Haiti Journal

We are immensely grateful for this trip.  The spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical impact of it cannot be minimized . . . we will be in the “sorting” process for some time to come.  The disparity between here and there is simply too great to comprehend . . . you cannot begin to compare the scope and depth of what we have been given (and allowed to have) with the scope and depth of what the Haitian people do NOT have.

I loved the time spent with those who are giving their lives in serving Christ in Haiti.  I loved the time spent with those who are being served.

This journal probably contains, for many of you, more “insignificant” detail than you care to read, but I didn’t want to miss a thing . . . nor forget it when the days and weeks have created distance between me and the days spent there.   It wasn’t  necessarily written with other readers in mind, but if you’d like to read more, click here.

Reiland Speaks at Growing Pastors Event

On Sunday evening, August 28, the pastors and pastoral staff of our district enjoyed an incredible evening of worship, fellowship, inspiration and training.  Trinity Wesleyan Church served as wonderful hosts for our bi-annual Growing Pastors event, with a record attendance of 130. The worship band of FWC/ALIVE led a great time of worship and Dr. Dan Reiland, (pictured) Executive Pastor of 12Stone Church in Lawrenceville, GA, was our guest speaker.  The lessons on Make the Most of Your Leadership Profile and Strategically Simple: A Lean Ministry Model that Makes Sense were challenging, stimulating, and inspiring.   In the words of a text received from a pastor this morning, “Last night cannot be explained, only experienced.”

It was also a delight to have Dr. Todd Voss, the new President of Southern Wesleyan University, and his wife, Julie, with us to bring greetings and to share the evening with us.  Many joined me in making a commitment to pray especially for Dr. Voss and the university.

We are deeply grateful to the staff of Trinity Wesleyan, the FWC/ALIVE worship band and its leader, Jeremy Palomo, and all those who volunteered to come early and stay late to make this event happen.

Our next Growing Pastors event will be March 4 at the Greenville First church.

PNN 4.25.09

Pastor’s News and Notes

April 25, 2009

¹ Those who live in the shelter of the Most High
will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
² This I declare about the Lord:
He alone is my refuge, my place of safety;
he is my God, and I trust him. (Psalm 91;1,2, 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: (5/04/09) Greenwood – Kenny and Cheryl Smith

· Men’s Retreat – April 25-27 at Springmaid Resort in Myrtle Beach

· Mrs. Virgie Milstead, mother of Rev. Don Milstead (Trinity) has been hospitalized in Gastonia, NC, recently and is being moved to hospice care.

· Rev. James Ramsay is continuing to recuperate from his blood clot condition.

· Rachel Harding, mother of Tom Harding, (FWC/ALIVE) continues to be under treatment as the doctors further diagnose her health problems.

· Mr. Stancell McWhite, grandfather of Matt Rhodes (Spiritual Formation Department), passed away and the funeral was held last weekend.

· Mrs. Bob Cooley (Norma) is undergoing treatment for her breast cancer.

· 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.

· 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

I continue to hear good reports about what God is doing in our churches this month – Salvations, baptisms, and new members received are encouraging signs. I know that several have and are participating in the SpringLife emphasis sponsored by the Spiritual Formation and E & CG Departments of the denomination.

Last week involved several meetings with pastors and others. On Tuesday morning, the Leadership Team (DS and Assistants) met to discuss and pray for both district and personal concerns. I enjoy immensely the privilege of working with these colleagues and our times of meeting each month.  Joan and I attended the BYF Luncheon at the SWU campus on Tuesday. It was a delight to see some of you and a special treat to hear and visit with Dr. Clifton Wood and his bride, Ernie Parker Wood. These are long-standing colleagues and people who have served as role models from our early ministry. Thanks to Glenda Hoyle, BYF Director, for her leadership of this district ministry.

On Tuesday evening, we kept our grandson, Will, so that his parents could attend the Caroline’s Promise banquet. We had a terrific evening at the Fluor Field in Greenville watching the Greenville Drive baseball team. It had been a rather busy and full day, but also a very good one since it was my birthday.

On Wednesday through Saturday, our Church Planter Assessment Center (CPAC) was in operation at Table Rock. While I had few specific responsibilities, I did give it some of my time and attention. This is such an important component and tool in our becoming a missional district. Our thanks go to our facilitators, Genetta Herrera and Jim Wood, who traveled in from Kansas,  and our assessing team which included Matt Rampey, Coordinator; Phil and Martha Faye Baily, Paul and Sandi DiToma, Steve Stanley, Jon Brady, Wade Rogers, Tim Jones.  Joan also gave lots of hours in a support role. We are already seeing some very strong potential from those who were assessed.

After the final exit interview of the April 2009 CPAC was completed, Joan and I left for Beaufort to attend the Dedication Service and Launch weekend for Healing Waters Wesleyan Church. I am providing a link on our district website for an article (addtional pictures are linked here as well) that was distributed earlier this week and is now on the denomination website. Thanks again to those of you who have helped to make this church possible. Continue to pray for Pastor Brenda Singleton and Jeff as they provide leadership for this our newest congregation.

As I complete this week’s PNN, I will be leaving within a few hours to participate in the district Wesleyan Men’s retreat at Myrtle Beach. Please pray for the retreat. Springmaid Beach Resort, the site of this year’s retreat, is at the opposite end of the Grand Strand from the devastating fires raging in the North Myrtle Beach area.  These are the worst forest fires in more than 30 years in South Carolina. Our church at Little River has not been directly affected, but they seeking to reach out to those who are impacted by this devastation.

I pray that this last Sunday of the district year will be marked by the presence and power of the Risen Lord in our services.

Believing in each other,

Pastor Buddy

News and Information

Work Week at Table Rock – May 18-23. Come for a day, a few days or the week . . . our treat!   Landscaping, repairs, painting and more are waiting for you and it will be great fellowship working together. Pastors, please announce this and make plans now to bring a group with you.  If these dates do not work due to other schedules at your churches, you may make arrangements to bring a group at other times by calling Greg Hayes, Camp Manager, at 864-878-2792.

Pastor Patrick Gué gave this report of the First Anniversary services at First Haitian Evangelical Wesleyan Church: “We had a big attendance for this weekend.  On Friday 25 adults and 10 children; on Saturday, 40 adults and 12 children; on Sunday more than 125 people including 25 children attended the anniversary service.  The Haitian Anderson Church was there with us plus a Haitian Baptist church from Charlotte, North Carolina was there, too.  A lot of people from Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida worshiped with us.  Ten American people were with us.”        –

Quote for the Week

I will leave the city. The throne is the Lord’s. So is the kingdom. I will not hinder God. No obstacle, no activity on my part lies between me and God’s will. Nothing will prevent him from accomplishing his will. If I am not to be king, God will find no difficulty in making Absalom to be Israel’s king. Now it is possible. God will be God!”

– From a A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards (Tyndale House, 1991), a book that has been in my “to read” section for 3½ years and finally read during my Day Alone with God this week.  It is a study in brokenness using Saul, David and Absalom as examples.  The book is definitely worth much more than the hour+ I spent reading it.

Humor for the Week

George Phillips, an elderly man from Meridian, Mississippi, was going up to bed when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.
He phoned the police, who asked “Is someone in your house?”
He said “No, but some people are breaking into my garden shed and stealing from me.”
Then the police dispatcher said “All patrols are busy. You should lock your doors and an officer will be along when one is available.”
George said, “Okay.”
He hung up the phone and counted to 30.
Then he phoned the police again.
“Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. Well, you don’t have to worry about them now because I just shot them,” and he hung up.
Within five minutes, six Police Cars, a SWAT Team, a Helicopter, two Fire Trucks, a Paramedic, and an Ambulance showed up at the Phillips’ residence and caught the burglars red-handed.
One of the Policemen said to George, “I thought you said that you’d shot them!”
George said, “I thought you said there was nobody available!”

(True Story – Moral:  Don’t mess with older people!)

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.”