WEEKLY CALENDAR

SUNDAY OCTOBER 4
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
10 a.m.    R.L. Pope Class by Chad Carrick on Facebook and WGOS AM 1070
**11 a.m.**  Live Worship **In Person** and Online on Facebook and WGOS AM 1070
(See announcement below. Please read about protocols and how to enter the building.)
4 p.m.     Youth **In Person**
**6 p.m.**     Worship on the Lawn and Blessing of the Animals Service
(See announcement below.)

MONDAY OCTOBER 5
9-11 a.m. Internet Access for Students (Fellowship Hall)
10 a.m.    10@10 Devotion on Facebook
5-7 p.m.   Internet Access for Students (Fellowship Hall)

TUESDAY OCTOBER 6
8 a.m.       Men’s Prayer Meeting Online via Zoom (New Contact: Tim Lyons)
9-11 a.m.  Sewing Ministry
9-11 a.m.  Internet Access for Students (Fellowship Hall)
10 a.m.     10@10 Devotion on Facebook
5-7 p.m.    Internet Access for Students (Fellowship Hall)
5:30 p.m.  Yoga (Jarrett Hall)

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 7
The Weekly Update on Facebook
9-11 a.m. CCM Monthly Drop-Off
10 a.m.    10@10 Devotion on Facebook
6 p.m.      Youth Small Groups Online (contact Rodney Denton)

THURSDAY OCTOBER 8
9-11 a.m.  Internet Access for Students (Fellowship Hall)
10 a.m.     10@10 Devotion on Facebook
5-7 p.m.    Internet Access for Students (Fellowship Hall)

FRIDAY OCTOBER 9
10 a.m.     10@10 Devotion on Facebook

SATURDAY OCTOBER 10
Fall Harvest Decorations Set Up in Church Yard

SUNDAY OCTOBER 11
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
10 a.m.     R.L. Pope Class by Allen Brownon Facebook and WGOS AM 1070
**11 a.m.**  Live Worship **In Person** and Online on Facebook and WGOS AM 1070
(See announcement below.)
4 p.m.       Youth In Person
6 p.m.       Worship on the Lawn

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…

James Carmichael
Margie Collins
Carol Kaiser
Josef Walker
Dean Sharpe-Austin
Kay Eanes
Grant Brinkley and Family
Finley Price Family
Andrea Cain and Family
Robert Miller
Dave Ogren
Tim Priska
Chris Eddinger
Tracy Brinkley
Peace and justice in our nation, state, and city
Our First Responders, Medical Community, and Essential Workers
All those affected by COVID-19
Our UM Missionaries
All Military Personnel
The United Methodist Church

We extend our prayers and sympathy to the family and friends of Dallas Hutchens who died Wednesday September 23, 2020. The obituary for Dallas can be read at jcgreenandsons.com.

WELCOME BACK THIS SUNDAY!

Dear MUMC Family and Friends,

We are excited to offer an opportunity to gather for in person worship this Sunday at 11 a.m.!  Throughout this pandemic, our leaders have been vigilant in their efforts to hold the safety of everyone as a priority. Every effort has been made to provide a safe environment for our time together.

It will be essential for us to adhere to some safety practices. We ask for your patience as we move through uncharted territory. As we become more adept at offering in-person worship, we will work on getting the 8:50 service restarted.

We realize that some of you are not yet comfortable with gathering indoors, and we honor that choice.  We will continue to offer the service on Facebook Live and WGOS. Some may choose to join us for Worship on the Lawn each Sunday evening at 6 p.m.

Thank you for your steadfast commitment to Memorial UMC.

Danny Leonard

WHAT TO EXPECT AT INDOOR WORSHIP:

• Access to the Sanctuary will be through the Randolph Street doors only.  The designated entrance for those needing the elevator will be the door under the walkway.
• You’ll be greeted upon entering the church and asked a few questions
• Face masks will be required for everyone
• Some pews will be blocked to maintain social distancing; an usher will help direct you.
• Out of respect for others, please refrain from shaking hands or hugging.
• Offering plates will be available at the entrance and exit of the sanctuary.
• When services end, attendees will be dismissed by section to avoid hallway congestion.
• No nursery staff will be present, but the nursery space will be available.
• Sunday school will not be offered at this time. 

WORSHIP ON THE LAWN AND BLESSING OF THE ANIMALS

Are you a pet or animal lover? Do you have your own furry or feathered friends at home, or know others with animal companions? Cat and dog, pig and bird, lizard and spider, hamster and fish (in water, please!)–ALL are welcome to join us on Sunday October 4th at 6:00 p.m. during our evening worship for a special Blessing of the Animals service.

This special event commemorates the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, where animals have been blessed since the middle ages. No saint is more closely associated with animals than St. Francis of Assisi. He rejoiced in the value and beauty animals bring to creation.

All pets are welcome to bring their humans, of course! We hope to see you and your furry, feathered, fuzzy, and finny companions October 4th!

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 ONLINE LESSONS

SUNDAYS AT 10:00 A.M. on FACEBOOK and 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:
October 4  Chad Carrick
October 11  Allen Brown
October 18  Jim McGhee
October 25  Keith Tobin

PUMPKIN UPDATE

There is mixed news in the pumpkin department. We have made the decision not to host a pumpkin patch in 2020. We do this with the health of the many volunteers in mind–both those who download and those who manage the pumpkin sales and interact with the public. We WILL be setting up our traditional fall harvest photo backdrop in the church yard, and it will be available for photo ops October 10 through November 1. We regret that the change in plans will come as a disappointment, and we appreciate your understanding of a difficult decision. We eagerly anticipate the return of our pumpkin patch in October 2021.

UMC PANEL DISCUSSION: THE THEOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RACISM AND COLONIALISM

A panel discussion held on September 16th served as a springboard for the remainder of UMC 2020 conversations. You can view the recording of the discussion online at UMC.org/endracism.

“The Church is unique in that it has the ability to theologically interpret our current realities, naming where God is present and where humanity is called to help bring about the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. The realities of racism in our communities brings about challenging questions: If we are the people who are called to ‘love our neighbors,’ why do we see such racism within our religious communities and structures? Why does racism abound within the United States and across the world? How can we as Christians partner with God to help bring about liberation and the beloved community?” (From umc.org/en/content/town-hall-theological-roots-of-racism-and-colonialism-9-16-2020)

Visit UMC.org/EndRacism for archives of this and other videos and resources. The topic of colonialism will be revisited at the November 18, 2020, UMC panel discussion.

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
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 August 21, 2020.

God Rules!!!

So, this week was the first week of school for so many teachers, students, administrators, school staff and parents. I know that for many folks the restart of school for this year has been as difficult and challenging as the end of school was just a few months ago. My prayers are with all those who are trying their very best to serve our kids and maintain a healthy and effective learning environment.

As tough as it has been to entrust the well-being of my kids to someone else’s hands, I have also witnessed firsthand how troubling it has been for the kids as well. On top of all the “normal” anxiety of starting a new routine after the summer—with figuring out new teachers, making new friends, learning new things, and (for some) attending new schools—there is the added concern of following new pandemic rules and procedures—like getting a temperature taken, wearing a mask, and social distancing. All of this has heightened the intensity of anxiety at my house to all new levels. Unfortunately, it all built up to its limit Monday afternoon. You see, all three of my kids were scheduled to go to school in person for orientation on Tuesday. Gracen, who already struggles with anxiety, was trying to relax, calm himself down, and enjoy the last few hours of summer vacation. So, he decided to take a tub bath. He rarely takes tub baths anymore, but I guess he was trying his best to find a happy place to drive away those first-day jitters. The problem was that he made the decision to take his phone into the bathroom to listen to some music during his bath (he typically uses music to settle his anxiety and calm himself down). Now, let me be clear, I have explained over and over that phones and water do not mix. Unfortunately, he didn’t ask me this time, probably thinking it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. I feel like I have been getting a lot of that approach lately, and because of this I am learning that kids don’t always do what is best for themselves. As much as I want Gracen to brush his teeth, eat a good breakfast, practice piano, and do his homework, the success rate of these things happening is directly related to how important he views them as being. In other words, at this point in his young life, it’s got to be his idea or he just isn’t going to do it.

What he fails to understand is that when I ask Gracen to brush his teeth in the morning and he doesn’t.. what will happen? CAVITIES! If I tell him to eat a good breakfast and he doesn’t? Well, he is a low-energy grouch ball for the rest of the day. If he doesn’t practice piano? His musical talent will be wasted. If he doesn’t do his homework? He will get overwhelmed by the backlog of schoolwork that piles up. And if he decides to put his phone on the side of the tub so he can listen to music during his soak? It’s going to end up in the water with him–maybe not today, but one day it will, you can count on it! I will never forget the panic in his eyes, and the bewilderment in my own, as a butt naked, soaking wet teenager came running down the stairs, yelling, “My phone fell in the water what do I do?” Luckily, I had been through this before and knew just what to do. We will not go into the details of how I know how to save a phone that has been dropped in water, but we immediately powered down his phone, removed the case, (which is probably what saved it from any real water damage in the first place, because it was not one of those new waterproof iPhones,) and then we stuck it in a bowl of rice. Now, since Gracen had already made plans to take his phone to school the next day, I asked him to look on the internet and see just how long it needed to be in the rice to make sure all the moisture was safely out of the phone. I knew the answer, but I felt like he needed to find it out for himself. He must have looked at a bunch of different articles, because when he finally emerged from the office about 30 minutes later, he had a disappointed look on his face and said, “It needs to stay in the rice for 24 hours; some said 48 hours, but the shortest was 24 hours.” Unfortunately, since it was afternoon, this prevented him from taking his phone to school the next day. So by NOT heeding my warnings and trusting the rule about no phones in the tub (as if that really needs to be a rule), he was not able to take that source of calm and peace with him on the first day of school.

Now, I know that Gracen didn’t plan to drop his phone in the water; it is a source of peace for him. But the problem is that he was warned that having the phone near water could damage it. He was willing to compromise what he was told might happen and gamble that nothing bad would happen, just to do what he wanted to do. He felt like he knew better and that he could make his own rules. Fortunately, the phone ended up being fine and he was able to use it later, just not at school like he had planned. Now, I hope that Gracen never ruins a phone, and I hope that he never gets a cavity, and I hope that he continues to hone his wonderful musical talents, and I hope he never gets behind at school, AND I hope that one day that he realizes that the rules that we have in place in his life serve a purpose of safety, care, and protection with ONLY his best interest in mind. He has a choice to follow those rules or suffer the consequences. But what he doesn’t understand is that those rules are in place to protect me too. If he chooses to not follow those rules, then I have to watch as a young man that I love dearly gets hurt, disappointed, overwhelmed, wastes his talents, injures himself, and whole host of other painful experiences I would do anything to keep Gracen from experiencing. All because he could not see the wisdom in the rules that I have learned from my own mistakes.

Parenting is tough, but when I think about it, we sort of treat God like this from time to time as well. God is not exactly a parent, but God does show us how to live our best life. Whether it is “Thou shalt not lie…” so that we will not develop a reputation for being untrustworthy, or it is “Love your neighbor…” because we need to be in community with one another, we may not fully understand why God lays expectations on us. But the fact that He does gives us a good indication that He loves us enough to care how we live. Gracen is teaching me quite bit about how frustrating it must be for God to try to be in a relationship and guide people who tend to be needlessly rebellious. God’s expectations, God’s commandments, if you will, are basically wisdom given to protect us from ourselves and from each other. An uncommitted person from outside of the Christian faith may look at the 10 commandments and think, “What’s so wrong with a little white lie from time to time?” But if someone lied to us about something that mattered to us, we would be outraged and hurt, and that relationship could be fractured! So, my point is that God’s LOVE is the SAME THING as God’s COMMANDS. We just may have trouble always seeing it that way. That is why it is so important that, when a person makes a decision to commit themselves to Christ, that first step in an ongoing process of making good choices and following God’s wise guidance. It reminds me of a verse from 2 Corinthians 5: 15-17. The idea is that God wants to renew our lives from the damage that the world sometimes does to us and that we sometimes do to ourselves. This is the passage: 

¹⁵ [Jesus] died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.

¹⁶ So we have stopped evaluating others from a [worldly] point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a [worldly] point of view. How differently we know him now! ¹⁷ This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

I mean, it is pretty easy to follow Jesus when all we have to do is accept God’s love, right? But what happens when God’s rules seem unfair or when we think we might know a better way and decide to make rules for ourselves? The truth is following Jesus is not solely about going to church and doing all the things that “religious people” do. Following Jesus is about making room for Jesus in your life and allowing Him to change us and shape us into being the best that we can be! There is a story that I think illustrates this perfectly. It is about the great sculptor Rodin who lived in the 1800s. He is the one who created the sculpture called “The Thinker.” You may have seen it—it’s a man sitting on a rock with his chin on his fist and his elbow on his knee.  

In any event, this event happened near the end of his career. He was pretty wealthy and had a fairly extensive art collection of his own. One day he was on one of his infamous art spending sprees when he came across a huge, 18-foot crucifix sculpture that had been discarded outside of a church in Paris. As soon as he saw it, he knew immediately that he wanted it. Rodin convinced the friends he was with to help him carry it home—12 miles away. No car, no moving van, not even a horse and wagon—all he had was some makeshift dolly that they had borrowed, and off they went. You can imagine how difficult it was to maneuver the huge sculpture across town and up the big hill to his home. People stared and commented, until they finally finished their journey around midnight.

When Rodin arrived at his home, he discovered that the cross would not even fit inside his front door, so they had to pry off the casing from around the doorway just to get it into the house. Then he decided that he just had to have it in his bedroom (so that it was the first thing that he saw when he woke up, and the last thing that he saw when he closed his eyes to go sleep). The problem was that his bedroom… was on the second floor. So, he awakened everyone in the house to help him heave it up the stairs to his bedroom. At one point, the group lost control of the sculpture and dropped it back down the stairs causing damage to his steps, the first floor, and some of the furniture. But, undeterred, he kept going.

When they finally got the crucifix in his room, he realized that his bedroom was only 12 feet high (Did I mention that the sculpture was 18 feet tall?), so they had to open a hole in his ceiling AND cut a hole in his floor (which, incidentally, caused the foot of the sculpture to stick out into the dining room underneath) just so that the sculpture could be stood up properly.

SO… in Rodin’s mind, it was worth tearing up his home and making all sorts of alterations just to get an image of Jesus into his home—into his life. Changes had to be made, but Rodin was willing to do whatever it took to put Jesus in the proper place in his house. The mess that he made out of his home was of little consequence compared to the importance that God’s love meant to him.

The question that I leave you with today is: What are you willing to change to allow Jesus to come into your house? … Into your life? Make no mistake, I’m not talking about home renovations; I’m talking about allowing God to shape you and to renew your life, to set the rules that you will live by. Are you willing to understand that God’s guidance, his commandments, are not an attempt at controlling us or keeping us from having fun? On the contrary, God’s guidance will always be a loving attempt to steer you so that you are living your best life. After the world has gotten through with you, used you up, and spit you out, or after you have made some decisions that were not good and have had to live through the consequences of those choices, God is always there waiting to fix what has been broken, heal what has been harmed, to give you the faith and confidence to make it one more day, to use you for your highest purpose. But, most of all, God will be there to pick you up, hold you tight, and let you know that you are loved. “God loves you right where you are but loves you too much to leave you there!”

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, AMEN.

Join us this Sunday at 10 AM for online Sunday School and at 11 AM for in-person worship OR online Worship on WGOS 1070 AM and on Facebook—your choice! 

Have a great day, take care of one another, and STAY HEALTHY PEOPLE!!!!

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