Message:
September 7, 2010
Having spent all of Labor Day weekend involved in serious labor, I mean serious labor, I am thrilled that God has allowed me a way to support myself and my family that does not involve physical labor!!!!! My wife and I decided that we could do a major landscaping project in our backyard. This meant we had to purchase, have delivered to our driveway, load onto a four wheeler to move to the construction site in the back, and place 8 tons of flat stones on a hillside. It really seemed like a good idea at the time!
Now, as I am barely able to move the fingers on my hands to type this, and even that movement causes pain, I wonder at my stupidity. Eight tons of stone moved at least three times equals twenty four tons of stone in reality. That doesn't count the almost 1,000 pounds of dry cement that had to be hauled, spread, and watered in.
The fact that the result looks great and hopefully will help with our erosion problem is minor compared to the pain I am experiencing as old muscles rebel. I sent my children an email in the midst of this project and asked, "Where are your children when you need them!"
I am clearly reminded that almost all progress in the world requires effort and work.
Where are you working to make things better for yourself? Perhaps getting in a life group of a class is where you need to do the work to improve you life?
God's best,
Bill
August 30, 2010
I am excited about the direction we are going in our series, "As the world turned." Last week we talked about love being unlimited. This past week we shared that blessings are unlimited also. I realized how much better the world would be if we just lived by those two truths.
I am not limited in my God given ability to love. I can have one, five, fifteen children and still love each and everyone of them with equal power. We can love countless friends. We can in fact have enough love to embrace the entire universe. Love is not an emotion that we must horde and never share. We are told "God is love." We are made in God's image so we never need fear expanding our circle of love.
The blessings I receive from God are not limited. I don't just get a certain amount of blessings from God. I don't have to horde the stuff God has given me, I can give it away and God will provide more. I will never run out of blessings, unless I make the mistake of trying to horde them and hang on to them for myself alone. One of the greatest blessings God gives is that we can never outgive God's blessings. The more we give the more we receive.
I hope you will come this week and see what else might not be limited in God's amazing world.
See you Sunday
God's best,
Bill
July 22, 2010
We have only four Sundays left before school begins and all our people return from vacations and weekends at the lake!!! We have missed you and will be thrilled to see you back.
Our fall season will kick off on August 22nd as we begin our series, "As the World Turned" a take off on the fact that the soap opera of daytime television will be ending this year after a 56 year run. We are going to show how this is nothing compared to the wild, crazy and often immoral stories of our Biblical history.
I hope you have had a great summer. I know the fall will be great at Grace!
God's best,
Bill
July 1, 2010
We have just completed our yearly three day staff planning retreat. Praise God that is over!! We now have our worship planned through June of 2011! We have put the structure in place that allows us to do ministry for the coming year and that is a true blessing. I am so thankful for the wonderful creative people that God has surrounded me with here at Grace.
One of the new plans we have is for me to create a "Worship Companion Book" (we really don't have a good name for it yet) that will have daily devotionals tied to the week's message, have a section on related Scripture readings, a section on study questions for each week's message and a suggested reading guide. We hope that through use of this book our people can become more closely tied to Jesus every day. They will be available for our fall kickoff on August 22nd.
I'm going now to a funeral and then back to teach a class tonight.
And you said I only work one day a week and half a day at that!!!! Hah! Not this week.
God's best,
Bill
June 21, 2010
I shared during worship yesterday my belief that every person who is affiliated wtih Grace Community UMC should know the answer to this question, "What does a huge sailing ship and an enormous palm dotted island have to do with teaching people about Jesus Christ?"
My answer to that question is, "Absolutely nothing!" and "Absolutely everything!"
You see, the ship, the island, the rock climbing wall, the millions of special effects that our staff and volunteers labor long and hard to create do absolutely nothing to convey Jesus Christ to anyone. On the other hand, they are our calling card to the community. Our hope and prayer is that our members leave worship and go to eat with family or go to their place of business on Monday and proclaim, "WOW! You won't believe what our church did yesterday!" We hope that they then talk about a stage with a full size ship or a palm dotted island. We pray that someone listening might be led to say, "That sounds like a church I'd like to visit."
For until we get people through the doors of the worship center we have no hope of teaching them about our Lord Jesus Christ. But when they come through the doors, then our music, our preaching, our welcoming spirits, all can reveal Jesus to them.
Our mission, our purpose for being, is to bring people who are not active in the Church of Jesus Christ back into relationship with him. Those people generally will not come to a place that looks like the church they have known and rejected in the past. We pray they might come to a church with a sailing ship!
Our mission statements says that we are created to Bring In, Build Up and Send Out. Without the first step, bringing people through our doors, we have no chance to complete our mission. So we build ships and rock walls and whatever our creative imaginations can dream up, all in the hope that we will this time find the right calling card for one more person to come to Jesus.
Will you help us by telling all you know about this weird place with a sailing ship on stage?
God's best,
Bill
There really is no place like Grace!
We have attempted to discover the right verbage to describe our unique style of worshipping Jesus Christ, but have been stymied.
We tried "contemporary" but found that label fits services that have been added onto a traditional church's offering of worship styles. We are totally committed to our new style of worship and are not an "add on" to any service.
We tried "modern" but found that while we are on the cutting edge in our selection of music and drama in worship, we still celebrate some of the timeless tradtions of the church such as Communion, Baptism, Bible Study and others.
We tried "Theatrical" and "Production" and while those come closer to describing our style they still do not quite fit and have an East or West Coast feel which definately is not Grace.
So, instead of labeling ourselves, we hope in this website to give you an opportunity to catch a glimpse of Grace in action. By clicking on "live streaming" you can see portions of our style. Checking out our other pages shows you some of the ways we follow our mission statement of "Bringing In" "Building Up" and "Sending Out" our members and friends in service to our Lord.
If you are looking for ways to strengthen your daily faith I suggest that you take a moment and click on "Daily Devotionals" that I share in the hopes of making our faith real in the day to day world.
I hope as you view and explore you will decide to come and visit us live and in person. For truly that is where you can best experience this wonderful place called Grace Community. We look forward to meeting you and making you a part of our "Community."
There really is no place like Grace!
God's best,
Bill Leslie
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