"All Faithed Up and No Where to Go" Pastor Cindy's Devotion 04/26/18

Good morning—
“I give you a commandment:  Love each other.”  That was our scripture for last Sunday.  It’s from John 13.  Jesus spoke these words.  My reaction:  sign me up.  I am in.  Loving each other seems like the best way to spend our time on this planet.  Yes, this is exactly what I want to do.  I want to follow the Prince of Peace, love others, and change the world.  Thy kingdom come.  Hooray!


And then I step outside my house or my church and my enthusiasm deflates.  What are we supposed to do?  What does loving each other look like in the real world?


Does this happen to you?  I look around my neighborhood.  The neighbor’s house needs painting—but I can’t just go over there with a gallon of paint and a brush.  I see an old man with whose t-shirt is worn and stained, but I can’t run to Target, buy a shirt, and hold it out to the man, “here, I think you should have this.”   I see things in the world that I think are wrong.  I can voice my opinion, but voicing an opinion feels like just more words blowing about in the air.  To quote a friend I admire:  “I want to do something.”  Too often, I just don’t know what to do.
  
And often it seems what I am doing is tending to the church, as an institution, but not really tending to the business of being a disciple, of loving as Jesus commands.


I am blessed to be part of this church and right now, I am so proud of my church.  They are doing something—actually lots of things.


Volunteer Reading Buddies go each week to the school next door to teach children how to read.  That’s an act of love.


Last night lots of adults gathered here to teach and encourage children in our Wednesday Night Live Programming.  That’s an act of love.


The Wednesday Night Dinner teams have raised money to feed children this summer in the local park.  That’s an act of love.


A member of our church has taught English As a Second Language for many years.  Now that program is coming to an end.  Teaching ESL is an act of love.  Watching it end is disappointing and that is part of loving too.


Being a disciple, loving others in our complicated world takes planning and coordination.  It is seldom as simple as it sounds.  Sometimes seeing the outcome is delayed and sometimes we never see the outcome.  We “cast our bread upon the waters” Ecclesiastes 11.  We can never know completely the impact of our loving.  And that is a power of love.  Its reach extends beyond our influence.  The child learning to read at Hillside will one day teach someone else to read.
 
At the end of the midweek, I want to invite you to three events at our church.  All are a response to Jesus’ commandment to love one another.  You are warmly invited to attend any of them.  Some of you who receive the midweek devotion live far away.  I encourage you to look around in your community and see how you might “love one another.”


One last thing.  The loving acts in the world around me are too numerous to list.  Part of my challenge always is to see them.  But each time I do, each time I recognize love in action, I am filled with hope.
 
Blessings,
Pastor Cindy
Pastor Cindy Hickman
West Des Moines United Methodist Church, West Des Moines Iowa


We worship at 8:30 and 11 on Sunday mornings and we would love to worship with you.


Three Invitations:
Embracing Diversity, Sunday, April 29, 6:30.  This summer we are sending a mission team off to Detroit for a week.  They will encounter a different culture.  In order to prepare for that different culture, on Sunday evening we will spend some time talking about our experiences and implicit bias and privilege.  You are warmly invited to join in the conversation.  How do we understand our own hearts and perceptions of a diverse culture?


Mental Health First Aid, Saturday, June 2.  How do we respond to friends and loved ones facing mental health issues?  Loving one another, we are all in the mental health business.  This is an 8-hour course and costs $35.  We need to register by May 1.  ( You can register by replying to this email and simply letting me know that you would like to participate.)


National Day of Prayer, Thursday, May 3. We will have three special opportunities to pray at 6:30 am, 11:30, and 5:30.  A light lunch will be served following the 11:30 prayer service. 
Three ways to love one another as Jesus has loved us.


Update on the Visioning
West Des Moines United Methodist Church has entered into 12 weeks of visioning.  Sarai Rice, the Executive Director of the Des Moines Area Religious Council and an experienced church consultant, is leading us.  We are committed to keeping the church informed about our progress.


At our week three meeting Sarai shared national church trends with us.  Between 2007 and 2014, the Christian share of the US population fell from 78.4% to 70.65, a decline of about 1% a year.  In every age category, more and more people are disaffiliating with churches.  Those involved in churches are less attached to church buildings, to Sunday morning worship, and to church committee structure.  Communication has become more important and it happens via the building itself, what members say about the church, social media and print media.  Most congregations across the country are small and shrinking.  Churches need to be able to change rapidly to engage with people in our changing culture.


This was an eye-opening presentation for the visioning committee.  We are processing what this means for our church.



We will keep you updated as we go forward.  Please keep this effort in your prayers. 

"Running on Empty" Pastor Cindy's Devotion 04/19/18

Suddenly it’s Thursday!  The Midweek is late! This week has gone by in a flash.  Worship on Sunday.  Bulletin and sermon prep for next Sunday.  Staff meeting. The Finance Committee. The Worship Re-design Team.  The Christian Education Coordinating Council.  An all-day Conference Workshop.  The Senior Disciple Luncheon.  Confirmation.  A memorial service.  Meeting with two couples planning weddings.  A hospital visit.  Several meetings today.  All good work, but suddenly it’s Thursday and I can feel my energies running low.

And your week?  I am wondering if it isn’t similar.  A rush of a week.  I admire our young families, the way they juggle work, family, and church.  I know it is not easy and it often means setting aside their own needs to care for others. 

Tomorrow is my Sabbath.  Sabbath is this wonderful holy time that God sets aside and then gives back to us.  It is a gift that in our fast-paced modern culture, we often fail to accept.  It is time to pause and think, take a nap, renew, breath in and out slowly.  Tomorrow I will wake up, read for a while, go back to sleep, get up, walk around my house, pet the dog, and do tasks that I want to do.  Maybe. And maybe I will do nothing at all.  Sabbath acknowledges that that hours and minutes tick away and sometimes we need to simply feel their passage.

Do you keep Sabbath?  Without Sabbath we are vulnerable. If we don't accept Sabbath, we can find ourselves soul-exhausted, and we can forget to love those around us.  We can make serious mistakes stumbling through our encounters with other human beings. Can we all open our lives for a day, maybe even just an hour, and allow ourselves the gift of Sabbath?  My prayer for us all:  that we all can accept the gift of Sabbath.   Even now, for the next five minutes, give Sabbath to yourself as a time of rest. 

Before I know it, it will suddenly be Saturday.  Back to work, back to routine.  Fueled by Sabbath. 

Blessings and see you Sunday!

Pastor Cindy

Pastor Cindy Hickman

West Des Moines United Methodist Church
720 Grand Avenue, West Des Moines, IA 50265
515.279.0826 

We worship at 8:30 and 11 on Sunday and we would love to worship with you. 

"John's Story About Spring" Pastor Cindy's Devotion 04/11/18

Good morning!  Did you see what happened yesterday?  Spring!  It has been on the calendar for weeks now and it has teased us with occasional afternoons of sunshine—followed by ice and snow and cold temps, but yesterday spring seemed to actually arrive.
 

Every spring I watch for tulips and lungwort to come poking up in my flowerbeds.  And that inevitably gets me thinking about John.  John was a family friend when I was a child.  He and my dad liked to tell stories.  They could use up an entire Sunday afternoon exchanging stories.  One of John’s stories has stuck with me.  I always associate it with spring.  This is how John told it.
 

In 1945 John was serving in the military and he was stationed in Chicago.  One day he was in downtown Chicago.   I don’t remember the details.  He may have been heading home on furlough.  He spotted a cab at the curb and jumped in, without really looking to see if it was occupied.  He was seated before he realized there were a black man and a young boy in the cab.
 

The man nodded to him and John apologized.  They quickly learned they were headed in the same direction and agreed to share the cab.

They sat in silence, the way strangers often do when they are uneasy.  The little boy sitting between them looked at his father and then at John, who was a pale white man of Irish heritage.  Back and forth he looked at them, and then he asked his father, “Why did God make some people white and some people brown?” 

It was the sort of question that adults don’t speak in words, but they sometimes wonder.  A question like that voiced out loud is often followed by a pause, because it is asked in such innocence, and it strikes so deep at our pain and brokenness.  “Why” questions are the hardest.  Why violence?  Why racism?  Why hatred? It requires a wise answer.  John turned to the boy’s father to see what he would say.

The boy’s father said that God created people of all colors so that when God looked down on the world it would like a garden in the spring, beautiful and full of color.

The boy was satisfied and so was John, so satisfied he told the story more than 20 years later in my family’s living room.  I am glad he did.

Welcome to spring.  Enjoy the garden.

Blessings,

Pastor Cindy

Pastor Cindy Hickman

West Des Moines United Methodist Church

720 Grand Ave, West Des Moines, IA 50265
515-279-0826

We worship at 8:30 and 11 on Sunday mornings and we would love to worship with you.

This week at West Des Moines UMC:

Wednesday Night Live tonight!  Dinner at 5:30.  No cost, but you are invited to give a free will offering.  We will use the money this summer to feed school children.
 

This Sunday we will continue our sermon series “Where are we going?”  Rachel Hollingsworth, our ministry intern will be telling us where she thinks we are going.  I can’t wait to hear what she has to say. 

Last Sunday I announced in worship that the church is entering into a time of visioning.  I said that we would keep you informed along the way.  A summary of what is happening appears below.  If you have questions please contact me or one of the team members.
 

An Update from the Visioning R&D Team

The church now faces lots of opportunities and challenges.  The opportunities include Holy Spirit momentum, increased worship numbers, our children and youth, increased use and effectiveness of our technology, and strong competent disciple leaders among our laity and staff. 

There are challenges too.  We have an ageing building, and, even though it is hard to admit, an ageing congregation.  The church owns 8 houses east of the church and these have become a challenge.  These were purchased 14 years ago with the plan of expanding the parking lot and the church building.  That was the vision at the time.  For a variety of reasons, the expansion was never realized.  The houses have been rented.  Recently the trustees informed the church council that the houses are in need of costly repairs beyond general maintenance.

With all these opportunities and challenges, what should we do?  What sort of future do we want?  What is God’s dream for this church?   Looking forward, how can we grow and serve as disciples?

We have established a Visioning Research and Development Team to gather all the information they can and propose a response to those questions.  The members of the team are Lesley Montgomery, Craige Wrenn, Berneda Franson, Becky Daniels,  Mike Powers,  Gary Norton,  Carol Litscher,  Mark Willson,  Kristen Kouba, Kristin Pawlowski, and Cindy Hickman.  They represent a cross-section of involvement and experience in the church.  They are all disciples committed to its future.

The team will be led by Sarai Rice.  She is the director of the Des Moines Area Religious Council.  She is a Presbyterian minister and has worked as a church consultant for the Alban Institute.  She brings a wealth of knowledge about church structure and visioning.

The team is committed to meeting every Thursday night for 12 weeks.  They will be doing research about our church and church trends.  They will be conducting lots of interviews with people in the community.  They will be seeking your input.  When they have compiled their information and created a proposal, they will present it to the church.

And of course, this is all words, all simply an interesting exercise, until it becomes action, lived out as we follow Jesus.  This is a process, a journey.  And I think, an exciting adventure.

What is God’s dream for this church?   Looking forward, how can we grow and serve as disciples?  Please pray for this team, for this effort, and for our church.

Every blessing,

Pastor Cindy

"Now Live It" Pastor Cindy's Devotion 04/04/2018

Good morning!
Sunday was wonderful.  Nearly 600 people came together at the church to celebrate Easter.  The music was beautiful.  Prayers soared to heaven.  We shared communion and dipped our hands in the baptismal bowl.  We read the story of the first Easter and imagined an empty tomb and a Risen Christ.


I preached about baggage,
·         that we all have it,
·         that Jesus carried it to the cross,
·         that the empty tomb means our baggage has been transformed, forgiven, redeemable.  Our baggage and everyone else’s baggage acceptable to God.  
·         that through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we have all been made holy, worthy of our place in the universe, needed and necessary in God’s plan for the world.
 
We celebrated Easter and now it is time to live it.


Look around.  What does living Easter look like in your life? A Risen Christ who goes before us, our lives made holy and usable by God, the impossible becomes possible.


We’ll leave it there today.  What does living Easter look like in your life?
 
Blessings
Pastor Cindy
Pastor Cindy Hickman
West Des Moines United Methodist Church
720 Grand Avenue, West Des Moines, IA 50265
515.279.0826

This week at West Des Moines United Methodist Church
Tonight!  Wednesday Night Live with supper at 5:30!  Bible Study at 5, Confirmation, Praise Band rehearsal at 6:15.  All sorts of ways to grow in faith.



Worship at 8:30 (Traditional) and 11 (Casual).  Get ready for some fun!  The Des Moines Big Band Combo lead us in music at both services.  Our sermon series "Where are we going?" will kick off.  Lots of good, good things ahead!  Come and enjoy!