Change of Leadership

Yesterday was the most difficult day I have had since being an Elder in the United Methodist Church. I have been with people in their most intimate times, I have buried those who should not yet have needed to be buried, yet yesterday was the most difficult day of them all. Yesterday was the day I had to tell the church that I have been serving that I was leaving to go to another church.

Itinerancy is the hallmark of the United Methodist Church; and for good reason. Itinerancy can teach us to rely on God as the faithful one, not on any one person. Itinerancy can teach faith communities to grow in their own leadership abilities and help them stand strong as a mighty force for God. But nowhere is it said that itinerancy is easy.

As Elders of the church we are to love those whom we serve. I love this congregation, just as I will love the new congregation. The Apostle Paul is very clear as we read in Romans 12:10, “Be devoted to one another in love.” When we love, it is difficult to let go. Yet our lives are so much richer for having loved, and having loved well.

My own relationship with the Apostle Paul has been this love-hate thing going on, but more recently the love has prevailed. I have grown to respect Paul as such an authentic voice of God that it is overwhelming–and convicting. Paul who planted church after church in the known Roman world, and then, just when he got to a point of loving a new church community, he left them on their own so that he could go plant another church. Why? His love for God was more overwhelming, more demanding, more powerful and more convicting than any other love. It was agape love that empowered Paul to leave those whom he loved to go start all over again. This was a love for fellow humans so that they too would come to know Jesus in a new, profound way.

And so, as much as I love the current congregation that I serve, I want to follow in Paul’s footsteps. I want to empower as many to know Jesus as possible, and I want to love new people. In turn, those new people can love new ones, and they in turn can be all that God is calling them to be. Love is hard, but God’s love prevails.

I am excited about the new possibilities that God has in store at the new place where I will be serving. They, too, are feeling loss as their beloved pastor is retiring.

And so, we all go forward, knowing that change is difficult, but that God’s love prevails. God is always at the helm, for both congregations. We will all be faithful in witness and service.  And God’s love will lead us into new, undiscovered possibilities!

A future with hope ~ TUMC Sandy Relief Team Last Day

Sounds are important to me. I like to listen to my surrounding sounds. A musician is always listening. The sound that has been new music to my ears over the last 5 days has been the sound of buzz saws, mitre saws and chop saws~ Why? That is what rebuilding sounds like for those who have lost their homes from Super Storm Sandy.

Our job site was abuzz with the sounds of rebuilding~ saws, hammering, calls of “How long do you want this cut to be?” Each time I came near the job site these sounds could be heard from at least a block away. Those sounds became the sound of hope!

There are other sounds being heard in Highlands, NJ. Right next to our job site, as mentioned previously, were the sounds of a backhoe backing up to tear down the trailer park homes that had been destroyed. Those folks are permanently displaced. We also heard the beep, beep, beep backing up of the big crane repositioning itself to take out the next part of the house that was right next to our rebuild house.

Today we heard the sound of emergency equipment; firemen and police rushing to the house just a few doors down. This house had been on stilts for the last week as they were raising the house in order that it would not be damaged from another storm. Today the emergency crews were there because this house that we being raised fell down off the stilts. Fortunately no one was hurt, but a house that we almost ready to be lived in is now in question if it can ever be occupied again.

We heard another sound today; The grateful sounds of a homeowner who is getting her life almost in order. One who will soon be back in her own home, and no longer living in a hotel~ One who is grateful for the many teams who have helped her along the way.

Today we were able to hang all of the upper kitchen cabinets, finish the last trim, put grout in between the newly laid bathroom tiles, get rid of the big trash pile of building scraps from behind the house, and get the home owner almost in her house.

Prior to our departure we were able to present her with a prayer shaw hand made by the Westfield 1st UMC team who had been housed with us. We also prayed a blessing over her home and over her.

Most of us are now home, Ron will return tomorrow.We are grateful for your prayers, we are grateful to have been called to the mission, we are grateful for the comfy beds of our own homes and tired, sore muscles. Most of all, we are grateful for the opportunity to have served, even for a short time, and the honor it has been to see God’s people on the move. Thank you for joining us along the journey.

Your Taylorsville UMC Mission Team & Friends.

PS If you have been new to this blog, please continue to join us. We blog about our experiences of trying to live as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, and we blog about our sermons to enable folks to grow deeper in their relationship with Jesus Christ. In the fall we will be preaching and blogging about the gospel of Matthew.

Meanwhile, if you would like more information about what the UMC in NJ is doing to help those still struggling from Super Storm Sandy, you are invited to “like” the Facebook page of “A future with Hope.”

A Future With Hope ~ End of Day Four

Once again, thanks for all of your prayer support. Tonight we will just send pictures, but let you know that they expect this ongoing recovery process to last five years. We will write more tomorrow night. We leave tomorrow and are hoping to get a lot of work done on our last day.

A future with hope ~ end of mission day three

Today Teresa made a video of what we have been doing here. Enjoy the YouTube video.

A Future With Hope ~ day three

Day three saw many accomplishments. We will write more after dinner. Tonight we knocked off early, at 5 pm so that we could enjoy a concert and picnic on the beach. After all, the beach is five minutes away.

Accomplishments: tile placed by Rusty, needs to dry and gets grout tomorrow, most doors hung, base board half completed and filled in. We finished encasing most of the windows and putting trim around them. You might need the tumc team to build your house 🙂

We are honored and blessed to be here, thanks for your continued prayers. Prayers for a good nights sleep would be welcome.

A Future With Hope ~ Sandy Relief Mission Day Two

We have just had another day of great day of accomplishments. We have also had many God sightings. One of the sightings that resonated with some of our team members was seeing a worm. You might ask, “What does a worm have to do with rebuilding hope for people’s lives?” The answer is, “everything!”

Our homeowner took great joy in her flowers and garden before the storm. As we were raking debris from her former garden and filling it with dirt and rebuilding a stone wall, she spoke longing for this sorely missed garden beauty. We dug up a few random, unidentifiable bulbs which had not bloomed this year. As we worked together she relayed a story from past years of telling her grandson not to buy worms for fishing because her rich soil had plenty of worms. She then sadly recounted how she had seen none since the storm. Not ten minutes later I, Nan, dug up a fat and very much alive earthworm. What delight filled her face and her voice! Joy and hope presented itself as a big, fat juicy earthworm! We carefully covered him back up and were grateful for this harbinger of good times to come. Hope comes in many forms, even in the form of earthworms!

Hope continued to come alive as our team finished more and more of the inside of the home. It is beginning to look like it might be habitable within a week or a little longer. Many of us had sore knees after having finished laying down hard wood floors. We began to tile out the bathroom, we hung some more doors, and put trim around windows and doors. She also had three windows that were not operable, they are now fully functioning windows.

Thanks for your continued prayers.

A Future With Hope ~ Sandy Relief Team Monday

This morning we went to the house assigned to us. Judy came to ‘a future with hope’ a while back desperate because she had a house that she couldn’t move into despite paying contractors to fix it up, they had taken her money and not done the work. Now she was going to be kicked out of the place she was staying because the grant money had run out. She was facing putting up a tent in the back yard. A couple of other groups ahead of us had done some great work but more needs to be done. We had to put down some flooring in two rooms and tile the bathroom. Also a number of doors needed to be hung and windows trimmed. We finished one of the room’s floors and got the cement board down on the bathroom floor. Several of the doors are now hung and a couple of windows are trimmed. There is still a lot more work to be done, but it is only Monday. It was a good day meeting new friends and sweat together. We are hoping to be able to get the homeowner back in her house by the end of this week or early next week.
Thanks for the prayers.

This is the next door house which is being torn down. During super storm sandy there were 8 people and a dog who waited out the storm in the top floor. The water surge was higher than the telephone poles.

We put in this wooden floor today.

A future with Hope ~Sandy Relief Mission Team

Our team from TUMC has safely arrived in Highlands, NJ. We are being housed in a church that was destroyed by Super Storm Sandy. We are here with another team from 1st United Methodist Church of West Field, NJ.

This church in Highlands was rebuilt with the purpose of housing teams. There are cots, one per person, and the men are housed downstairs in the former social hall, while the women are housed upstairs in the former sanctuary. I’ve never slept in a sanctuary before…..hopefully people don’t sleep in ours, for example during the sermon 🙂

We are tired from a long drive, but safe. We are eagerly awaiting our “job assignments” which we will receive tomorrow (Monday) morning.

Thanks for the prayers.
Your sandy Relief Team