In our time with the Word on Sunday, we focused on John 21:15-25. It’s the story of Simon Peter being restored by Jesus. Three times he denied Jesus. Jesus offers Peter a threefold restoration.
Here’s a follow-up question for discussion:
“How can we offer words and actions of restoration to one another and to folks who are walking wounded through life by disappointment, shame, unresolved guilt, and/or deep regrets?”
The playground at West Park was completed, dedicated, and opened to West Indianapolis children on Friday, May 1. A gift from the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) Foundation and Kids Around the World, the playground equipment as a variety of levels, six slides, a climbing wall, and swings. It’s intended for children preschool through 12 years of age. We ask that children always be attended by a parent or guardian and that the usual West Park guidelines be honored: no alcohol, no drugs, no violence; take out what you bring in; leave it a better place for others.
In our time with the Word on Sunday at WEMO, we explored the sense that Jesus’ followers are people who live between promise and fulfillment, between the beginning of “the end” and its future fulfillment, between the Kingdom of God begun and its consummation, between Jesus’ first coming and his second coming. This old age is passing away and the promised future has already begun in Jesus and in those who follow him in faith. So, for the sake of dialog, what does it mean for you to live between “already” and “not yet?”
Youth spent Wednesday evening, April 29, mowing weeding, spread manure, and cleaning up around the WEMO Community Garden on Tremont Street just north of the church facility. The garden will begin to be planted next week after it is tilled.
This is the second year for our community garden, led by our youth group with Gale & Georgia O’Connor.
This year, we hope to add a certified Monarch Butterfly haven as part of the garden. It will be one of only a few sites set up in the city to attract the butterflies.
The WEMO Community Garden is open to anyone who lives or worships in West Indianapolis. Contact Georgia O’Connor - ggbl82@gmail.com for information on how to get involved.
Volunteers from t
he Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) Foundation and Kids Around the World are nearing completion of construction on the new playground equipment in West Park at West Morris and Tremont Streets. Working since early Monday morning, the workers have constructed the elaborate, $50,000 GameTime playground complex and poured concrete into the bases. They are now are busy spreading 12 inches of special wood-chip mulch within the 60 x 100 foot area that is bounded by a thick wood frame.
Dedication for the playground is set for 10 am on Friday, May 1.
West Park is owned and maintained by West Morris Street Free Methodist Church, 2302 West Morris Street. It is an 8-acre piece of ground with a grove of shade trees along West Morris Street and the west side of the property. The park runs extends from West Morris Street at the south end to Wilkins Street at its north end. In addition to the playground, there is a softball diamond, soccer goals, and a volleyball net.
The park and playground are open for use to neighbors. The chuch desires that West Park be a safe, inviting place for all in the West Indianapolis community. We request that the property be kept free of alcohol, drugs, and violence.
Construction began on Monday morning, April 27, on the Game Time playground equipment that is being installed in West Morris Street Free Methodist Churches’ West Park. Volunteers from the Million Dollar Round Table Foundation, an organization of life insurance aces, along with Kids Around the World, a Christian organization that builds playgrounds around the world are working diligently.
The playground will cover a 60 x 100 foot area of West Park, an 8-acre area at West Morris and Tremont Streets which is owned and maintained by West Morris Street Free Methodist Church (WEMO). The equipment is estimated at $50,000 in value. The playground, along with the labor to install it, is all donated as a gift to the church and West Indianapolis community.
The playground will be completed by Thursday, April 30, and will be dedicated at 10 am on Friday, May 1. The public is welcome to watch the construction and are cordially invited to the dedication.
1. 11 baptisms on Easter Sunday morning.
2. 19 WEMO children participated in the Wabash Conference Kids Lock-In, April 18-19, along with 5 adults. Highest participation ever.
3. Contributions and volunteers are providing lunches, devotions and prayer for Habitat for Humanity build volunteers in our West Indianapolis neighborhood.
4. “Kids Around the World” volunteers will begin building a $50,000 Game Time playground (donated) in West Park, April 27-30. Dedication of the playground will be on May 1 at 10:00 am.
5. Two women’s Bible study groups meet weekly at the church to explore and apply the book of Esther in a 10-week series.
6. WEMO Community Garden on Tremont Street kicks off its 2nd year on Wednesday evening, April 29 @ 6:15 pm. New this year: a Certified Monarch Butterfly Garden area (one of only a few in our city). Participation welcome!
7. We are preparing to welcome 350 youth Bible quizzers from across the Midwest to the Annual West Morris Street Regional Bible Quiz on Saturday, May 2. Lots of volunteers are needed on Friday, May 1, and Saturday, May 2.
8. WEMO Senior Adults (SCAMPS) enjoyed Biscuit Therapy on April 4, a Mystery Luncheon on April 16, and visited Linnie Moorefield in Spencer. Next Biscuit Therapy — May 2 @ Bob Evans Plainfield. Also: Seniors Alive Retreat – May 7 @ Benedictine Retreat Center in Beech Grove
9. West Park mowing is ready to roll. A ZTR mower purchased late last season makes this a breeze. Want to help once a month? Call Tim Foddrill @ 638-8335.
10. Earnest prayer is a vital part of each outreach ministry, fellowship activity and service we engage in. Let us continue to pray with thanksgiving and petition for one another and for God’s grace-bearing, life-changing work among us.
God bless you today.
Pastor John Hay, Jr.
Ways to cooperate with God’s desire to restore, renew, realign, and transform people and places
A VISION OF TRANSFORMED PEOPLE & PLACES. I’ve been reflecting on Isaiah 61. Jesus declared it fulfilled as the new norm for people and places as he began his ministry in Nazareth: to preach Good News to the poor, proclaim freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight, release the oppressed, proclaim with our lives the reality of Jubilee, renew the ruined cities, and restore places long devastated. Four aspects of Isaiah 61 strke me anew:
1. God desires to transform and restore both people and places.
2. God intends to work through vision-responsive people—you and me—to bring about renewal and transformation of people and places.
3. God’s vision of a transformed future begins with actions of relief, release, and realignment right now.
4. Anointing and power for being an agent of transformation comes from the Spirit of God.
FOUR WAYS TO BE A TRANSFORMER. Here’s how I think about putting this invitation and challenge into action; four ways to become a transformer:1. Make yourself available. Most people are too busy taking care of personal affairs and maintaining the status quo to make a difference in the world. Do you want to see things change in the world? Start by making yourself available. First, to God in prayer, worship and service. Second, carve out serious time to focus on one concern raised in Isaiah 61.
2. Get God’s perspective. God sees potential and promise where others see problems and futility. Read the Bible frequently and deeply to gain God’s perspective on right relationships with God, between people, and in the marketplace. Turn off the talking heads (both secular & religious), challenge long-held presumptions about the way things are, and let God’s hope and promise begin to percolate in your mind and heart.
3. Do simple things to make a difference. Start small and simple. Like: Stop spending so much. Save a little to sponsor a child through International Child Care Ministries. Volunteer to serve others: visit homebound neighbors, tutor children after school, or serve as a mentor. Have a neighborhood food drive for a food pantry. Call someone to encourage them. Volunteer to help build with Rebuilding the Wall (Indianapolis) or Habitat for Humanity.
4. Join with others to challenge a wrong by supporting what’s right. Overwhelm unfairness and injustice by showing how what is fair and just makes more sense. Stand with workers for livable wages. Support Central Indiana Life Centers’ alternatives to abortion. Use fair trade products. Advocate for safe products, sustainable use of resources, and creation care. Participate in food recovery and good nutrition through Second Helpings’ efforts. — Pastor John Hay, Jr.
RESOLUTE JOURNEY. Lent, which began on Ash Wednesday, February 25, tracks with Jesus as he sets out resolutely for Jerusalem and the cross. But even after he began to walk and talk disturbingly about his and his followers’ crosses, everywhere He went life broke through. The way to the cross is filled with paradox–hope intersects despair, understanding intersects confusion, promise intersects pain, life intersects death. It would be a mistake to walk through Lent–or any other season of life–with a somber heaviness, as if on a death march.
TWISTED IMAGERY. How does one march to death? Marching, after all, is imagery robust with triumph and pageantry; with music of the band and prancing of the horses and regimented rows of rhythm-stepping soldiers. Most often a march celebrates a victory, graces a holiday, or highlights heroic efforts.
ANOTHER’S AGONY. But not a few marches truly have the stench of death. One group’s triumph is another’s agony. Our family lived for a few years in Oklahoma where Native Americans were marched from their homelands in what is now called the Trail of Tears. I ponder 65-year-old photos of French spectators weeping despairingly as Nazi tanks and troops rolled into a Paris pounded into submission. History is full of prisoner-of-war and ethnic-purging marches that served to grind oppressed people into oblivion.
BREATHTAKING JOURNEY. But Jesus’ march toward Jerusalem was neither morbid nor despairing. Though one of his disciples resignedly said “Let us also go with him that we may die with him,” they misunderstood both the spirit in which Jesus journeyed and the redemptive mission he resolved to fulfill. His trek was no denial of life; nor is ours. The journey will be as breathtaking as heart-rending, as life-giving as disturbing. It is important for us to grapple with the specter of the cross in light of the hope and life and grace that loom larger on the horizon.
IN CHRIST’S TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION. The Apostle Paul writes in terms of a marching procession: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? (2 Corinthians 2:14-16).” Who, indeed! – Pastor John Hay, Jr.
Join us at 10:30 am on Sunday, February 22, to explore and apply the Bible regarding The Gift of Fellowship, the seventh of “7 Gifts That Keep On Giving.” Breakfast fellowship is 9:00-9:30 am. Sunday School for all is 9:30-10:20 am. Volunteer-staffed nursery and preschool 9:30-12 noon. Children’s Church for K-4 from 11:00-12 noon. Our facility is handicap accessible. Call 632-8311 M-F, 8 am-1 pm for Sunday AM transportation within West Indianapolis neighborhoods.
For online comment/discussion regarding the Gift of Fellowship, respond to the following:
(1) Share one experience of Christian fellowship that has positively shaped your life.
(2) What do you think makes fellowship within a community of faith unique and valuable?
