My brothers and sisters in Christ,
Well, it was 12:00 somewhere. I’m not sure, but it had to be someplace in the world. Didn’t even make it up for the New York celebration. Patty and I would rather get sleep. I wonder what it says about us. I would imagine the same thing about most of you. Maybe a good meal and a movie, and call it a night. We had our 2 grandchildren with us. My goal was to make it up past the 5-year-old. The 8-year-old is iffy. Sometimes he stays up later than I do.
Did you know that only 9% of people who make New Year’s resolutions keep them? If January is the month to make resolutions, then February is the month to break them. The problem is that they are so hard to keep. The notion that it takes 21 days to form a habit is a myth. Research indicates that it is approximately 66 days, possibly longer. This is a long time to make something permanent.
Being a follower of Jesus Christ is not an easy thing either. It takes hard work. It usually takes doing something against what is normal in our world today. I still have a remark rolling around in my head by a person in our congregation. They said, “No, we don’t get to do that. As Christians, we don’t get to do that.” I think they were commenting about someone saying something bad about a person. In reality, it can be used for many things. I wonder if by not doing it, people would notice that there is something different about us.
This is what the season of Epiphany is all about. Liturgically, it is how God has made himself known. Last weekend it was by a star. This week, it is through the baptism of Jesus. But I think this season is about us also. It is about how we make God known to others. Some of us rely on our actions, which is really good. But many times our actions may attract people to us, so we need to be ready with our words. This past weekend, I was wondering if we know how to do this? Are we equipped to express our faith in words? If you are like many, most do not. I’m going to try to work on this. More to come.
We are going to celebrate Bernice Menne’s life on Saturday, January 24 at 11:00 a.m. She was a big part of our church, and my hope is that we have many people from our congregation attending. One of the things we are going to do at this celebration is to share stories about Bernice. Do you have one that you would like to share? We can do this in a number of ways. One, if you plan on attending, you can share your memory at the service. It only has to be a minute or two. All you need to do is let me know so I can put you on the list that you are sharing.
If you don’t want to do this, you can write it down, and I will read it at the service. Finally, you can send a letter to the family. I will give you an address in a later letter. I’m not sure if the family knows how we feel about Bernice. This would give us a great opportunity to let them know how we felt about her.
Make sure you mark your calendars for Sunday, January 25. We will have our Annual Meeting at this time. It will occur right after the worship service. After a few reports, the congregation needs to vote on two items. One is the ratification of our church constitution. It is not like last time, when the members of the committee worked many hours to bring it up to date. Most of the changes over the last two years were grammatical and formatting. However, there are two important changes that were made.
The first change was how we make a quorum at our meetings. Instead of a number, they want a percentage. For the last couple of years, we have set the number of people needed at 25 to make a quorum. Now they want a percentage. We made it greater than 8% which makes our quorum at 26 voting members. If we don’t have 26 voting members at our annual meeting, we can’t do any business. This is the reason why you need to plan on attending.
The second change is they want it written in our Constitution that we “Proclaim the love of God.” We had to add this phrase in a couple of places. I wish I could think of something witty to say about this, but I can’t right now. I’m going to let this stand by itself.
The other item we will vote on is our annual budget. Most of you have received the letter from Dave Kromphardt on the state of our finances at St. John’s. Last year, our expenditures outpaced our offerings. We now find ourselves in debt by approximately 16,000 dollars. It will only get worse if things don’t change. The letter expressed a couple of solutions for us to erase this debt and move on for this year. If you have not received this letter, please let me or Eloide know, and we will get it to you.
One of the ways we can solve our money issues is for everyone to reflect on what the Holy Spirit is putting on their heart. I know nothing about what people give. All I know is how much my family gives. We are trying to discern what the Spirit is saying to us. I would like each person/family to do the same.
As a group, I would like all of us to make it our daily prayer. Epiphany is about how God makes himself known. I’m excited to see how God will make Himself known in this letter. Let’s bathe it in prayer and see.
Crossed marked and spirit sealed,
Pastor Tom
815-223-1144
Readings for the Baptism of our Lord – January 10 & 11
Isaiah 42:1-9 Psalm 29 Acts 10:34-43 Matthew 3:13-17