Pastor’s News and Notes

April 16, 2009

“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” Luke 16:13 NLT

PRAYER FOCUS

Church for this week: (4/20/09) Graham Chapel – Preston and Donna Edmonds

Church for next week: (4/27/09) Greenville, First – Steve and Kimi Stanley

Church for the next week: (5/4/09) Greenwood – Kenny and Sheryl Smith

• Dedication and Grand Opening service at Healing Waters in Beaufort.
• Rev. James Ramsay was admitted to St. Francis Hospital (Greenville) on April 11 with a blood clot in each lung. He is being treated and was able to come home on Monday.
• Mrs. Bob Cooley (Norma) has been diagnosed with breast cancer and will be undergoing treatment. She received a good report this week that no other malignancy is present and the existing cancer has not grown. Bob is the Music Pastor at United Wesleyan in Easley.
• Rev. Ray Lewis (Retired) is now in rehabilitation following surgery for a broken hip.
• Rev. Michael Stepp (Carlisle) is back in the pulpit following his back surgery.
• Mrs. Herbert Taylor (Carolyn) is continuing her chemo for cancer.
• Continue to pray for the physical needs of Rev. Darlene Teague.
• Frances Wilson, District WW Prayer Ministries Coordinator, underwent surgery for breast cancer earlier this week.
• Pray for Mrs. Chet Rowan (Kathy) whose treatment for MS continues.
• The families of Saul Rodriguez, Jimmy Williams, and Beulah Groves.
• Brian Hall, son of Richard and Sharon Hall (Eden) who is in Iraq.
• South Coastal DS Dan Berry and his wife, Shelley http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/danshelleyberry.

What’s Been Happening

Let me summarize the last couple of weeks by giving you the things that required significant “blocks of time.” I, along with some of our pastors, enjoyed a “Day of Dialogue” with Wayne Schmidt of Kentwood Community Church (W. Michigan District) in North Carolina; there were two days of ReFocus meetings and related activities; a GS/DS Cluster Meeting in Central; 2 days of SWU Board of Trustees meetings; and the DS Roundtable at 12Stone Church in Lawrenceville, Georgia. In addition, I met with two LBA’s and a church ReFocus team.

Add to that the personal things, such as my younger son’s 30^th birthday bash in Charlotte; having one of our grandchildren, Ike, spend 2½ days with us; and the drama leading up to the finale of the best sports event of the year–March madness–and the ultimate victory by our beloved Tar Heels, much to our delight and to the disappointment of others.

It has been a very full two weeks. Indulge me with a few highlights. The SWU trustees’ meeting was positive in spite of the economic challenges that many small colleges are facing. Pray for God’s blessing and for a strong enrollment for the Fall in both the traditional and adult programs.

It is always good to be with my General Superintendent and DS Colleagues. The DS Roundtable hosted by the 12Stone Church proved to be an extremely special time of inspiration, learning, sharing and encouragement. The times that Pastor Kevin Myers and Dan Reiland spent with us were both inspirational and challenging. This pastor and church are a special gift to the Kingdom and to our denomination.

I hardly know what to say about the “man weekend” my son, Aaron, planned for his 30^th birthday. He arranged for a weekend-long Pentathlon competition. The events were bowling, golf, video game (Bond, I believe), paintball and ultimate fighting. Yep! Grown men donning head gear and gloves and going at it . . . all because he realized he was turning thirty, had never been in a real fight, and wanted to know how he would do. Well, I didn’t hang around to find out! I exited when I saw that they really were fighting! The rest of the story is that no one was badly hurt and I did come home with one of the Aaron-designed shirts made just for the event. By all reports, the guys (including son-in-law Matthew who flew down from Michigan) really had a great time.

As far as church visits go, these past two Sundays were “special” Sundays when I do not typically make official visits. However, on April 5, I did three “drop-in visits.” Different service times now make that a possibility. On April 12, we visited the Greenville, First Church, worshipping with our son, Matt, his wife and son. They had 160 persons attending comprised of young and old, ethnically diverse, from the community and drive-ins, long-time attenders and first-time visitors and an atmosphere that was vibrant and alive. This service and the crowd represented what is best about the celebration of Easter – new life in Christ! By the way, St. Francis Hospital was like a “Ghost Town” on Easter Sunday morning, when I stopped by visit Jim Ramsay.

I have shared some reports that I have received and love to hear more good news about Resurrection Sunday in our district. I pray that what happened will carry over to the weeks following.

Believing in each other,

Pastor Buddy

News and Information

You are invited by First Haitian Evangelical Wesleyan Church of Mauldin to come and celebrate its first anniversary this Sunday, April 19, 2009, at 2pm. Two services will be held prior to this date. One on Friday, the 17^th at 6pm and our first service of Christian Baptism on Saturday, the 18^th at 5pm and followed by a regular service at 6pm. You are invited to come and see what God is doing among us.

– Pastor Patrick Gué

EASTER REPORTS

Welcome Wesleyan

We had 320 for Easter Sunday. We did two services.  One at 7:00am at the church and then another at 10:00am on the shores of lake Keowee.  Our Youth band gave a concert, we had a brief drama presentation of the Gospel, and then an Easter Egg hunt with prizes: a flat screen TV, Wii, IPods, gift cards and many more items.  We mailed out over 3000 pieces of direct mail.  The result was that we had over 200 people attend that we did not know and probably wouldn’t have come to the church.”

– Pastor Phil Baily

Trinity Wesleyan

“As someone said, last weekend was historic for Trinity Wesleyan.  God did some amazing things for us!  Amazing Love, our Easter musical/drama, was a tremendous success in every way.  To start with, we know of at least 10 people who made decisions for Christ Friday night and Sunday morning!  Praise the Lord!  300 chairs were in place to serve our Friday night audience but before 7:00 P.M. more chairs were being added.  It appears we had around 340 in attendance not counting the choir and cast, and it was pouring rain outside.  We learned the next morning that 15,000 Pickens County residences lost power Friday night, but ours never flickered.  God was surely with us.

Then on Easter Sunday morning 258 were present in the chairs, and when you count in the choir, cast, etc. there were a total of at least 368 present in the building.”

– Pastor Don Milstead

Special Event at SWU

On Thursday, April 23, Dr. Theo Lehmann will be speaking at Southern Wesleyan University’s Newton Hobson Chapel on the university’s campus in Central. He will address a student chapel in the morning and also give a lecture at 7:30 p.m. The evening lecture is free and the public is invited.

The evening presentation is a reflection on the book “Blues Music and Gospel Proclamation, The Extraordinary Life of A Courageous East German Pastor,” translated by former Clemson professor Ed Arnold. Arnold and Dr. Lehmann will autograph copies of the book. For each book sold, $5 will be donated to the relief fund for Christians in Orissa, India.

Lehmann was born in 1934 in Dresden, Germany, where he lived through both the Nazi era and the Communist-ruled German Democratic Republic. He was also the best-known scholar of jazz and blues music in the GDR. His doctoral thesis was entitled “Negro Spirituals: History and Theology.” Lehmann authored another notable book, “Blues and Trouble,” with a foreword by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966. Lehman’s fascination with these musical forms expressed so well his own longing for freedom.

Lehmann was ordained in the Lutheran Church of Saxony. He was called to the urban parish of Chemnitz, where he introduced a youth worship service which grew dramatically despite an atmosphere of persecution.

His reputation as an evangelist spread far beyond the narrow confines of East Germany, and he was named to the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. Lehmann’s ministry to his country under Communist rule has led some to call him “the Billy Graham of East Germany.”

Lehmann’s dreams were realized when in the fall of 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and Germany united as a democracy. In 2003, he was presented with the Constitutional Medallion of the Free State of Saxony, in recognition of the part he played in the “peaceful revolution” that led to the fall of the GDR.

The author of more than 20 books and composer of numerous songs widely sung in churches and evangelical gatherings, Lehmann today is his country’s foremost evangelist. His life is an extraordinary witness to the power of God and one person’s faithfulness to the gospel message.

Dr. Lehmann’s visit to Central is sponsored by the Spiritual Life Department of Southern Wesleyan University, First Wesleyan Church/ALIVE of Central and the Littlejohn Community Center. For details, contact Rev. Ken Dill at (864) 644-5431 or Ed Arnold at (864) 639-6235.

Quote for the Week

“In this tough economy, people are discovering what really matters. In God’s economy, people always matter.” – Taken from a card in the foyer of 12Stone Church last week. www.youmatter.12stone.com

FYI: 12Stone had 11,145 on Easter weekend–including students and kids and those who are a part of the Hamilton Mills campus. More importantly were the 110 first-time decisions for Christ and 101 who rededicated their lives to the Risen One!

Humor for the Week

George Beverly Shea was recently interviewed by WYFF4 news anchor Mike Cogdill on the occasion of Shea’s 100^th birthday. At the close of the interview, Cogdill asked Shea, “What would you like as your epitaph?” After thinking for a moment, Shea responded, “He stayed on pitch.”