St. John’s United Methodist Church

We will resume two worship services each Sunday on September 7th, we’ll return to our Sunday morning schedule of two worship services – at 9 and 10:30 AM. So, Praise music will begin at about 8:45 AM each Sunday for the first service. As always, our wonderful Sandy Shepard will coordinate childcare for […]

Come one, come all and bring a friend or neighbor too!
We’ll be celebrating the joy of living in the love of the Lord together at the Henry Law Park, the Rotary Band Shell this year. We will welcome Rev. Joyce Whetstone (2007 Ziegler Preaching Award winner) as our guest preacher.
What you need […]

“Healing” and “curing” are not the same thing. If a healing ministry is about shalom, there are other ways to be healed than just physical.

The Church has this gift that in many respects is held under a bushel basket, just sort of hidden away. The Church has a tradition of healing, and healing in the sense of body and mind and spirit and relationships. And that all of those are knit together in order to achieve Shalom [Ed.: see last week’s sermon]. I want to talk this week about some of the stuff that’s behind healing ministries as I understand them. The first, and most important, is that Christ is the one who is behind it all.

“Shalom” means “peace” in its fullest sense: health and wholeness. The healing ministry of the church is about shalom.

Baptism involves the naming of the child or adult. Names have meaning, and in ancient times they had even more significance than they do now. The name “Jesus” is a version of the Hebrew “Joshua”, which means “God saves”. Jesus is also called “Emmanuel”, which means “God is with us.” …..

This is the season of Advent – the season in which we prepare to welcome the life of God into our midst. And we’ve made a lot of preparations – we have the tree, we have the holiday plans we’ve made, we have special music, we have decorations – a whole range of activities and things that are identified with this time of the year…….

This week’s focus is “presence” — that is, being present. It is vitally important for us to realize that we are not alone in the world. How frequently we ask, in our prayers, for God to be present with us. God is not some sort of removed entity, some intellectual or even theological concept, but that God is a real presence with us that brings comfort. Our presence with one another is a powerful event. Being present with one another is so important. Maybe the Church would limp along, but it would not go along as well without us. None of us is indispensible, that’s true, but it’s different because we’re all here together.

Remember when you could buy a soda for 7 cents and a candy bar for a nickel? Remember when someone might deliver the food to your car wearing roller skates? Remember when you drove up to a sound box and put it on your window and watched a movie? There’s a nostalgia about those “remember whens” because everything changes. It’s difficult today to have confidence in the way things are because they might not be that way when we take a look at them next week or next month. How can we be confident in a world that is changing all the time?

Most of us think that times of stewardship are just about raising money. This isn’t about that at its heart. This is about drawing us deeper into the Kingdom of God, drawing us closer to Christ, drawing us closer to one another as sisters and brothers in the faith.