Pastor Jeff’s Blog

Welcome to another new feature at Evergreen-UMC.org! We’re excited to introduce Pastor Jeff’s Blog. Pastor Jeff will share his thoughts and insights as he brings the Word of God. His blog may receive a daily update so check back with us frequently. We earnestly hope that your lives will be enriched with your readings.

Peace in Christ,
Howard Lively, EUMC Webmaster
Webmaster@Evergreen-UMC.org

Psalm 17:6
I call on you, O God, for you will answer me;
Give ear to me and hear my prayer.

Prayer…when do you do that during your day? You might spend time praying while you are driving. You might pray before you go into a big meeting. You might pray before you go to bed or first thing in the morning.

I have been thinking about prayer a lot lately because of one of my classes at the Divinity School. One of my favorite professors there at Duke is actually a Jewish rabbi. He has really changed the way I think about prayer. Rabbi Sager prays over an hour every day. What a way to spend time! A Jewish theologian, A.J. Heschel, makes this claim about prayer, “Prayer must pervade as a climate of living, and all our acts must be carried out as variations on the theme of prayer.” Wow! So every act I do during the day can be a prayer? Every act of kindness or act of charity is a prayer. Everything I do can be a prayer! That really changes the way I will act on I-40! Prayer opportunities are everywhere, and those prayers are very necessary! Worshiping the God that made us and loves us enough to send God’s Son to die for or sins is important. God wants us to communicate all the time, even about little things like traffic and mean people!

Do we need some prayer vitamins in our lives? Do we need to pray more frequently? Then, think about places you can add prayer into your life. You could pray for the person in the ambulance that is passing you on the street. You could pray for the boss that is driving you crazy. You could pray while you are walking to your car. You could pray for the guy who runs into you in the hall at school. If you find some neat places to add prayer to your life, tell me. Let me know how you do! I will be praying for you!

Blessings to you and yours,

Mary Berg
Pastoral Associate

I can’t believe that we have already entered the liturgical season of Advent. For most of us we note this time in relation to shopping days left until Christmas (there are 26 in case you are wondering). However on any given Sunday for the next four weeks you will notice there is an advent wreath (some new candles on a fancy round stand here at Evergreen) in the church. Each week we note through scripture, prayer, song and light another dimension of God’s love for us.

Last week we were reminded of the certainty of Christ’s second coming into the world. We celebrated the ultimate Peace that would reign in all creation as all creation is fully reconciled to God. Although it is hard to imagine and even more difficult to represent with a single candle it truly is GOOD NEWS! And that my brothers and sisters is something that is wonderful about the church; that we gather with all our hangups and failures, our imperfections and doubts, our egos and our fears and still with boldness remind each other that Jesus Christ is victorious. We proclaim in community with more authority than any of us alone can claim that upon his return every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is LORD!

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence…to make your name known to your adversaries, so the the nations might tremble at your presence! (Isaiah 64:1-2)

Peace,

Pastor Jeff

Hey Everyone in Evergreen land,

I have been thinking a lot about being Methodist as I am waiting for school to start back up. I thought that I would blog about something that I had always wondered about before I came to school. Why is the United Methodist Church so connected? Why do we have things like an Annual Conference and why does it matter? Plus, where did they get the idea to move pastors around every couple of years?

Connectionalism makes the United Methodist Church unique. We do not answer to the pope in Rome like the Roman Catholic Church nor are we an island in and of ourselves like a congregational church. Our connection is multidimensional, global in scope, but local in thrust. Connectionalism began with John Wesley in the 1700s in England. For John Wesley, the connection was the best way to spread scriptural holiness across the land. Itineracy plays a part in the connectional nature of Methodism. Each society could not have their own preacher due to the lack thereof. John Wesley also thought that each society should not become dependent on a certain preacher. The traveling preacher rode from society to society preaching staying mere months in each. Wesley thought that the congregations would become bored if they had the same preacher continually. This sharing of ministers connects us one church to another.

Control also influences connectionalism of the past and the present. John Wesley wanted to control what was preached and how. For example, he would suggest that poor lay preachers return to their day jobs rather than teach wrong theology from the pulpit. He would interview all candidates with Charles Wesley and determine their fitness for the job. Similarly, Wesley created the Model Deed (Trust Clause in America) to ensure that a local church could not control the pulpit. Many Anglican churches did not allow him to preach from their pulpits, therefore he responded to that himself when given the chance. As a result, the United Methodist Church has the Trust Clause incorporated into every deed to property of the local church. A pastor cannot preach something contrary to the Book of Discipline, nor can a UMC hold a bingo to raise money for a mission trip.

Biblically the connectional nature of the UMC reflects the funnel model of the ministry of Jesus Christ. Jesus had his group of 12 disciples, the group of 70 followers, and the 5000 who listened to him preach. We have the local church. This small group is the best place to nurture disciples as Jesus did with his close friends. The local church invests time in people and leads them to know God better. The local church impacts individuals. The Annual Conference then supports the local church with its programs. People like the bishop have less direct contact with church members and therefore less direct impact. The Jurisdictional and General Conference employees have even less contact with people and effect change on a large level through education and initiatives.

The organization of the United Methodist Church reflects our particular theology. Methodists hold faith and works in tension. We believe that we must act out our beliefs but these actions do not earn our salvation. Connection enables us to strengthen one another in faith. The local church holds a Bible study, but the General Conference through the General Board of Discipleship provides great materials like Disciple Bible study to do such a thing. The local church encourages members to explore a calling to ordained ministry but the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry provides scholarships to make that easier for people to do. Works are also easier and better with the connection. The local church recruits a local work team, but the Annual Conference organizes a central location for information and a place to do it like the NC Conference’s M.E.R.C.I center which sends the work team to Clyde, NC to clean up houses destroyed in the flood. Overall, the connection magnifies our theology and makes it easier to practice it.

As a whole, the United Methodist system of polity can sometimes be unwieldy. You can’t call up just one Methodist person to get a sound bite for a news story on TV. Conversely, the local church can sometimes seem like it is all alone in the woods doing ministry. Yet, the history and activity of our connection show what kind of people Methodists are: we care about Jesus, about each other, and about the world around us.

May God bless you and the connections you make at Evergreen!

Peace,
Mary

Greetings.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

This is perhaps the most widely recognized verse in all of scripture. And, why shouldn’t it be? It proclaims a God who loves us, and that ought to makes us feel pretty good. It talks about eternal life and that sure seems appealing. But best of all it doesn’t seem to demand anything of us, except that little bit about “whoever believes in him,” but certainly that isn’t off-putting enough to rain on our parade. For Christians this little verse is our banner, and we (including the dude with the rainbow hair at every sporting event in the 70’s) raise that banner high. You know we don’t get too much flack for it either. Perhaps the best of both worlds, a verse that seems to make us feel good and one that doesn’t seem to make the world feel too bad, mad or sad.

Okay so maybe there is one little problem at which we might take one little peek. Verse 16 is actually preceded by verses 14 and 15. I know that fact is no great revelation and isn’t even a particularly Duke divinity school special. What is of great importance is that those verses have everything to do with how we feel about verse 16.

“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15) Indeed these verses do look similar to 3:16, but there are some big differences like snakes, wilderness, Moses, and the Son of Man being lifted up (think Jesus lifted up on the cross). The people of world may not realize it, but John 3:16 ought to bother them and us more than we all realize.

You see, the image of Jesus lifted up on the cross has to do with all of us, our sinfulness, our state of our total rebellion against God. Oddly we might only begin to recognize our current predicament when we begin to think about snakes and Moses. Shortly after the children of Israel were freed from their slavery in Egypt, they began to grumble and groan about being out in the wilderness. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is nothing good to eat! There is nothing to drink. Frankly we are sick and tired of the whole journey.” When God had heard enough, “He sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died.” (Numbers 21:6) This of course got the Israelites’ attention and they went to Moses to get them out of this fix. They acknowledged their sin and prayed for relief. God instructed Moses to make an image of a snake, place it on a pole and anyone who was bitten may look upon this image and they would live. The point is that the Israelites needed to recognize their sins and ask for forgiveness, and God in love forgave them and in turn gave them life.

Move forward to Jesus on the cross. It is for our sinfulness that Jesus is on the cross. What we often fail to remember, although 3:16 should remind us, is that God sent Jesus into the world not to die, but to LOVE! To love was Jesus’ mission. To show us God’s heart by loving us the way God loves us with extravagant, boundless love. But, the religious leaders had rules about who was to be loved and who wasn’t. Don’t we have similar unwritten rules today? They tried to fence his love in. Yet, His unconditional love broke through their fences and exposed their empty legalism and it became clear that in order to stop his loving they would have to destroy Him.

Jesus faced a choice; he could stay alive at the cost of denying his very nature, or stay faithful at the cost of His life. In the end He made the faithful choice. How could He ever deny His own and His Father’s heart? And so He walked the terrible road to crucifixion, utterly trusting God with the outcome.
It was on the cross, a place where Jesus suffering was so deep that as Peter Storey puts it, “God drew a veil of darkness across it,” that God did God’s greatest work in the world. Even when Jesus’ enemies crucified Him they couldn’t stop His loving! As His heart broke open on the cross in the great struggle between human sin and divine love, LOVE HAD WON!!!!
Each of us needs to understand that following (or “believing”) Jesus means following the way of unconditional love. Taking up our cross and going with Him means betting our lives on the ultimate power of love over every other influence in the world. Following Jesus means that believing that through the cross our lives and all of history have been changed forever! It means saying “yes” to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as God said “yes” by raising Him on the 3rd day!

As we continue toward Easter let us not forget for a second that our sinfulness nails Jesus to the cross. Yes God so loves the world that He sent Jesus but we so don’t want to love that we kill Him. Praise God for grace and mercy that even at our worst God loves us and was willing to die that we may live, that we may love.

Peace,
Pastor Jeff

Greetings my brothers and sisters.

A dear friend of mine sent me a link to a powerful article. http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2001/005/3.35.html
I was convicted by the directness and love evident in the author’s words. I invite you to read this short piece, and let me know what God shares with you.
Peace,
Pastor Jeff

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Eugene Peterson writes, “Christ is the way as well as the truth and life. When we don’t do it his way, we mess up the truth and we miss out on the life. We can’t live a life more like Jesus by embracing a way of life less like Jesus.”

This season of Lent is nearly at a close. Next week you and I will do two terribly difficult things; first, we will vividly remember the violent death of an innocent man. This man suffered horribly, and died, literally nailed to a tree for the single purpose of giving you and I an opportunity to either accept, or reject his love. Secondly, we will celebrate this same man’s victory over death, a resurrection from the dead. This victory provides us our only opportunity for eternal life in right relationship with our Creator, the Lord God Almighty!

Why are these things difficult? They are difficult because they force us to acknowledge that God loves so much that God was willing to die for us to say, “yes!” And, that we must acknowledge God loves us so much that God was willing to die, and still let us say, “no.”

I am in prayer for you, for our church, and for our community, that we all might say yes! Let us all choose the way that we might speak the truth, and enjoy the Great life.

Peace as we share the way of Jesus,

Pastor Jeff

Greetings,
I don’t know about you, but for me Holy Week is the most amazing time of the year. Where else can you find the emotional, intellectual, devotional and inspirational ride on par with what this week involves? We journey from the “highs” of praise and expectation, to the absolute “bottom” recognizing that our sinfulness (willful separation from God) is so deep that it can only be countered by God dying upon a cross. More importantly than our state, is the knowledge that God loves us so much that God was willing to go the complete distance to reach us where we are, and bring us out of our enslavment to our own sinfulness.

Jesus told Peter that Satan wanted to shake the disciples faith, thus end the church before it even began. Yet Jesus prayed that Peter’s faith (and presumably the other disciples’ faith) would remain alive in them and empower them to fulfill the commission given to them, sharing the Gospel. We know from Peter’s story that it was the shaking of his faith that helped him understand his complete dependence upon Jesus. So too, may we findin the story of Jesus’ passion, that we are “shaken” enough to truly encounter God’s love for us.

For those who were present in worship yesterday, we definately shared an encouter with the Holy Spirit. I can’t recall a Palm/Passion Sunday that was as spiritually instructive and directed as yesterday. I’d be interested to hear from you on this matter. Share with me the most powerful Holy Week experiece you have had.

I pray God will speak to you during this last week of your fasts, and other spiritual disciplines. Do not rush past this week in a hurry to get to Easter. I invite you to participate in the Maundy-Thursday/Good Friday services and be willing to surrender yourself to come face to face with the cost God paid that you could be saved. This is why Jesus was willing to die on the cross….for you! But, lest you forget, we won’t remain in this difficult place very long. As the powerful preacher proclaimed, “It is only Friday, Sunday is coming”

Peace,
Pastor Jeff

Greetings,

Today the focus is on the cross. At first glance, the cross seems a strange symbol of our faith. Why not a dove, or a chalice, or even a lilly. These are all symbols we use in our faith, but yet the cross is THE symbol of Christianity. I just finished reading a few medical accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion. It is hard to imagine a more brutal, torturous device of death than the cross. The combination of severe trauma, asphixiation, and pain that Jesus suffered is beyond our comprehension. Yet, we’ve chosen the cross as our symbol.

Today, Good Friday, I invite you to consider the cross. Like me, you may find it difficult to come to terms with the fact that Christ carried His cross for us. I would prefer to think that God loves me because I’m nice, or smart, or a “good” person at heart. The cross however reminds me that the price of God’s love far exceeds anything I can do.

The cross reminds me that I, not Jesus, am deserving of such treatment. Daily, as we live our lives, we again and again turn our face away from the one who loves us perfectly. The cross reminds me that Jesus takes my place on the cross so that I may be forgiven of my sins, and that I may be made pure in the sight of God. Jesus said, “No greater love has a person than to give one’s life for his brother.” No greater love than the one who gave his life for all.

May God strengthen us on this most difficult day, and may God open our hearts to the love of the cross.

Peace,
Pastor Jeff

Greetings,
Wow! It is hard to believe that we just celebrated Easter! Fortunately for all of us, the season of Easter in the church is celebrated for 50 days. For anyone who suggests that church is dull, or filled with guilt inducing conversations I invite them to think about the season of Easter. It is our longest specific season. It is filled with joy, enthusiasm, celebration, worship, praise, promise, hope and love. As the old commerical stated, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

As I reflect upon our past season of lent, I am glad we have 50 days of Easter. It is downright uncomfortable to look seriously at our sinfulness and chosen separation from God for six weeks. Yet because we took that seriously, Easter was a tremendous celebration. Thank you to all who worked so diligently to create an environment of worship and celebration for the greatest day of the year!!

I’m taking a couple of days off, but because of Evergreen’s desire to embrace the difficult, and its enthusiasm for worshiping our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I’m filled with the spirit of excitement for all that God is putting before us.

One more note. Evergreen has the special opportunity to develop some community building skills through the “Plow Point Ministry” project. http://www.plowpoint.org I ask you to pray for our discerment. I’m believe this is an important step for our church and, more importantly for the growth of the Kingdom of God. Please consider participating. If you have more questions feel free to speak with me, or Keving Powell, or Trish Gardner.

Now may the grace and peace of our risen Lord be with you all.

Pastor Jeff