Elders Participate in

“Miniversity” on Vision

  Several of our elders, Mark Stokes, Steve Jones and Sheila Dannenmaier, along with Pastor Lowell Roddy,  recently traveled to Lebanon, Tennessee, to attend a “miniveristy” held at the Lebanon Cumberland Presbyterian Church on the topic of vision.  The purpose of the event was to introduce church leaders to the processes used by other churches to make wise and prayful decisions concerning congregational goals.

  Participants studied various scriptures to understand what the prophets and apostles meant by the term “vision.”  The program also encouraged everyone to look at how the early Christian church responded to Paul’s vision of the Macedonian man requesting missionary assistance and apply that conviction and enthusiasm to a plan for fulfilling the challenges before us today.  Topics that were covered included: Identifying the Need, Claiming God’s Vision for Our Congregation, Evaluating the Obstacles and Resources that Impact Our Vision, and Planning to Make Our Vision Happen. 

  While several of the groups attending the conference were there, like Charlotte CPC, to learn about the vision program, others are farther along in their efforts and described what they have learned as they worked through the extensive goal planning process.  The pastor of the Lebanon CPC told how the congregation discovered unperceived needs in their community and developed new goals and programs to meet those challenges.  As a result the church is experiencing renewed spiritual vigor with dynamic physical growth as well. 

  While the results of the vision process will vary for each individual congregation, please be in prayer that our church will be open to God’s leading as we work fulfill His vision for us in the Charlotte community. 

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Do You Want to Go to Heaven?

Sunday school teacher: “How many of you children want to go

to heaven?”
Everyone raised a hand except one little boy.
Teacher to the boy: “Johnny, don’t you want to go to heaven?”
Johnny: “I can’t. Mother told me to come home right after

Sunday school.”

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God and Your Money

What money?

That’s a good question. The sad reality is that many American families spend more money than they make. That should be a shocking fact for Christians. Why? Because Christians are supposed to be good stewards of all that we have: our time, talent, intelligence, energy and possessions, including money.

Let’s consider money from the Christian standpoint:

1.       It is not sinful to earn all the legitimate money one can garner.  In itself, money is not evil. It is the love of money we must resist.

2.       It is important to save as much as we can-at least 10 percent.

3.       It is vital to make a budget and stick to it.

4.       God owns the world and gives us the responsibility to take care of it. It takes money to care for home and property.

5.       We should strive to five at least 10 percent to God’s work, which includes the church.

6.       One reliable fact about stewardship: There is no way we can out-give our loving God. Ever!

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Pointers on

Gardening?

There’s the story of the minister who was making a wooden trellis to support a climbing vine.

As he was pounding away, he noticed that a little boy was watching him. The youngster didn’t say a word, so the preacher kept on working, thinking the lad would leave. But he didn’t.

Pleased at the thought that his work was being admired, the pastor finally said, “Well, son, trying to pick up some pointers on gardening?”

“No,” he replied. “I’m just waiting to hear what a preacher says when he hits his thumb with a hammer.”

—Homiletics

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Science and Scripture

We need the spectacles of science to show us what the universe is like, and the spectacles of Scripture to show us how to relate to God as creatures in the divine image.

—Dr. Barbara Pursey, retired teacher
at Dubuque Theological Seminary
 

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Shedding Tears Before God

When Philip Johnson, renowned architect and designer of the Crystal Cathedral in California, was just 13, his family took him to France. When they entered the cathedral at Chartres, Philip was so moved by the majesty and beauty of the building dedicated to God that he burst into tears.

  I have also shed tears in a church. I wept when I felt the nudging presence of God pointing me toward the ministry. I wept when I was ordained. I wept when I retired after serving as a pastor for 38 years.

  I have seen people weep at the altar rail. I have seen brides cry during the marriage ceremony. I have observed people weeping at funerals and sometimes at the baptism of a child. I recall a man saying to me, “I cried during the sermon. Do you know that what you preach can sometimes make a person cry?”

  To weep before God is to be in good company. Job said, “My eye pours out tears to God” (Job 16:20, NRSV). A psalmist prayed, “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not hold your peace at my tears” (Psalm 39:12, NRSV). Read Jeremiah 9 and you will understand why he is called “the weeping prophet.”

  Jesus wept over the wretched status of Jerusalem where he was spurned (Luke 19:41). He also wept when his friend Lazarus died (John 11:35). St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “I wrote you out of much distress and anguish of heart and with many tears” (2 Corinthians 2:4, NRSV).

  The point is this: When you are moved to cry before God, cry. People with caring hearts do that. This is something to remember, especially during Lent.

—Charles Ferrell

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 Mission Prayer Emphasis

 Keep the Hopson family

of  Kampala, Uganda,

In East Africa in your

prayers this month

 Kenneth and Delight Hobson, along with their three young children, Kaleb, Austin and Emilee, serve with the Cumberland Presbyterian World Gospel Mission. Kenneth serves in the management of a printing press. He is currently involved in a feasibility study of beginning a Christian ministry in Kampala. Delight will be teaching and discipling.

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Mark your calendars for the Nashville Presbytery's Children Bash on April 22 beginning at 2:00 at the Brenthaven Church.

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Things to Ponder:

 ● We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
—Abraham Lincoln

● Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
—Leo Buscaglia

● The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.
—Mohandas Gandhi

"A Historic Church, Living the Good News"