by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
Our lives are run by a series of different schedules. These are sometimes conflicting. As a parent, the school year runs my family’s life: when is spring break? How long is summer vacation? These questions determine our lives. As a sports fan our lives are run by games. I love it, especially this time of year. Those are two powerful schedules that determine who we are.
The church also has a calendar that determines who we are. And this week is the height of that calendar. Holy Week is the summit from which we look down on and evaluate all the rest of the year. And do we ever have a Holy Week planned for you. I want to encourage all of you to take part in all of Holy Week. It’s the week where we walk with Jesus down a lonely road to Golgotha, called “Skull Place,” to die. And yet that death is not the end.
All week please be specially attentive to scripture and prayer. One approach to Holy Week would be to read the passion stories in all four gospels. It will take a while, but it will help you live into what Jesus experienced with his betrayal, arrest, torture, death, and his end-that-was-not-the-end. As a church we will gather on Wednesday of Holy Week at 5:30 p.m. in the chapel during the time when we normally celebrate the Eucharist. This week we will celebrate a foot washing, where Jesus, the greatest, takes the role of a slave. Please wear shoes you can remove with relative ease (hard this time of year when it is not yet warm, I realize!). We will remember who our Lord is, and what it means to serve him, as we wash one another’s feet.
Thursday we have our dramatic representation of the Last Supper, “Is it I?” directed by Paul and Diana Haas. This has become a mainstay here in the High Country. We invite you to experience it again or for the first time. Twelve men in our church become the disciples on the night of Jesus’ last meal. We learn what each is thinking when Jesus announces that one will betray. And we learn a bit about each of the twelve and how their lives ended as powerful witnesses to Jesus. It has been said that the best “proof” we have of the resurrection is this sorry lot of losers transformed from deniers and betrayers into those who would give their lives in martyrdom for what they had seen and heard. The best “proof” Jesus has now is your and my life. Sobering thought, isn’t it? Enough to make you and me get ourselves to church, isn’t it?
On Friday we will begin our celebration with The Stations of the Cross, portrayed by Dr. Cynthia Taylor, followed by the seven last words that Jesus says from his cross: “Father, forgive,” “I thirst,” “It is finished,” and more. Our preachers are seven of our leaders at this church and beyond: Carrie McClain, our own pastor Jeff’s wife, herself a seminary graduate and aspiring pastor; Caitlin Tremper, a graduating senior at App bound for divinity school; Renee Choate, longtime leader at our church and at others; Eric Heistand, campus minister with Cru at App, Austin Eggers, seminary graduate and from a long-standing family at our church; Chief or Buddy Price, longtime pastor of Banner Elk Christian Fellowship (now in his 90s!); and from my staff Dana Holden, director of our preschool, and a seminary grad and leader in the church herself. Each preacher gets all of 3 minutes, 180 seconds (we won’t go over an hour!), to illumine her or his portion of scripture. These are some of the most gifted preachers we have, people who love our church, please come and support them and worship on Friday night at 7:00 p.m.
On Holy Saturday we will have an Easter Egg hunt and other children’s activities at the church from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30a.m. All the world waits on Holy Saturday for what’s to come.
Easter Sunday will begin early, 6:30 a.m., while it is still dark (John 20:1), when the women first came to the tomb. We will worship in the chapel. Our first sunrise service in some time will include music, preaching, communion. Our regular worship services at 8:45 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and Crossroads at 10:55 a.m. will be full of visitors. As we worship the newly risen Lord that day be sure and greet and welcome and speak to those not normally in church. What a gift that God sends us angels in the form of visitors on these holy days.
And what a gift to serve a crucified and risen Lord together in these mountains. Blessings for Holy Week.
by Jason Byassee
Dear Friends,
“We think every rupee is as precious as every child.”
Jason Byassee
So claims Chris Heuertz, founder of a terrific mission agency called Word Made Flesh, and our missions celebration keynote this spring. I so hope everyone can participate all weekend, April 19-21. He is the best of Wesleyan evangelicalism (a graduate of Asbury College) with Catholic care for the poorest of the poor (he spent months at Mother Teresa’s home for the dying in Kolkata). Word Made Flesh founded the first pediatric AIDS care home in South India. They treasure children. And they strive to treasure their funding just as much.
We do too here at Boone UMC. Last fall seemed to be shaping up like a hard one for us. We made budget plans for 2013 on the assumption that money would be even tighter than in 2012. We have since had several pieces of good news.
One, we finished 2012 in the black financially. This was due to some remarkable giving by each of you. Some of you told me “I dug deep, did we make it?” We didn’t make what we budgeted, but we did cover what we spent. Our future work here is to spread our giving out over the course of the year so we no longer have to pray for a “Christmas miracle”!
Two, we have been working to refinance our mortgage. Harold Tilley, Jennifer Whittington in my office, Jason Triplett and others did the work to put our loan out for bids and four banks came back with terms that would all have improved on what we were paying. We decided to refinance with Wells Fargo, since they offered the best rate and the most flexibility we could get. Our new rate will free up thousands of dollars in monthly cash flow. Harold gave this happy news to the administrative council this week. Let me reiterate what I said then: let us not say that finance committee is always the frowning body of “no”!
Three, we have received a significant gift from a bequest of a church member, Bette Hodson, who died in 2012. She loved our church, our children’s ministry, and our life together pursuing Jesus on this mountain. This is a game changing gift for our church. For now we will use it to pay off our smaller mortgage, provide funding for the visioning process and the creation of a capital reserve fund. The rest will be placed in our endowment fund to bless future generations.
Just to be clear, the giver of this gift wanted no part of it to go to regular operating expenses. She was wise to stipulate that. We need to cover our own bills through the spiritual practice of giving and investing in God’s work in this church and community. What the gift does do is set an example of the way one member’s giving beyond her death can bless her church for years to come. She did not have to ask her family to sacrifice to do it–on the contrary they made out far better than they would without this investment. Please see me or Jim Deal in our endowment committee for more about how you can do likewise.
Final note on our finances for now: with the recent arrest of a community member for embezzling from another local church, it is a good time to say that we have practices and people in place to prevent this here. We have two check signers for every check that goes out. Two people have to count our Sunday offering together (only one can be a staff member and they cannot both be check signers, or family members). We hire an external accountant to go over our expenditures. Our finance committee is moving us toward a full audit of our finances. We are bonded against any potential embezzlement. What happened is terribly sad. No one should be so naïve as to say “it couldn’t happen here.” But we have practices in place to make it exceedingly difficult. If any of you would like to discuss anything about our finances please see me or Harold, our finance chair, we can tell you more than you’d ever want to hear.
Let us all move toward treating children and dollars as the treasures they are.
by Jason Byassee
Dear Friends,
A lay leader here whom I trust deeply recently came to me with some advice. “You ask a lot of us,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt to thank us, say ‘attaboy’, every now and then”.
Jason Byassee
He couldn’t be more right. I spent oceans of words and worry last fall on our finances. Y’all heard about it, I lost sleep over it, it hung over lots of our conversations, in worship and far outside. I honestly felt last fall sometimes like the wheels were coming off. I know we have a history of catching up at the end of the year with our giving, but what if this is the first time we don’t? On my watch? (sorry to overpersonalize these matters…).
Then we did catch up. Money kept coming in into 2013 (apparently you can give well into January toward the year before and get tax benefits. Who knew?!). One noteworthy gift came from our own Preschool, which sent a gift of $2,000 to the church, bless them. And we realized in our accounting that $50,000 we set aside for repair was being counted as an expense, when it’s still in our hands, waiting to be spent (we removed it from our profit and loss sheet). So with an avalanche of generous year-end giving we met our expenses for 2012. I still can’t believe it when I think about it. Several of you have come to me and asked, “Did we make it? Our family stretched, dug deep, and did all we could.” I can’t say this enough: thank you. That end of the year giving is not to be presumed. It took all of us digging deep and giving generously–in response to a God who gives us everything in Christ.
Another of you suggested I more often give thanks for folks in lay leadership, serving on committees, stretching our church in mission (do you see a common theme in the feedback I’m getting?!). I told her I hesitate to thank people because no one is serving for me. Any service, any giving, any time offered, is done out of love for God, the church, and our community. For me to say ‘thank you’ hints that I’m the recipient, and I never am. She corrected me: “It’s not for you, sure enough. But you’re the leader of our church. Your thanks means something.”
With this first round of committee meetings at our church in 2013, with eager new members and wise longer-time participants, I’m staggered at the level of creativity and hospitality offered in leadership in our church. I hear stories about the elbow grease and skill with which we rebuilt our church building after the fire in 1982. Lots more of our leaders are around who built this current site in 2000. We have more community leaders than I can count, in all sectors of society, who are part of our congregation.
And we have real needs. One group is talking about what our vision as a church should be. They talked before about our financial situation, our debt, our long term financial prospects, and possible need for a capital campaign. Another group is working on our welcoming practices. We have a confusing building, hard to read for outsiders, leaving, say, parents with kids who turn up to church 15 minutes late unsure where to take their kids, where to find worship, where they left their car. Another group is trying to tend to a building that is aging and having expensive repair problems to HVAC’s. Another wants to make our prayer space more beautiful, on the way to attracting more participation in our prayer practices. Others spend all their time and effort in designing creative and exciting ministry with our children, our youth, in missions in our community. Still another is launching new endeavors in mission internationally and locally and among the poor. If you count the hours and the worn shoe leather and the chewed up pencils you’d run out of time.
This church is such a gift. It is offering its life to God, who offered his life to us first in Christ. The kingdom of God inches slightly closer when we do these things. As leader of this church on its behalf I say, thank you, more profoundly than I can ever articulate on my own. And as your friend and fellow church member, your fellow sinner being saved by grace, I say “Let’s get back to work.”
by Jason Byassee
Dear Friends,
Jason Byassee
I was struck by a story Will Willimon shared with us while he was here and so want to share it with you who weren’t there that Sunday afternoon. He had a meeting with Cal Turner, founder of Dollar General, a fabulously successful businessman and loyal Methodist. Turner asked the Methodist bishops what they thought Dollar General sells. Consumer products? No. They sell hospitality. ‘We imagine a single mother of two. She’s been treated like dirt all day as she works two jobs to try and make ends meet. When she comes in here we want her to feel treated like a queen. We want to get her whatever she wants and we want to remember her when she comes back.’
Sounds not a little like what the church is trying to do, doesn’t it? Among public speakers like me they say an audience will remember you best not for what you said, but for how you made them feel while you were speaking. So it is with church. Those who honor us with their time by visiting us will not first remember what I or anyone else said or did, but how we made them feel while they were with us. Would that they would feel like angels, like Jesus himself, because biblically speaking, that’s what our guests are (see Genesis 18, Matthew 25, Hebrews 13).
My family and I ran into this difference on a recent trip. We stopped to eat at a national chain and were told it would be a 20 minute wait. We noticed the place was unclean, that waiters were bickering at one another openly, the server wasn’t at her station, and when we found her she said it would be another 30 minutes. “The wait staff is just overwhelmed,” she explained. I don’t blame the wait staff for this–clearly someone in management hadn’t hired enough of them, trained or treated them well enough. It was clear we weren’t wanted, so we left.
At another national chain we found ourselves attended to, joked with, welcomed. “What do you want, baby?” the waitress asked. As she left Jaylynn said hearing herself called “baby,” after our last experience made her feel like a star! We not only stayed, tipped more than was reasonable, and enjoyed, we’ll go back.
I’m hesitant to draw on consumer experiences for talking about church. We’re not a chain competing with rivals, we’re the church of Jesus Christ, cooperating with other churches in preparing for a Kingdom that God is bringing. But such analogies can be useful. It is hard to greet unfamiliar people. I’ve done it before and been embarrassed to learn the person had been at our church 20 years! Yet greet we must, and not only that, we must befriend, notice, get to know, pray for and with people. One church consultant wisely says “People are not looking for friendliness. They’re looking for friends.” And we have that to give–for God has made us his friend in Jesus Christ (John 15).
A friend of mine first visited our church when his family moved here. He was terribly put off. No one spoke to him, he didn’t know where to take his kids, the building was confusing, parking was a headache, and he left vowing not to come back. Only years later, re-invited by friends, did he come back, get involved, and join. Now he helps lead us. He remembers that initial impression.
Our church is, by nature, generous about welcoming new people. This is not a place where you have to have been here forever to have a voice. We are curious who God is bringing our way. As many of you read in Desiring God years ago, “God speaks to the church by whom God sends to the church.” New people aren’t just marks for membership. They are a summons from God about what he wants from us, to be met with delight.
But my friend didn’t feel that way that day. We whiffed. It happens.
Our welcoming committee is committed to it happen as little as possible. Sandra Ammons leads this group, with staff wisdom from Andy Ellis, and muscle and creativity from Summer Hays, Katie Lineback, Bob Kroll, Phyllis Butler and others. Our ushers, headed by Johnny Carson, are also committed to welcoming all.
And so is our whole church. Our new mission language, is this: “Loving our community, and inviting all, to discover life in Christ.” Welcoming is the foundation of who we are. Our new values language includes several that touch on welcoming: “Everybody everywhere matters.” We are all created in the image of God, we are all souls for whom Christ died, we are all folks whom the Holy Spirit longs to clasp to God’s heart. “Get ready to do something” is another value that touches on our essential responsiveness as a church. When we see a need, we mobilize to meet it. What better place to see needs than through peering into someone’s eyes, grasping their hands, and telling them we’re delighted to see them? Our measures include this question: “When have I walked with someone not like me?” I worry for folks who don’t have the church. How do they get into relationships with folks different than them? As we grow closer to Jesus we grow closer to one another. Our measures also ask when we’ve invested in someone toward a life in Christ. How might we launch a new endeavor or two in evangelism around here?
Andy and Sandra and I recently met to imagine her committee’s work for 2014. We realized together how deeply our mission, values, and measures language can help in their work. They suggested we might connect recently joined people to those who visit. If there’s a retired couple visiting at 8:45 we can connect them with someone similar who has recently joined. So too if a widow visits Crossroads, or when college kids turn up to 11. We connect most easily with those like us, why not put those most recently enthusiastic about our church–our recent joiners–in relationship with folks visiting? I love it! Creative people pouring over our vision frame and taking action to fulfill our mission.
And that’s exactly how the new mission, values, measures, and strategy are supposed to work. We can place any issue our church faces within the four-sided frame. And in this case–how we welcome–two values, several marks, and our mission proper all applied. Folks doing that together saw stuff no one could see alone. And hopefully our entire life together with Christ will be enhanced.
The goal here as ever is not to get new members. It’s not to meet budget. It’s to introduce new people to Jesus. To meet Jesus ourselves all over again in who he sends to us. And to take part in his inching his kingdom slightly closer here in the high country.
What are some things you count?
We count what matters to us–or to avoid something we don’t care for. My grandfather apparently knew how many panels there were in the ceiling of his Baptist church. Not a good sign for the quality of the preaching . . . Lots of us count our retirement accounts carefully. Will there be enough? We all know how many children we have (even if I find it difficult to remember their ages–they change every year).
At church we naturally count attendance and money. In the ministerial resume-comparing world they count butts, budgets, and bricks–adding buildings to our big two. But some of our most creative folks have been asking what else we can count. Surely there are other signs of faithfulness besides just those two. Our visioning committee came up with some questions to measure our faithfulness. This is a very Methodist thing to do–from the beginning we have counted signs of faithfulness obsessively. Kelly Broman-Fulks’ group wants us to ask these questions as we consider whether we are successfully growing as disciples:
What did I do in response to God’s leading this week?
Did I apply scripture to a decision this week?
Where did worship send me this week?
Have I walked with someone not like me this week?
Am I praying for my friends and enemies this week?
Am I connected to church beyond Sunday worship this week?
When did I invite/invest in someone into a life with Christ?
Hard questions, if we answer them honestly. And more granular, particular, than simply money or attendance. These questions ask about the depth of our discipleship. Positive answers show we’re being successful as a church. Or even better: faithful.
God loves to count. But he sure counts differently than us. He knows the number of hairs on our heads–so he counts more better than we do. He counts one sheep as more precious than 99. God counts the years of eternity–thousands times thousands. And in the book of Numbers (1) God counts the number of everything about the Israelites. We Methodists, when we count carefully, are only doing what the bible already does.
Our staff has brainstormed what we can count as signs of faithfulness. I love their answers. Colette suggests we count teachers stepping in on the Sunday School wing in a pinch. Jennifer suggests we count utility use (much up this year). Andy suggests we count midweek attendance at church functions, not just Sundays. Brandon and Lindsey suggest we count conflict and lament–in real community not all is rosy. Jeff suggests we count the kinds of prayer requests offered. Are we going beyond health ailments and asking for prayer for spiritual needs as well?
Some of my favorite lines in hymns include God’s way of counting. Matt Redman’s “Bless the Lord,” a contemporary worship song, includes this line, “For all your goodness I will keep on singing, 10,000 reasons for my heart to find.” And Amazing Grace’s concluding stanza includes these immortal words, “When we’ve been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, than when we first begun.”
Friends let’s join these leaders of ours as we stretch what we count as marks of faithfulness. Money and attendance matter. So too do 10,000 other things.
