Posted by rrindfuss    0 Comment(s)    Add a Comment 
Aug 24 2017

It's back-to-school time, and a while back I took a virtual trip back to school when I found some of my old college notebooks and began reading. Some of it I immediately grasped, and some of it came back with a bit of thought, but a disturbingly large amount of the content was not only unfamiliar but incomprehensible. And I'm pretty sure some of the incomprehensible stuff was really important.

Something similar happens with faith. Things we once knew, things that we had mastered to some extent, things that transform life can grow unfamiliar and even seem beyond our grasp if not reviewed periodically. 

Over the course of the next several weeks at Access in a new sermon series titled Rooted, pastor Julie and I will explore the core knowledge and practices at the root of Christianity. In this back-to-school season we'll re-enroll as students of Jesus and re-discover the life-transforming power of being in his presence and learning from him.

I hope you'll join us for this powerful series that begins Sunday with "Rooted in Christ." The Access band will bring us into the presence of God with awesome music, and we'll look at Jesus' teaching about how to stay connected with God and the blessings that result. 

Also make sure to download a copy of this week's Rooted devotional where you'll find stories, information, and activities for adults and children that will help you go deeper with the sermon topic.

See you Sunday!
Rich

Access Pastor
First United Methodist Church Richardson

Posted by jklossner    0 Comment(s)    Add a Comment 
Aug 18 2017

This weekend, 180 of our youth will be going on ‘Really Living’ - their annual back-to-school retreat. I went with our youth on this retreat last year and did not expect how full - or how messy - the experience would be. For 48 hours, the youth come together. Through games, worship, small groups, and pudding, they end the summer by celebrating that to really live means life will be messy. This isn’t the sort of mess you clean up; it’s the kind of mess that you lean into and embrace.

When things are messy in our lives, it’s easy to feel frozen or helpless. In our struggle to embrace the messy middle, we live in this tension that polarizes and divides us. When something chaotic, confusing, hurtful or frustrating happens in the world, what can I do? Do I post something eloquent on Facebook? Do I talk about the problems and the problems with our problems? Or do I feel so unable to respond that I simply don’t and I do nothing? Do I hide?

1 Timothy gives us some instruction for what we might do when life is messy: “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.” (1 Tim 6: 17-19)

“Really Living” seems to be defined so clearly in these verses focusing on good works, being generous, and being ready to share. It seems as though these instructions are not a guide for how to get out of the messes in our lives, but instead how to live to the fullest in the middle of the mess. In the middle of the mess, there’s someone who needs you in a hospital room. There’s someone whose whole perspective on the day might change by a free lunch bought for them.  There are children longing for us to teach them. There are things we can do: donating, giving, sorting, loving in action. Author Rachel Naomi Remmon says it this way: “helping and fixing and serving represent three very different ways of viewing the world: When you help, you see life as weak, when you fix you see life as broken, But when you serve, you see life as whole.” Wholeness does not come in the absence of struggle; it comes in the middle of it. It comes when we choose to not have all the answers but to instead meet in the middle and serve.

In just a few short hours I will leave with our youth and ‘really live’ this weekend. By Saturday I will be covered in paint or pudding and sharing smiles with our youth in hopes that we may be an encouragement and confidence for them as they go back to school. Words will never capture fully the work God does in the middle of it all. I can’t wait.

Where is God calling you to really live this weekend - to serve and embrace the mess?

Join us this Sunday as we conclude our series “Building Bridges” by talking about partnership. Working together to build a bridge of justice and compassion is messy work, but it’s worth it. It is what makes us whole.

See you Sunday!

-Julie 

Posted by rrindfuss    3 Comment(s)    Add a Comment 
Aug 10 2017

A decade ago I received a very special Christmas gift from a congregation member: an 1894 edition of "The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South." When a new member joined the church, this book instructed the pastor to say, "All, of every age and station, stand in need of the means of grace which [the Church of God] alone supplies; and it invites all alike to become fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God." The invitation to "all alike" was expansive and welcoming, yet the word "South" in the title of the book reminds me that the all-inclusive invitation existed in the context of a Methodist Church that had split 50 years earlier, north and south, over slavery and would not re-unite for another 45 years. The all-inclusive invitation existed in a context that had also created the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in the south and the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the north. Even as the church wanted to be a place for everyone, it was deeply divided around race. Today, Methodists have similar words that affirm our aspiration to be a church for all races and also guide us towards how to become that.

The newer editions of that 1894 book now instruct pastors to ask:

Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races?

The words put a definite responsibility on us, but they also acknowledge Christ's role when we take on that responsibility. We acknowledge that Jesus is our Savior. We acknowledge that we and the world we live in are broken, not what God desires, and that we can't fix ourselves or the world on our own. We need a Savior. And we have one in Jesus Christ.

Those words speak of grace. God's grace is the gift of God that welcomes us and empowers us to welcome others even when it's difficult, when it requires us to change, and when we don't even know what we need to change or how.

Those words also speak of trust. They challenge us to put our "full" trust in God's grace. They challenge us to build bridges of understanding and welcome across racial lines. They challenge us to see and learn how race affects church and society. And they challenge us to make changes that will bring our reality closer to God's vision, all the while trusting that God's vision is worth striving for and trusting that God's grace will enable us to do what we couldn't do on our own.

I'm grateful and excited that Pastor Julie will help us explore race relations as she preaches this Sunday. I hope you will join her and me, the Access band, and the rest of the Access congregation as we all gather to affirm our faith and seek God's grace to help us grow into the people and church God would have us be.

In Christ,
Rich

Rich Rindfuss
Access Pastor
First United Methodist Church Richardson