WEEKLY CALENDAR

SUNDAY AUGUST 23
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
10 a.m. R.L. Pope Class by Kyles Wallace via Facebook and on WGOS AM 1070
11 a.m. Live Worship Online via Facebook and on WGOS AM 1070

MONDAY AUGUST 24
9:00-11:00 a.m. Internet Access Remote Learning Cafe (Fellowship Hall)
10:00 a.m. “10@10” Weekday Devotions via Facebook
5:00-7:00 p.m.  Internet Access Remote Learning Cafe (Fellowship Hall)

TUESDAY AUGUST 25
8:00 a.m. Men’s Prayer Meeting Online via Zoom (contact Brian Russell)
9:00-11:00 a.m. Internet Access Remote Learning Cafe (Fellowship Hall)
10:00 a.m. “10@10” Weekday Devotions via Facebook
5:00-7:00 p.m.  Internet Access Remote Learning Cafe (Fellowship Hall)
5:30 p.m.  Outdoor Yoga in the Church Back Yard (Weather permitting)

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 26
The Weekly Update via Facebook
9:00-11:00 a.m. CCM Drop-Off Event at CCM (See announcement below.)
10:00 a.m. “10@10” Weekday Devotions via Facebook
6:00 p.m. Youth Small Groups via Zoom (contact Rodney Denton)

THURSDAY AUGUST 27
9:00-11:00 a.m. Internet Access Remote Learning Cafe (Fellowship Hall)
10:00 a.m. “10@10” Weekday Devotions via Facebook
5:00-7:00 p.m.  Internet Access Remote Learning Cafe (Fellowship Hall)

FRIDAY AUGUST 28
10:00 a.m. “10@10” Weekday Devotions via Facebook

SUNDAY AUGUST 30
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
10 a.m. R.L. Pope Class by Stan Styers via Facebook and on WGOS AM 1070
11 a.m. Live Worship Online via Facebook and on WGOS AM 1070

PRAYER CONCERNS

If you or a loved one would like to be added to the prayer list, please contact Lorna McCullough at 336-259-5814. If you put a name on the list, please keep in touch to let us know how that person is doing, as names are removed after three weeks.

During the coming week, please pray for…

Carol Kaiser
Nancy McLain
Josef Walker
Sam Branson
Dean Sharpe-Austin
Kay Eanes
Jim and Barbara Westmoreland
Florence Highsmith and Family
Peace and justice in our nation, state, and city
Grant Brinkley and Family
Finley Price Family
Our First Responders, Medical Community, and Essential Workers
All those affected by Coronavirus/COVID-19
Robert Miller
Andrea Cain and Family
Dave Ogren
Dallas Hutchens
Tyler Oldaker
Tim Priska
Chris Eddinger
Tracy Brinkley
Our UM Missionaries
All Military Personnel
The United Methodist Church

MONTHLY CCM DROP-OFF 

NEXT EVENT: August 26, 9-11 a.m.

We are hosting monthly “drop-off” donation events at CCM on the last Wednesday of each month. You will pull up to the front of CCM at 10 W. Guilford St. in Thomasville, pop your trunk, and a volunteer will retrieve the donation items.

SPECIFIC ITEMS NEEDED AT THIS TIME:

• Cereal
• Oatmeal
• Canned Meat
• Canned Potatoes
• Rice

Thank you in advance for supporting our community!

SCHOOL SUPPLIES DRIVE 

It’s Back to School time and we are collecting needed supplies for area students. Collection bins are set up outside of the church reception door at the Mission Racks for easy drop-off. Thank you for your generosity helping students with the learning materials they need.

• Paper
• Notebooks
• Glue Sticks
• Folders
• Safety Scissors
• Crayons
• Markers
• Erasers
• Highlighters
• Colored Pencils
• Hand sanitizer
• Sanitizing wipes

WE NEED YOU!

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

School will begin for the Thomasville City Schools on August 17, but the school buildings will remain empty. Students will learn remotely for a while. It will be imperative for children to have access to the Internet and there are some who do not. We are pleased to partner with TCS to provide an Internet access site for remote learning for students. We will open the church for two-hour periods on select days during the week for students needing Internet access.

In order to accomplish this, we will need church folks who will give a couple hours of their time to be present. This is not a tutoring service. Students will sign up, and we will limit the number of children at each session. All safety precautions will be followed. Tables will be set up to ensure social distancing, and students will be expected to wear masks, wash their hands prior to entering, and have their temperature taken. Children K-8 must be accompanied by an adult.

The church will be open on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday 9-11 a.m. and 5-7 p.m.  Two volunteers will be needed for each session. To sign up please use the Signup Genius link here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0545A8AF28A02-remote.

STUDENT REMOTE LEARNING INTERNET ACCESS CAFE  

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP or call the office at 336-472-7718.

A/V VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR WORSHIP 

Do you enjoy photography? Interested in the latest information technology? We need a few good men and women to train as video camera operators. If you have any interest in helping us take this step forward in virtual broadcasting, please notify Susan Frye (sfrye@mumctville.org or 336-472-7718) or Harold Vannoy (hvobwnknob@gmail.com or 336-240-9524) who will get you in touch with the right persons. We will need this help in the near future to execute this critical outreach mission. Thank you!

R.L. POPE CLASS NEW ONLINE LESSONS

SUNDAYS AT 10:00 A.M. on WGOS

The R. L. Pope Class is excited to announce the return of new, weekly online lessons. Tune in to WGOS on your radio or computer.

Teaching Schedule:
August 23   Kyles Wallace
August 30   Stan Styers
September 6   Kyles Wallace
September 13   Allen Brown
September 20 Harold Vannoy
September 27   Richard Herman

PROJECT DIVINE INTERRUPTION SCHOLARSHIPS

The recipients of the Project Divine Interruption Scholarship this year are Tori Connolly and Paige Hepler, two of Memorial’s own. Both have shown outstanding leadership and academic qualities and we are proud to present them with $1000.00 towards their educational expenses.  – Barbara Greeson

UMC ANTI-RACISM TOWN HALLS IN AUGUST

Two new interactive town hall discussions are planned to explore both old and new approaches to organizing for racial justice in church and community. The sessions are part of the “Dismantling Racism: Pressing on to Freedom” initiative’s town hall series on anti-racism.

• The first of the two discussions took place August 19, and included a panel of seasoned leaders. (Click here to go to the recording.)
• The second town hall, scheduled for August 26 at 12:00 p.m. CT, will feature a panel of young, emerging leaders. The webinar will be at available at THIS LINK as well as a live airing on The United Methodist Church Facebook page.

CLERGY AND STAFF ARE AVAILABLE

You may contact members of the staff directly or by calling the church office at 336-472-7718 and following the instructions on the recording. Here is a list of staff phone extensions and email addresses, for reference:

Danny Leonard, Senior Minister – Ext. 16; dleonard@mumctville.org
Rodney Denton, Minister of Youth and Young Adults – Ext. 18; rdenton@mumctville.org
Lynda Hepler, Minister of Children and Families – Ext. 11; lhepler@mumctville.org
Brian Russell, Director of Contemporary Worship – Ext. 20; brussell@mumctville.org
Danny Frye, Director of Music – Ext. 12; dfrye@mumctville.org
Susan Frye, Secretary – Ext. 14; sfrye@mumctville.org
Peggy May, Financial Secretary/Treasurer – Ext. 13; pmay@mumctville.org
Jarry Oldaker, Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds – Ext. 17; joldaker@mumctville.org

FINANCIAL GIVING OPTIONS WHILE THE OFFICE IS CLOSED

Thank you for your ongoing generosity to Memorial. While the office is closed, there are three options for making gifts to Memorial:

The address for mailing checks is:
Memorial UMC
P.O. Box 428
Thomasville, NC 27361-0428

Online gifts can be made securely at https://onrealm.org/mumctville/give/now which can also be accessed from our website homepage.

Electronic funds transfer (EFT) giving can be set up for your recurring tithe. For information on how to arrange this, please email or leave a message for Peggy May, Financial Secretary, at pmay@mumctville.org or 336-472-7718.

FEATURED DEVOTION

We close this week’s eNews with a 10@10 devotion shared by Rodney Denton on July 3, 2020.

Humble Hammers

Good morning everyone! I am glad that you have chosen to spend a few moments with me this morning! Hopefully, we can get your day off on the right foot or at least give you a little something to think about this morning!

So, the week of the fourth of July is really different this year for me than it usually is. You see, for the last 16 years, with the exception of two—2009 when my twins were born, and 2017 when my father died—I have had the privilege of serving on one of Memorial’s Appalachia Service Project (or ASP) Teams. The purpose of our trip is to serve the people in rural Appalachia by building relationships and “doing a little construction on the side.” as they say. All of this is in an effort to help make a family’s home warmer, safer, and drier. Although the ministry is designed to make an impact on the people we serve, we have found over and over again that, by the end of the week, the bigger impact may have been made on those of us who have gone on the trip! Memorial has participated in ASP for more than 25 years straight until this year.

There are certainly many stories that stand out in our many summer trips over the years. There was the “Rabies Vaccination Complication” of 2009, when we were sent to Buchannan County, Virginia, and had to leave the trip early in order to get our 30+ people vaccinated for rabies exposure. Then there was the year that we went to Bell County, Kentucky, and instead of staying at a local grade school as we usually do, sleeping on the floor, and using the community showers, we were surprised to find that our center had been moved to Union College, where we stayed in the dorm rooms and had private showers and actual beds! And of course, there was the summer of Harlan County, Kentucky, when we had no air conditioning and we kept experiencing electrical blackouts. There are many more stories; these are just a few off the top of my head.

But today I want to share a personal ASP story from the summer of 2013. Our site was in Morgan County, Kentucky. Now, for some reason, although I have very little construction experience, I have been a team leader for many years on this trip. And, although I have grown in my confidence and skill level, I still find myself getting very anxious and worried that I will somehow ruin the house we are working on. This particular year, I was partnered with Beth Todd, who is a great co-leader and in many ways always found a way to fill in my knowledge gaps and helped me to stay sane through the week. The rest of my team this particular year was all girls. The team consisted of Payton Williams and Maggie Hepler (both seniors), Camille Craddock, and finally, newcomer Kayla Hepler, who had only been involved with the Youth Group for about a month prior to going on the trip. Now, as far as I am aware, we have never had any other all-girl youth team, which certainly speaks to the quality of the youth participants that were on the team. In fact, it was a great trip for me. Things went unusually smoothly and it was a lot of fun, Disney sing-a-longs and all! Our project consisted of replacing a floor in a gentleman’s home which had become unsafe and had holes in it and was in danger of giving way when he walked over it to leave his home. This was an important repair for safety, since it was one of the two main exits for the home. The first steps for the project involved removing the unsafe flooring and repairing any broken or deteriorating joists under the floor with new ones. Joists are the beams that run under the plywood subfloor and provide support and stability for the room. So, once we got the old flooring removed, we saw that a few of the joists needed to be replaced. We split into teams and one team began working on one of the joist and the other team was working on replacing the other. At one point, I looked over at Kayla who was in the perfect position to secure the new joist in place. As the rest of her part of the team held the joist in place, I told her, “when the joist is in the right position, take your hammer and put a few nails in that board.” Then, I turned to focus my attention on my team’s joist. Like I said, Kayla had only been at Youth for a few weeks before this trip, so I was still unclear what she knew or didn’t know; and I just assumed that she could use a hammer. I really wasn’t paying attention; all I knew was that the nails ended up solidly in the board and the joist was secure. Job well done!

Now, I don’t exactly remember when I found out, but later that day while we were all sitting around talking, I learned that Kayla had trouble figuring out how to properly use the hammer. She had tried a few different ways to hold the hammer and a few different ways to hit the nail, all without very much success. I guess she was a little embarrassed to ask me what to do, and I was too focused on other things to pay attention to her predicament. So she kept trying really hard to figure it out until fortunately, Maggie (whose dad, by the way, is a superb carpenter—I think he built his own house, he makes all kinds of wooden items that he sells at our Gifts Galore sale, and he probably taught his daughter how to swing a hammer at a very early age—so, Maggie saw Kayla’s frustration (and my lack of guidance) and went over to try to help her. She ended up showing her how to properly hold the hammer and how to swing it in order to drive the nail in the board. Like I said, job well done. It just didn’t happen the way I thought it had. After that, Kayla was able to spend the rest of the week and the rest of her trips to ASP, for that matter, swinging that hammer with confidence and conviction.

Now, this incident not only gave Kayla a new life skill, but it also left me with a broader understanding of the idea of community. I often think of the role (or lack of role) that I played in this situation. You see, when I think of this moment, I realize that I probably made some unfounded assumptions about Kayla without actually taking the time to get to know her and understand her like I should have. If I had, I might have found out that she had never used a hammer before. Because of this, I feel like I sort of failed as a member of the team. At the very least, I failed as a leader who should have known the gifts and abilities of my people. Now, don’t get me wrong; I am aware that Maggie stepped in and saved the day and no long-term damage occurred—and the leader role isn’t about my being perfect and doing everything right—but this whole situation could have played out a lot differently for Kayla, had Maggie not been so perceptive and willing to help.

There is a short mantra that ASP stresses all week. It is “People before projects.” This means that the driving force behind ASP’s ministry is building relationships. This can certainly mean building relationships on the worksite with the families we serve; however, it can also mean building relationships among people on your own work team as well. I have found that in ministry, building relationships comes sort of naturally for me. I enjoy talking with people and asking questions and getting to know others, but I am embarrassed to admit that when I am on ASP, I find that I really struggle with keeping my anxiety in check about getting the job done and not messing up a person’s home. The “work” often can end up taking precedence over sitting down and chatting with the family or trying to involve the whole team in the project or, as in the case of Kayla, becoming so single-minded about my small piece of the project, that I miss out on something as simple, yet profound, as getting to teach another person how to properly use a hammer. I wanted to be able to brag about how much we got accomplished and how solid that floor ended up being and how good it looked when we were done, but that ends up being about the project and my own ego. “People before projects.” I will miss trying to maintain that balance this summer on the ASP worksite, but I think that perhaps this is a mantra that goes far beyond hammers and plywood. This little phrase makes me think of a passage in Galatians chapter 6, verses 2 and 3. It says:

“Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.”

I love that! God tells us that we are not too important to NOT “share one another’s burdens.” This is the main lesson that we are trying to convey when we take teenagers to rural Appalachia on a work team to serve a family they have never met and will likely never meet again. The world around us may tell us to look out for number one and that self-promotion is the only way to get ahead in life, but, according to this passage, that does not seem to be the way God sees things. In fact, it seems just the opposite in God’s weird, sort of upside-down economy. God calls us to work together, to be humble, and to help others in their time of need. I am so thankful that Maggie, on that hot, July day in Kentucky, had the wisdom to realize that Kayla needed her help, and then was willing to use what she had (knowledge and understanding) to help Kayla not only finish her part of the project but learn a new skill as well. Maggie’s keen compassion, partnered with the patience to teach the skill of swinging a hammer, and the graciousness to not simply do it herself, all made for a beautiful example of humility that day. What a humble calling that our bible passage calls us to this morning, to put another person’s needs before our own.

Humility is something that we know we should have, but so few seem be able to get it right. Humility is sort of a weird virtue. A person doesn’t run out, deciding, “I want humility, now,” or, “I am going to go study and pray until I am humble.” It just doesn’t appear to work that way. Humility is more of a beautiful byproduct of helping those around us become better. Somehow humility is not developed through rigorous self-discipline and focusing on ourselves; rather, humility is born out of community and giving up control and helping others. Humility is not about raising or lowering our own worth; it is about helping others realize their worth. C.S. Lewis put it beautifully:

“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

This may all seem a little counter-intuitive, but the reality is that our world today could use a lot more of what Maggie showed me that day. People who are willing to understand where others are coming from. People who are willing to seek ways serve the needs of others. People who are willing to pay attention and step in to make a difference in another person’s life. People who are willing to trust that by investing in other people, our lives are enriched and the world is made a better place. People who are willing to be humble in the truest and most fundamental sense of the word. People who are willing to use the gifts and knowledge that they have and share it. What would it be like if everyone approached life in this manner? How would the world be different if we all tried to be a little more humble and less important? We are called to share one another’s burdens. Thank you, Maggie!

I will miss the opportunity to learn new lessons on ASP this week, but that does not mean I can’t renew my commitment to the beautiful lessons that I have already learned. I hope you have a great Fourth of July. Stay safe. Stay healthy. And most of all, stay humble! In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, AMEN!

Join us this Sunday for virtual Sunday School and Worship on Facebook LIVE and WGOS 1070 AM.

YOU CAN WATCH AND READ ALL 10 @ 10 DEVOTIONS HERE.