1 THE WESLEY CIRCUIT – November 2015 From Our Pastor Do you remember the first time you rode your bicycle on only two wheels? Training wheels were removed. Mom or dad held the back of your seat to give you a running start. After a few wobbles of the handlebars, you were off and running, despite your doubts. You had just learned a new skill. And with that skill, a whole new world was opened to you. Fast forward 20 years. Some can take basic bike skills and hone them to such a level that they now ride their bicycle for 112 miles during an Ironman competition or join with others in the Tour de France to cover roughly 2200 miles. All of a sudden, in those circumstances, a simple skill can take on a whole new meaning. In the church, we experience a similar reality. We learn simple skills when we first begin to follow Christ. As we grow, we learn that simple skills can be taken to incredible heights as we give ourselves to practicing them. This year, our Consecration Sunday theme is Growing and Serving Together. When we serve the Lord in the context of Wesley UMC, we are all growing in our faith. This process never ends, does it? We learn from Children’s Church that we are to love one another. We then spend the rest of our lives practicing that skill, taking it to new levels. We learn that serving others honors and blesses Christ, even as we ourselves are blessed in that process. Yet we discover new blessings from serving each year as we give ourselves to it. The same is true with our giving. Each year, around this time, we celebrate Consecration Sunday, where we prayerfully consider how God wants to empower the ministry of Wesley through us. This year, we will celebrate it on November 15. On that day, we will have the opportunity to practice the spiritual discipline of giving. We will all approach this act of worship from a variety of places, but we can grow and serve together. We will all approach this from different levels of giving – but one thing is for sure: when we take giving to a whole new level, what we find is not that we have less, but that we have so much more. We have been blessed to be a blessing. So will you commit to growing and serving together in 2016? I get excited when I think of what God is able to do in a church when God’s people commit to a vision of seeing the Kingdom grow and thrive. I believe God wants to do that. And when we give ourselves to this process, we see how even a simple skill can be taken to whole new heights. Rev. Bob
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From Our Pastorstorage.cloversites.com/wesleyunitedmethodistchurch4/documents/… · January – September 2015 totals: 20,835,882 pounds (62.5 Million Servings) using 20,209 volunteers
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1
THE WESLEY CIRCUIT – November 2015
From Our Pastor
Do you remember the first time you rode your bicycle on only two wheels? Training wheels were removed. Mom or dad held the back of your seat to give you a running start. After a few wobbles of the handlebars, you were off and running, despite your doubts. You had just learned a new skill. And with that skill, a whole new world was opened to you.
Fast forward 20 years. Some can take basic bike skills and hone them to such a level that they now ride their bicycle for 112 miles during an Ironman competition or join with others in the Tour de France to cover roughly 2200 miles. All of a sudden, in those circumstances, a simple skill can take on a whole new meaning.
In the church, we experience a similar reality. We learn simple skills when we first begin to follow Christ. As we grow, we learn that simple skills can be taken to incredible heights as we give ourselves to practicing them.
This year, our Consecration Sunday theme is Growing and Serving Together. When we serve the Lord in the context of Wesley UMC, we are all growing in our faith. This process never ends, does it? We learn from Children’s Church that we are to love one another. We then spend the rest of our lives practicing that skill, taking it to new levels. We learn that serving others honors and blesses Christ, even as we ourselves are blessed in that process. Yet we discover new blessings from serving each year as we give ourselves to it. The same is true with our giving.
Each year, around this time, we celebrate Consecration Sunday, where we prayerfully consider how God wants to empower the ministry of Wesley through us. This year, we will celebrate it on November 15. On that day, we will have the opportunity to practice the spiritual discipline of giving. We will all approach this act of worship from a variety of places, but we can grow and serve together.
We will all approach this from different levels of giving – but one thing is for sure: when we take giving to a whole new level, what we find is not that we have less, but that we have so much more. We have been blessed to be a blessing. So will you commit to growing and serving together in 2016? I get excited when I think of what God is able to do in a church when God’s people commit to a vision of seeing the Kingdom grow and thrive. I believe God wants to do that. And when we give ourselves to this process, we see how even a simple skill can be taken to whole new heights.