Add any site-wide alert message here.

Public Header: Add up to the minute announcements for your site visitors here! (Hidden from mobile visitors).

Blog

Add any number of blogs to your site. Make them viewable to any visitor, or only your members, clients, staff, or teams.

Jun
30

Popsicles, Persistence, and Possibility

Posted by eric    0 Comment(s)    Add a Comment  comment-icon.png

Nostalgia kicks in at the thought of having a red, white, and blue popsicle on the fourth of July. It is ingrained into my thoughts around Independence Day in the same way that fireworks, hotdogs, and pool parties find their place in this time of year. There is nostalgia in that popsicle tastes of eagerness and optimism. Somewhere in the middle of all the festivities I am engulfed in the boldness and bravery that this country was founded on. What a story we have of independence that is rooted in the idea of persistence and possibility. We don’t often think about how extravagant and daring this idea was: the possibility of freedom that sparked dreams and hopes, and the persistence to bravely pursue such a possibility. 

Both persistence and possibility are ideas deeply rooted in our faith as well. Psalm 34:14 says to “do good, seek peace, and go after it.” This scripture is a pressing declaration that in all that we do as Christ followers, we are called to action. After seeing Wonder Woman a few weeks ago, I went back and read some of the old comic books. She is certainly a different sort of super hero. Her strength seems to be embodied by this pressing idea that responsive action is deeply rooted in compassion and empathy. She repeats the phrase “we cannot stand by” over and over again right before she springs into action. Wonder Woman has me wondering what our relationship to God and one another might look like if that was our mentality. What if we met situations and problems we see with a simple, but crucial persistence? Maybe not to save the world, but to do something out of a place of compassion and empathy. Maybe even ‘do good, seek peace and go after it.’ Call me optimistic, but it seems possible. 

A beloved pastor of my home church, Tom Graves, wrote a prayer for Independence Day. In this prayer he says “May the possibility of peace and the gift of life give us the courage we need to live like Christians in America.” The core tenant of our Christian faith revolves around the life-centered and life-giving belief in resurrection. We believe that new life is possible, for ourselves, for each other, for our country, and for our world. Even in the most difficult moments of our lives God offers us possibility. Possibility of rebuilding, redeeming, reconciling, and restoring. The same words that Jesus spoke to his disciples are words to live by for us today, “with God, all things are possible.” (Matthew 19.26

I hope you have a wonderful celebration of Independence Day next Tuesday in all the various ways (hopefully with a red, white and blue popsicle). As we taste, see, and hear the signs and celebrations of freedom, may it push us to new possibilities and the persistence to “do good, seek peace and go after it.” 

Below is the full prayer for Independence day from Rev. Tom Graves. I hope it is a blessing to you as it has been to me. 

God of our fathers and mothers, we thank you for this land we call home, and for those whose vision and wisdom made freedom a cherished blessing for our time.

We confess that we take our citizenship for granted. We stake our claim to its countless privileges but resist its responsibilities. We like to remember the sacrifices of those who began the American Revolution, but we fail to see the urgent need for new dedication in our own lives to the continuing revolution in our midst.

Help us to see our nation as an unfinished creation that needs our love and devotion as well as our intelligence and hard work.

Deliver us from words or deeds that turn the ideal of liberty and justice for all into the vulgarity of liberty and justice for some.

May the hope for our community and our nation be that we become the kind of society where every person knows you and has the opportunity to be all that they can possibly be.

Enable us to see that this kind of hope will never become a reality until we become brothers and sisters by conscious effort and mature patience. Transform our Fourth of July festivities into a celebration of the common life we have been given.

Make our brightest fireworks be those of indignation and holy wrath at blindness and bigotry toward any person or community of persons.

Translate the patriotism we espouse into deeds of constructive citizenship, and make the flag we fly, a banner of joy to be a part of a nation that could be this weary world’s best sign of hope.

May the possibility of peace and the gift of life give us the courage we need to live like Christians in America.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who loved his land, but never more than its people.

Amen.

Julie

Jun
22

A tool in God's hands

Posted by rrindfuss    0 Comment(s)    Add a Comment  comment-icon.png

Last Sunday I shared a story of being used as a tool in God's hands. No, not one of the tools pictured or any kind of mechanical instrument at all. I was another kind of tool entirely.

On Sunday I said that Christians must practice their "superpowers" - like prayer - because without practice they can hurt rather than heal. I shared how early in my ministry I placed my hand on the shoulder of a woman and prayed over and over for all kinds of blessings for her. I knew this woman's last name, and I had heard a first name used with that last name. I thought it would be extra powerful to pray for this woman using her first name, so again and again I used the name I had heard as I prayed for all those blessings. After I finished, the woman explained to me that she and another woman shared the same last name, and I had been praying for the other woman – the new wife of her ex-husband. Years later the woman explained that she had managed to continue being around me, because at that time God had been trying to teach her to be humble, and she saw me as a tool in God's hands.

Tool: (noun)

1) A guy with a hugely over-inflated ego, who in an attempt to get un-due attention for himself, will act like a [donkey], because, in his deluded state, he will think it's going to make him look cool, or make others want to be like him. (urbandictionary.com)

If you've ever found "tool" to be the best description of you, know that God can still use you. The Apostle, Paul, wrote that we have the treasure of Christ within us, but we are fragile clay jars. He writes, "But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us" (2 Corinthians 4:7). God constantly works on growing us to be more Christ-like, but I take great hope from Paul's writing that God understands we're ill-equipped to represent Christ. Or, to put it another way, I take great hope that God understands that sometimes the tools God has to work with are tools.

I hope you'll join us Sunday at Access. We'll worship God with prayer, giving, and terrific music from the Access band. And our Hero Central sermon series will continue with "protect your secret identity."

Have a great weekend!
Rich


Rich Rindfuss
Access Pastor
First United Methodist Church Richardson

Jun
15

Why giving to the church multiplies world-changing impact

Posted by rrindfuss    0 Comment(s)    Add a Comment  comment-icon.png

The knock on my car door window startled me. I was about to pull out of the Micro Center parking lot and hadn't noticed anyone nearby. I rolled down my window and saw a thin woman in her late 50s. She held a bag from the store. As the wind disheveled her long, graying blonde hair, she explained that her car wouldn't start. "I think it might be the alternator," she said and asked if I could help her with bus fare so she could get home. The excitement of having just purchased a USB Bluetooth dongle (version 4!) put me in a generous mood, and I gave her a $5 bill. Best-case scenario, she used it for bus fare, and my five dollars directly impacted and improved another person's life. Even as a pastor, when I give to the church I don't often see such an immediate impact. At the end of this post I will ask you to give to our church to help balance our income and expenses going into the summer, but before I do that, I want to share why giving to the church has the power to impact and improve far more lives than many other kinds of giving, and I'll do it with a story of how another 5 dollars helped bring dental care to a rural village in Africa.

There's a book called Growing Strong in God's Family on my bookshelf. It cost about $5, and my dentist and I worked through it together years ago in a class at church. While God didn't work solely through that book, it played an important part in strengthening my dentist's faith, keeping him open to discerning God's call, and encouraging him to go when the opportunity arose to travel to Africa and provide dental services to a rural village. And when the people of the village asked him to speak about his faith, he drew from what he had learned from that book.

When we give to the church we create opportunities for God to transform people. Those transformed people then impact the world in amazing ways. Giving to the church provides worship services, clergy and staff, spaces to meet, curriculum to study, and opportunities to serve that all bring people in touch with God. Giving to the church enables it to serve as an incubator where God transforms people, inspiring and empowering them to make a positive difference in the world and multiplying the impact of the giving.

I'm so grateful for your giving and the way it is enabling FUMCR to facilitate transformative encounters with God. This past week 600 children have learned about God in Vacation Bible Camp, made possible by facilities, curriculum, and over 200 volunteers, each with their own story of how God worked through the church to inspire them to serve. School children and teachers in South Africa are having facilities constructed and expanded for them by a team from our church this week. Last week we hosted a worship service where our own Pavielle Jenkins was commissioned in one of the final stages of her ordination as a pastor. Last year members of our church were instrumental in expanding prison ministry to a new facility where they will be conduits for God's Spirit in transforming the hearts of prisoners. Thank you for making this and more possible!

As we head into summer, our finance team has shared with me that our actual income is lower than our budgeted income. Can you help us eliminate that gap, so that we can continue to do everything we had hoped to do this year to create opportunities for God to transform people who will change our world for the better? One-time gifts are helpful, and annual pledges tied to recurring gifts are absolutely amazing for the gifts themselves and for the predictability they provide for planning our ministries. Click here to give and/or pledge.

Thank you so very much for your generosity and all the ways you make our church such a wonderful place to serve!

I hope you'll join Pastor Julie, worship director, Eric, the Access band, and me this Sunday as we continue our Hero Central series of sermons with the second lesson Christians can learn from superheroes: practice your superpowers!

In Christ,
Rich


Rich Rindfuss
Access Pastor
First United Methodist Church Richardson

1...10111213141516...33