Newsletter Article

Today I had to write an article for our newsletter. It is based off of a comment Sr. Pastor Darris made during yesterday's service. I thought you might like it.


Most Attractive Staff Member ???

For those of you in the 10:30 service this past Sunday, you will know what I am talking about. At the end of the service Darris commented that now that Suzanne had left the staff, he had to take up the mantle of being the most attractive staff member now. I must say, that brought the house down. It was one of those lines that becomes the primary thing you remember from the worship service.

It got me thinking. Magazine covers specialize in spotlighting attractive people. People Magazine has the 50 most beautiful people. Sports Illustrated recently came out with their annual swimsuit issue. If the Kingdom of God had a magazine cover, who would be on the cover? Perhaps instead of beauty it would highlight those who are most godly, most embody what the kingdom is. One issue would have a picture of the Sunday School teacher who arrives early each week to teach their kids God’s Word. Another issue would have a picture of someone sending out supplies to soldiers in Iraq. Another issue would show someone answering the phone at the church. These are all people who are in service and doing their part to extend the kingdom of God. What matters is character and Christ-likeness, not attractiveness! Who would you put on the cover?

Max's First Book

This is something Max did recently for a project for school. THey had to write a book. I hope you enjoy it.


This book is dedicated to my family




There are some...
….Unusual things




One fine summer day Bob was riding his skateboard, and then he stopped to look around. He didn’t notice the old lady following him. Before he could get back on his skateboard, the old lady walks up and pokes him with a cane and yelled, “World domination”.

Bob immediately ran away. When he finally got to his friend’s house he told him every mysterious thing that happened. Then his friend said, “Come back here tomorrow and I will have a plan”. The next day he went to his friend’s house. While he was walking the same old lady came. The tried to run faster but his back started to hurt. He eventually got to his friend’s house.

His friend said if he got a new haircut and looked like somebody else then the old lady would stop it. So Bob asked his mom for a haircut and when he got his haircut, he looked like Elvis. When he got home and he got on his skateboard, the old lady recognized him, poked him with a cane and that made him fall off his skateboard. She got in his face and said, “World domination!”


He immediately picked up his skateboard and went to his friend’s house. He told his friend that it didn’t work and so they tried many other ideas. They kept failing. He decided to ask the old lady to stop poking him. The old lady says, “World domination”. Bob responds by saying, “Who is dominating the world?” She says, “Nobody”.

Then Bob runs and tells his friend what she said. He said, “Let’s write cartoons and forget about the whole thing.” The End.

All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises

I made this video yesterday for our service on Sunday. I hope you enjoy it.

We Need your help!

Giggles is one weird little rabbit. He cannot make any decisions, so he leaves his most of his life changing choices to the public. So go to the address below and vote on the poll to help Giggles decide what to do.


http://illuminatedhoneysuckle.blogspot.com/

Super Bowl Reaction

The game was a difficult one for me to root for. While I respect the togetherness and execution of the Patriots, I do not like their coach for the way they run up scores. He is a sore loser. On the other hand, being from Philly, I don't like the NY Giants and especially most NY fans. I like Eli Manning and wanted him to do well.

It seems to me the Giants had a great game plan and excuted it better than the Patriots. I was so excited to see Eli throw the winning touchdown. I just was so happy for the guy. He's taken so many shots about his personality and character and he rose above it being himself and winning says a lot.




The commerials on a whole I was not that impressed with. The best by far was the Coke Commerical with Charlie Brown. Overall, it seemed not the best use of $2.7 Million Dollars for many companies.



Plan on writing more tonight.

MLK Day for the Layers

We went to Knoxville for the day to have some fun and get out of town. The kids and I had off. We went to the mall. These are pictures from the day.


In the mall a pottery store had opened and the kids did pottery pieces. They also had these large walls to draw on. It was a lot of fun.




Mommy made a print of Pierson's hand like we have for all the other kids.



The other kids did a vase, a mug, and a ceramic tile.

Memphis Revisited

These are few pictures from the Estonia weekend. Taavi Holman, District Superintendent from the UNited Methodists churches in Estonia came from his visits to East Tennessee to share with them about the ministry in Estonia.

Dr. Eddie Fox, president of World Methodist Evangelism, was there. He is such a great leader. He reminded me of John Ed Matheson at Frazier Memorial. Very winsome, caring, fun to be around.
We worshipped last Friday night with Maxie Dunnam, Chancellor of Asbury Seminary. This picture doesn't do this justice.

Emmauel UMC hosted this event. They did a good job promoting and highlighting things at this church. This is the church in Estonia that they sponsor.

These are the Estonian Pastors or represenatives who came all the way over from Estonia to be here for this gathering. That is quite a commitment in terms of financial and physical space to navigate to share what is going on.

I am personally looking forward to going to Estonia in July. It looks that now we will do a survey of the capital Tallin, spend some time with our connecting congregation in Aseri and hopefullly do a VBS type of program for their kids and the kids of the community. We also are looking at spending 3-4 days at Camp Gideon, a UMC church camp that continually needs updating.

Ellen Fisher Day

Our church Wednesday night had a retirement celebration for Ellen Fisher, former Associate Minister of First UMC. She just retired from ministry at Christmas time and we had quite a shindig. About 225 people came, more than double our usual Wednesday crowd. Former ministers and youth ministers came to speak as well as testimonials from the crowd of what Ellen has meant to them. On top of that, there was a video tribute remembering all the ministry she had over the years. The county mayor, a member of our church, presented her with a commentation and declaration that January 23rd was Ellen Fisher Day throughout the county. Then the church presented her with a love offering of $3000! WOW. How generous. She was blown away. It was a great evening for Ellen. Below are some pictures from the night.


Lora from Church made two great cakes, one the Methodist Cross and Flame and another for Duke, her alma mater.

Some of our kids sang a song for Ellen.

My Time with Joel Osteen

Matt, one of my Beeson Colleagues from last year found this video on a blog and I pass it on to you for your enjoyment. It was from our visit to Lakewood Church in Houston last January. Enjoy!

http://gregwythesvideos.ning.com/index.php/main/video/show?id=13695411

Memphis Day Two

Last night was a dinner for all connecting congregations that sponsor Estonian Congregations. There were about 5 estonian folks here for this gathering and about 15 churches represented. Of course we had bbq. It was good. It was neat to meet people and begin some networking and hearing what congregations are doing. In particular, I met one man who has gone to Estonia for years and is planning on going the week we had hoped to from our church in Late July. Today is the main session of hearing what is going on in ministry in Estonia and we have a worship service tonight.

On a personal note, I had almost the whole day yesterday to myself so I used the time to read, write my sermon, pray and do some thinking. I was kind of like a retreat day for myself. It made me think how I need to schedule some time to read and think into my weekly schedule.

See you later...

Memphis Day One

Just got to Memphis last night after a 7 hour drive from Morristown. Went with Harry Turner, from Kingsport who has gone to Estonia many times and who brought me up to speed on the ministry in Estonia. I learned that my friend Kaupo Kant who is a pastor there has had two church plants come out of his church in Voru in the past 5 years. This is a small congregation that is looking to launch additional groups and I applaud them for that. This should challenge us in the States with what we are doing in terms of reaching out.

A pastor from Severville is here for the gathering and He and a member of his church and I went to

They are famous for their ribs. I must say they were good but not the best I ever had. In fact, I think I liked the ribs place a mile from my house a little better but it was a fun experience.

Today, I am working from the hotel before our dinner tonight with other Connecting Congregations from around the country. I will report more later in the next couple days. Pray for kate and she is with her mom for several days till I come home. Nancy graciously came to help with the kids. The kids our out of school for a snow day today. Too bad I missed it.

friends of estonia

Tomorrow morning I leave for Memphis Tennessee for the National Friends of Estonia Gathering. Since our church sponsors the Aseri Church, I am going to represent our church and connect with other people to see how they are assisting the ministry in Estonia. At first, I was not looking forward to the 400 mile trip and the 4 days away from my family but now I am looking forward to connecting with folks and getting the bigger picture of what is going on in estonia. I also get most of Thursday to kill so I am looking forward to doing some reading and thinking without the busyness of being here.

Gotta go. Pierson is crying.

My First Post of the New Year

Something is wrong in life when my first post of the year is January 12th. Right now I have 2 sick kids and a sick wife but all is well since they are alseep and I am watching the New England Jackson ville game. I would like NE to loose because I don't like their coach and cocky attitude but it is looking unlikely that will happen. They just scored again. ouch.

Tomorrow I get another Sunday when I don't have to preach. Last week's service was led by our youth and this week's service is a missions sunday led by the Hispanic Church which began just a year ago and now has about 60-80 people in attendance, most by profession of faith or rededication. I am looking forward to it since it will be led by their praise band. We also have the District Superintendent From Estonia (Rev. Taavi Holman) coming to preach for us Sunday night. It should be a great day. I got to go get some rest.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

How does that cover everything. It's amazing, I have been off a few days but have been unable to blog up to this point. These are the kids skating at the local school. We did this a couple days before Christmas when the temp was about 50.

Pierson liked playing on the swings. He is getting so much more animated and loves to hear his own voice. His favorite words and gifts are car and ball. He points at the TV when a car is on it and says, "Car". His reaction to opening Aiden's gift of a car was priceless.

My mom came up the day after Christmas and was with us to yesterday. We just hung out a lot, went to go see Alvin and the Chipmunks, went shopping in the after Christmas rush.

Maggie got a new Helmet for her bike for Christmas. She was looking cool!

We played games as a family, with Kate's and with the kids and my mom.

I must say doing twister is getting harder as I get older. I really need to stretch my body more than I do. It was fun with the kids laughing with each other.

It has been nice to have a few days off from work. Everybody needs a break. I go back on Jan 2nd. 2008 forecasts to be a busy year. I am going to Memphis in mid January as well as an overnight trip to North Carolina. We are just trying to enjoy this slow time before school begins. If I don't get a chance to have another post by tomorrow, have a happy new year!

Hallelujah

My Senior Pastor made me aware of this. Hope you enjoy

The Ultimate Gift

Another week has passed and no blogging. It is hard to keep up regularly, especially with Christmas time.

Last night Kate and I watched The Ultimate Gift, a movie which came out about a year ago. It was about a incredibly wealthy man who gave his grandson the ultimate gift. I won't spoil it for you but instead of giving him money, he gave him the gift of things that matter, the gift of work, the gift of family, the gift of laughter, the gift of problems. It keeps you on the edge of your seat seen this young man gain responsibility in his life.

Tonight a Sunday School class is doing something great. They are making a steak dinner for those in Transitional Housing (MATS) and the Daily Bread Ministry (who feeds people from our community every day). About 15o are scheduled to attend. On top of that, they are giving each person gifts and after the meal, they are going to watch The Ultimate Gift. It is exciting to see how Christmas for several folks means more than attending worship services, but it means giving back, of their money and their time. I'll let you know how it went later.

Another exciting thing this year is how many responded the jail ministry request of helping kids at Christmas. There was a M and M tree with kids names on it whose parents (usually fathers) are in jail. So many gifts have shown up at our office to be given to those kids whose parents are seen weekly by people from our church.

Which leads me to another thought, is the disposition of our lives in general to give back or to take. SOmetimes people do great things at Christmas to either relieve guilt or to make it Christmas or Thanksgiving special to others. But I have to ask myself if overall I am a giver or a taker. Do I look first to help others or to meet my own needs first? I saw in a recent article that Gingumsburg UM Church has challenged churches and local busiiness to give as much money as they spend on themselves to their mission to Africa, with a goal set of $1.5 Million dollars. WOW! This challenges me to be that giving to others, especially others I don't know. Think about yourself, your disposition, your Christmas giving. Are there any adjustments that need to be made?

Search for Baby Jesus

This past Sunday night was the Search for Baby Jesus with some of our kids at church. We gathered and went around town to find Jesus. It was kind of like a scavenger hunt. We closed out the night at Jeff and Polly Adams house. As you can see Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus were in their barn.

Suzanne Then read to us the Christmas story.

The rest of the night involved smores, looking at the beautiful scenery, driving the golf cart. It was a fun night.

Way Too Long Not To Blog

Hello, It has been quite a while since my last entry. I will blog more later but Trav Wilson sent me this video of Asbury Professors doing a commercial. Included in this is Dr. Kalas, first man in the video, who is now the president of Asbury Seminary. It is funny seeing such a distinguished man making this kind of video.

Reactions from Last Sunday's Sermon

I must say I was surprised by the number of comments I got after preaching last Sunday. Ususally I get, "good sermon, Pastor" types of comments but the reactions I got were heartfelt. The best was one I receieved in the early service when she said God spoke to her about two things in her life. Those are the types of comments I like to hear. While I want a sermon to be easy to follow and at least enjoyable, what I most want is for God to say something to people through his word. Sometimes he does that inspite of us or with us. I pray that it might be the latter most often.

Tomorrow I preach again, This time on Mary. It is advent and I am taking a look at each of the characters. Basically I am preaching that Mary was 14, from a small insignificant little town in a land occupied by a foreign power and in the midst of her lack of understanding of all the angel explains to her, she still responds in faith. What makes this story even more amazing is the story which comes before it in Luke is the story of Zechariah, a priest with a tremendous spiritual heritage, who does not exhibit the same degree as the uneducated 14 year old girl. I close that sometimes in life God doesn't seem to make sense, like in both of these cases, yet how we respond makes all the difference. Last time I checked, there weren't two many people naming their kids Zechariah.

Pictures from Thanksgiving

The Family at Lunch

Anna's Hands Expressing her joy for the lunch Kate and Nancy made.

Pierson watching Best in Show on Thanksgiving.