November 2017
It is the time to ask God for help for our Parish
Matthew 7:8-Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
Pastor Ran and I want to say “Thanks” to you. Thanks for fully supporting us and baby Caleb. We really thank you for your love, kindness, generosity, help and everything you do for our ministry. Thanks for your faithful decision to maintain our parish ministry continually with us, even though we have some financial problems.
St. Croix folks, thanks for your dedication to sharing your benefit continually with our parish churches. Your continuing support has been a huge help to the Upper St. Croix Parish.
Even though, we have been here almost 1 year and 5 months, we have done many new things for the church and will have a fruitful ministry plan.
Things we have done:
We have started the Parish Youth Group. We are meeting regularly with 5-15 youth joining our program. We had the Parish Confirmation Class and have started a new monthly children’s program, Children’s Fun Sundays at Atlas UMC. We held the Invitation Sunday at SCF and have a plan to apply this event parish wide as the church evangelical event. We have started to introduce ourselves to the community and have participated in local church events. We have regular visitation to church & non-church members-regularly visiting 10 people, at a minimum of once a month and suggest pastoral visitation quarterly with some our church members who live in Minneapolis. Also, we are covering several emergency pastoral visitations. At any time, pastors are ready to visit our church members when they need our help.
Next year, our first priority is to be united among the four churches as the one parish beyond financial bondage. For that, we will have a new parish Ad Council meeting, 3-4 joint parish worship services, parish fundraising events for our next generation, parish missional work and parish children’s ministry.
Our second priority is our revival not only spiritually, but also increasing member’s attendance. Finding our lost sheep at each church and inviting new people to our church will increase our attendance. Through worship, Bible Study, and adult education programs, I hope we will grow our faith spiritually. We will have more visitation time to find the lost sheep, but the pastors’ work for the revival has a limit. Praying for and giving some information to the lost sheep, or those who are interested in our church and Christianity would be helpful. We also encourage you to try to give the good news to your family, friends, and neighbors yourselves. We will have a time to invite new church members next year.
We know we will definitely have financial problems next year. I do not say “Maybe,” I am saying “Definitely”. We have a 2% increase in the parish budget, almost $3,000 compared to last year. This is not a tremendous jump compared with last year, but we are having a hard time solving this problem ourselves. If we don’t receive a Conference financial support grant ($9,881) and Central’s apportionment deduction ($5,718), we can’t solve it.
However, remember that we are still surviving and also have some positive signals to solve this financial issue, specifically that SCF UMC decided to maintain their commitment and to extend it to us until next December and they will prepare a $1,200 emergency fund to help the other churches, if they have still financial struggle. Central has started the financial stewardship program and Atlas & Wolf Creek accepted the budget and have tried to overcome this difficulty with faith. Also, our conference may try to help us this year as well.
As a leader of the church and as the pastors in the Upper St. Croix Parish, we have lots of holy responsibility about our financial situation so we decided to increase our general offering $1,000 to the church to help cover next year’s parish budget increase, even though we currently have committed a lot to the church. We want to lead by example as the pastors of the parish, even though we will eat only lentil and beans-don’t worry that Caleb will eat his favorite milk continually without limits ????
Also, each church will have a Commitment & Celebration Sunday at the end of November or early December. (The letter with the pledge card will be sent in middle of November) Commitment and Stewardship is not merely about money. It is also about how we offer our whole lives to God and to the service of the church. We promise to serve the church with our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. All five of these things are marks of discipleship. Your promise will help the church in managing and maintaining the 2018 church plans, which we have worked hard to budget for this coming year. However, if you are uncomfortable with giving after your prayer, please skip it until the next year. We honor and respect your decision.
Jesus said, (Matthew 7:8) Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
It is the time to ask God for help for our Parish. It is the time to seek the vision of the church for our next generation. It is the time to knock on the door to find the lost sheep and invite new members to the Parish.
Let’s go the next step with a humble and faithful heart like the tax collector in Luke 18. I definitely promise that we are going to share and celebrate many fruitful ministerial joys with faithful friends and God here. Thanks be to God and thanks be to all of you.