The Leading Edge

Monday through Wednesday of this week Rhonda and I will be at “The Leading Edge” an event for the Senior Pastors of the 100 top attended United Methodist Churches in the Nation.  This is the second gathering for this Event led by Adam Hamilton the Senior Pastor of Church of the Resurrection the largest Methodist Church in the world.  The purpose of these three days is for each of us to encourage, support, and give ideas for ministry to one another.  Large Church pastors very seldom get together, and it certainly seldom happens nationally.  It will be a blessing to us all and hopefully we will bring some of those blessings back to our individual Churches.  But this event is also designed to be a core piece of revitalizing the United Methodist Church as a whole around three major ideas; Worship, new worship services and churches,   Mission and its expansion locally and around the world, and recruiting and encouraging new young pastors to lead the Church into the future.  First Methodist has long been about these God given goals, but in this last year we have emphasized them even more, preparing to add new worship services, supporting the creation of a new Methodist Church in the Mansfield area, expanding our mission (we are excited to help build a Church in Mexico and wheelchairs will be on the way there on Thursday) and we are actively pursuing ways to recruit and train new young pastors.  Please be in prayer for me as I represent you in one of the most significant and exciting moments in the life of our Church.  In many ways the future of the Methodist Church is on the line.  It is especially meaningful because my twin brother,  Steve Ramsdell will be representing First Waco at this event as well.  We will certainly be the only twin brothers, or even brothers in the top 100 Methodist Churches.  I will be blogging each day from Jacksonville Florida updating you on what is happing.  I have high expectations.

thoughts on Wineskins

       Jesus said that we have to put new wine in new wine skins.  If we use the old ones they will burst.  He offers so much that is new, fresh, abundant, full,meaningful.  There is nothing better than life in Christ, both walking with God and living in the new way He teaches us.  Why is it so hard?

       I think it is hard because it is so difficult to give up the old.  When someone tells me they are going to start coming to Church and haven’t been.  i know it is going to be hard.  They are going to have to give up what they normally do on Sunday morning; or at the very least find some other time to do that.  As I write this it is 6:30 Saturday morning.  I am doing this as part of a devotional time.  But it is taking a concerted effort to not turn the TV on and flip from fox news and CNN to see what’s going on in the world;  not that the information I will gain is going to help me or anyone else.

Our Habits often own us, control us, dominate us, even own us more than our faith, values, and beliefs.  Addictions, Television, food, ETC.  Those habits become comfortable, known, familiar, patterns we easily fall prey to that often prevent the new from taking hold in our lives, things we do that control our future before God can give us a fuller one.  Can I find time to pray and connect with God.  What do I give up?  Can I find time to go to Church consistently?  What do I give up?  Can I find time to connect to my wife, family, friends, those important to me?  What do I give up?  Can I find time to serve, bless, love, and make a difference in the lives of others.  What do I give up?  If we did a careful inventory most of us would find our lives are full of things that really don’t count

 for very much, things that do not reflect our faith in Christ, or even who we really are.  Where does it begin?  What are we really willing to give up?

When I purchased my motorcycle a few years ago I made a very easy decision.  My little car made its way into the driveway.  The motorcycle gets the coveted garage spot.  What do we really care about?  To make room for the new that Jesus is calling us to, we have to begin moving out the old.

Thoughts on the New Heavens and New Earth

I got a great question from this weekends message on The New Heavens and the New Earth: 

“When you say God’s people are sealed against spiritual harm and will overcome in the end;  will this mean that everyone will be free of temptation and sin?  Will we live freely with no desire to sin or to break His law;  I just can wrap my mind around a world like that!”. 

The idea of the seal is how God marks us as His in this life as we wait for the new heavens and new earth. This mark is a spiritual seal that makes us fully His no matter what happens to us in this world;  cancer, rejection, martyrdom, Etc;  God will fully restore us to everlasting life.  In other words the believer will always win in the end.  This seal is opened as the Lamb’s book of life by Jesus Christ Himself,  and the names of all God’s people are in that sealed book.  Now the idea of living in an eternal kingdom with Christ that has no sin, death, or temptation, that I can’t wrap my mind around either.  It is a life beyond what defines too many of us and a new life defined by living as the redeemed;  the idea of living the restored garden of Eden, remembering that back in that time they had yet to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the first time they saw God after they disobeyed and ate, they hid, realized they were naked or exposed, and blamed each other and even God for the situation.  Imagine a restored garden of Eden; where God is accessible and we love each other without regard to any selfishness, fear, envy, jealousy, misunderstandings, etc.  I can’t imagine it, but I yearn for it.

thoughts on Bob

Monday morning I led the memorial service for Bob.  Bob was my friend and the friend of many of us.  Rhonda and I both ate at his home and went out with him and Paulette on occasion.  I went with Bob on  a Mexico mission trip, we drove together for 12 hours with a van full of college kids.  Bob worked with our homeless ministry, had a heart of compassion for the least, the last, and the lost. He cried as he served a child with Spina Bifida when she got her first wheel chair and stayed connected to her.  One of the things Bob enjoyed doing in our Church was standing in the Narthex and looking for people out of place, new folks he could help feel welcomed and guide to resources if they needed it.  Bob loved good food and new adventures as well as his grown children.  I did the wedding for two of them.  He loved Paulette and his life.  And yes, Bob deeply loved God and God certainly loved him.  But in the last few years of his life, possibly precipitated by a job loss some years ago, alcohol began to win. I don’t think any of us know the exact date when he lost control, Bob probably didn’t either.  Bob lost his family, his home, his car, and found himself homeless for the last year or so.  He died in a storage building in Arlington, where he was living.  He was found three days later.  And even here he attended and helped at the Salvation Army Church in the area.  He still loved God and God loved him.  But alcohol, even though it never stole his heart,  stole his life.  At the service we celebrated Bob’s life,  grieved the last few years of our and his helplessness,  as well as his death, and trusted Him into the hands of an Amazing Grace God.  As a pastor I have seen this before.  I am not a fan of alcohol;  it has too many victims,  Bob, his family, his friends, those he served and could have still served, and His Church.