That is one of the hymns in our Faith We Sing Hymnal and an early service favorite. It reminds me of the verse from Hebrews that invites us to \u201crun with perseverance the race marked out for us.\u201d That passage also includes the idea that we are surrounded by a mighty cloud of witnesses, all encouraging us as we run our race. I don\u2019t know about you, but I take comfort in thinking that my parents, among others, are still cheering me on as I continue on to my own finish line, however far ahead of me that might be.<\/p>\n
But I also think of these words of scripture in the context of our church and especially as we come into the last quarter of our yearly giving pledges. We are sort of rounding the last turn and while some are way ahead and have already finished the race, others are lagging a bit behind. There is an old African proverb that says, \u201cIf you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.\u201d It is only together, as part of a community of givers, that we can finish strong.<\/p>\n
In October we\u2019ll focus on stewardship for three successive Sundays. We\u2019ll begin that \u201cconversation\u201d by hearing from one of our lay members, Mark Humphrey. The following week I\u2019ll share some thoughts and the final week Pastor Kelly will tie everything together. When you consider the financial giving of a congregation, and us as members of that congregation, it does resemble a marathon race, one that stretches out over the length of a year. Now we all know that circumstances change over the course of time and sometimes the pledge commitment one makes at the beginning of the year just cannot be met. We get that. But if the majority of us honor our pledges we will finish strong so I encourage you to carefully review the 3rd Quarter Statements you\u2019ll be receiving in October and do your best to meet your pledges.<\/p>\n
We are also called from time to time to run \u201csprints\u201d. These are short races with a clearly defined goal in mind. Just recently I encouraged you to empty your coin jars in support of the Bay View Community Center\u2019s food pantry. I\u2019m excited to tell you our canister of change came in at $97.26, one of the best of local churches and local businesses. Our friends at Anodyne Coffee had the most with $126.27. Good for them!<\/p>\n
Our Wesleyan Bell Choir is also inviting us to \u201csprint\u201d along with them as they raise funds for the refurbishment of our bells. This is an expensive proposition and not something covered in our annual church budget. All of our music here is excellent but I think you\u2019ll agree those bells are something special. So let\u2019s all dig just a little deeper, as we are able, and show our support for our bell choirs as they host Coffee Hour on October 11 and November 8. Let\u2019s finish strong!<\/p>\n
Pastor Andy<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That is one of the hymns in our Faith We Sing Hymnal and an early service favorite. It reminds me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[259,67,551],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pastorandy","tag-pastor-andy","tag-stewardship","tag-wesleyan-bell-choir"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}