THANK YOU TO OUR MOTHERS

Matthew 12:49-50 (NLT)
⁴⁹ Then he pointed to his disciples and said, “Look, these are my mother and brothers. ⁵⁰ Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother!”

  Sunday, May 13, is Mothers’ Day. It is one of those great days on the calendar. I thought you might enjoy the following history about the establishment of this special day from Wikipedia.

The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. Julia Ward Howe first issued her Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870 as a call for women to join in support of disarmament. In the 1880s and 1890s there were several further attempts to establish an American Mother's Day, but these did not succeed beyond the local level. The current holiday was created by Anna Jarvis in Grafton, West Virginia, in 1908 as a day to honour one's mother. Jarvis wanted to accomplish her mother's dream of making a celebration for all mothers, although the idea did not take off until she enlisted the services of wealthy Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker. She kept promoting the holiday until President Woodrow Wilson made it an official national holiday in 1914. The holiday eventually became so highly commercialized that many, including its founder, Anna Jarvis, considered it a "Hallmark holiday", i.e. one with an overwhelming commercial purpose. Jarvis eventually ended up opposing the holiday she had helped to create. She died in 1948, regretting what had become of her holiday. In the United States, Mother's Day remains one of the biggest days for sales of flowers, greeting cards, and the like; it is also the biggest holiday for long-distance telephone calls. Moreover, churchgoing is also popular, yielding the highest church attendance after Christmas Eve and Easter. Many worshipers celebrate the day with carnations, colored if the mother is living and white if she is deceased.

This year we look forward to the St. Paul Youth will be leading the service on Mothers’ Day. It will be a great day to celebrate. We honor and thank you mothers who have helped to make our families, churches, and nation what it is.

OUR WELCOMING METHODS

I noticed in a recent article that First United Methodist Church in Midland is involved in putting together an Invite System. According to the article by the senior pastor, it consists of using Invite Cards to invite people to special services. We have been doing this over the past year at St. Paul as a part of what will become our Evangelism Plan. You may recall the packages of cards that we handed out prior to our Easter service, The Thorn. It does a couple of things. By handing these cards to people, they become aware of St. Paul. As the Invite Cards are distributed to people on a regular basis, it begins to make a bigger impact as they realize St. Paul is here and available to help meet their needs.

There is a sense in which this is related to our Assimilation Plan or we might call it our “Welcoming System.” Welcoming has to do with preparing for guests to come. It’s the reason they are not visitors, but guests. Visitors drop in unexpectedly, but we are ready to welcome our guests. As a result, we prepare the building for them so it’s clean and pleasing to them. We provide the coffeehouse look so that they are comfortable and their anxiety is reduced. We have greeters available to welcome and assist them. We have ushers to help them find their seats. Assimilation also includes the follow-up and assistance they might require at service.

At this point, we have put several of these elements in place. The Assimilation Plan is really ready to be presented to our congregation. At our next Harvest Council meetings, we will be discussing the best way to present it to the congregation.

Therefore, in May, we will begin to discuss the Discipleship Plan of St. Paul which includes Small Groups. This is very important as Small Groups are a vital cog to connect new people to people in the church as well as to grow them spiritually. The ultimate goal is spiritual growth but relationship building keeps them involved so that we can help them grow spiritually, so it is part of the Assimilation Plan as well. Please pray for the Harvest Council as we plan the future to achieve the vision that God has given us. We ask for your prayers because it requires teamwork to reach our vision. I can’t do it alone. The Harvest Council can’t do it alone. It takes all of us to be able to accomplish it.