This is Pastor Chuck. Welcome to your online January newsletter! We also will be mailing this out to our homebound members and any others who do not use a computer or smartphone.
We usually mark a new year with new intentions, and 2025 certainly should not be an exception. I summarize the new mindset we need as a church in two words: "Look out!" We need to look outside our walls for the lost rather than look in at ourselves and our wants. We need to look out for nonbelievers and find ways to introduce them to Jesus Christ. We need to learn to look out and live out our faith in the world if we are truly going to be the church Christ intended.
Churches everywhere are struggling; this recent article in Church & Culture gets to the crux of our simple problem. We have forgotten how to look out. During the era we sometimes call "Christendom," an era that began to collapse about 40 or 50 years ago, most Americans at least nominally described themselves as Christians, and churches operated on an "If we build it, they will come" mentality.
We now find ourselves in the position of the early church described in the New Testament. People around us in general do not know who Christ is, many needing to hear the story of salvation for the first time. We generally are not doing a good job of telling that story, either because of apathy, fear or lack of understanding.
The article I linked above has a particularly insightful quote from an atheist, the magician Penn Jillette: "I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize .... If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell and that people could be going to hell ... how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?”
We are going to talk a lot early in 2025 about this need to get outside our walls—in particular, we will talk about the "how"—and I pray we will move quickly from talking to doing as the year progresses.
Some of the "how" mentioned above will be embedded in sermons leading us toward Lent, which begins Ash Wednesday, March 5. (Easter is April 20 this year.) Here are the texts and titles of sermons planned for January:
Jan. 5 "What Brings Us to Our Knees" Matthew 2:1-12
Jan. 12 "On Baptism" Acts 8:14-17
Jan. 19 "On Marriage" Isaiah 62:1-5
Jan. 26 "Finding Apostles" 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
Our Church Leadership Council has affirmed the need for a big outreach effort this summer. We have exceptionally good building space for such an event. We just need people with a heart for children!
We want to hold a robust Vacation Bible School in June or July of 2025. We have not held these in the past largely because the preschool-daycare operation in our North Wing ran an ongoing childcare program throughout the summer. With the preschool-daycare now closed, we have an opportunity to use our North Wing, with its wonderful classrooms, playground and gym, to hold one of the best Vacation Bible School programs in the area.
Planning for such an event needs to begin as soon as possible. If you want to play a part in all of this, please contact Karen Peace at peacetribe2016@gmail.com or (423) 742-1501. Karen has years of experience leading large VBS programs. With her health problems that come and go, she cannot guarantee that she can be physically present for all that needs to be done, but she will be an excellent equipper for all of you willing to serve.
Some of the women of Holston View are organizing a service group, Holston View Methodist Women's Ministry. They have developed a mission statement: Loving God, Growing Together, Reaching Out.
As the pastor, I'll just say, you gotta love the mission statement.
If you want to learn more, there will be a potluck breakfast 9 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 25, in the fellowship hall.
Here's a prayer poem for New Year's Day, adapted from a Celtic liturgy:
O Holy Spirit of Love,
In us, round us, above;
Holy Spirit we pray
Send, sweet Jesus, this New Year's Day.
Holy Spirit, to win
Body and Soul within
To guide us that we be
From ills and illness free.
From sin and demons' snare,
from hell and evils there,
O Holy Spirit, come!
Hallow our heart, thy home.
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