The Have Mercy Challenge team serving the Poorly Clothed in our community will be holding a clothing drive on Saturday, June 1 in the MFC. They are asking for church-wide clothing donations. They will be collecting clothes for the whole month of May. Their goal is to gather clothes for all age groups, including maternity. They need clothes that are in good quality as well as up-to-date (no poodle skirts needed). All clothes that are not claimed will be donated to Sylva Linings. Please leave clothing donations in the Loving Kindness Room in the bin labeled “Serving the Poorly Clothed” by May 31st.
Supplies Needed for Summer Explorers Camp
Summer Explorers Camp will begin on Monday, June 10th. Our staff and campers are getting excited about all that we will be doing this summer! We need your help with a few supplies as we prepare for camp. Some of these items could be lying around your house! Also, feel free to check out our Amazon wishlist here:
https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/LKIDY053QS5O?&sort=default
Hole Punchers
Construction Paper
White and colored computer paper
Notecards
Varied Poster Board
Washable ink pads
Varied Colored Acrylic Paint
Paintbrushes and sponges
Colored Duct or Masking Tape
Origami Paper
Fabric Scraps
Colored Beads
Water Balloons
Hula Hoops
Tarps
5-gallon buckets
PVC Pipe
Cooking supplies (i.e. cookie sheets, aluminum foil, cooking spray, spatulas, kid-friendly knives, cookie cutters)
Zip lock bags
For more information contact Kelly Brown, 1st Explorers Ministry Director.
With Full Confidence
Rafif is a precocious 5-year-old Iraqi Muslim girl who weekly runs into the library to greet me with a big hug. I first met her last year when she was a part of the Ready for School program and learning her colors, shapes and numbers.
Last fall she entered pre-K and is learning to read and write. After Christmas she asked me to find her books with sight words in them, and she read to me. She then told me she wanted to read to the group at story time. With full confidence she read aloud the simple book.
A few weeks ago, Rafif and her family moved to another city. I’m happy to have known her, experienced her huge smile and hugs and am privileged to be a part of her early learning. I’m sad to see her go, but pray that she remembers that I, as well as other Christians, love her and welcome her family.
- Karen Morrow, CBF field personnel serving in Fort Worth, TX
No Shirt, No Shoes, No…
…No worries. Right?
When I was a child, summer began when I was able to peel off my socks, kick-off my shoes and go barefoot. With the exception of Sunday mornings, my entire summer was lived with bare feet and flip-flops. Summer meant freedom and the permission to do things off-script. Feeling liberated to do things differently, summer felt exhilarating. The worries of the other 9 months were suspended, and the biggest concern was fretting over which flavor of ice cream to choose from at the neighborhood Baskin Robbins.
For us, however, summer will have to wait a few more weeks. It was 41 F at our house this morning. Few of us want to tiptoe through the dew-lined grass with blue feet.
And yet, summer approacheth. With the release of our summer calendar this past Sunday, it is our hope that our church family will have multiple opportunities to kick-off our shoes and enjoy one another’s company in our beautiful mountains.
The first of these opportunities is coming up! We will gather for our annual summer picnic at the Deep Creek Pavilion near Bryson City in the Smokies on the afternoon of June, 2nd. Yes, you can come early and tube the creek. Or, you can simply set-up a lawn chair at the pavilion after dropping off your offering for our potluck dinner. After our time off feasting, and as dusk begins to descend, we’ll gather by the water for an evening worship service.
This past spring my studies in the Celtic Christian tradition have taught me about the Irish’s deep love and respect for nature. They believed that particular places and features in the natural world were touch-points for experiencing the divine. Sources of water, groves of trees, and high mountain tops were considered holy ground, and people flocked to worship by gurgling fountains and on craggy outposts above the clouds.
For many of us, our mountains and their diverse forest ecosystems have a similar power. Taking a cue from our Celtic ancestors, we will have three opportunities for worship outdoors this summer. The first, as just mentioned, will be by the water after our potluck picnic at the Deep Creek Pavilion. The second service will be on Sunday afternoon, July 14th up at Waterrock Knob where we’ll gather for a time of worship in the highlands. Our final outdoor worship service will be in the woods at Pinnacle Point Park above Sylva on August 4th. I hope you will choose to join us as we seek to experience God’s presence in a thin place—that is a place where the dividing line between this world and the next is very thin.
There will also be opportunities this summer for relaxed fellowship so that friendships can be sparked and nourished. In an attempt to identify the best frozen confections in our community, we’ll be meeting up at three different ice cream joints on select Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. Our task will be straightforward: Show up, devour a cold, tasty goody, and then judge the product we just sampled. At the end of the summer, when we have our own annual, homemade ice cream contest, we’ll announce which ice cream establishment serves the best desserts in town.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be hearing updates and testimonies from our ‘Have Mercy Challenge’ groups. Many of us have already been on mission to do an act of mercy to one of the people groups that Jesus directs us to show compassion to in the Bible. The intergenerational groups that have developed around this challenge are yielding fruit and changing lives. Together, we are proving that we are up to the challenge to provide care for the “‘least of these’ my brothers and sisters.”
Yes, dozens of our community’s children will be with us for our Summer Explorers Camp throughout the coming months. And yes, our children and youth will both be attending mission camps, as well. Our Being-Active-Living-Longer Club (aka, the B.A.L.L. Club) will be busy, and we’ll be taking in a Tourists Ball Game, also.
Why such a different slate of activities for these next few months? Summer provides us with unique opportunities to kick-off our shoes and do things a bit differently. Summer in the mountains provides us with different entry points into our faith community and gives us the chance to encounter God in dynamic and creative ways.
Besides. Who doesn’t like ice cream?
Join us this summer as we seek to be God’s people in fresh and authentic ways. But be sure to keep a pair of flip-flops in your car. Some of the establishments in our community have signs on their doors that read: No shirt. No shoes. No service.
Man of Mercy - Sermons in May
BALL Club Trip to Maggie Valley
BALL Club Road Trip to Maggie Valley
Thursday, May 23
Leave church at 9:00 am
Brunch at Joey’s
Optional visit to Wheels Through Time Museum
https://wheelsthroughtime.com
Group Rate of $10 for 8 people or more
Please RSVP to Tia at church or Linda at 270.784.2547 by Noon on Tuesday, May 21. Jeff will be our driver for this outing!
Let us know if you want to go to both Joey’s and the Wheels Through Time Museum or just Joey’s. We will return to Sylva by the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Weep with Those Who Weep
Like everyone else, I was shocked by the mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Seeking to be an instrument of Christ’s peace, I participated in an inter-faith prayer service at a local Turkish mosque. Attending merely as an observer, I saw an opportunity to bear witness to Jesus Christ when leaders from other faith communities were invited to speak.
Romans 12:15 popped into my mind. I shared that the Bible teaches us that we, as Christians, are to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. I said that American Christians were grieving with them today. Afterward, a number of people came up to me to thank me for my words of comfort and compassion.
- Rick Sample, CBF field personnel serving in Fremont, Calif.
Women on Mission Annual Dinner Invitation
Women on Mission Annual Dinner
Waynesville First Baptist Church
Thursday, May 23 – 6:00pm
Legacy ….”The Rest of Your Story”
Featured Speaker:
Rosalie Hall Hunt
Author, Speaker, Retired Missionary
$10.00 – per ticket
R.S.V.P. – Sandra James (828-736-3171)
Please sign up on mission’s bulletin board by Sunday, May 19
Where to Begin?
When I found myself walking across the parking lot at Food Lion this past Saturday evening, I was struck by the absurdity of the moment.
Earlier that same day, I had taken one last look at the front of Windsor Castle outside of London, England. The sky was a brilliant blue that Saturday morning in England, and the wind chill made it feel like it was in the mid-30s.
Hours later, I was sauntering jet-lagged into our local grocery store through mid-summer humidity to buy fresh milk. And it occurred to me. You shouldn’t be able to be on two continents on the same day.
Please, don’t get me wrong. I love to travel and to have the ability to visit far-off places and to experience people and cultures that are unfamiliar to us. The reason that I don’t think you should be able to be on two continents in one day is because it all feels surreal and overwhelming. Our ability to travel so rapidly can easily generate culture shock. When we zip around the globe so quickly, our mode of transportation doesn’t naturally provide a way for our new experiences to sink in. Like a torrential summer storm that pelts the ground, international travel can feel so sweeping in its reach that the experiences don’t sink in and saturate the ground. Instead, they just run off the surface and float away in the flash flood of rapid assimilation back into the life we had left.
What’s needed when one has an experience of a lifetime is space to absorb all that was felt, sensed, heard, tasted, and explored.
My great-grandfather’s experience a century ago sounds about right, then.
My great-grandfather was a circuit-riding Baptist pastor in the northern foothills of North Carolina. He was beloved by the congregations he served, and they made it possible for him to see the Holy Land. So, he and a good friend boarded a boat—an ocean liner, no less—for a two-month voyage to the middle east.
No, I don’t cotton to the idea of being on a boat for weeks at a time. And no, the practicalities of that kind of extended sabbatical seems unrealistic for me and my family at this time. But I do think there’s something to having space to think about and reflect upon one’s experiences so that they might sink in.
Our week in England and Scotland was extraordinary and life-changing. I am so very grateful for the rich blessing of being able to travel with my family and to have a pilgrimage experience in an ancient, and faithful setting. Yes, the reason for our particular journey to the United Kingdom centered on my doctoral studies. You’ll remember that my doctoral studies are intended to enrich and deepen my call to congregational ministry.
I am eager to tell you the story of my pilgrimage to the island of Iona, and I will do so with pictures and anecdotes beginning Wednesday night, May 15th. But I’m also glad there’s a bit of space between now and then as I’m still processing the power and significance of my journey. There is something deeply moving about being in a place that is widely known and understood as being ‘thin.’ Truly, in doing so it provides space to become ‘thin’ ourselves to the presence of God in our lives.
Of course, I’ll tell you about seeing the Gutenberg Bible and the spectacularly important Codex Sinaiticus at the British Library. I’ll tell you about worshipping in Westminster Abbey and at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. I’ll tell you about the sleeper train and the complicated travel to the small, spit-of-land off the northwest coast of Scotland.
And I’ll tell you about my time of pilgrimage to a sacred place and all that it stirs up within me.
It just may take some time for me to let it all unspool.
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Join us during Adult Bible Study this Wednesday, May 8 in the Mission and Fellowship Center to conclude watching the documentary about Fred Rogers, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” The movie documents Fred Roger’s desire to “Have Mercy” in his life and through his career.