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  • About Us
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What is the Church: People, Prayer, Praise & Pulpit

8/31/2021

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It was her sophomore year in high school.  Her tight-knit group of friends were her world.  Sports were her safe place.  One night at a youth group gathering,  one of the leaders shared their faith story.  The leader told a story about his best friend; about how his best friend was always there for him, listened to him, never judged him, and always wanted the best for him.  He shared about how his best friend never gave up on  him, and how he would feel lost without his best friend.  She left the youth group that night thinking she wanted a friend like that. Someone she could just be herself with.  Someone she didn’t have to pretend to be anything or anyone she wasn’t.  Someone who didn’t define her by how she looked or her family’s struggles or dysfunctional dynamics.   A few months later, while attending church camp in the mountains of Colorado, it all clicked and she met that friend.  His name was Jesus.  

That is the church and why it exists - coming alongside young people - all people, and offering them time, space, patience, affirmation, opportunity, comfort, support, guidance, and wisdom as they navigate the world around them.  Telling our stories and listening to how their story is unfolding even if it's different, especially if it's different. 

What is the church and why does it exist? 
Luke 22:10-  When it was time, he, Jesus, sat down, all the apostles with him and said, “You’ve no idea how much I have looked forward to eating this meal with you…” Taking the cup, he blessed it...taking the bread, he blessed it and broke it and gave it to them saying this is my body broken for you. 

It happens every year and is one of my favorite events to be a part of here at Grace church.  It is our Women’s Retreat.  Out of all the speakers, themes, topics, lessons, books, locations, craft projects, songs, things gone well and things we never did again, the best part of every single retreat is the end.  The tables are pushed aside and the chairs are formed into a circle and we share in communion.  I sometimes sense by that point in the day, people are just going through the motions and circling the wagons for communion cause they know it's the last thing and then they are outta there!  But then it happens...we start to share.  We start to recap the day, lift up one another in support and prayer, talk about the highlights and things that surfaced through the Holy moments of the day.  We come back to center and it is as if time slows down - we are suspended in the holy for just a moment and connected in a way like no other time.  It's beautiful.  Moving.  Inspiring.  Raw.  Messy.  Breathtakingly mysterious and powerful.  

That is the church and why it exists - feeding one another the kind of soul food that helps us carry on when we are tired and weary, or when we have had enough and just want it to be over and go home.  Sharing life lessons and life struggles so that no one person carries it all.  Remembering the presence of God with us, Emmanuel, Jesus in the passing of the cup and the breaking of the bread.  Being together, building one another up, and making room for each other in the circle; making room at the table of God.  

What is the church, and why does it exist?
Matthew 25:40  I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was shivering and you gave me clothes, I was sick and you stopped to visit, I was in prison and you came to me...Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me - you did it to me. 

A hot meal every week for anywhere between 30-115 people.  A mini-parade for folks in lock down.  Food drives for people.  Food and supply drives for the animal shelter.  Unloading and distributing food off the food trucks.  Blood drives.  After school tutoring.  Booths at the fair.  Support for local businesses and nonprofits.  Christmas gifts for complete strangers.  Thanksgiving baskets for families of the neighboring school.  Meeting space for a dozen different groups who don’t always clean up after themselves.  Fundraisers and capital campaign projects.  And that’s the easy stuff.  Walking in the pride parade for your son, daughter, or grand-daughter even if you don’t understand or agree but you love them,  or walking for your friend who’s family shut them out.  Sitting in on a protest because you need to do something with all the emotions around a situation - you need to feel like you have a voice.  Writing to your senators and government leaders even when those around you tell you it doesn’t do any good.  Participating in book studies that ask the hard questions and give space for honest reflection and answers.  Being intentional and making friends with those who are different from you in order to show your kids the world is bigger than we sometimes let it be.  Sponsoring refugee families even when your family doesn’t agree or think it's a good idea.  Not walking away from the church because things get tough and the future uncertain but staying the course when others have left. 

That is the church and why it exists - connecting with the world and those in it in meaningful and significant ways; ways that matter.  Engaging in the community and taking a stand in the midst of injustice, giving voice to the voiceless, and using our power to empower others. 

If we believe God is a God of love, forgiveness, compassion, hope, and goodness, then that is what we are to reflect.  If we believe God is generous, faithful, and present, then that is what we and who we are to be.  God works through presence and God needs a people to be present to and through and a people to intentionally create spaces for God to be experienced by others. 

We are to be a part of God’s mission to restore all creation to God’s presence.  Despite our differences.  Despite how vaccines and masks have become divisive.  Despite politics.  Despite different backgrounds and expectations.  Despite prejudices.  Despite the myriad of things that try to divide us.  Despite it all, we are all the church. We are called to live our lives in a way that shows, invites, reveals, inspires, and challenges those who have eyes to see and ears to hear AND allow the presence of God in others to do the same for us, that everyone may come to recognize and hold to faith in Jesus Christ.  That is the church and that is why it exists. 

How will you be a part of its reality? 
Amen
Pastor Jenothy Irvine


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What is the Church?: Programs and Presence - John 15:1-4

8/24/2021

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From the time of Adam and Eve, it seems humanity walks precariously on the edge of closeness with God.  We have always found ourselves teetering in the tension of being so close with God we brush against the holy, and being or feeling so distant from God we brush against all that is dark, lonely, and isolating.  

Throughout the Bible we read of how time and time again God’s people felt the closest to God, the safest, the most secure, loved, and unshakable when God’s presence was tangible:
In the garden with Adam and Eve.
With Noah on the ark.
With Abraham and Sarah bearing a son and birthing a nation
With Moses freeing his people and crossing the sea.

These Old Testament accounts tell us that God’s people are not God’s people apart from God’s presence.  In Exodus 33, Moses responds to God saying,  “Is it not by Your going with us, your presence with us, that we, Your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:15-16 NASB).  

It is through God’s presence that God works among them and through them.  On and on it goes through the Old Testament - through the wilderness, into the promised land, until once again God’s people turn their backs on God and turn away from the practices that ground them in their faith.  Turn away from creating space for God in their midst. 
And then, in God’s greatest act of love and restoration, God’s promise is made whole in the birth of Jesus - the one the prophets foretold with the words, “...and he shall be named Immanuel,”  which means, what???  God with us!   God’s very presence came and lived among us - showed us the way to live and how to treat one another.  

So when we ask, “why does the church exist?”  Why does a body of believers matter?  The answer is because “presence is the way God works.  Therefore, for God to work, requires a people for God to be present to, and to make space for God to be made known in the world” (38).  

Presence and programs.  Once we grab hold of just how significant this understanding of presence is, then we build the programs and we ask ourselves, “what is more important, to organize the church as a set of programs, for individuals to access, or as a whole way of life to be lived together in the world? (30). 

I think you know my answer to that one.  Practicing the presence of God individually and as a gathered body of believers must be understood as a way of life, not something insignificant and immediate, but something transforming and eternal.  Not something once a week but something everyday in everyday life.   

Presence is how God works, therefore God’s presence needs our presence.  Out of such awareness the needs, interests, values, struggles, and questions of the people are made known and the programs then, are a response to God’s presence and leading.  Programs that equip, teach, build, empower, and direct others into an awareness and lifelong pursuit of God’s presence.  

What are we to be, church?  A place of program upon program upon program or a place where the evidence of God’s abiding presence is known, programs emerge, and transformation occurs?  

Why church?  Because God’s presence needs our presence to work in and through; we are vessels of God’s presence.  Why church? Because we need the presence of one another to show our world there is a place and a people of hope and that ultimately God’s love prevails. Why church?  Because it is bigger than us.

Amen

Pastor Jenothy Irvine
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What is the Church?: Practice Makes Perfect - Acts 2:42-47

8/17/2021

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What do you do when life is uncertain?  When a situation feels out of control?  Nothing makes sense?  Or things just feel off, out of whack, not quite what they should be?  You’ve been there haven’t you?  

It is in those moments you come to know what matters most.  You go back to what you know, what or who you can count on.  You declutter the inbox on your mind.  You unpack the excess baggage of the heart.  You let go of the little things - insignificant things, and focus on what is most important. 

That is what I am going to ask you to do today, church.  Today and for the next few weeks, I want to invite you to go back to what you know - to what is important about following Jesus and what matters most about being church. 

“When that happens,” Professor Fitch says, “when things get chaotic, and no longer seem to make sense, we must go back to the what and why.  We must ask all over again: what are we doing here when we gather as the church and why are we doing it?” (12)  What is the church?
Why is it so important?  How do we live as the church in our own time and place?  Those are the questions we will explore and seek to answer over the next few weeks.  Nothing to it, right?  By God’s grace and with the Holy Spirit as our guide, may we have the courage to try. 

Following Pentecost, the Apostle Peter preached perhaps the greatest sermon ever and at the end of it, he gave the greatest altar call of all time (Acts 2).   And there was laid the foundation of the early church.  With a handful of fisherman turned apostles, the band of followers who stuck it out with them, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and a few thousand of their closest friends.  All founded on what?  The divine plan of God, the love and example of Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit. 

And what did the early church do?  This newly formed band of believers - a new team Jesus?  What makes any good team?  Practice. Where do they start?  Fundamentals!  They practiced being church.  They practiced living out the truths taught by Jesus’ example.  They practiced living in harmony,  pooling their resources, and being a community.  It was a faith lived out (not just talked about, read about, or preached about) - lived out; practiced alongside others doing the same - trying to live a Jesus centered life. These were people from all over the known world.  They weren’t cookie cutter believers.  They weren’t like minded individuals gathering for a cause.  They weren’t all from the same side of the tracks.  They didn’t all come from the same socio-economic background, have the same educational level, or access to the same training, opportunities, or lifestyle. 

In fact, about the only thing they did have in common was their faith and belief in Jesus - and that was enough.  They were committed to practicing a living faith that others would see what love, justice, peace, compassion and a kingdom community looked like and that it was possible. 

I am sure it wasn’t easy.  I am confident it wasn’t always pretty.  I am certain different people at different times wanted to quit and walk away.  (otherwise Paul wouldn’t have had so much to write about!)  But church, even in the chaos and uncertainty, they stayed the course because Jesus was their center, and when they got off course, they trusted God and each other to find a way.  Theologian Ephraim Radner proposed that we should not see unity as an ideal of perfect harmony in all relations that churches reach, but instead as an understanding that the church by nature is always in process of sorting out its disagreements; this sorting is a part of a way of life and in fact it is our conflicts and the way we practice reconciliation in the midst of them that gives witness to our unity in Christ.  He calls this process a “brutal unity.”  (19).  

Church might look different now but it’s definition and purpose is the same - church is a community of practices - those activities and ways of living that reflect the life of Jesus; church is the joining of people together in their commitment to and faith in Jesus as Lord (15).  

Practice makes perfect.  Just ask any olympic athlete returning home from Japan.  Practice makes perfect.  Whether you are an elite athlete, pro ball player, professional dancer, esteemed chef, or renowned author, speaker, and preacher.  Practice makes perfect.  The same applies to doing and being church.  And what we practice is what we perfect. 

May God’s Spirit guide each of us, together, into a true understanding of what it means to be the church.  Amen.

Pastor Jenothy Irvine
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Grace United Methodist Church
1300 E Adams Dr,
Franklin, IN 46131

Phone: 317-736-7962
grace@franklingrace.org

Weekend  Worship Services
Saturday: 5:30pm 
Sunday: 9:00am & 11:00am

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