from Pastor John D. F. Nelson
We have more opportunities in our lives today than people have had at any time in history. Opportunities for education, careers, leisure activities, ways to communicate, even travel. We can make possible things our great-grandparents would not have dreamed of. However, I feel our number of options have blinded us to the value each carries. The few choices our ancestors made were directly tied to their focused hope for the future. Their actions planted faith and built churches to nurture that faith for each of us.
God continually blesses us with love and grace and has provided opportunities for us to respond in faith as well. This fall we each will have new opportunities to be engaged by God in worship, to grow in our faith though educational offerings, to serve others through outreach events, and so much more. As you look at how you will live out your faith this year, what is the desired future you are working toward? What do you hope for your family and for the church? How will you let the light of Christ shine through you?
As a church we recognize that our actions not only affect our current needs, they also affect the hopes and dreams of the generations to come. In our lives we have specific windows of opportunity to respond in faith; like when a child asks how the world was made, when a teen is seeking to find out their purpose in life, when a friend loses a loved one, or when people need a place to belong and be told that they are not alone. Each are opportunities for us to respond in faith. This is why our church council and staff have titled this year’s congregational focus and the next three-year phase of our capital campaign, "Windows of Opportunity."
In our annual ministry budget we will have the opportunity to support ministry efforts and reinstate the salary cuts that our outstanding staff has endured over the past year. We will also have the groundbreaking opportunity to create a new mission and outreach line item in the budget to share more of our resources with global and local missions.
In our capital building appeal we have the opportunity to pay our monthly mortgage payments outside of our operating budget, freeing up ministry dollars. We have the opportunity to eliminate all of our debt from the building renovation that has reinvigorated Gethsemane’s heart for hospitality and enabled us to gather together in fellowship in ways we never expected. We also have the opportunity to replace the old leaking windows in our educational wing with much higher efficiency windows, saving on future building costs.
You have lots of options before you, but only a few of them will make a lasting difference in the lives of others and in your own. God is calling you, inviting you, to once again engage your faith, and live it out in every choice you make. We are opening a window of opportunity here at Gethsemane and invite you to let your light shine through it.
from Bob Windels, Youth Director
By the time you read this, I hope to have finished building a replacement deck on our house in Eden Prairie. After searching for ways to Do Something for Nancy, I settled on giving her a more comfortable place to sit out in the sunshine she loves, with more room for her plants and for hosting company. So I budgeted for the materials and relished the chance to use my tools and construction skills, and my best window for completing this project fell in August, with my summer youth trips accomplished and with a little quiet time left before fall programming starts up. However, you may remember much of August featured torrential rains and an impressive 100-degree heat index! Right project, right time— but less-than-ideal conditions that are giving new meaning to “sweat equity.” I’ve been making progress in spite of the weather, though, chugging lots of water and working until dark, fueled by the belief that when the new deck is done it will seem well worth the investment, the sore muscles and the sunburn, in order to have a better, more useful space to live in— some quality-of-life infrastructure.
Gethsemane made a similar decision when we opened the doors in 2006 on our remodeled building, investing in our quality-of-ministry infrastructure. These attractive new spaces get well-used all the time, and I believe the congregation continues to feel like that was money and energy well-spent, that the timing was right, that it needed to be done in order for us to adequately serve our membership and community— even though we’ve still got a significant chunk of that mortgage yet to pay off, and many of our original windows are needing urgent replacements, and a new roof is not far off… all while many of our member households continue to struggle financially in this recession. Right project, right time—less-than-ideal economy.
Auto dealerships are trying hard to convince us that “Opportunity is Knocking” and “Now’s the Right Time” to buy that new car, while hoping that we’re not reading the new unemployment forecasts before committing to a major purchase. Hopefully good financial news really is right around the corner, but good stewardship of money and time continue to be essential skills in a world where almost everybody’s selling something—and the latest gadget is usually a way more fun and attractive way to spend a dollar than, say, paying taxes to replace a bridge before it falls down. And a week spent re-painting your house is less attractive than—well, anything, probably. (I kind of hate painting.)
But things of value are worth paying for to build and sustain them, worth sacrificing for, and worth spending the time to do the necessary groundwork: in other words, infrastructure. (For every hour I get to spend with teenagers, I’m spending 8 hours prepping at my desk or doing errands or recruiting/training volunteers or managing fundraisers—but all of that time spent allows the one eventual hour with the youth to be more fruitful.)
As you get your stewardship campaign materials this fall, I hope you will be able to feel good about investing in Gethsemane with your time, talents and finances, in balance with all of the other things you truly value. May God bless the timing of your decisions! Now I’m getting back out there to sweat off a few more pounds on my construction zone stay-cation… Carpe diem!
from Pastor Sarah Moat
There is a saying in my family that pretty clearly illustrates what we value. Back when we were kids we had the wonderful experience of spending summers at the lake with our grandparents and extended family. I have wonderful memories of those lazy days with long afternoons on the boat or on the beach, playing hard and eating well. On one of our boat trips we were disappointed at not finding the snacks that were always carefully stowed away for an offshore excursion. My cousin woefully complained, “nothing to eat and nothing to drink, we’re not having any fun.”
That phrase has now become a fixture in our family’s vernacular and we always make sure that we have plenty to eat and drink when we get together - because it is fun to be with people around the table surrounded by good food and special drinks. Many of my memories with my family include celebrations around the table with extended family as we eat and relish in the company of one another. I try to continue this tradition with my girls as well.
In the book, Take This Bread, Sara Miles writes about her memories of gathering at a table of a different kind. She shares her story of transformation after encountering the body and blood of Jesus Christ at the communion table, where she encountered the “eternal and material core of Christianity: body, blood, bread, wine, poured out freely, and shared by all.” Miles has opened a food shelf in her congregation, serving food to people in need right from the altar. And in doing so she serves people who aren’t familiar with the inside of church; they don’t know the creeds or ways to process or pray but she is sharing the body of Christ with them – a sign of unconditional acceptance and forgiveness. In her radical faith she is loving and serving just as Jesus did – crossing the barriers that get set up sometimes by those of us in the church as we try to decide who is welcome and who should remain on the outside.
As we gather each week for worship here at Gethsemane we come together for good food and drink as well. The meal around the table shapes our life together and it sustains us for the week ahead but it also calls us into the world to spread the gift of Christ to all people – even people who don’t look like us, believe like us or live as we do. The good food served from our altar really is for everyone.
It is always a privilege to partake in communion with you. The longer that I am here and have had the opportunity to learn your stories, your joys and your concerns I recognize over and over again the deep need that we all have to be fed with the body of Christ. We come to the table humble and broken, hungry and in need, and it is in the good food and drink that we receive Christ – unconditional love and forgiveness. It is my prayer that as we are fed and forgiven we can find ways to bring the same unconditional acceptance into our community. All of God’s people always need something to eat and something to drink!
from Tiphanie Dirnberger, Children's Ministry Director
Today I attended and participated in the Hopkins Raspberry Parade with 35 other Gethsemane members. The weather was perfect – partly cloudy, a little breezy and the thermometer was in the mid seventies – uncharacteristically comfortable for the parade. I was not the only one enjoying the beautiful weather; it looked and felt like a record crowd watching from the sidewalks.
As I was walking the parade route I was thinking how lucky my kids are to live in a town with an old-fashioned Main Street and a town festival steeped in tradition. My kids are proud to say they live in Hopkins and thoroughly take advantage of living close to Main Street. They often walk downtown to go to the movies or bowling, ride their bike to the library, eat at restaurants with friends or go shopping in the numerous antique stores. I grew up in a town of 500, and though Hopkins is 35 times larger than the five streets of my hometown it still has that same small town feeling.
Though more people probably attended the parade because the weather was pleasant, most people go because it is something they have always done. The parade is fun – but face it – it is often miserably hot and after you see a couple waving princesses they all start looking alike. Yet while walking the parade route you often see three generations watching the parade together. Parents bring their kids to the parade because their parents brought them.
Church is the same way – parents often bring their kids to church because their parents brought them. If your parents only brought you to the parade a couple of times while growing up, you as a parent probably wouldn’t feel a strong need to bring your kids. The same can be said about church.
My hope as Gethsemane’s Children’s Ministry Director is that parents will bring their kids to church regularly so that kids experience church as something that is part of a routine, not something that just happens when the conditions are right. Going to church can be work, but I promise you will not have to reserve your seat at 4 am like many diehard parade goers do. As a parent I do realize that getting everyone out the door early on a Sunday morning is hard – but so worth it!
I want every Gethsemane child to feel part of our community and when they grow up to want to share their faith and Gethsemane’s traditions with their kids.
from Pastor John Nelson
When we think about summer I believe we all fall back into the idea that this is a “time off,” or at the very least, a break from the routine. It is imbedded in us from the days of our youth, anxiously waiting for the end of school so we could be off for the summer. “Off,” meaning not having the same obligations of school, waking up early, doing homework, busy schedules, etc. These expectations, or at least these yearnings, persist even though as adults we don’t get summer “off” anymore. We might take a vacation but for the majority of the time we are all still working, be it at home or at the office. And if you are at home your work just doubled if the kids are there with you now.
Yet this expectation to be “off” is persistent; we each want a break. And it is one of the beautiful ironies of life that when we get it we quickly become bored with “nothing to do.” Funny how only two days into summer the refrain I hear year after year from my kids is, “I’m bored! What can I do?”
Some might call it God’s sick sense of humor on us, that we are restless without something “to do,” or at least we feel like couch potatoes after doing nothing for very long. So we each come up with a summer project or list of things we had put off that we always meant to get to. Things like gardening projects, books we wanted to read, places we wanted to see. But what if there was a more intentional purpose for our yearning?
What if God implanted this “restlessness” into creation so that we might continually seek to engage life differently? But not merely engage life, but to actually engage God in new ways. You see, to be engaged by God in a living relationship, in a living faith, is not a seasonal or part-time occupation. To be engaged in a living faith is a year-round activity with seasonal shifts. It is a lifelong pursuit, a pursuit approached differently at different times, but one with the same goal in mind—growth.
So how might you possibly engage God differently this summer? Better yet, how do you expect that God will be engaging you differently over the next few months? We have each learned that if you wait for God to surprise you, you might be really surprised. So how about you proactively take up one of the Elements of a Living Faith as your “summer project?” It might be a Bible study you were not free to take before, or you might join a new social ministry you had always wanted to do, or be a part of the small group that has been inviting you. Thinking in holistic terms; how could you be a better steward of your faith life and the gifts, the talents God has given you?
This summer, rather than simply working on a tan or your golf game, how about you work on your God game… and get engaged.
Hope to see you in the field!
