Rather than end the trials and traumas inherent with being human, Jesus became human, “considering equality with God something not to be grasped.” Jesus as God’s Son had the right to avoid human trials but instead chose to embrace them with and for humanity.

His story: a cross, crucifixion, rejection, abandonment, injustice, death and burial. Jesus comes to us in every circumstance, any disaster, any crisis, as God with promise, to never leave us or forsake us and to proclaim that one day, “There will be a new heavens and a new earth, no more mourning, crying or pain anymore, the first things will pass away.”

In the light of an astonishing number of disasters, we might wonder where is God — when a school inOklahomais devastated by a mile-and-a-half-wide tornado, when a small city outside ofWacoexplodes, when neighboring towns are devastated by another tornado and the iconic Boston Marathon experiences terrorism.

Think the faith of Christianity, the faith we place in Jesus, who while on the cross said:

• “Today you will be with me in paradise,” to the thief dying next to him.
• “Mother, behold, your son; John, behold, your mother,” thinking of his family.
• “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,” the response of loving grace.
• “I thirst,” Jesus was human.
• “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” feeling abandoned, isolated, hurt.
• “Into thy hands I commend my spirit,” in a season of death, trust.
• “It is finished,” the work he came to do was done.

The Resurrection would come, but that was in God’s hands. This broken world will one day be made whole, but that, too, is in God’s hands.

So where is God? God is with us!

• Home Run: Our church promoted and brought this faith-based movie to Cinemark Theater. The Mansfield theater was #2 in attendance in the state of Texas, #8 in the nation.
• ESL classes: First Methodist graduated another great group of English as a Second Language students, typically a dozen languages spoken.
• Big Hope: We continue to provide almost 40 mentors for at-risk kids at neighboring school, Alice Ponder Elementary, partnering with Kids Hope and Big Brothers Big Sisters.

• In the City 5K & Cleanup: A thousand people gathered at Rose Park, many to run the 5K benefiting Habitat for Humanity and the Wesley Mission Center, and many helped clean up seven of our city parks. Two and a half tons of trash was picked up. This was a partnership with the City of Mansfield

• Feed by Grace: This Saturday a group will serve the homeless community in Fort Worth as a special Mothers’ Day weekend emphasis.

• West: We received a special offering, partnered with First Methodist Waco and Highland Park, to contribute to the Conference Disaster Relief. We also sent a team to serve directly in West.

• Easter in Mansfield: On Easter at the Center for Performing Arts, we had 6,000 in attendance, and we continue to receive guests and members who were introduced to First Methodist in this engaging and innovative way.

• National Day of Prayer: We hosted 14 senior pastors who gathered to pray at City Hall, followed by a prayer service attended by those in our community and city leaders, including the City Manager and the Mayor.

• Chick-fil-A Leadercast: This Friday we are hosting a leadership opportunity for the community at our church that will impact many.
• Chamber of Commerce: We sponsored a Chamber luncheon where I had the opportunity to be the speaker, sharing on servant leadership and becoming a “first follower.”
• Mission: A team went to Louisiana to continue our own efforts to bring recovery to a hurricane-ravaged area.

• City Council: We presented In the City for the City to the City Council, Common Ground made a report to the City Council and the City Council celebrated the city’s partnership with First Methodist Mansfield.

• Midlothian: Many of our members who live in Midlothian had an In the City for the City day, cleaning up a park in that growing community.

• Mission Conference: We hosted the Large Church Mission Conference in partnership with the Leading Edge.

• Confirmation: We had 103 young people confirmed in their faith, with 900 in attendance at that service alone.

• Membership: More than 220 people have become full members of First Methodist since January 1.

• Attendance: Our highest average worship attendance at this point of our year, over 2,500.
• Life and Mission: Our ongoing life and mission includes seven worship services, multiple opportunities to do Bible study, Care Ministries that touch people every day, the Wesley Mission Center that helps people every day and children’s and youth programs and ministries that continue to impact families weekly.

• Vacation Bible Camp in June where we anticipate 1,400 children and volunteers;
• United Mission Week for middle school and high school students serving in our community for one week, we anticipate over 200 impacting this area;
• The Freedom Project, a church-wide celebration beginning in the fall where we partner with Dave Ramsey to impact our church family and community in a transformative way;
• A summer message emphasis, Luke’s Gospel, Investigating the Story of Jesus.

We especially ask you to forgive us for our bent to call upon you when we need you and to ignore you when we don’t. We remember what Psalm 127 says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” Today we recognize that America was birthed by your grace, has overcome many obstacles — many of our own making — because of your grace and exists today because of your ongoing, amazing grace. Forgive us for our tendency to take those benefits and that grace for granted.

And each of us prays that if we can make a difference for our country — beginning with our own family, church, neighborhood and community — reveal to us those ways and give us courage to follow through on the ways you would call us to serve. God bless America.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.

• America is the 3rd largest unchurched nation in the world;

• Of our overall population, 18.7% go to church on a given weekend;

• Average church attendance in American churches is 75;

• Ninety percent of churches are plateaued or in decline;

• Fifty congregations close their doors each week.

These statistics are from the Healthy Church Initiative, a program to help revitalize the Methodist Church, one in which I am a Church Coach. When we add to this that nationally the fastest growing religion in America is “none” — meaning those who mark “none” instead of a particular religion or denomination — these are striking figures.

Should these figures frighten the church? No, but they should challenge the church. When the Church began and there were just 12, then 120, then 3000, I don’t think those early church leaders — Peter, Paul, Priscilla and others — were that afraid about living for Jesus Christ in a non-Christian world. Instead they were challenged by it, especially when they were continually reminded of who they were by the words of Jesus.

“Go make disciples of all nations.”
“Be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the remotest parts of the earth.”

I can rephrase these two simple commands of Jesus, “Live for what Jesus lived for!”

Some years ago, I had someone send me an email. Her concern was that Christianity was going to decline and one day disappear. I reassured her that would never happen because the church always had Jesus, and Jesus would always draw people to himself. This means that as long as a church centers in Jesus Christ, lives for what he lived for, that church would be blessed and even buck the odds of the culture it is in. That was certainly true for the church in the first century, and I believe it is true for the church today. Some of the most exciting and effective churches in history exist today, and I hope First Methodist Mansfield is one of those. Churches are learning to share Christ, engage the culture and reach the community they are in in new and innovative ways. And the core of that is a church family who are centered in Jesus Christ, living for what he lived for.

Jesus lived for his heavenly Father.

Jesus was committed to the mission God sent him to do.

Jesus loved the people of his world and was willing to die for them.

Jesus forgave those who rejected him.

Jesus never forgot who he was and why he was in the world.

Jesus said, “As God sent me, so I send you.”

Rhonda grew up in a broken home and was raised by her father and grandmother. Her mother was not a very good mother. For many reasons, Rhonda and Eleanor (called El) had no contact for the last 40 years. I had never met her, and she had never seen her grandchildren. In January of this year, we found out her mother had terminal cancer, and a message was sent to Rhonda asking if she would call her mother. Rhonda did, and her mother asked if she would come see her. She drove to Florida in January with our oldest daughter, Julie. This first visit restored their relationship. A month later she went again with our daughter-in-law, Gladys, where they helped get her set up on hospice at her government apartment. It was good Gladys was there, she knew how to set up a hospital bed. Then right after Easter, we both went, and I met my wife’s mother for the first time. By this time she was declining fast.

When Rhonda saw there was no one there to give her mother care these last few days of her life, she stayed there with her and took care of her mom night and day, right up to the last — medications, prayers, comfort, changing her and her bed sheets, being a liaison with the hospice people and staying by her side until her mother breathed her last.

This is more than a story of reconciliation; it is the story of a Christian woman living out her faith in a boots-on-the-ground way. Rhonda was there when her mother needed her the most, when she had every reason to not be there at all. I am proud of Rhonda, for I am not sure I could have or would have done the same thing in the same circumstances. For Rhonda, her relationship with Jesus Christ has driven this story, a relationship that began when she was 12 years old in a little church in Key West, Florida, the same church where we were married in 1974. This relationship with Christ opened up a miraculous door of grace where she experienced a relationship with her mother and her mother with her the last three months of El’s life. It’s a miracle! God is big enough for Rhonda and her mother, Eleanor.

First, as I write this, I am visiting Rhonda’s mother, El (short for Eleanor), meeting her for the first time. My wife and her mother had not spoken for 40 years; now they speak every day as her mother continues her hospice journey. Rhonda is 4’10” tall; her mother is two inches shorter. I feel like a giant in her tiny apartment.

Second, we are entering a new season in the life of First Methodist Church where we intend to engage the community in a major way — influencing, transforming, shaping and even building the communities we live in. This has been the DNA of this great church for many years, but we are stepping up our game. There are several things we are connecting to as Easter’s celebration has been completed (almost 6,000 in worship Easter week, a new record).

But first, a quote from one of my favorite authors:  George Barna writes in his book Maximum Faith, “While American churches receive hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours each year, and a small but significant share of that time and energy is expended on serving the needs of people outside the congregation, our studies have shown that most Christians do not serve anyone in the community during a typical year . . . most church-going Americans believe that such acts of service are good, worthwhile and necessary, yet relatively few engage in them.”

This would mean that most churches care about their community but too little to respond to that need. Our intention is to not only respond but to do so in a community-building way, offering our church family opportunities to pool their volunteer time together, making the biggest difference in the smartest way. So, we have and are putting our plan into action. Easter at the Center for the Performing Arts was one of our first steps into the In the City for the City vision.

On April 13, we will be the leader in the In the City 5K & Cleanup — a 5K, one-mile fun run and cleanup of eight of the city parks — as we partner with the City of Mansfield (this partnership is the first of its kind). We are also involving other churches, many community leaders and businesses and already have many, many sponsors for this community-changing event. Besides cleaning up the parks, there will be a community hot dog lunch at Rose Park. The proceeds from the run will go to Trinity Habitat for Humanity and our Wesley Mission Center. What do we need from you? Please consider signing up for the one-mile run as a family, individually for the 5K, for the cleanup time in the parks or all of it. You can walk, run, clean or just one of those choices. Go to our church website for complete details and sign up today. Our goal is 1,000 participants. This event is a big deal. You can also sign up at church this weekend.

Then we are bringing a movie called Home Run to the Cinemark Theater in Mansfield, April 19-21. This is a faith-based movie that would not have made its way into our city if we had not sponsored it. It is the story of a baseball player who finds himself deteriorating due to personal and family issues. In the movie, he finds recovery while he is suspended from Major League Baseball as he coaches a Little League team in a small town, a team his estranged son is on. It is a great story of faith and recovery. We hope it serves not only many in our church family but our community as well. I certainly hope many of you can attend, but we also hope you will let your neighbors know about it. You can purchase tickets at the theater as well, but we have set aside 1,000 tickets to make available to you that you can purchase at church.

Finally, we are beginning a new message series this weekend, Skeptics — Wrestling with Our Doubt. This is an important series for us all as doubt is a critical part of our own journey to an expanded faith. But it is also aimed at our un-churched family and friends. The intention of this series is to be a journey, from basic challenges and questions about faith that will touch the lives of those who are seeking, to encouraging those who are in the journey and eventually seeking to build a church that desires to invite neighbors and friends to join them in worship. Pastor David and I are extremely excited about this emphasis that is challenging for us, and our prayer is it is a blessing to you and many others.

We hope you are encouraged by the Lenten message series, Enemies of the Heart, and we are convinced you will be inspired by our Holy Week and Easter services. We want to give you a quick overview of what’s on the horizon:

• Holy Thursday, March 28 — Sometimes called Maundy Thursday, this is a special contemplative offering of Communion from 6:00-8:00 p.m. You may arrive anytime during that two-hour window. You will have an opportunity for a time of reflection and prayer, and then go to the altar alone or with family and friends to receive the sacrament and a personal prayer from one of our pastors.
• Good Friday, March 29 — This will be a traditional service at 7:00 p.m. with music, scripture and symbols marking the journey of Jesus to the cross as we remember together the sacrifice the Lord made for us.
• Easter, March 30/31 — This is a very special Easter weekend, one where we celebrate the resurrection as a church family, as well as reach out to our surrounding communities. We will have Saturday Easter at 6:00 p.m. in the Sanctuary, Sunday Easter at 5:00 p.m. in the Chapel and Easter Sunday Sunrise at Town Park at 7:00 a.m. Then we will have our Sunday Community Easter at the Mansfield ISD Center for the Performing Arts at 9:00 a.m. (contemporary) and 11:00 a.m. (traditional).

Our intent is to celebrate Easter as a church family as well as to reach out to our area in an unprecedented way (the Center for the Performing Arts seats 5,000 and has 2,000 parking places). With our set vision of being “in the city for the city,” what a great way to begin — an inspirational Holy Week followed by an outreach-focused Easter. The story of the resurrection is everybody’s story, a story where God tells us “life wins.” Our world is in desperate need to hear that positive news.

Please not only be prepared to join us for Holy Week and Easter, but invite a friend, neighbor, family member or co-worker, and let them know we are preparing these special services with them in mind.

God is big enough for the city!

We are preparing for Easter by walking with those early Christians ? through Holy Week where we celebrate the Last Supper as the 12 did, Good Friday where we grieve his death on the cross as hundreds of his followers grieved, the three days that followed, a dark time where all they had hoped for in Jesus Christ seemed as dead as he was, and then Easter, the day Christ rose, the day that changed everything.

Easter is the day we celebrate and worship because we have heard the story that Christ was raised. It calls us to our version of the upper room (this year the MISD Center for the Performing Arts) on Sunday morning, the Sanctuary on Saturday night, Town Park at the Sunday sunrise service and the Chapel on Sunday afternoon. Thousands of people will be coming together that day because they heard the story too ? the Easter story ? the story of hope, of life, of love and Jesus, a story of light shining in a dark world, a story of grace and resurrection in a world too often defined by sin and death, the story that love and life win because God says they win.

And, then it becomes our turn to spill into the streets speaking the glories of God in the languages of the world we live in. “And so by your good works they will glorify my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16) This is the language that speaks to our world, the Church reflecting our faith in Christ, in the resurrection, being salt and light in our world, a language everyone understands, a language that speaks God is at work in the Church and through the lives of Christians. Our In the City for City campaign this year is a direct reflection of God’s call to his Easter people to speak the glories of God in the language our world understands ? the language of service, of generosity, of love, of grace, to build the Kingdom of God, within the walls of the church but also outside those walls the way that Jesus did. It is an exciting time to be the Church.

This weekend is Palm Sunday Weekend, and along with the children’s Palm Parade in most of our services, we have our Community Easter Egg Hunt at Rose Park at 3:00 p.m. We also have the Texas A&M Women’s Chorus (some 45) singing at the 11:00 a.m. Sanctuary service. It will be a pretty special weekend of celebration as we move into Holy Week (Holy Thursday 6:00-8:00 p.m., Holy Friday 7:00 p.m. and then Easter Weekend).