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Contact us:
205 Belinda Drive Hermitage, TN 37027
(615) 883-3918 Fax: 883-4085
A Message from Reverend Allen Black
I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:14 (New King James Version)
Paul is sharing with the church at Philippi his heartfelt purpose statement. The challenge to move toward Christ is sometimes painful but will always bring about blessing as we reach forward in faith.
The following article was written by my dear friend Rev. Bud Gordon and was in his newsletter “The Central Express”. Bud is pastor of the Central United Methodist Church in Columbus, Mississippi.
In John Irvine’s novel, “The Hotel New Hampshire”, John’s sister, Fannie, is raped. In the light of that tragedy her family seeks to minister to her in her physical suffering, but she locks herself in a bathroom. Her brother, John, calls to her through the bathroom door, asking if there was anything he could get for her.
She whispered back, “Thank you. Just go out and get yesterday and most of today. I want them back.”
Who among us is not like her? How many yesterdays would we like to have back - even this morning. If this were humanly possible, we could get back those family and friends who have gone on before us. We would get another chance to right a wrong done by us or to us. We might find that, given another opportunity, we could more prayerfully consider some critical decision before us. However, we all know that this “getting back our yesterdays” is simply not the way things work in this world. No counselor, no pastor, no friend can restore the “what was”. We cannot by sheer willpower or effort get back what has been done in days gone by.
Jesus has promised to give us abundant life. This does not mean Jesus will give us more money, more things, or added days to our life span. We won’t even get back yesterday. What it can mean is healing for yesterday’s pain, right relationships restored, and meaning and purpose given again to our existence.
The resurrection of Christ gives substance to this kind of hope. Because Christ is risen, we can boldly embrace hope as a way of living out or days. One noted preacher put it this way, “Though everything is not going to be all right tomorrow, tomorrow will be all right. Amen and Amen!
UPCOMING HUMC EVENTS
May 11 - 18 Gulf Coast Mission Trip
May 18 High School Senior Brunch
May 22 YY Outing - Bicentennial Mall
June 2 Summer Camp Begins
June 2 - 6 Junior High Youth Mission Trip Camp Lookout, Chattanooga
June 16 - 20 Vacation Bible School
June 19 - 26 Mission Trip to Mexico City
July 6 - 13 Senior High Youth Mission Trip Hurricane Relief, D’Iberville, MS
Attention Families of High School Seniors: Join us as we honor our high school seniors at a brunch on Sunday, May 18 at 9:45 a.m. in the Family Life Center. Please call Carolyn at 883-3918, ext. 102 and let us know how many family members will be attending the brunch.
Joy Class Yard Sale
Saturday, June 21st
Pickup of items on Friday, June 20th
Please start to save items as you do your Spring cleaning.
Need more information: Terry Byrd 449-4393
Mission Trip to Mexico City: June 19 - 26
We still need four people for this mission trip. For more information, please contact Steve Gammon at 449-6727 or David Wilder at 948-9151.
Arthritis Foundation Exercise Program
It’s not too late to join us for an Arthritis Foundation Exercise Program that started on May 7 and will conclude on June 11. We will meet in Room 108 on Wednesday from 10:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. Lynn Farris is a trained instructor. There is no charge to attend this class. To sign up, please contact Carolyn at 883-3918, ext. 102.
Register Your Children Now for VBS or Summer Camp. Registration forms available in the church office. For more information on any children's activities, please call Rita Byrd, Director of Children's Ministries at 883-3817, ext. 107.
PLUG IN…….with “POWER LAB"
Vacation Bible School
JUNE 16 - 20
There will be a Vacation Bible School "Power Lab" Information Meeting on Wednesday, May 14 at 6:30 p.m. in the sanctuary. Be praying about how YOU want to "plug in" with our children at VBS this summer!
It's Not Too Late to Sign Up For Summer Camp
Below are the different themes that will be offered each week. This is a unique and wonderful opportunity for your children to spend time in a high-energy, positive setting with old and new friends! Register your child for one or more weeks to insure an action-packed summer.
June 2 - 6 Past & Present
June 9 - 13 Imagine…Explore CREATE
June 16 - 20 Power Lab
June 23 - 27 Space Race
June 30 - July 3 It’s a Jungle Out There! (Closed Friday, July 4)
July 7 - 11 You’re Soooo Dramatic!
July 21 - 25 Cruisin’ the Caribbean
The cost per week is $80 per child. Partial scholarships are available. For more information, please contact Rita Byrd at 883-3918, ext. 107.
Exciting News from your HUMC Communications Committee
Sign up to get your photo taken for the church directory each Sunday in May. Life Touch will be here taking photos the weeks of June 3 and June 10. There will be volunteers at both buildings before and after each service to sign up your family for photos. This is a wonderful opportunity to invite family members that may not attend here to join you for a long overdue photo. Each family will receive a FREE 8 x 10!
This year, the photo taking process will run a little differently, and hopefully, even more smoothly than before. Each family will have one person who will take your photo, show you your proofs and assist if you decide to make a purchase.
No Pressure Sales—When you make your photo appointment, you will be given a price sheet so that you can decide before hand if you would like to make a purchase.
Say “Jesus”!
Can you spare two hours? We NEED Volunteers to serve as hosts and hostesses when people sign in to have their photos taken. Please call Tonya Malzone at 883-3918, ext. 104.
United Methodist General Conference delegates hear messages of hope Written By Robin Russell
(Reprinted with permission of The United Methodist Reporter)
FORT WORTH, Texas—United Methodists from 50 nations and five continents heard a message of resurrection hope during the opening worship service at their 2008 General Conference.
They gathered April 23 at the Fort Worth Convention Center, on the 40th anniversary of the day the Evangelical United Brethren merged with the Methodist Church to create the United Methodist Church, within 40 miles of where it happened.
Basing her sermon on the General Conference theme of “A Future With Hope,” Houston Bishop Janice Riggle Huie told the assembly, “Resurrection hope transforms lives and changes the future. Tonight, through us, the people of the United Methodist Church gather around this table filled with resurrection hope.”
Worship leader Marcia McFee and music director Mark Miller led more than 6,500 people for a two-hour worship service that featured special choirs, an orchestra, praise singers, liturgical dance, prayers, Scripture readings and diverse music—from traditional hymns such as “Are We Yet Alive” to contemporary, ethnic-flavored arrangements of praise songs.
Through worship, the ordinary things in life—bits of glass, wood and seeds—would be transformed into sacred elements, Ms. McFee said. Wood from historic Gulfside Assembly in Waveland, Miss., destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was used for the pulpit, altar and table.
Bishops Huie and Gregory Palmer of Iowa led the nearly 1,000 delegates on the floor and thousands of guests and conference officials in the stands in a service of Holy Communion.
Preaching from the book of Romans, Bishop Huie said that though Scripture teaches that “in hope we are saved,” today, the word “hope” was becoming more of a “marshmallow word.”
“It sounds soft,” she said. “It looks sweet and appealing. Get it close to the fire, and hope melts off the stick and drips on the ground. “John Wesley would say that marshmallow hope is the hope of ‘almost Christians.’”
By contrast, she added, hope is the very “nerve center” of the Christian life. “Love is the heart. Faith is the muscle. It is impossible to live without hope.”
She said she also chose the book of Romans for her text because the apostle Paul was addressing a community filled with special interest groups, much like the United Methodist General Conference. “Many people in our beloved United Methodist Church are anxious,” she said, over declining membership, divisions over social issues and the increasingly complex global nature of the church.
“Among 1,000 delegates it seems like there are 1,000 points of view,” she said. “It’s easy to feel vulnerable, helpless—even to lose hope.”
Indeed, delegates would be sifting through 1,500 petitions in 13 legislative committees before taking final action in plenary sessions through May 2. But Bishop Huie compared their efforts to a woman in labor: There may be “struggle, pain, suffering and brokenness, but new life is going to come.”
“Resurrection hope gives us the courage to stand beside the bed of a loved one with terminal disease,” Bishop Huie told the assembly. “Resurrection hope overcomes the insults of institutional racism. Resurrection hope plants new seed when the rains finally come. Resurrection hope rebuilds homes and lives after a storm.
“We are no longer captives to fear. We are heirs to a new covenant—a new future.”