FIGURING THE COST

Leaders of our congregation are beginning a significant conversation about bringing our operating budget in line with promised support. You, as a member of the congregation, will be brought into this family talk in the upcoming weeks.

We have great things to celebrate: 20% of the households that have made a pledge of financial support are first-time pledgers to FUMCB/The Open Door; many people increased their giving by 6-10% and beyond; the number of children and youth participating in the church is increasing, on and on the good news goes.

However, despite the growth in giving there remains a significant gap of between $150,000-200,000 between income and expected ministry expenses. Believe it or not this is not a new condition for our congregation. As long ago as 1991 our people organized a task force to address a $100,000 budget shortfall.

For the last twenty-two years leaders and pastors have worked hard to make ministry happen despite the gap between giving and expenses. Lead pastors have taken on the role of perpetual fund raisers, income was used from the post office lease to cover expenses, and bequest or estate gifts were also used to pay current bills rather than building an endowment. Sometimes we have engaged in mid year or seasonal appeals just to make the budget.

Your church’s lay leaders-with my support-have decided to address this issue.

Here are the two primary reasons. First, good stewardship demands that we spend only what God’s people are willing to give.

Second, this gap distracts us-pastors and laity-from the great work we have to do sharing the Good News of God’s love: reaching out to adults and youth and children, developing small groups, feeding the hungry and welcoming the stranger and blessing the world. Great things are happening, but we keep taking our eyes off our mission to make sure we are one step ahead of a serious financial crisis.

Some of the changes may be painful, but we believe they are a necessary step to congregational health, growth, and a more faithful stewardship life. A task force headed by E.G. White is working hard. They ask for your prayers and gracious, careful attention. Watch for more information about all of this.

In Luke 14 Jesus is talking about what is involved in following him. He says this (The Message) in verses 28-30, “Is there anyone here who, planning to build a new house, doesn’t first sit down and figure the cost so you’ll know if you can complete it? If you only get the foundation laid and then run out of money, you’re going to look pretty foolish. Everyone passing by will poke fun at you; ‘He started something he couldn’t finish.’”

God’s house can’t be right if the financial foundation isn’t right. The church can’t challenge men and women to be faithful stewards unless the church practices faithful stewardship.

On the other side of these decisions there is, I believe, a church that is healthier, more mission focused, and more effective. But this will demand grace and patience from all of us.  God is also calling us to look beyond our own interests to the greater good of the total church.

May God give us grace and wisdom to lay a proper foundation. Because God has a great house of grace and love God is wanting to continue building here!

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark

MOVING SEASON

A week ago I spoke with a couple who are moving.  As they told me about this change in their lives they shook their heads and said, “So we are sorting and throwing out things…giving so much away.  You don’t realize how much you have accumulated until you start boxing things up.”

Lent, this blessed season in which God invites us to reflect on the people we are, our attitudes and behaviors, is like a moving season.  We slow down, we pray, we open the Bible or we begin to journal or we engage in some intentional act of service, and we realize how much we have accumulated along the way.  Some of what we have sitting on our shelves, in our head and heart, is so good!  And more than we would want to admit is junk.  Old attitudes, resentments, fears and addictions that need to be boxed up and given away…to God.

Amy Lyles Wilson, in the current issue of Alive Now (a periodical from the Upper Room you may want to subscribe to by going to alivenow.org), has written an article titled 10 Suggestions for Making Peace with Your Past.  Here, in part, is what she writes (with some additional notes from me):

     1. Forgive yourself.  Take time to let go of words or deeds you wish you had handled differently.

     2. Write a letter to someone you have been meaning to forgive.

     3. Allow your friends and family members (I’d add church members, church staff and pastors!) to make mistakes.  Nobody is perfect – even the people you live and worship with!

     4. Pray for the person who has hurt you.  Praying for someone has a way of setting our own hearts free from bitterness.

     5. Remember that forgiving does not mean pretending that the offensive act never happened.  Holding onto the need to get even just wears us out…

     6. Ask yourself if you need to seek forgiveness from anyone you’ve harmed.  Take the initiative.

     7. Learn from your past mistakes.  Identify how you would have handled a situation differently and let that insight shape your future behavior.

     8. Accept the fact you can’t control the outcome.  All you can do is make the first move towards forgiveness or reconciliation.

     9. Talk to a counselor if what you are dealing with is terribly difficult.

    10. Don’t panic if forgiveness does not come easily.  Sometimes forgiveness takes time.

Look around.  What needs to be boxed up and gotten rid of?

Jesus, in Matthew 6, says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume.”  Later, he says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

What does “moving season” mean for you in your life?

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark

LAB FOR LIVING

People across the state ask me where First/The Open Door is located, and I tell them we are just off Kirkwood.  When people don’t know Bloomington or IU well enough to understand where that is, I say “We’re about four blocks away from the IU campus and one block away from the center of downtown.”

God has placed us in an extraordinary setting.  We have the opportunity not only to minister to a vibrant city, but also to be a place where students and faculty can journey with God.  We can be a faith-full, loving, serving, thinking community where generations of students can be profoundly shaped by the Carpenter.  One young graduate student, after spending several years at First, commented this winter, “This has been the best experience of my life.”

At campuses like Duke, the University of Chicago, and Harvard there is a university church in the center of the campus.  IU, because it is a state school, really has no university-supported chapel with a worshipping, serving congregation.  I wonder if we  -and not us alone, but in partnership with several other churches adjacent to the campus-  see ourselves as a university church?

Stephanie Paulsell teaches at Harvard Divinity School.  In a recent Christian Century (12-26-2012) article she said this about university churches as labs for a new way of living:

 What are university churches for?  Are they nostalgic relics of a nearly forgotten religious past?  Ceremonial settings for the rites of academic communities? Anomalies that sit uneasily in relation to the university’s dedication to research and experimentation?

I (have) learned that a (university) church is one of the most porous places within a university, a place where the world can enter, pose its questions and share its own challenging knowledge.  I learned that in a church it is possible for faculty, staff and students to encounter each other in ways not governed by distinctions between age and rank and profession.  I learned that churches within universities can become meeting places for religious people of all kinds.

Some of the people in the church have lived long lives of faith.  Others at FUMCB/The Open Door have no experience of religious practice and they are looking for a way to cultivate a life with God and in community.  No question is off limits here.

University churches offer opportunities to find out what we might learn through faith, service, community and prayer.  We need places to practice having faith: faith in one another, faith in ourselves, faith in God.

The exciting thing is that university students and faculty have this place where questions can be asked, faith can grow, love can be exercised... and do it side by side with people of all ages from across the community.

Jesus keeps inviting the disciples to put out into deeper water and make new discoveries with God.  Sell all you have and give to the poor.  Try on forgiveness as a way of life.  Worship God with reckless generosity the way a woman breaks open a jar of perfume and pours it over my feet.  Become like a little child.  Put out into the deep water…and that is an invitation we offer faculty, students and staff at Ivy Tech and IU.

In one sense, as a university church, we’re a lab for new ways of living.  In another sense we are like the place where a river meets the sea, currents meeting and mixing together, sustaining all kinds of life.  As the university offers a place that engages the mind, God, through us, offers people a place, a community, that engages and shapes the soul!

We may not be on the campus, but we’re close…and our closeness tells us something about our mission.

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark

THE DARING COMMUNITY ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE

Two weeks ago I spoke with a room full of our leaders and used the image of church as a team of trapeze artists.  We are, right now, finishing swinging on a trapeze that was set in motion more than twelve years ago.

Twelve years ago God led us to make a commitment to be a regional church located in downtown Bloomington.  We didn’t move out to the edge of the community.  We also decided to do a major upgrade of the facilities at First UMC.

A part of that plan included a courtyard project which would include a labyrinth, fountain, garden and columbarium.

We continue to work to finish the plan started more than a decade ago.  What does that mean?  We are working to complete the courtyard project AND we will be dealing  -later this Spring-  with the need to raise $120,000 from the congregation to pay for debt service on the remaining debt.  This debt has hampered our ministry outreach and the leaders have decided we can no longer limp along and allow this debt to limit our ministries.

As this trapeze bar swings out towards the center of the ring we are holding on, finishing this movement. I am inviting our congregation to look up as we anticipate the trapeze bar coming our way.  Sometime in the next 6-12 months we need to be ready to jump and catch this next thing.  What is it?  The next key movement for us, I believe, is an honest, wide-ranging, Biblically-guided, contextually appropriate (using good data on our community and church) conversation about our mission and future.

What strategic steps must we take to be faithful to God and be a vital church that is healthy, alive, and growing?  This conversation, this need to achieve greater clarity about our identity and mission, is essential.  Living churches and great organizations are always adjusting to a new reality so they can thrive.

So even as we hang on to this bar let’s lift our eyes to the bar that is swinging our way…preparing ourselves to let go and fly through the air towards what God is bringing towards us!

In the meantime we continue to focus on these major projects:

• Developing a thoughtful and comprehensive way of welcoming and assimilating new guests at The Open Door/First.  Hospitality.

• Developing a path to discipleship.  What are the best resources we can offer people as they grow in faith, hope and love?

• The Open Door – thoughtfully and faithfully stepping into a new season as we focus on community building, ministry teams, discipleship and outreach.

• Leading our Jubilee College Ministry into a second stage of maturity.  Putting in place what will be necessary (leadership, structure, funding) for our outreach to students to continue and grow.

It’s a lot.  We know it is, but we need to finish this swing, get ready for the next big thing coming our way, and yet do our best to put some basics in place that are essential to our life together for God.

In Ephesians 2 Paul says we are “God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things.”  Later (verse 22) he says, “Christ is building you into a place where God lives through the Spirit.”

We’re swinging out towards the center of the ring on a bar set in motion a decade ago.  Holding on… and looking up to see the trapeze coming our way.

It’s all pretty exciting…and just a little scary.  But there is a net of grace beneath us and God can be trusted!

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark