At SDUMC we opened our hearts, our minds and our doors for two weeks for a very successful Interfaith Shelter Network rotation, concluding on Sunday, February 14th. Over 14 days we provided 42 meals to 14 adults, one two year-old and a dog. We received over $1000 in donations for food and equipment from our generous congregation. Three guests found permanent housing and two found jobs during their stay at SDUMC.
A BIG thanks to the more than 100 members and friends who made the shelter such a success. We could not “minister to the hopes and hurts of a troubled world” without you.
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Dear Friends,
The Haiti Relief Concert will be this Sunday, March 7th at 5:00pm in the Sanctuary.
There is no cost for this benefit concert, but you will have an opportunity to make a difference in Haiti with a free-will donation if you choose.
2-28-10
Bulletin Listen Watch Video
Dear Friends,
We’re good at respecting the “individual” in our culture. We value individual rights, individual options, individual claims, individual freedom. We boast of our freedom to do just about anything we want to do with our lives, but rarely do we have people in our lives who can help us figure out what in the world might be worth doing. We need mentors, friends, leaders, examples in our lives to show us the way, to show us how to be faithful, to show us what we can be. But we live in a culture in which people prefer to be admired rather than imitated – do as I say, not as I do, they say.
That’s what makes Paul such a rare and necessary leader. “Join in imitating me,” he told the Philippians. It wasn’t that he thought of himself too highly. It wasn’t that he thought himself perfect. Paul simply understood that to be a Christian is to assume that, whether we like it or not, we are always exposed to the imitative stare of those around us. All of us teach others by the very way we live our lives.
Who’s watching you today? Your children, your neighbor, your spouse, your co-worker? Chances are it’s someone you do not even know is there. Who will you be? How will you live? What will you do?
See you Sunday,
Rev. Mark
02-21-10
Bulletin Listen Watch video
Dear Friends,
The Season of Lent seems to have arrived sooner this year than in years past. Indeed, just yesterday I saw a brown, forlorn Christmas tree sitting at a neighborhood curbside awaiting pick-up. Unlike Christmas, which occurs on a fixed date each year, Easter’s arrival is determined by the date of the spring equinox (the first Sunday following the first full moon of spring). The liturgical season that precedes Easter is called Lent – a forty-day season (excluding Sundays) of “fasting” and “penitence” that ends on the Saturday before Easter. “Lent” comes from the Old English word, Lenten, which means spring – a reference not only to Mother Nature, but to that season of the soul in which, after deliberate preparation and attention, we blossom in the full light of God’s grace.
With our observance of Ash Wednesday this week, our Lenten journey has begun. Our gospel story from Luke this Sunday sends us immediately into the wilderness with Jesus where, for forty days and forty nights, we learn to live without the comforts, distractions, and addictions of our everyday lives. Lent is intended to be very much like a wilderness experience, where we learn what it’s like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what, for better or worse, we can supply for ourselves.
If you haven’t already done so, it’s not too late to “give something up” for Lent. Nothing is too small to give up. All you have to do is set it aside and ask yourself, “How does it feel not to have it? How, by giving it up, might that void become for me an impetus to grow personally – in my relationship with God, in my understanding of myself, in my encounters with strangers, enemies, and those whom I love?”
Join us this Sunday as we head out to the wilderness with Jesus — learning to live without so that we can be sure that we’re indeed even living at all.
See you Sunday,
Rev. Mark