Too Many Missionaries??!!

“Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29)

Two Sundays ago Katlin Geysen was raising funds for her internship summer at J-Life in South Africa; Shannon Herrmann’s ChristCare group was gathering support for Rachel Snider who is headed to the Dominican Republic as a missionary (she is now fully supported); Tina Smith was here with her sister whom she wanted to introduce to HRC before she and Skip head off to South Africa as missionaries. Just another Sunday at Hopewell Reformed, right?  This Sunday my daughter Hilary will be in worship sharing her vision for the calling God has placed on her life to head to Casa Gabriel in Mexico and work as a missionary with Mexican Medical Ministries.

It seems like we are overloaded with folks that are headed into missions right now at Hopewell.  That is a beautiful thing.  I know the Mission Team met this past Thursday and had to look at how we support “home grown” missionaries as well as other missionaries we have supported for a long time.  In our budget we make sure we are a tithing church, and at least ten percent of all income goes outside of this church.  We are raising up missionaries from within our fellowship and the work we are doing in our community reflects a missional mind set as well.  When we look at Odyssey we see a mission outpost that is local.  Our Community Maintenance Program is a home grown mission focus as well.  I am certain that if you take all the numbers in our giving that are spent in mission it adds up to much more than a tithe, and the generosity of your giving is shared outside of this congregation is ways that God is multiplying.

In the book of Numbers there is a story of God’s spirit being poured out on a select group of seventy.  Two of those called, Eldad and Medad, did not make the ordination service, yet they were prophesying. Joshua told them to stop, but Moses said “no” and proclaimed, “Would that all God’s people would prophesy!”  When I think of too many missionaries I think of Moses’ words.  Would that all God’s people be missionaries: wherever we are, whatever we are doing let us live into the vision of the kingdom of God.  What we are seeing is the fruit of a congregation living lived into mission and I pray that all God’s people would be known as missionaries.  We can never have too much of that.

Yours from the harvest fields,

Taylor

 May 19th from 9:00 AM – NOON at The Hopewell Reformed Church. 

There will be flowers, plants and baked goods for sale.

Proceeds benefit local missions of the church.

SAVE A LIFE!

The American Red Cross will be holding a blood drive here at HRC on June 1 from 2:30 – 8:30 PM.  All donors are invited.

CONTACT Betsy Di Somma.

How Ya Doin’?

This Tuesday I will be in the Bronx for lunch. How do they say it in the Bronx:” How ya doin’?” I thought it a good question to ask at HRC today.  We are looking at a new matrix to measure transformation in the church (in fact there is a Willow Creek Webinar about this on Thursday www.willowcreek.com/web_events/wc_05172012.asp) but the traditional way the church looks at how it is doing is through the lens of the two ‘B’s’: butts and budgets.  In other words, how many people are in worship and how is the financial support of the ministry going? I give you a quick update on these two today.  Maybe next week we will have a better tool to measure transformational discipleship, but for today, here goes:

Breaking the Five Hundred Barrier: In January I shared we had set a goal that we wanted to average over five hundred people in weekly worship.  For the three months since January our average is over 500 people in worship.  Our total for the year including January is 498 (so we have been very close for the year).  This has been helped by the weekly worship of Odyssey, which is averaging close to one hundred people, as well as the return of our youth service, which currently is happening once a month.  We currently have six different worship opportunities in a month.  This is good news and encourages us to continue to live into the challenge to make weekly worship a priority during the summer months and beyond.

Budget: Our deacons, especially Mike Reynolds, are doing an excellent job at staying on top of our finances.  We are tracking well in our expenses (we are below budget in spending), but our income is not meeting our goal of a two percent increase.  We are in good shape financially in a difficult economy, but I believe it is time to set our vision higher, as it seems that we are coming through a tough economic time and things are looking better.  Our giving, at this point, is up one percent for the year and our challenge for the next couple of months is to see that raised up to four percent.  This is especially important because we plan next year’s budget based on the income for this year.  Since we are now on a fiscal year budget that means we will be using figures in these months to set the budget for 2012-2013.

Direct Giving: We have a stewardship team that is taking shape and will look at ways to make it easier to connect our discipleship with our dollars.  I hope you have noticed that we are giving a Direct Giving option to give directly from your bank account. Direct Giving is an easy option that keeps your vision for giving consistent throughout the year.  This helps with summer time vacations and other times when you may not bring a checkbook or forget your envelope.  We will look at other ways that we can encourage faithfulness in stewardship, but right now I encourage you to take advantage of Direct Giving through the church or through your financial institution.

As Mike Reynolds says: We are blessed,

Taylor

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