Note: Every year, I am asked to present a report of the year for our annual Charge Conference. It’s really sort of a “what I did last summer” kind of report that asks, “What did your church do for the last year?” Long ago I decided that my answers should not be seen as any kind of a secret, and so I publish them here, and in our church newsletter. I’m excited about the future of Christ Church and its people and I hope that by talking more about it, others might learn about it, join us, and grow with us as we care for the people around us the way that Jesus cares for us. So, what follows is this year’s report:
As Christ Church entered 2024, we committed to keeping our mission statement in the front of our awareness and thus keeping our focus on our mission to reach out to our community and to use our gifts to do whatever we can to meet the needs of the people around us. Each church committee was challenged to regularly consider how the goals set out in our mission statement might be met in the context of the work being done by that group. As a result, some changes were made. Some of those changes were subtle and others were more visible, but even the subtle ones are having an impact.
One of our goals was to offer training to our members and leaders to better prepare and equip us to do the work of Jesus in our community. Toward this end we hosted a Bridges Out of Poverty training course which was open to anyone and advertised to East Ohio Conference churches as well as to our local Chamber of Commerce and local schools. While we might have hoped for more, attendance at this training event was good and was attended by both members of Christ Church as well as others from our community. Christ Church continued in our pursuit of developing a more active presence and ministry on the campus of the University of Mount Union (UMU) and, toward that end, several of our campus ministry team attended monthly training webinars hosted by the Coalition for Christian Outreach (CCO). For several years, we had been hoping to partner with CCO in placing a campus ministry intern at UMU, but CCO has been challenged to find sufficient volunteers and, as of now, Christ Church has begun pursuing other options to establish and grow our presence on campus.
This year Christ Church continued to have a presence at the summer concerts at the caboose downtown where we gave out popcorn, water, and ice cream in exchange for donations to Habitat for Humanity. We also continued our collections in support of the Alliance Community Food Pantry, the Salvation Army, and the Alliance of Churches. In addition, with the growing number of children present in our worship services, we relaunched a monthly “Noisy Can” offering which has nearly tripled our regular giving to the Alliance of Churches bread ministry and the Salvation Army food pantry. Similarly, our increased focus on finding solutions for the needs of our community inspired our United Women of Faith to make a substantial $30,000 donation from the Martha Goldrick endowment fund toward the YWCA project which will provide temporary housing to women and children in crisis situations. $15,000 was donated to the YWCA for immediate needs and $15,000 was invested with the Greater Alliance Foundation in establishing the YWCA Transitional Housing Fund to encourage wider community support of future needs.
As noted, we continue to see an increase in the number of children each Sunday and have now launched a second class so that we can better provide age-appropriate instruction. At the same time, our youth ministry through scouting remains strong and is reaching many young people and their families through our Cub Scout pack and two scout troops.
For some time, our members have been encouraged to be more invitational, and that message has begun to bear fruit as we have seen an increase in the number of visitors as well as several new members and regular attenders coming from those who first came as invited guests. Thankfully, we have only lost one current member to death or transfer and have therefore seen an increase in our membership for the first time in several years. We have also scheduled a new member class (and we anticipate that another may be needed after that) and so we hope that we will soon add even more to our congregation.
Overall, we are seeing positive changes throughout the life of our congregation, and it is our hope that we will continue to encourage those changes and the growth that they have inspired. I am encouraged by the things that we have seen in 2024, and I am optimistic that we will continue to build on the growth that we have seen. In sum, I believe that there is a bright future for Christ Church, its mission to the people of our community, and our place in the work of Jesus Christ.
This year the Advent season seemed to sneak up on us faster than I remember others in the past and we are already racing towards Christmas. This seems to race even faster when our fourth Sunday of Advent falls on Christmas Eve morning. This feeling of hectic scheduling makes it even more important that we be deliberate in preparing ourselves for the celebration of our Lord’s birth. I don’t just mean buying presents and decorating our homes, but preparing our hearts and our souls so that we can enjoy and appreciate the arrival of the newborn king.
I admit that since I was in my twenties, and in most ordinary years, I struggled (past tense) and still struggle (present tense) with being a humbug. I just don’t “feel” Christmas-y. Before Patti and I were married, I discovered that one way to fight back, and to start feeling the warmth of the holiday was to start listening to Christmas music after Thanksgiving, even if I didn’t feel like it. More recently, with the loss of my hearing and music often sounding off-key, music hasn’t been as effective and so instead I make sure to decorate our Christmas tree, turn on the lights, and look at it for a while every evening.
But that isn’t enough. Because the Spirit of God dwells within each one of us as the followers of Jesus, when we are together, we feel the presence, not only of other people, but also the presence of God himself. And so, every Sunday, but especially during Advent, it is important for all of us to worship together, to simply be together, so that we can feel that sensation of closeness to God and prepare our hearts for Christmas. That closeness to God is real and, as important as it is to us personally, it’s important that we don’t keep it to ourselves.
Statistically, about one-third of, or one in three, people say that they would be willing to attend or visit a church if they were invited. That willingness is often highest at Christmastime. Christmas Eve is easily one of the most attended worship services of the year in almost every church in North America. And so, as I have in the past, I hope that each one of you will invite at least five others to join us. Toward that end, we have printed business cards that you can give to your friends, classmates, business associates, barber, hairdresser, grocery store clerk, or anybody else, and invite them to join us as we worship and celebrate Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve and Christmas are a time when we draw close to one another, and draw close to God, in a way that is both special and memorable not just because of the people, but because it is a time when we encounter the Spirit of God in a special way. Of course, we will share the extraordinary experience of hearing our choirs, bell choirs, pipe organ, and singing traditional and meaningful carols of Christmas together. But most importantly, we will remember the story of God’s invasion of the earth and the arrival of the Christ child, who would become the rescuer and redeemer of all humanity.
I hope that you will join us as we draw closer one another, and closer to God, together.
Note: Every year, I am asked to present a report of the year for our annual Charge Conference. It’s really sort of a “what I did last summer” kind of report that asks, “What did your church do for the last year?” Long ago I decided that my answers should not be seen as any kind of a secret, and so I publish them here, and in our church newsletter. I’m excited about the future of Christ Church and its people and I hope that by talking more about it, others might learn about it and join us in our mission to care for the people around us, and around the world, the way that Jesus cares for us. So, what follows is this year’s report:
In 2023, Christ Church did what we have always done, survived, endured, persisted, explored, and innovated. As in life, things change and while some of those changes are good, others can challenge us. This year, after a particularly strong Spring storm, our scouts discovered that one of our tower windows had been sucked out of the building and shattered in the street. Further investigation showed that our roof had taken some damage in that same storm. But, as they have done for over a century, our trustees are managing, and repairing the damage to maintain our facilities. Similarly, we’ve lost a number of members to death, as well as several non-member family and friends, and our members have had their share of falls, surgeries, and other setbacks.
But through it all, we continue to do what we’ve always done. Christ Church has been, and remains a visible presence in our community through our semi-annual basement sales, the Habitat for Humanity Apostle build, our continued support of our Scouting youth ministry, contributions to school scholarships in Sierra Leone, the construction of a high school in Liberia, ongoing support for the missions in the Red Bird missionary conference, the bread ministry and Tuesday community dinners with the Alliance of Churches, the Salvation Army food pantry and Christmas “giving tree” programs, domestic violence shelter, coordinating and hosting the delivery of nearly a thousand Thanksgiving dinners, as well as our ongoing support of the Alliance community food pantry, and probably others that I’m forgetting. We also have continued to live stream our weekly worship services and offer our sermons online in both text and audio formats. These online platforms now connect to more than 600 subscribers, though of course, not everyone connects every week.
At the same time, Christ Church has been doing some new things and exploring new possibilities for the future. This year saw the installation, and refinement of a new sound system that will allow an “autopilot” mode for days when our sound engineer cannot be present as well as our participation in the return of the Ministerial Association’s community Good Friday service (after Covid) in a re-imagined format. That service, in its new format, returned to a packed house at the First Christian Church.
Christ Church has also seen continued growth in our scouting ministry which now has four full patrols and continues to be one of the only troops for female scouts on this end of Stark County. This growth in the scouting program resulted in our church trustees giving the scouts a second room in the church in which they can store all the additional camping equipment and other things that these active troops need. We have also seen continued growth in the number of children attending Sunday worship which has resulted in a restart of a long-dormant children’s Sunday school program, and a collection to purchase all new toys for our nursery, in addition to our continuing children’s church program during worship.
As we look forward to 2024, we hope to continue to do what we’ve always done, but we are also exploring our partnership with the Coalition for Christian Outreach and the possibility of hiring a full-time campus ministry staff person. We also continue to work through the lessons that we learned during our strategic planning sessions and set goals for ministries that align our strengths with the needs of our neighborhood and the community of Alliance.
While our Sunday morning church attendance has not yet returned to its pre-pandemic levels, it does seem to be headed in the right direction and the signs that we see every week give us every reason to hope for the future.
As it has often been said, “We may not know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future.”
Youth Pastor at Berlin Brethren Church, in Berlin, PA
A note from Pastor John: As you can tell from the header, today’s blog isn’t from me, it’s from my Ashland Seminary classmate, Luke Dowdy. Luke shared this devotion during the last online meeting of our World of the Hebrew Bible class, and I was so struck by it that I asked him to share it with me, so that I could share it with all of you. I hope that you like it as much as I did.
Rev. Luke Dowdy
Today’s devotion is inspired by our recent studies in women of the Old Testament. I’d like to introduce our passage with a question; “Are you carrying a tambourine?”
Let’s set the context. Moses had been sent by God on what seemed to be an impossible mission of freeing an entire people from slavery with only a staff and the revelation of his name. Through the course of making his appeals to Pharaoh, followed by 10 devastating plagues, the Israelites are hurried out of Egypt and sent on their way. But it doesn’t take Pharaoh long to change his mind and go chasing after them.
The people begin to panic and Moses intercedes for them, leading to the famous crossing of the sea. We know that after the Israelites cross on dry land to safety, the waters that were being held back by God come crashing in and destroy Pharaoh’s chariots and horsemen. It was a moment of deliverance! God had come through for them when they needed help the most.
Then in Exodus 15, we’re told the people of Israel began to sing. “Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying, ‘I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name.’”
The song of deliverance in chapter 15 continues a bit more. But what caught my attention the most was actually what happens after, beginning in verse 19. “For when the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his horsemen went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them, but the people of Israel walked on dry ground in the midst of the sea. Then Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. And Miriam sang to them: ‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.’”
This reading on women and daily life have me thinking of a packing list. We all have one when we travel, whether on vacation or an extended trip…and the Israelites are probably no different.
If you were told you were about to flee Egypt on short notice, what you would pack? What is so essential to your family, your survival, your identity that you’d take with you? Let’s set aside the plunder taken from the Egyptians in chapter 12 for a moment and focus on the packing list. I’m guessing there might be some type of cookware, maybe a bread basket. Clothes make sense to cover your family. Oils for various needs are appropriate. Perhaps a skin for holding liquids. Would you pack an heirloom that’s been passed down that you want to be sure your children get?
But of all the things to pack leaving Egypt hastily, when space is tight, and you don’t want to be bogged down for the journey, they make room for tambourines! Where did they come from? It seems out of place.
Imagine the packing conversations, wondering what to leave behind to make room for the instrument. Honestly, I’m not sure I’d let my wife bring a tambourine as an “essential item” if we were about to embark on an extended trip.
But Miriam and the women seem to know that praise was up ahead, something worthy of worship…and they were prepared! They left Egypt in anticipation of great things to come…and they packed their tambourines! The instruments made the list!
I think we can all ask, “Are we carrying a tambourine” in anticipation for what is ahead, something worthy of worship because God will pull through when we need him the most? Of all the things I’ve packed for my day, so to speak, is one of my items a tambourine?
What do you think of when I say the word… extravagant?
We buy things that we need, but how nice those things are often depends upon how much money we have available to spend on things that don’t matter. We might need a watch, but we could buy a cheap one at the dollar store that will keep time, or we can buy a decent Timex that will last longer. But when we have a little more disposable income, we might consider buying an Apple watch or a Garmin sport watch that not only keeps time but counts our steps, calories, tracks our heartrate, and a bunch of other things. And there are some people who have enough money that they can wear a year’s salary, or even the value of a house, on their wrist with wildly expensive watches made of gold and platinum. But do you know what those expensive watches say at three o’clock in the afternoon? They say that it’s three o’clock. The difference between a Timex and a Rolex isn’t that the time is different, or that expensive watches somehow give their wearers twenty-five hours in a day instead of the usual twenty-four, the difference is in their level of extravagance.
We could say that a house with four bedrooms is better than a house with one bedroom if you have a larger family. But at some point, as homes grow larger and pass three thousand square feet, four thousand, five thousand square feet, and even larger, at some point we’ve crossed a line from utilitarian and into extravagance.
And so, if I were to ask you what comes to mind when I say the words “religious extravagance,” I wouldn’t blame you a bit if you began to think about the mansions that we’ve seen on television that belong to a variety televangelists and other religious leaders who have capitalized, in one way or another, on their position, power, or notoriety. But is religious extravagance about 25,000 square foot mansions, Rolls Royce automobiles, and private jets?
As we consider that question, let’s begin by remembering what God said through his prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 43:16-21.
16 This is what the Lord says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, 17 who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick: 18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. 20 The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, 21 the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.
As I read that passage, I divided it into four sections that each said something different. The first, asks God’s people to remember what God is capable of doing and all the amazing, awesome, powerful, and even impossible things that God has done. The second, simply says that while we should remember what God has done, we should not live in the past or get stuck there. The third, says that as we keep the first two things in mind, the big news is that God is doing something new. Now, God is doing the impossible. He is making a road through the impassable wilderness and bringing free flowing water to the desert. The fourth thing explains why God does everything that God does. The reason that God does extravagant miracles, achieves the impossible, blesses his people, feeds them, and cares for them, is not just so that they will give thanks, but so that they will tell the world about his greatness.
But in John 12:1-8 we see an entirely different sort of extravagance as the time of Jesus’s crucifixion draws near.
12:1 Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. 3 Then Mary took about a pintof pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
4 But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, 5 “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” 6 He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.
7 “Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. 8 You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
For perspective, let’s consider the value of what Mary did for Jesus. It’s one thing to say that she anointed Jesus with perfume that cost a year’s wages, but it’s another thing entirely to put that into language that is personally meaningful to our wallets. Thinking about a year’s wages in a vague sort of way sounds like it might be a lot, but we feel a punch in the gut when we put that into numbers that we understand. And a number that most of us can understand is the median income. The “median” is the annual income at which half of all wage earners made more, and half made less. And in the United States, the median income in 2021 was $79,900. So, when we say that Mary poured $80,000 on the ground, we feel that it a different way than saying that it was worth about a year’s wages. John uses this as an opportunity to criticize Judas for being a thief, but it’s hard not to think, as Judas suggested, about how much food, clothing, rental assistance, bus passes, or other things that we could buy for the poor with $80,000. Mary’s gift was not just costly, it was extravagant. But Jesus understands and explains to everyone present that there was a limited time that anyone could give such a gift, and while God’s intent was that this gift should have been for Jesus’ burial, Mary chose to give her gift to Jesus while he was still alive rather than after he was dead.
And in Philippians 3:4b-14, the Apostle Paul frames the discussion about extravagance differently. Rather than reminding everyone about the extravagant gifts that God has given to us, or about the extravagant gift that Mary gave to Jesus, Paul explains how his life changed because of his reaction and response to God’s extravagance. Paul says:
If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith inChrist—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Paul begins by reminding his readers that for all the worldly reasons that people can have confidence, trust, and even arrogance, Paul has all of them… in abundance. Paul had money, possessions, accomplishments, power, authority and more. He was born into the right kind of prestigious family, he mixed with the right kinds of prestigious people, he followed all of the church’s rules in a very public way in the sect of the Pharisees, and even among the Pharisees, he was outstanding in his passion, zeal, and herculean efforts as a defender of the faith and a warrior for the church as he persecuted those who followed Jesus, and he did all these things so well that no one could find fault with his theology or practice. Paul was beyond a rising star in the leadership of the church and was on track to be among those in the very highest levels of the Jewish church and the leadership of Israel.
But Paul after he met Jesus, he threw it all away.
Because he chose to follow Jesus, Paul lost his position in Jewish leadership, was cast out of the Pharisees, excommunicated, banned from the Temple, and we suspect that he may have even been disowned by his family. Paul says that he has now given up anything that he once considered to be valuable because the value of knowing Jesus was worth more than anything that he had before. In fact, what Paul received when he put his faith in Jesus was so extravagantly valuable that in comparison, everything that he had before was worth no more than garbage to him.
The value of what Paul received from God through faith in Jesus Christ is so valuable, that even after he has given up everything that he had, Paul still looks forward to the future and presses onward so that he can become whatever God called him to be, and to do whatever God called him to do. Paul freely admits that Gods work in him, and through him, is not yet finished, but he continues to do the work of Jesus Christ, and to press on so that he can earn the reward that God has prepared for him.
Isaiah said that our mission it to show the world how amazing, wonderful, and awesome God is, and not spend our time and money showing people how awesome we are. The goal is to get the people around us to give thanks to God and give praise to him, not to give thanks and give praise to us. Mary shows her gratitude to Jesus by giving him the most extravagant gift that she can imagine. It is a gift that is her life savings and represents her pension and her rainy-day fund all wrapped up in one package. Paul says that God’s gift to us, the gift of his own son, Jesus Christ, is such an extravagant gift, that nothing that we have, and nothing that we can do, can ever begin to show God how grateful we are. Instead, Paul’s response was to give up all that he had and spend his entire life giving of himself to do the work of God’s kingdom.
My friends, religious extravagance isn’t about churches that seat tens of thousands, or 25,000 square foot mansions, Rolls Royce automobiles, and private jets. Those sorts of things point people in exactly the opposite direction that God wants us pointing. Religious extravagance is demonstrating to the world that what God has given to us in Jesus Christ is so valuable that we will give, or do, anything to show God our gratitude and to do the work of the kingdom of God so that, as God said through Isaiah, the world would proclaim God’s praise.
When the followers of Jesus Christ are extravagant, every part of that extravagance should point to God so that the world sees the wonders of our amazing God… and not us.
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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.com . All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.
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