Volume 7 Issue 9 December, 2012

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Hello all near and far…I pray this note finds you well.

I read a quote from Anatole France the other day. “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” I guess I have had change on my mind lately. It hasn’t been too long since we went thru this pretty enormous pas-toral change together. The parsonage that Jen and Ryan and I live in has changed, much for the better, thank you Frank and Gene and Jason. Our faces are changing, some people have left this church, and some new ones have come along. The weather is changing; the sun has left us for the cold and rain. Jen-nifer has gone back to work; there are some changes at the Devantier’s house. You all are changing thru the pledges you have made to be with God more often, to pray be greener etc. The church as a whole is changing as well, some small changes some a little bigger; some are comfortable some carry a slow burn with them. But we all know change is inevita-ble. Harold Wilson said it very well, “He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which re-jects progress is the cemetery.”

I think the Bible is all about change, because it is about life, about living, not about death and cemeteries. Jesus asked his disciples to change their lives, to walk away from what they knew to what God wanted them to see and be. Names were changed, Simon to Pe-ter, Saul to Paul, Sarai to Sarah, there were others. People changed locations, Abram to an unknown place, Israel out of Egypt, Jesus to Egypt. Minds were changed hearts were changed, people turned from death to life, and finally the world was changed, none of it easy though. Charles Stanley said, “Often times God demonstrates His faithfulness

in adversity by providing for us what we need to survive. He does not change our painful circumstances. He sustains us through them.”

I believe that the church is in need of change. I am not talking just about Longview UMC, or the big UMC, but all churches. We my friends are living in changing times. Now we can choose to embrace this change and look at it as an amazing opportunity, an epic adventure. Or we can decide to fight it tooth and nail and let it hurt every step of the way. Either way we know it will still change. There are many people much wiser than I am who think they have it all figured out, and maybe some have. But one thing is for certain and this has never changed (like God). We are supposed to love our God and all our Neighbors. This means, “all means all.” All are welcome, all share with each other, all who are in need of help will be helped, all get to be married, all get to choose where they want to live. All means all.

"We ain't what we ought to be. We ain't what we could be. We ain't what we gonna be, but thank God we ain't what we were." I love that quotation. I've seen it attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr., but I think when he said it, he was quoting some-one else. It doesn't really matter who said it. We all live off the achievements and great thoughts that have gone before us.

I would like to ask you all to be in prayer for our church and its leadership, because we have our hands on the rudder as we speak, we will be deciding the direction this church will be taking in the next month and years to come. We will be deciding how we as a church are going to react to the changes that have to part of life. Please know that all of you are invited to be part of the decision making proc-ess, just come and ask me how you can serve in this body to help us make good changes. So please pray with me right now.

United Methodist Women

All women of the church are welcome and

United Methodist Men

All men of the church are welcome and

encouraged to attend

2nd Wednesday of each month 7:00 pm

Women’s Book Group

Meets 2nd Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. (except

July and August) in member’s homes.

Sunday School

Each Sunday Sept through May

9:30 a.m.

Adult studies

Watch this space for a new study for Sun-

day evenings @ Fosburgs

“Walk with Jesus”

Sunday 9:30 am

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Music

The “Unity Crew” rehearses Tuesdays at

7:00 pm

Christmas choir rehearses Thursdays at

6:30 pm

(Pastor’s message, continued from page 2)

Awesome Creator

Creation is all about change

Birth pangs, plates shifting, growing up and growing old and even death

Sickness, moving, healing, retiring, divorcing, loving and leaving

Change has come unbidden, and most times, unwelcome

change can be overwhelming and petrifying, but it has come

ready or not, change is here, and must be accepted

Holy Spirit

Make me strong enough and guide me to victory

Make me flexible enough not break thru the stormy changes

Make me see the blessings that are everywhere

Make me be willing to see the big picture in all things

But most of all let me walk by faith and not by sight

Dear Jesus

I pray for Longview UMC

That You would guide our church in whatever direction you see fit

That You would raise leaders amongst us with loving hearts

That You would fill this place with those who are in need

That you would walk with us in the cool of the evening

Thank you Jesus, for changing me…Amen

Pastor Rene

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LUMC Gallery

Rachel Wallace

Ask our Unity Crew drummer Rachel Wal-lace, 26, what makes her laugh and she responds with laughter. "Everything," she says. "You always have to find something to laugh about" whether at work or else-where. "I look for the good, too." It's this embrace of life that helps her get through the difficult process of coming out to family, friends, and co-workers. Church is "big", Rachel said. "It's the Number One thing in my life, serving God the best that I can. I honestly don't think I would be here if I didn't have my co-workers and my cousin, my church and PFLAG." Since coming to our church, Rachel has walked from Kalama to Longview -- and marched in parades -- on behalf of same gender marriage. She is active with the D i v e r s i t y T a s k F o r c e . Rachel has five brothers and two sisters. In addition to her parents, her extended family numbers a dozen aunts and uncles and "too many cousins to count." Her religious background is with the Pentecos-tal church, where the family attended every church service offered. She was home-schooled until ninth grade, then took several courses to help her with dys-lexia. She then finished four years of a private high school in two years. "That was an adventure of a lifetime," she said. After a day of working with disabled peo-ple in the Clatskanie area, Rachel might take up one of her interests. It might be photography, drumming, hiking, action movies, or just about any kind of music. There is one more: "I love dancing," she s a i d . "I find her to be a breath of life," said Ei-leen Arnold. Diana Thomas adds: “I see Rachel as an endearing, searching and dedicated soul.”

Niis Bue

Staff Parish Relations Committee

The Staff Parish Committee met with the pastor and approved a pastoral package for 2013 of $54,685. This continues Rene at the three quarter time level for 2013 at the same cash salary level as 2012. The main difference is that there is a reduc-tion in the package by $3000 from 2012 because the pastor and his family are living in the parson-age. The pastoral package will be presented at the Charge Conference for discussion and approval. We will also meet with the District Superintendent be-fore the Charge Conference as per custom.

SPR recommended and the Administration Council approved the hiring of Sydnee Elton as a second caregiver in our nursery at $10.00 per hour for two hours each Sunday morning. By having two care-givers in attendance each Sunday morning we are in compliance with the denomination's safe sanctu-ary guidelines. Feel free to stop in to the nursery and say hi to Sydnee and Caitlyn and bring your lit-tle ones!!

SPR will be participating with the pastor in a confer-ence wide model of effective ministry assessment called the Advancing Effective Ministry through Covenant Building. The pastor and the SPR mem-bers will be reading material, participating in online surveys and learning more about tools for effective ministry assessment over the next few months.

As you can tell, the SPR committee has been busy and is blessed with pastoral passion and positive encouragement from our District Superintendent and Conference. Blessings to you during this holi-day

Barbara Vining

Staff Parish Relations Chairperson

Christmas Eve December 24, 2012 7:00

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Worship Committee

Our Worship Committee has finally gotten re-organized. We have been pretty productive over the past few months. We have some big changes for the front of the sanctuary that have been designed by our "artist in resi-dence", Sharon Pederson. We have also made some minor changes in our Worship service by trying to give just a little more structure to our starting and to try to balance the need to have strong fellowship while also meeting the needs of some to prepare for reverent worship. We are also trying to help newcomers feel more comfortable in worship and trying to see how folks feel about not holding hands during the "unity circle." Of course there's nothing like change to help us think about what is important and what is n o t . We have now have an agenda that we are trying to work with to help us move forward in all the areas. Here is what it looks like for now:

1. How’s it going so far? 2. Follow up items from past meetings 3. Greeters / Helpers / Ushers 4. Flowers, Sanctuary Environment/ Communion preparation. 5. Music/Art/Decoration/Dance 6. Worship Service flow / program items 7. Other

As you can see we have some big areas to cover. Our biggest hurdle right now is finding folks to join the committee that want to be ins charge of organizing some areas. We have good help but in some areas we need to have someone in charge of making sure things happen, besides the chair. Right now it would be a big help in having someone be in charge of making sure there are greeters and ushers each week. Let us know what else we can do to make your worship experience a truly spiritual and uplifting event.

I am also leading the music during the worship service. We are struggling a bit and looking for more musicians, special music volunteers, etc. to add more variety to this part of worship. We are in the process of trying to advertise that informa-tion to the community. Pray with us that we get a g o o d r e s p o n s e . I want to thank all on the committee for their ex-cellent ideas and contribution to the commit-tee. We seem to be off to a good "team" start. Robert Mumford

United Methodist Women Thanks to everyone for your great support of our bazaar. Because of your support we were able to raise over $1200 between the UMW and UMM so that we can continue our work in this church, our community and our world! We hope not to work quite as hard in December! We will have just one meeting, December 13th. Edith Allen Circle will not meet in December. Fol-lowing a very brief meeting on the 13th, we will car pool to the Red Hat Thrift Store to shop for items to donate to The Emergency Support Shel-ter. Profits from the Red Hat store go to the sup-port the shelter, so our money spent will help the facility twice! We did this last year at the sugges-tion of our beloved Nadine Aldinger and I think it is something that will become a tradition for us. After shopping we will meet for lunch at the Merk building. We would love to have any and all of you join us. Sharon Fosburg

United Methodist Men

We had a very good bazaar sale but still have lots of things left over. We will be

looking for other opportunities to sell the remaining items.

We would like to invite all men of the church to dinner at J T’s Steak House on

this Wednesday November 28th in order to

thank you for all the things you do around the Church. Please come and join us.

The UMM will pay for your dinner, drinks are up to you.

We are spending some of our money to

fix the lawn mowers so we can make the lawn look good as it should.

Our December meeting will be on Wednesday the 19th at 7:00 pm at the church. We will be putting together the gift bags to be given out on Christmas Eve at that meeting.

Thank you for all the help!

Gene Fosburg

Book Club

The December book club meeting will be a bit different. Our book is “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever”. Our gathering will be December 12th at 6:00 pm at Martinson’s home. All are invited: men as well as women! There will be read-ings presented from this classic book. You are invited to bring a “finger food” item to share.

This will be a wonderful holiday gather-ing full of fun, food and fellowship! Meet at the church to carpool to Martinsons, leaving the church at 5:40.

Angel Fund

The Angel Fund (formerly known as the “Love Fund”) is nearly depleted. This fund exists to try to meet some needs of people in our community who need assistance with utility bills and basic needs. The need is great in our area. Rare are the days that a call doesn’t come into the office asking for assistance. This help is given at the Pastor’s discretion and is paid directly to the utility company or, in some cases, a gift card is given. People are never given cash or checks directly. This fund is available to members of the congregation who find themselves in need of help as well as to those who call the church office with re-quests. While the Pastor is the one who ap-proves requests, he is not authorized to sign on the account. Every attempt is made to be sure your gifts are distributed wisely and carefully.

There is now less than $100 is the Angel Fund account. I have been regretfully in-forming callers requesting help that we are not able to help at this time. You have al-ways been so very generous in the past when you know there is a need. I am hop-ing you will be able to respond this time as well. You may mail donations to the church or place them in the offering plate on Sun-day mornings. Just indicate on the check or envelope that the donation is for the “Angel Fund”.

Thank you for your generosity.

Sharon Fosburg

Administrative Assistant

2851—30th Ave.

Phone: 360-425-4927

Email: lumcoffice@cni.net

LONGVIEW UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

OUR MISSION STATEMENT

Longview United Methodist Church is a

beacon of diversity in our community.

We encourage each individual in their

spiritual journey as they become a disci-

ple for Jesus Christ

Check out our brand new

website!

www.umclongview.com

Portland Gay Men’s Chorus

“The Most Wonderful Season”

Sunday, December 9th

4:00 pm

Wallenberg Auditorium

Lower Columbia College