Shout Out! First Methodist Youth News: Wednesday, May 16, 2012

THIS Sunday, May 20

Confirmation Sunday!

Worship 10:30 a.m.

Confirmation Celebration in Collins Hall after worship.

12- Youth Ministry Committee Meeting in 134

Upcoming:

Sunday, June 24- Last Sunday Youth Adventure…. SCAVENGER HUNT!!!!

Sundays in July- Collection drive for Community Warehouse

We will be collecting towels, sheets, blankets, pillows, washcloths, etc…much like the kitchen supply drive.

I will be asking 2 youth every Sunday to help collect these items. This basically will entail standing by a barrel with a receipt pad and a smile.

Sunday, July 29- Last Sunday Lunch at Violetta in Directors Park

Bring your TriMet pass or $ for the MAX and $10 for lunch. We will leave from Collins Hall and be back by 2p.m.

August 17-19 Youth Mission PDX

We are taking on Local Mission this summer!

We will be working on a service project for the church, volunteering in a community garden with the Oregon Food Bank, volunteering at the Goose Hollow Family Shelter, and working with the Portland Public Schools. We will also be participating in worship on Sunday, August 19.

As with any mission trip, we will ask for the help of the congregation and parents.

We will need meal providers, transportation, and overnight adult chaperones.

To sign up to help, please contact Megan Humphreys -Loving at mhumphreys-loving@fumcpdx.org

It is the goal of FUMC Youth Ministry to have at least 10 youth participate in the ENTIRE weekend. This means attending all of the service projects, spending the night at the church and helping with worship on Sunday. Sign up for this weekend will start next Sunday, May 20.

Whats Up Wednesdays: May 16, 2012

THIS Sunday, May 20

 9:30 a.m. Children’s Choirs

10:30 a.m. Worship: Confirmation Sunday

Sunday School for Kids

Confirmation reception after worship…come greet the newest members of our church family.

5p.m. Super Sunday for Families

Bring your kiddos to the church for a night of fun, and the grownups head out for dinner at Henry’s Tavern.

Upcoming:

Super Sunday

May 20, 5 p.m.

There are SO many fun things I have planned for Super Sunday this time around.

If you have a suggestion about a place for parents to eat, let me know!

Please RSVP by May 10 with the names and ages of children attending.

Summer Sunday School

OK Gang, pitch in for the summer and teach one Sunday! The lessons, supplies, and snacks are already here and you know we will have kids who want to have a great time at church while learning more about our faith and traditions. So we just need teachers. Please email me with the dates you can teach.

There was at least one bright spot in the midst of this grief – the General Conference voted to expand the introduction to the Social Principles in the Book of Discipline by adding these words:
“We affirm our unity in Jesus Christ while acknowledging differences in applying our faith in different cultural contexts as we live out the gospel… (and) we stand united in declaring our faith that God’s grace is available to all – that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”

The hope I take from this is some permission for us to continue preaching and practicing openness and inclusiveness in the United Methodist churches of the western United States. Our cultural context not only supports – but cries out for – this kind of faithful response to the Gospel, even if the cultures of Africa, the Philippines, and parts of the southeast US (where most of the support for exclusivity exists) do not.

I was touched recently by someone else’s reflections on the recent General Conference struggles, who wrote about why we stay in the church when it continues to break our hearts:
“The willingness to extend care and even to embody unity with those who are different from us seems like a challenge – but isn’t that what love is? Loving someone who is really, really different – now that’s love. So we stay in families and in churches in order to love the people who drive us nuts, the people who we believe are betraying Jesus and his love, the very ones he died for. We may not be doing it well. But we’re definitely getting a lot of practice. God help us.”

For my part, that helps to put the decision to stay into perspective. I will stay in this church to continue creating a place where Wesley’s kind of Methodism can flourish, where we can practice loving one another and extending that love into the world without restrictions. I will stay in the hopes that by our witness and through our work we may yet bring our beloved church back to its inclusive and prophetic roots.

Blessings,
Rev. Donna

There is an old preacher’s joke (perhaps you’ve heard it), that goes like this:
A preacher was giving the children’s sermon in worship one day, and started out by asking “What’s warm and brown and fuzzy?” Whereupon one precocious child answered, “I know the answer is probably Jesus, but it sounds all the world like a squirrel to me!”

The answer is probably Jesus, but it sounds more like a squirrel to me. How often it seems we fall into the temptation to make of Jesus little more than something warm and brown and fuzzy. We want Christ to be something as easy to imagine, pleasant to watch, and warm to hold as a squirrel… well, maybe a stuffed squirrel, or at least a tame one!

But the Gospel lesson today effectively reminds us that Jesus is not now, nor ever was, a simple sentimentalist. And it tells us in no uncertain terms that Christ’s love cannot be reduced to a Hallmark card or a few dozen roses. Because Jesus’ love is not a love which takes us just as we are and leaves us there. It is not a love which condones all that we do, nor accepts all that we do not do. Jesus’ love is a love which speaks truth to us and asks us to follow. Jesus’ love is a love which always involves action, and always requires a response.

A response like – for instance – housing homeless families with compassion and respect for the past 18 years. Eighteen years of not only offering safe temporary shelter, but also working to alleviate homelessness by providing the resources, the support, the encouragement, and the friendship needed to place one family at a time in stable housing. Eighteen years of working together as volunteers and as staff, offering Jesus’ kind of love to one another and to all those we have been honored to call our guests. Eighteen years of knowing that every night is an important night, and that the work of compassion does not end just because we may be tired of sleeping in the gym. This work cannot end just because we may be weary of bringing in supper, or just because we might be anxious about our own church budget.

Jesus says, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love”. This is what our faith ultimately boils down to – love. Someone else put it this way:

“The bottom line is not what we believe (as if Christianity were about creeds). It is not even whether or not we believe in love. It is about actually loving.”

In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus speaks of his commandments. And we wonder, “Where’s that list?” The truth is, you can look all through the New Testament and you will find Jesus giving only one single commandment – to love one another.

He says nothing at all about how we should “feel” in our relationship with him. But only volumes about how we are to act. Jesus seems much more interested in the fruits of our labors than in all of our best intentions. So that even after 18 years in the shelter business, we still have to ask ourselves two questions in the face of every decision, every choice, every plan, every vision we propose for our church. First, we have to ask “Is this rooted in love?” And then, equally important, “Will this bear fruit for the reign of God?”

Today, as you know, is Mother’s Day. And it is a day ripe for misunderstanding and missing each other. If we try to focus only upon the warm fuzzies of sentimental love, or try to look only at how we feel about our mothers (or for that matter, our children), we might misunderstand our love. And we might miss each other entirely.

Robert Fulghum shares these reflections about Mother’s Day:
“For 25 years of my life, the second Sunday in May was trouble. Being the minister of a church, I felt obliged in some way to address the subject of Mother’s Day. When it came to the second Sunday in May, the expectations were summarized in these words by one of the more outspoken women in the church: ‘I’m bringing my mother to church on Mother’s Day, Reverend. And you can talk about anything you like. But it had better include mother, and it had better be good.’

One memorable Sunday I said, for all those who had wonderful mothers or who were wonderful mothers or who thought motherhood in general was just wonderful…I would like to say wonderful. But – and then I gave sort of a mock quiz, asking some questions without asking for a show of hands:

1. How many of you find yourself uncomfortable around Mother’s Day?
2. How many of you don’t really like (or even hate) the mothering you’ve received?
3. How many of you don’t really like your children?
4. How many of you don’t really know your mother at all?
5. How many of you find Mother’s Day painful, involving thoughts of abortion, divorce, suicide, rejection, alcoholism, alienation, abuse, sorrow, or loss?

You see, it is not always a simple and straightforward thing, this day of
celebration. Because it is not always easy, choosing to love. And this is where our sentimentalizing – about moms or dads or kids or even about God – falls far short. We cannot expect love to just happen. Not in the church, not in society, not even in our families, will that necessarily occur. Because love in Jesus’ sense of the word implies a choice, it requires a response, and always involves action.

Henri Nouwen puts it this way: “The mystery of ministry (of what we do together as a church) is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God.”

It is a mystery, and it is a wonder – that you and I together could bring our own imperfect and incomplete love and God can use us to share God’s unbounded and unconditional love with all the world.

So what, you might ask, became of Rev. Fulghum on that infamous second Sunday in May? He writes:

“A visiting lady, who had ‘sainted mother’ written all over her face, accosted me after the service. ‘Young man’, she said, ‘better men than you have gone straight to hell for suggesting less than what you said this morning!’”

Sometimes it seems that sentiment and truth are complete strangers to one another. As we lose ourselves inside our valiant attempts to hang onto our warm brown fuzzies, even at the risk of losing touch with that which we so desperately desire. Even at the risk of forgetting to notice the fruits of our labors, the proof of our love.

One Mother’s Day, about fourteen years ago, it was a lovely spring day, much like this one today. Sarah and Kate and I had been to Sunday School and also to church, and we had come home for lunch and presents (my personal favorite part of Mother’s Day!). I opened the gift form Sarah and then Kate suggested we needed to retire to the backyard for me to receive her gift.

There, five-year-old Kate had set up lawn chairs facing the swing set in the corner of the yard. Once I was comfortably seated, she rather dramatically told me that her Mother’s Day gift to me would an active one, as she performed various tricks on the swings. Ah, performance art!

I remember at the time laughing with Sarah about this gift. But I’ve got to tell you, after all these years, after all those Mother’s Days gone by, the gift I remember the most is the gift from that swing set. It is the gift from that child’s heart which understood, somehow, that it is the fruits of our labors that count.

It is the fruits of our labors – our actions – that defines our love. So the question for all of us today is this – what are you producing? And how will your fruits be shared? For the sake of Christ, and in response to his love. Amen.

Join us this week for worship at 10:30.

Scripture: Ephesians 1:15-23
Sermon: Seeing by Heart, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Encouragement; wisdom from within

This Week’s Music

• Prelude: Festive Peal, Karen Thompson; The Sanctuary Bells, Nancy Hascall, director
• Anthem: Te Deum (Chorus 3 & 4), Antonin Dvorak; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
• Offertory: O God, Beneath Thy Guiding Hand, William A. Payn; The Sanctuary Bells, Nancy Hascall, director
• Postlude: Toccata, Theodore Dubois;

We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.

Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.

Join us this week for worship at 10:30.

Scripture: John 15:9-17
Sermon: Fruits of our Labors, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Love is a verb and actions of faithfulness

This Week’s Music

• Prelude: Supplication, Richard Purvis (1912-1994); Jonas Nordwall, organist
• Anthem: I Will Not Leave You Comfortless, Everett Titcomb; Portland State University Madrigal Ensemble, under the direction of Erick Lichte
• Offertory: Tu es Petrus, Robert Pearsall; Portland State University Madrigal Ensemble, under the direction of Erick Lichte
• Postlude: Final – Marche, Leon Boellmann (1862-1897);

Happy Mother’s Day! We extend a special welcome to all of our mothers as well as our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.

• Download the Bulletin

Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.

May 2012

• Tuesday, May 15 – Submission Deadline
• May 23 – Publication Date

June 2012

• Tuesday, June 12 – Submission Deadline
• June 20 – Publication Date

July 2012

• Tuesday, July 10 – Submission Deadline
• July 18 – Publication Date

August 2012

• Tuesday, August 7 – Submission Deadline
• August 15 – Publication Date

You can find current and past issues of the Circuit Rider here.

 Way to go! On a fantastic Youth Sunday. You all rock!

Thank You! For the lovely surprise bridal shower celebration.

THIS Sunday, May 13

The Youth Ministry Committee decided that it would be okay to take a break from Youth Sunday School for the rest of the month. BUT if you want to come to Collins Hall and hang out with me, I’ll be there.

Worship 10:30 a.m.

Shelter Sunday-We will be celebrating the ministry of the Goose Hollow Family Shelter.

Upcoming:

Sunday, May 20- Confirmation Sunday!

Youth Ministry Committee Meeting after worship at 11:45 a.m.

We will be talking about summer projects and the new year for the committee!

Sunday, June 24- Last Sunday Youth Adventure…. SCAVENGER HUNT!!!!

Sundays in July- Collection drive for Community Warehouse

We will be collecting towels, sheets, blankets, pillows, washcloths, etc…much like the kitchen supply drive.

I will be asking 2 youth every Sunday to help collect these items. This basically will entail standing by a barrel with a receipt pad and a smile.

Sunday, July 29- Last Sunday Lunch…Destination TBD

August 17-19 Youth Mission PDX

We are taking on Local Mission this summer!

We will be working on a service project for the church, volunteering in a community garden with the Oregon Food Bank, volunteering at the Goose Hollow Family Shelter, and working with the Portland Public Schools. We will also be participating in worship on Sunday, August 19.

As with any mission trip, we will ask for the help of the congregation and parents.

We will need meal providers, transportation, and overnight adult chaperones.

To sign up to help, please contact Megan Humphreys -Loving at mhumphreys-loving@fumcpdx.org

It is the goal of FUMC Youth Ministry to have at least 10 youth participate in the ENTIRE weekend. This means attending all of the service projects, spending the night at the church and helping with worship on Sunday. Sign up for this weekend will start next Sunday, May 20.

Whats Up Wednesdays: May 9, 2012

Three cheers for the family potluck! Thanks to those who brought food, and who helped to set up and clean up. Last Sunday was very fun!

THIS Sunday, May 13

 9:30 a.m. Children’s Choirs

10:30 a.m. Worship: Cherubs Sing

Sunday School

Upcoming:

 Super Sunday

May 20, 5 p.m.

Please RSVP by tomorrow with the names and ages of children attending.

Any suggestions about where to send you grownups?

Summer Sunday School Volunteers

Now is a perfect time to try your hand at teaching Sunday School. The summer is very laid back, and a perfect time to get to know more kids and parents.

Volunteers are provided with curriculum and all supplies needed for teaching lessons. Summer Sunday school starts on June 17 and continues through September 2.

Please consider what teaching Sunday school might do for you, and what you might do for Sunday school!

June 17- Portland Pride Parade

First United Methodist Church is a reconciling congregation and we welcome ALL God’s children here to worship. Families are invited to stroller, wagon, and/or walk in the parade. More details to follow.

Fourth of July Family Camp

July 4-July 7

Join families from other churches, and from FUMC at a great weekend getaway at Camp Magruder. For more information visit www.gocamping.org

Camp Genesis for First and Second Graders

August 23-26

This summer I will be deaning a special camp for First and Second graders at Camp Magruder. This will be a great time for kids who have never been to sleep-away camp to give it a try. There is also a Moms, Pops and Tots camp if you want to make it a family weekend (and keep an eye on your first time camper). Talk to me if you have questions.

Or check out www.gocamping.org

Alternatively, you could just click on this link.