Introduction
Taking a que from the tradition in our country for the
President to make an annual State of the Union address, I have started making
an annual State of the Communion address to my congregation. I want to share a few highlights from our
ministry together in 2018 and share our vision for 2019. But first, let’s hear the Word of God and
remember our purpose as Christ’s followers.
Matthew 28:18-20
18 Jesus
came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples
to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you
always, even to the end of the age.”
We Have A Mission
In this passage, Jesus reminds his followers of three essential
ideas. First of all, Jesus is Lord. He says he’s been given all authority in
heaven and on earth. In other words,
everywhere. He has the right to command
everyone and everyone ought to obey. This
is even more true for anyone who claims to follow Jesus (to be a Christian). Obedience is not optional. It’s essential.
Second, Jesus gives his followers an important command—go and
make disciples of all nations. We are to
tell people about Jesus Christ and urge them to follow Jesus as Lord. New disciples (followers) are to be baptized—a
sign that they have made a complete new start as a new person committed to
following Jesus.
Third, we are to teach new disciples Jesus’ commands, his
way of life, and encourage them to obey Christ as we ourselves obey him. So
there is growth as disciples. We don’t
stay as baby Christians—we grow in our faith and our obedience and communion
with God through Jesus Christ.
The Church is not a social club. It’s not a place we come to be entertained by
beautiful art or good music or an engaging message. The Church is the body of Christ on a mission
to make disciples of Jesus Christ and teach them to obey the Lord of heaven and
earth. It’s an important mission.
At Pleasant Grove, Our Mission is to make disciples of
Jesus Christ. We have three over-arching
goals as we do that. They are 1) Give hope
to the hopeless, 2) Build new relationships, and 3) Help Our Community. These are the goals we focus on as we make
disciples of Jesus Christ.
4 Reasons Why I love
Pleasant Grove
I’ve been the pastor of Pleasant Grove for more than eight
years now. Eight years is the longest I’ve
lived anywhere in my life. My family and
I have loved it here so far. Everyone
has been so kind to us. I want to share briefly
about four reasons I love Peasant Grove.
First of all, Pleasant Grove is big enough to do a lot of
good ministry. I have served smaller
churches where we struggled to have the people, facility space, and resources to
serve God the way we needed to. Pleasant
Grove has lots of capable, willing people, an abundance of facility space, and
the resources to do great ministry.
But another reason I love Pleasant Grove is we are still
small enough to have a sense of intimacy.
I have been to larger churches and they have their own kids of strengths,
but you can lose the sense of intimacy our church members have with one
another. We know each other’s names. We have time to talk to each other, care for
each other, get to know each other.
And because of that, there’s another thing I find really meaningful
at Pleasant Grove—the way people love one another here. We are all different. We come from different backgrounds. Some have lived in this areas their whole
lives; others are new comers to the area.
Some are older; some are younger. However, I’ve witness a deep caring
and unconditional kind of love here. You
accept people who are different. You
love them despite their struggles. You accept
people as they are, but also help them grow in Christ to become who God wants
them to be. I see this Christ-like love in
the people of Pleasant Grove all the time, and it makes my heart smile!
But there’s another thing I love about Pleasant Grove. The people here are always willing to learn,
change, and grow. As long as I’ve been
with you, you’ve always been willing to try new ideas, new music, and new ways
of doing things. You’ve embrace new
people, new leaders, and new technology.
I know change hasn’t always been easy, but you’ve had the courage to try
and and open hearts to embrace whatever works to further the Kingdom of
God. And that blesses my heart.
Highlights
from Last Year
Let me share some highlights from our ministry last year. Last year, we started using a new model for
planning events. Susan Cooksey and
Sherry Dickson teamed up to co-lead a planning team of volunteers worked so
well to plan many excellent activities to help us make disciples as we give
hope to the hopeless, build new relationships, and help our community.
- We had an excellent Super Bowl Sunday with the barefoot kicker from Tennessee, Ricky Townsend, as our guest speaker.
- The youth served an excellent steak dinner for Valentine’s Day so that everyone could enjoy a special meal with their special someone.
- Near the end of 2017, we hired a new children’s minister, Ashten Webb. In 2018, she did a great job getting to know Pleasant Grove and leading our children’s program. We had several very successful children’s activities.
- We hosted a community Easter egg hunt, with over 200 people attending.
- VBS was one of the best organized I can remember, with as many as 50 kids attending. Our volunteers had a fun working it and we got great feedback from those who came.
- Trunk or Treat is always a huge hit in our community and we had about 800 people attended this year. Plus, we did some things to help minister to those who came—more than just give them candy and a hotdog. We invited them to church, gave them a pamphlet about community resources in our area, and also a newsletter with a Gospel lesson and information about our church.
One of the things I was very pleased with last year, was how many of our events built on previous events. For example, our movie nights over the summer and our summer bouncy blowout lead into VBS. People from VBS were invited to our Wednesday nights kids program. Each event led into the next one and helped build momentum.
New People
Since our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ, one
of the most exciting things for me has been to see so many new people coming to
Pleasant Grove. Since last summer, we’ve
had at least 27 new people start attending PGUMC regularly. And they’re also getting involved. Many of these have started attending Bible
study, Sunday school, Wednesday dinner and youth & children’s programs. Many of our newest people have even gotten
involved to help plan some of our events like trunk or treat. Here are some of the statistics:
- 12 new people joined our church last year
- 3 people were baptized – Finley Rebecca Ward, Amaya Childers, & Brooks Blalock
- 3 people gave their life to Christ through a public profession of faith – Abigail Mullis, Amaya Childers, & Walker England
- Six members of our church died last year and went on to
glory. It’s never easy to say goodbye to
people we love at Pleasant. However, we can find comfort in knowing they are at
Home with Jesus in heaven now. And we
can celebrate the way they helped shape our church. So, we are thankful for the six of our saints
who passed away in 2018: Patricia
Pellom, Dot Kuhne, Arnold Locklear, Jerry Albertson, Ann Brooker, & Don
Douglas.
Looking Forward to 2019
We have a lot to be thankful for from the past year. And we also have a lot to look forward to in
the coming one. We’ve already made a great
start for 2019. Susan Cooksey and Sherry
Dickson and the planning team did some great work in November planning the
activities we want to do this year. We already
have event coordinators and a list of volunteers for each program. And Sunday, we bathed each event in prayer. Now, we need to continue to pray for the
teams who are planning them. Hanging on
the walls, you see what we are working toward and who is helping with each
event. Pray for them and support them. It’s gonna be a great year!
And invite people to come!
Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. All these events are opportunities to invite
people through the door of our church, to feel the love we all feel here, and
to meet the Lord Jesus Christ who fills our hearts with love. My hope for our church in 2019 is that we
will see even more new people coming and getting involved and growing in
Christ. I want us all to look for ways
to invite more new people to come.
Another hope I have for the people of Pleasant Grove in 2019,
is more spiritual growth. Everyone needs
to grow in Christ—whether you’re new to Pleasant Grove or you’ve been here a
while. Many people want to grow in
Christ. Many people resolve to grow in
Christ. But growth doesn’t just happen because
you make a resolution. Growth comes
through practicing. Practicing the spiritual disciplines of worship, prayer,
study, fasting, and service help nurture the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our
lives. Love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control become more
abundant as we practice and grow in Christ.
So, I plan to teach a series on spiritual disciplines and encourage you
to practice them more. The series will
start on Wednesday night, January 23rd. I hope you will come and invite a friend.
One of the spiritual disciplines is service. We grow in Christ as we serve. Pleasant Grove is a very outreach oriented
church. We like to serve and help
people. We are going to continue our focus
on that through outreach projects like building wheel chair ramps. We will also help our community by offering
meals for high school groups like football teams and bands and bereavement
meals for people who’ve lost a loved one.
Further more, we will continue to serve snack packs to hungry kids at
Pleasant Grove Elementary, using funds we’ve received from grants.
In the past, Family Promise was one of the great opportunities
we had to serve. The biggest blessing of
working with Family Promise was the opportunity for hands-on service to the
needy who struggle financially. However,
for several years Family Promise had shifted their focus away from housing
homeless families in church buildings.
This was better for families, but also eliminated hands-on service opportunities
for churches. At the end of last year, the
directors of Family Promise decided to disband and let other charitable organizations
like the City of Refuge and Greater Works take over.
We will miss partnering with Family Promise in our community. However, we are still committed to serve the
needy and we’ve increased our outreach budget so we’ll have the funds to do
it. Since Family Promise has disbanded, we
were able to shift the funds we were using to support them directly to our outreach
fund. We can use these funds to do more
to help the needy directly instead of passing the buck to outside
organizations. Furthermore, we’ve committed
to send a feeding team to the City of Refuge four times this year – Feb 7, May
2, Aug 1, Nov 7. Kay Denson will be
coordinating the effort, but it will take everyone’s help to prepare and serve food. Our job will be to feed needy families as
they come to the City of Refuge to learn about Jesus. So, we will regain the hands-on service
opportunities we lost when Family Promise changed their focus from housing
homeless families in our church and we will be doing a great service to help
the needy and help our community.
One final thing I need to report is we need to pray for our United Methodist Church.
Our denomination has a special General Conference coming up February
23-26 in St. Louis, Missouri. This may be the most significant General Conference our denomination has ever had since its inception in 1968. Representatives from all over the world have
been studying issues about human sexuality and will meet at the General
Conference to debate and vote on the issue.
One proposal is to maintain the UMC's traditional teaching that God
designed sex to be enjoyed only within the bounds of marriage between one man
and one woman. Another proposal seeks to
redefine marriage within the United Methodist Church to include same-sex unions
as well open ordination as pastors or deacons to "self-avowed, practicing" homosexuals. This is a serious issue and the United
Methodist Church is not of one mind on the subject. Many within the United States want to see the church change and be more
inclusive of gay people. Others wish to offer
grace to those who struggle with sexual sin, but hold to a biblical view of
marriage and human sexuality. Either
way, there is a serious threat that as many may leave the United Methodist
Church based on what is decided. This is not just something that affects other churches in other places. This is something that could affect Pleasant Grove UMC directly. We need
to be in prayer for our United Methodist Church.
Answer the Call in 2019
If you are a member of Pleasant Grove United Methodist Church, I encourage you to pray for our church and our denomination. Furthermore, I would ask you to pray that God would show you:
- How you can invite others to join with us at Pleasant Grove
- How you can grow in your own faith through spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, worship, study, and service
- And pray for those who will be coordinating events and leading ministry at PGUMC
If you are not a member of Pleasant Grove but are attending regularly, I invite you to consider going deeper in your relationship with God by becoming an official member of the church.
If you live nearby, but are not active in a church, let me invite you now to come see what Jesus is doing in our lives at Pleasant Grove. I invite you to come grow closer to God here as we grow with you.
If you live too far away to come to Pleasant Grove regularly, I invite you to find a good Christian church where you live where you can partner with other believers to grow in Christ and servce the Kingdom of God.
May God bless you and lead you in the 2019.
Pastor Chris Mullis
Senior Pastor, Pleasant Grove United Methodist Church
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