We are truly blessed to have such a wonderful music program at Andover. In just a few short weeks (7 to be exact), the music of First Church Andover is leaving a footprint in our worship and upon our community. The fact that we have come so far is directly attributable to the leadership of Richard Dwyer. Richard has brought a sense of excitement through his gifted playing along with his choosing of choral anthems and special music. The choir has already grown "into" our choir loft and we are looking to add seats for many more new singers. The choir itself has been an integral part of the initial ministry as they have led in congregational singing along with special anthems weekly. Their faithfulness is a true example of obedience as they bring God's message of love and grace through music.
If you are interested in being a part of the music ministry, please feel free to come to rehearsal on Thursday evenings at 7:00 or email Richard at richard@1stumc.org.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Music Ministry at Andover: A Thanksgiving
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Andover's Christmas Eve Schedule
Many have been asking about plans for a Christmas Eve service. There will be a service on Christmas Eve that will cap off a full month of special emphasis surrounding the season of Advent. The service will be from 5:30-6:30 on Christmas Eve night. Make plans to begin your holiday festivities with a time of worship that will include familiar carols, special music, a candlelighting service, and a message from Todd entitled "A Christmas Story; Imagine That" which will be taken from Luke 2:1-20.
Andover Children's Sabbath
We have posted a few more pictures from the Children's Sabbath on the flickr site on the left-hand side of the blogsite. There have been so many positive comments from last week's service. Our children and youth have a special place in the hearts of the congregation even after only six weeks of services.
Thanks to everyone who participated and helped last week. We are already looking forward to next year
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Week #6 Update
Today was the first installment of what will be an annual service called Children's Sabbath. It is a day when the children and youth of the congregation lead us in a variety of ways in worship. There will be pictures forthcoming later in the week, but for now please know what a blessing the day was because of the children and youth. They played, greeted, ushered, prayed, gave announcements, read Scripture and even sang as they led us in worship.
Thanks to all who participated in the day. A special thanks to the parents who were so willing to help make the day happen. your children were truly used by God today!
November 11th Sermon Manuscript: The Grace to Love God
Text: Luke 7:36-50
Charles Swindoll's book The Grace Awakening is subtitled "Believing in grace is one thing, living in it another." That is a great introductory statement to the next two weeks of sermons. For the past five weeks, we have examined God's love for us, God's patience for us, and God's plan to bring us into the Kingdom of Heaven. Now we turn our attention to understanding how God's grace works in our lives after we initiate a relationship with God. As Romans 10:9-10 reminds us, "if we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved." There are two parts to that statement. Believing and Confessing. Trusting and Living into. Both are essential parts of our faith journey.
Has anyone been to a shuttle launch? Susan and I passed by Cape Canaveral on our way to our honeymoon cruise. What an awesome sight to see the launch pad and realize what takes place upon it. I believe that this provides a useful analogy for us to begin exploring how grace works in our lives to bring about sanctification. For the shuttle to complete its mission, it takes years of work to ready the ship for flight. Many years of detailed planning go into every mission. The day finally comes when the shuttle is rolled onto the pad and readies for launch. Only after being on the launch pad is it finally ready to ignite the rockets it sits upon and lift-off to complete the mission. Without a doubt this is the most exciting time, at least for me, part of the journey. But also without a doubt, it is NOT the most important. There is still a mission to complete. Maybe it is docking with the intl space station to bring supplies or make repairs. Perhaps the mission is to complete science projects to aid in the quality of life of alzheimers patients. Whatever is it, the mission is not complete just because the shuttle craft made its way upon the launch pad.
This is how our life with Christ is lived out in many regards. God's grace works in our lives to prepare us for a life of faith, we have called this prevenient grace. Then there comes a day when we are on the launching pad ready for lift-off. This is what justifying grace does in our life. It justifies us before God and makes possible the start of a relationship. But that is not all there is to this journey. There is an ultimate mission for us to complete. There is something else for us beyond the launching pad and that mission is completed through God's grace working in our lives as well. Many of our theologies stop with the launching pad. Well, we accepted Christ as a child, what else do I need to do? I have been "saved" and my ticket is punched for heaven, I can coast now. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Now, let me say this with great tender care, God's mission for us on earth is not to simply punch our ticket to heaven (however this is vitally important for sure!). I grew up in an environment where the church's main mission was to save people from going to hell. But that is just part of God's purpose. His mission for you and me as is contained in 1 John 3: 2, is to grow us to be more and more like Jesus. That is the final result of our time on earth. By doing so, God is focused upon bringing His kingdom of peace, wholeness, forgiveness, mercy, and eternal life to the entire world. His goal is to see that everyone participates in this kingdom and he has chosen to use you, me, and the entire ecclesiastical body to make it happen.
The first step God has taken to assure this happens is his grace that works in our lives from birth that draws us to Him. In addition, his grace justifies us, makes us right, so that we begin to cooperate with God's grace in our lives each day. What does cooperating with God's grace look like? Let's go back to the shuttle for a moment. Upon ignition, two huge jet fueled rockets engage and force the ship from the pad and hurtling into the atmosphere. The rockets are providing the power, but the astronauts have a role to play as well. The must work with the power of the rockets, cooperate with it, in order to maintain proper trajectory that keeps pointing them toward the mission rendezvous point. Let's make no mistake, the astronauts do not provide any of the power, but they do work alongside with the power of the rockets to achieve the right trajectory.
That is a good analogy of how our life with God is after we have accepted Christ. We cooperate with the power and blessing God places in our lives in order to bring about the completion of his mission he has for each of us. Our life's trajectory determines how useable, or unusable to be quiet frank, that we are to God over the course of our lives. One of the major problems with God. Now that is heresy if I have ever heard it! One of the major problems with our understanding of God is that God tells us much about "process" and not much about "product". He tells us what we are to be doing, but does not give us the exact details or implications of our actions of faithfulness. We usually have to get to the end of a time before we see what it is we were called to do.
Okay, I wanted to say all of that to set up our passage this morning. Let's look at the passage from the viewpoint of "process". What is God calling us to be about. How do we go about cooperating with God's grace in our lives so that our lives trajectory is propelling us toward what God has for us.
O wow, this passage is full of disgrace for Jesus. We could spend a couple of weeks detailing the contextual information surrounding this story. Jesus is invited by a Pharisee, Simon, to a dinner. More than likely this was a symposium where a meal would be served and then a special guest would be invited to speak or entertain questions or start a debate. It was a real heady affaire to be sure. We can safely assume that Jesus was invited to be that guest of honor. And here is where the story starts to unravel. Custom would have it that any guest would be given certain measures of hospitality such as foot washing, oil for their head, and a welcome kiss. This would have not only been normal, but expected for the guest of honor for sure. None of this happened. So we can either assume that Simon was a poor host, unlikely, or that Simon was sending a message to Jesus, probably.
At dinner, the guests would recline with their feet behind them at the table. Feet were considered offensive in this culture. Not only were they dirty from the dust of the road, they were a sign of disrespect if pointed toward someone. When I think of it in this term, I always get self-conscious on the platform when you can see the soles of my shoe. But back to our story.
Entering the scene is a woman of ill repute. We don't know exactly who this is or what she has done, but we do know that she was well known by those in attendance and that she was sinful. She shows up at the scene at Jesus' dirty, disgusting, unwashed, and ceremonial unclean feet and begins to show him the ultimate in hospitality. She took her hair down, which would have been scandalous at that day and time. With her tears she wets his feet. She wiped them with her hair. She then kissed his feet which was a sign of her unworthiness to not kiss his cheek as a sign of welcome. And finally she pours an expensive bottle of perfume upon them.
Extravagant. Yes. Over the top. Yes. Uncomfortable for those in attendance. Without a doubt. And this is why we see Simon begin to question Jesus and this woman. And Jesus answers with a parable that Maddie read this morning. Two men were in debt to a moneylender. One owed 500 pieces of silver, the other 50. When neither of them could repay, the moneylender forgave the debts out fo the kindness of his heart. Which one of them would love him more? To which Simon answers, the one who owed more. To which Jesus answers Simon, so it is with this woman. Wow, a dagger to the heart for sure. A wake-up call and an indictment upon Simon and the rest of the religious leaders in attendance. She loves me more Simon, that is why she is taking care of all my hospitality needs that you neglected.
What does Jesus mean by this? I am so glad you asked. You are ever the inquisitive group. First of all, he is not attempting to say that there are degrees of love. That is like saying that there are degrees of being pregnant. The last I checked, you either are pregnant or not. We might want to check with the medical professionals here today, but I think I am right about this. It has more to do with the expression, understanding, and awareness of love in our life. Secondly, Jesus is building the case that true divine love (agape in the greek versus philo or brothery love) is a direct result of an experience with God. Turn over the 1 John with me. (4:7-8, 19) Our ability to love is a result of God's love for us. Thirdly, God's grace working in our lives produces a response. And it is that response that is the important part for us this morning.
Remember, that we are to become more like Christ. That is the reason we are left upon this earth after accepting Christ as our personal Savior. We do that by cooperating with God's grace in our lives. Remember how the astronauts cooperated with the booster rockets to keep them on path and headed toward their mission? Same with us. When we love God with our heart, our mind, our soul and our strength, we are cooperating with God's grace and thereby growing toward the likeness of Christ.
I always think it is interesting that we are to worship God. Seems like a pretty self-centered request by God doesn't it? Why would the God of the universe need me to worship Him? What difference is that going to make in His perfect being? I am not going to make him more perfect, more powerful, more complete. Nope. Then it must be for me? What happens when we love God with our heart, our mind, our soul and our strength? We are changed. We are changed because of our awareness of our station in our life. We are changed because it places us in a place of dependency upon God.
Has anyone drank out of a firehydrant before? No? Me either. Not sure why I ever would? Actually, who ever came up with that expression must have been a rather clueless person to put his mouth, I say his because it must have been a male to do something like this, over a firehydrant and hold on for dear life. But that is exactly what our loving God does for us. It places us under the flow of God's grace. And I don't know of a better place to be than in the flow of Almighty God's blessings and power for us.
There is a town in Tennessee called Orme which gets its water from a spring near the town. The spring normally dries up in August for a day or two per year, but this year it dried up on August 1 and hasn't run since. As a result, the residents of the town have water for three hours per day. Three hours to wash clothes, dishes, water livestock, and of course flush toilets. And we think we have it bad. Each day they truck in a few thousand gallons of water from a nearby town, fill the cistern and then turn on the spicket for three hours. The rest of the time, they are without. It has made them realize how important it is to have a water source that is available and running. The story contained a quote from the mayor that I think is telling,
"Cherish the water you got and be kind of careful with it," Cash said, "because you never know if you will be out of water."
Are you feeling dry today? Have you lost the fire of your faith and are simply going through the motions? I know that I have had times like that. Times that the passion and drive for things spiritual are the farthest from my mind and my "want to". Perhaps this is a time where you have left the fountain that feeds you? Perhaps it is a result of moving away from the spring of life that fills you up.
We are able to love because God first loved us. That is a fact of Scripture that we cannot escape. 1 John 3:1 says, "How great is the love that the father has lavished upon us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are!" We cannot escape God's love for us, but we can neglect our response to that love. Our response, or cooperating with God's love (ie. grace) is the first call to our life. It is not because that God needs our love as expressed through our actions, words and thoughts. Rather it is through our active love for God that we are placed under the proverbial fire hydrant of God's power and blessings. And it is from this place that we continue to grow toward the likeness of Christ and are well under way to accomplishing our mission that God calls us to.
Feeling dry? Unattached? Having a hard time figuring out what God is doing in your life? Let me encourage you to take your focus on your issues and place them upon God. We can do this through worship, prayer, spending time with friends, bible study, fasting and so many other ways. The list goes on and on, the focus remains the same. God's face. It is through seeking God's face that we so many times find God's hand. Seeking God's face keeps our lives on the proper trajectory. The woman in our story today sought God's face by seeking Jesus' feet. That is how she cooperated with the love that had been shown her. It is how we cooperate with God's grace that will make all the differenc e in our lives. Are we ready to abandon all self-control and give ourselves completely? That is the question of the day.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Sunday School Week #2
Wanted to remind everyone that this week is the second week of Sunday School for all ages at Andover at 9:45. Right now we have classes for Preschool with Miss Laura, K-2nd grade taught by Barbara Hull, 2-5th grade taught by Todd Nelson, Mid/Sr Hi taught by Susan Nelson, and three adult classes with Randy Greenup, Tim Mowery and Elley Fisk facilitating. All classes are biblically based and discussion oriented. There will be time for fellowship, study and prayer each morning.
Sunday School is the cornerstone of the discipleship path at Andover. The next natural step after attending a worship service is to join a Sunday School. It is through Sunday School that you grow closer to God, closer to others, and prepare for service within and outside the church building walls.
See you Sunday morning!
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Andover in the Net News
http://kysite.brickriver.com/news_detail.asp?TableName=oNews_PJAYMY&PrimaryKey=oNews_PJAYMY_ID&PKValue=353
The above link, which you will need to paste into your browser, will take you to a story posted in the Net News, the Kentucky Annual Conference's newspaper, this past week. One of the exciting parts of the Andover launch is to see how others around the city and state are responding. There is a genuine interest in seeing how things go as well as an excitement that is building for this new work.
Our communications team led by Marsha Berry (Director of Equipping Ministries at First Church) and includes John Higgins (Graphic Designer) and Jill Wilson (Communications Team Chair) have gone beyond the call of duty getting the word out. We are hearing on a weekly basis how the postcards or other forms of publicity have drawn people to a worship service over the past month.
These efforts are reinforcing the one-on-one emphasis of invitation that we have stressed at Andover. Research shows, and experience backs up, that people are interested in spiritual matters and are willing to come to a church service IF THEY ARE INVITED by someone they know. We have seen results of this over and over this past month and are thankful. It says a lot about a community of people who care enough to invite others. You are special in so many ways. May God continue to bless your faithfulness.
Todd
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Devotional Thought: Be Strong and Work
This passage is from the lectionary text for the week ending November 11, 2007. Just as a teaching point, the lectionary is a collection of Scripture passages (Old Testament, Psalm, Gospel, New Testament) that changes weekly. Over a three year cycle, the reader of the lectionary texts will have covered a good cross-section of the Bible. I use it weekly for devtional reading as well as sermon preparation.
For Sunday, November 11, 2007, the four passages are
1.) Haggai 1:15b–2:9
2.) Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21
3.) 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
4.) Luke 20:27-38
Haggai 2:4 But now be strong, O Zerubbabel,' declares the LORD. 'Be strong, O Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,' declares the LORD, 'and work. For I am with you,' declares the LORD Almighty.
We, God's people, are in a partnership arrangement with God. That is God's ordained structure of getting things done on earth. God can choose to work in whatever manner God wants, and God has chosen to use you and me to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven. This passage makes it clear that we are to do two things: Be Strong and Work. God provides the power, blessings, wisdom, discernment and so forth that we are to place our faith in...we provide the willingness to be used. God decided to use people to carry out His plan here on earth.
Are we wiling to place our trust in God's great power and then be actively involved in the world around us as agents of God's grace? That is a lifelong question isn't it.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Andover Update November 5th
God has been so faithful as we have moved through one full month of services. I am at a loss and quite humbled at the progress we have made so far. It is good (maybe an understatement) to see that about 70% of the first time visitors have come back for a second service. The ratio of First Church to Community congregants started at 33/67 and has been moving wider to approximately a 20/80 split. And this after we expected a 50/50 split! The overriding comment we get from visitors about the church is that it is friendly and they feel a sense of "home". We kicked off Sunday School today for all ages and saw a good complement of people. The choir is humming right along under the direction of Richard Dwyer. We have had special anthems each week and some wonderul instrumental pieces that have added to the worship experience each week. The sense from our Downtown campus is one of great anticipation as well. People are genuinely excited to see what is happening.
All of this would not be possible without a great group of people who have committed themselves and many hours of their time. It is also a tribute the vision, faith, and risk-taking of a congregation with a 200+ year history of service to the Lexington community.
The work is by no means over. In fact, we have some of the tougher work ahead of us as the newness wears off and the sense of normalcy sets in. Connecting people to one another and moving into mission is our next focus and that will be a tall matter for sure.
Todd