by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
It’s been said that Jesus eats his way through the gospels. Open up any page of the gospels and Jesus is usually there eating and drinking. It’s no wonder he uses eating and drinking in communion to make us part of his body.
We have some changes to the way we eat and drink together that have been a long time in coming. As always, these will require feedback and patience with one another.
Our kitchen is a sort of crown jewel of our campus. Our leaders wisely built an ambitious commercial kitchen with which to host events for us and our broader community. We have had remarkable volunteer leaders there–Jan Niblick, Denise Stanley, Mary Carolyn Abernathy, Tamera Holshouser. With their encouragement, SPRC saw the need, and Finance found the money to hire a kitchen coordinator. Lynn Rollins is working for us part-time in that capacity and she is a wonder with her expertise and professionalism and grace.
With Lynn’s hire, we have an opportunity to get serious about the kitchen policies that have existed on paper for some time, but haven’t been followed as uniformly as necessary. For example, groups have to clean up after themselves when they use the kitchen. This is not only common courtesy of a sort that roommates and spouses have to master on day 1; it’s also necessary to keep people volunteering. If you have to clean up for two hours (I exaggerate not) before you can cook, you’ll think twice about volunteering. We also cannot leave dirty dishes or food out for basic sanitary reasons. It’s gross at home, but unsanitary and discourteous in a common kitchen.
What else will this mean? Outside groups will pay a deposit. We will almost certainly change the locks and limit the access non-staff have to the kitchen. We will need to require donations or approximately $3-5 each for meals. These (nd probably other changes) will be for our good, and we’ll be proud of the results.
One other change is to how we serve coffee on Sunday mornings. Chuck Eyler has helped us all see that drinking coffee together in the chapel is a great use of that space and time…especially in welcoming new people and getting to know folks who aren’t in our normal Sunday routine. This has been wonderful…but Chuck needs help. Folks who have made coffee down the Sunday School wing for years have had their routine disrupted, but I hope y’all will join Chuck in this new coffee-making routine. We’re going to begin selling our own Boone United Methodist blend courtesy of Uijin Park and Espresso News shortly with a tithe of proceeds going to mission. While this time together in our most beautiful room is wonderful. We will work hard to incorporate the 11am worship folks and Crossroads folks into that community time?
As Jesus and the disciples ate and drank their way through the gospels, they had their own complications. Who pays? (some women leaders, one verse tells us–see Luke 8:3). Who gets how much (handy when he can always make more)? More locally now–how do we navigate the different sort of volunteer we’re getting these days? More households are two-income. Fewer stay-at-home parents are ready to volunteer oceans of time to church. Folks in my generation are much more inclined to pay than to do the work ourselves. These changes are neither good nor bad, they just are. What do they mean in terms of how we share our kitchen? I don’t know. I just know Jesus will be faithful as we try to figure it out together.
And that he’ll meet us as we eat and drink at his table.
by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
We’re so excited about this weekend! This Saturday night at 6:30 pm (note the time–chosen to be friendly to those who are cautious about driving at night) and Sunday at 11:00 am we will gather for a combined worship and to hear from Leighton Ford, one of the most significant leaders in the church for more than seven decades since he went to work for his brother-in-law Billy Graham at age 15, 71 years ago. I’m honored to call him a friend, and to introduce him to you, my friends of Boone United Methodist. This would be a perfect event to which to bring a friend.
Saturday night at 6:30 pm will include worship by local group Battle Victorious. They’re terrific in a concert venue, but this is church, and we’ll sing with them, and Leighton will preach. Sunday we will worship in the sanctuary at 11:00 am in a combined service with our wonderful praise team and Leighton preaching once more. He is only allowed to preach twice in twelve hours these days, so our combined service honors that need from our guest. We will eat together after in our Family Life Center. We will also have mission displays in our chapel Saturday evening and Sunday morning with local mission efforts showing us what they’re up to and encouraging our involvement. We will have our own mission projects on Saturday at 9:00 am. Please sign up for mission projects and for child care on Saturday night. I’m so proud of our mission committee, chaired by Dale Williams and guided by Rev. Laura Beach as well as Tamera Holshouser and Sarah Strickland of the Family Life Committee.
This weekend we will make a wager on God once more. Faith Promise is not a second ask, like for a building fund. It’s a step out in faith. We imagine that God will bless a certain sized gift separate from our normal Sunday offering. Then, if God is faithful and provides that money over the next July-June year, we give it to missions. If not, we don’t. We find that the more faith we have, the more God provides. The result of this over the past decade is a dramatic, sometimes 10-fold increase in our mission budget, allowing us to support local work like the Wesley Foundation, Circles of the High Country, Boone Area Missions, and international work like Guatemala, Zoe in Rwanda and India, and the Justices in Germany. We’re proud of our Faith Promise work and want to invite you to partner with us.
Sometimes the Sunday after Easter is called Low Sunday–the people aren’t there, the musicians aren’t there, hey even the ministers aren’t there. Not here. Easter is only the beginning. It’s that way with God and the church, and so it is in our midst here. See you Saturday evening at 6:30 pm and Sunday at 11:00 am.
by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
Folks sometimes commiserate with me around Easter or Christmas: “You must be really busy.” I’m tempted to respond, “I’d pay y’all to do this.” Don’t tell the Staff-Parish Relations Committee. . . Worship is the reason we preachers get into this work. So the weeks to come are full of delights.
First, Holy Week. We’ll kick off this Palm Sunday with a big and thumpy processional led by Cassie the Haas family . . . donkey. We’ll receive new members at the sanctuary services and fete them with a reception in the chapel between services. Then the service will take a turn from Palm to Passion Sunday as we read the narrative of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, suffering, and death. We’ll leave in quiet.
Then Holy Week will see a Footwashing service on Wednesday night, April 1, at 7 pm, at which I will preach and which the Revs. Vern Collins and Laura Beach will help me lead. We pastors will wash your feet (or hands if you prefer). Our choir and musicians will lead some gorgeous music. I really beg you to come to this, odd as it may seem, as part of your week of following Jesus to his cross. Thursday, April 2, at 7 pm we will have our traditional Maundy Thursday reenactment with communion and stripping of the altar following. Friday, April 3, at 7 pm we will have a Seven Last Words service with our pastoral staff preaching (Jeff, Vern, Colette, Laura, Patti, Luke). Each will have 3 minutes with which to wonder at the mystery of Christ’s saving work by attending to one of his sayings from his cross. Our choir and congregation will sing some of our greatest songs and we will conclude with Tenebrae and a haunting sounding of 33 bells to remember each year of Christ’s life.
As Christ explodes from his tomb on Sunday, our church will explode into worship on Easter, April 5th. We will worship as usual in our sanctuary and Crossroads services, plus a 6:30 am sunrise service that will begin in our courtyard around a fire and will include song by Abby Bryant (if you heard her in our sanctuary services last week, you know you’ll be amazed).
The point of Holy Week is to walk with Jesus to his cross, on the way to be astounded by him again at his resurrection.
The week to follow is sometimes called Low Sunday in the church–the pews are more empty, the ministers are away too. I love those Sundays–they show the “reward” for worship on a big festival day is . . . more worship, with less spectacle. But will there ever be spectacle on April 11-12! We will have our Mission Celebration weekend highlighted by preaching from Leighton Ford on Saturday night April 11 at 6:30 pm and in one combined service on April 12 at 11:00 am. Leighton is one of the most significant evangelists of the 20th and now 21st centuries. He worked alongside his brother-in-law Billy Graham for years. He led the Lausanne movement for world evangelization, and recently has devoted his time in his 80’s to mentoring younger leaders. He’s still the best preacher I’ve ever heard. We will celebrate our time together Sunday with a meal put on by our Family Life Committee (thank you Tamera Holshouser and Sarah Strickland!). The Saturday evening service on April 11, will include song led by the local blue grass and Americana group Battle Victorious.
In advance of April 11-12 we’d like you to be in prayer about how our church serves in mission here and around the world. We raise some $70,000 a year via Faith Promise with which we bless mission work near and far. This is money we commit on faith to God. If God provides, we give. If God doesn’t, we don’t. We are convinced that the more we step out in faith in our promise to give the more God blesses us, as a church and individually. Please consider how you might partner with God’s redeeming work in the world as we hear from one of God’s great partners in recent decades in Leighton.
So much to look forward to. What a gift to be the church together in this town. Lent’s “bright sadness” is nearly over. We’re about ready to say, “Christ is . . .”.
by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
Dear Church,
I am often staggered by the gifts on our staff. And I often wonder how to let others in on what I see. So in response to a good suggestion (thanks Dave Rowe!) I’d like to use this space to interview them, starting with our newest pastoral hire, the Rev. Laura Beach. Laura is a graduate of Davidson College and Duke Divinity School and is working for us two days a week in Luke Edwards’ old role as mission coordinator. When she is not working for us, she is helping coordinate the Circles anti-poverty initiative in which Boone Methodist is also invested. Her job for us is not to do all the mission work (who could?!) but to coordinate each of our efforts to offer ourselves in response to God’s calling on our lives.
What made you decide to be a Christian?
Because God’s grace went before me and drew me in. I’m in love with a God who had the power to create everything out of nothing, but who was willing to set aside that power to come live among us in the most vulnerable way–as a frail human baby. I am compelled to follow a God who had such great love for us wayward people that Jesus was willing to call us “friends,” and to die the most painful death at our hands without resorting to violence in return. I find joy in knowing Jesus and meeting him anew in the most unlikely people. I love that Jesus forms into one body people who would normally have little reason to connect. I want to be like the saints, who have such faith that they are willing to give up their whole lives following the One who showed us what it means to be truly human.
What made you decide to be a minister?
Since middle school I have wanted to serve people, especially society’s voiceless and powerless. I thought I would do that as a public servant. In college I studied international development with a focus on sustainable agriculture. I thought I would serve in a non-profit development agency. But during a summer internship at Maggie Valley UMC, I began to see how God might want to use my gifts and passion for serving to equip the church to be in relationship and ministry with those who are often overlooked by the church. In the years that followed, God kept affirming that I was called to minister to and through God’s set apart people–the Body of Christ.
What’s your deepest hope for your job?
I am delighted that in my role here at Boone UMC I am able to combine some of my background in development and my love for people to help us as a church engage the community to work towards creating an environment where all people can flourish. My deepest hope is that we would so authentically engage and love the community that those we meet would become family who say “This is my church!”, whether we meet them through our firewood ministry, the community garden, Circles of the High Country, our work at the Hospitality House, or in local schools and agencies. On the flip side, my hope is that through these relationships–as well as through our international partnerships –Jesus will continue to make us holier.
What’s something most people don’t know about you?
Most people know pretty quickly when they meet me that I’m strange. You’ll see me riding my bike when it’s cold,bringing my own plate and utensils everywhere so I don’t have to use disposables, being adamant about recycling, eating food that would otherwise be wasted, and in general insisting that we think about the impact various decisions have on our more vulnerable neighbors–human and non-human. What most people do not know is that all these strange things I do come from deep convictions about what it means to follow Jesus, to love God and neighbor, and to be faithful and grateful stewards of all the gifts God has given us. So, if you see me doing something strange, and think, “Why is she doing that?” I’d love to have a conversation about it!
by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
“So are we not having a bulletin anymore?”
This is the kindest version of this anxious question I’ve gotten. The most hostile was from my seven-year old: “Ever since we unveiled this logo you won’t snuggle with me anymore!” I reassured him the logo and the snuggle schedule are unrelated. And proceeded to snuggle.
The hardest part of my job is knowing what to tell to whom when. Our longtime leaders on the now-dissolved visioning committee have known for years that our new mission statement would result in visible changes. Last fall they kept asking, “When are these graphics appearing?” But most of y’all didn’t know any of this was coming. So when we unveiled the new logo and graphic identity and bulletin in late January, the vision leaders and all the staff said, “Finally!” Many of the rest of you were surprised or even shocked. What’s with all these changes? Why so fast and without warning?
Here’s what the graphics task force, the communications committee, and the communications staff have been up to with the bulletin. The one we have long handed out is phonebook thick, with most of its contents only of interest to few. How many of us need to know who wrote the tune to the next hymn in what year? What night the committee meeting is? We have screens and hymnals and email and a website for such details. The bulletin is focused now more on helping orient folks who are new to worship. What is church for anyway? What do we do and why? Tracy Smith helped me see the value in such explanations. “This liturgy stuff isn’t bad,” she said one day. “Do you mind stopping to explain it occasionally?”
Our next sermon series will have a brief order of service in it, so prepare to be less discombobulated! We’ll also stuff the announcements back in the bulletin. The bulletin–like all of us on Sundays–is turned now toward welcoming those least familiar with the church. New and unfamiliar? Sure. But it’s the right thing for us to do.
As for the new graphics, the reaction has varied. Folks more accustomed to business settings have seemed to me downright ecstatic. We have to be identifiable visually and business leaders know this. Others have been more nervous. Is the cross being displaced? Are we less Methodist now? Is red disallowed? (Answers: no, no, and no). Like my son, we see change that comes without warning and worry something we really fear is about to happen too.
The church is often resistant to change for good reason. The most important things about ourselves we will never change: Jesus, the witness to him in the scriptures, the truth about him in our traditions. The color of the logo? Not so much. The colors the graphics task force chose suggest the liveliness and vitality of a region like ours that cherishes the outdoors, and a mission that calls all people to discover “life in Christ.” We still love our denomination’s insignia. Our congregation’s logo tells a more local story about Boone with a cross-shaped path of discipleship through the mountains. Both are good. Only one is new.
Here’s where we are: the visioning group, led by Kelly Broman-Fulks and joined by Charles Stanley, Jim Deal, John Thomas, Bobby Sharp and a host of others, completed its work in the fall 2014 and handed the vision off to a number of temporary task forces. The graphics task force, led by Michaele Haas, is behind the new logo and graphics and banners. A First Face task force under Johnny Carson is revamping our practices of greeting guests. An interior design and chapel task force under Margaret Handley and Scott St. Clair is looking at how our interior space can signal “welcome!” instead of “we store stuff here.” A longer term project is a task force examining a future adult care facility and is co-chaired by Claire Cline and our new volunteer director of adult ministries, Patti Connelly. The overall work of the four task forces is overseen by Susan Jones.
There are obviously more changes afoot. But these changes are not designed to undo what is good about us. They are designed to sustain what is good and strengthen us for a future of doing what we have always done: being the body of Christ for the sake of this community’s flourishing. Nothing stays the same in this world. A house not maintained will deteriorate. So will any other human endeavor or created thing. But working hard to sustain what is good and to improve areas that need strengthening can make an institution last quite a long time–millennia even, as the church of Jesus Christ has shown.
And yes, snuggling is still allowed.
by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
A friend of mine was a pastor in Montreal. He was in his office one day when a limousine rolled in and an entourage stepped out. It was Rod Stewart. He and his friends asked, “Can we pray here?” Why sure! My friend said, wondering what to have him autograph. He apologized for the disarray in his sanctuary. “We’re under construction.” Rod Stewart responded, “Isn’t the church always under construction?”
Jesus-soaked wisdom from the man who wrote “Maggie May.” Sure enough, the church is always under construction. And so are we as persons.
As a church, we’re just off a fantastic weekend in which we unveiled our new logo and graphic identity (thanks to Michaele Haas for leading that task force and to Susan Jones for her overall leadership of the task forces). We had a terrific leadership meeting in the afternoon. After Kelly Broman-Fulks’ and Jim Deal’s rousing words we were all ready to run through a wall. Our Pathways sermon series in the sanctuary and in Crossroads will include sermons on our strategy icons for the next four weeks: worship, connect, serve, and grow. We’ll plan to do all four together this month.
We had an excellent year in lay leadership in 2014. Our staff-parish committee has some recent successes to report. We have made a hire in our mission coordinator position: the Rev. Laura Beach starts work with us on February 1st. She is an elder in our conference and will ably fill Luke Edwards’ shoes, which Jaimie McGirt has done on an interim basis of late. Laura will lead us to serving Jesus in the vulnerable here and around the world. And then having met Jesus in his poor, we become different, holier, more like Jesus.
Judy Wyndham starts work with us in our administrative offices on February 1st. She came highly recommended by several longtime trusted leaders of our church and will help us in work that Denise Stanley has done brilliantly as a volunteer in communications. The trustees have pushed us to have someone in our foyer to be the face of the church greeting everyone God sends our way. Judy will be ideal at this. The words “administration” and “ministry” have the same root for a reason. Judy’s contribution to our ministry will be inestimable.
We have also made a hire in our kitchen to coordinate all our work in feeding our youth, our children, our elderly, and our community. Lynn Rollins has experience as a chef and kitchen coordinator and will start in early March. Her hire does not mean we don’t need volunteers to cook–we always will! It means when we volunteer we’ll have someone showing us how to do it well. It’s been said that Jesus eats his way through the gospels. When we meet over food he is present, in the breaking of bread. Lynn will help lead us all in this holy work.
These hires and lay leaders are guiding us all toward “loving our community and inviting all to discover life in Christ.” As one of your pastors I know this word isn’t enough, but frail words are all we ever have: thank you. God is with us. Let’s rejoice.
