reason. Science was beginning its path toward becoming the primary means of understanding the world we live in. There were those who believed that religion ought to be like science – rational, factual and reducible. But for Wesley faith was always a matter of the heart.

We will be exploring the “heart” this fall in a couple of ways. First, in adult Sunday school we are reading Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity. In his many books Borg asserts that as inheritors of the Age of Reason, we have forgotten that religion is something to be experienced – we don’t just believe things, we experience the presence of God. In his book about the Apostle Paul he focuses on Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus where he falls off his horse and has a vision of Jesus asking Paul why he was persecuting him? For the philosophers of the Age of Reason (and many academics today) this is all contrived nonsense. Since scientifically this is impossible, and any reasonable person knows that, we easily dismiss it. Therefore, when we talk about Paul we talk about what he wrote in his letters, his ideas but disassociated from this experience. Borg says that’s a mistake. Just as with John Wesley, this experience Paul had was real. Not only was it real it was foundational for everything Paul wrote. In The Heart of Christianity Borg addresses the basics of our faith but from a different angle – looking at how the Age of Reason and the Reformation have influenced how we see our faith, and opening our perspective. This book can be a transformative book for us all.

The second way we will be addressing the “heart” this fall is through our stewardship campaign. Extravagant Generosity: Giving from the Heart. With Stewardship too we have inherited a very rational way of viewing giving. Since it is about money we shuffle it over to the economic part of our lives – we think about it when perhaps our hearts need to be strangely warmed. In the Sundays of October, I will be preaching about seeing stewardship as grounded in our hearts. How will be see giving differently if it is a matter of the heart? I hope everyone will make a special effort to be present for these Sundays.

Pastor Jim