The Prairie Fire Marathon Run is this Sunday, October 13. Access to Douglas is limited on that day, so plan ahead and leave plenty of time to get to the church. The easiest access to Grace arrives from the north.
We Welcome the South Sudanese Presbyterian Church
Grace has a new partner in our ministry: a congregation of the Presbyterian Church of the South Sudan. Led by Pastor Jacob Juol, this congregation worships on Sundays from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and gathers on Saturdays from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. for Bible Study and Prayer. On both days, the congregation gathers in the Chapel. Please greet and welcome our siblings in Christ whenever you see them.
Donate to the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is a most significant mission arm of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
From the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) website:
The Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) is the emergency and refugee program of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. The core budget, including staff and administrative costs, is funded through the One Great Hour of Sharing, and its program work is additionally funded through designated gifts.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
- Focuses on the long-term recovery of disaster-impacted communities.
- Provides training and disaster preparedness for presbyteries and synods.
- Works collaboratively with church partners and members of the ACT Alliance (Action by Churches Together) internationally and nationally with other faith-based responders.
- Connects partners locally and internationally with key organizations active in the response — United Nations, NVOAD (National Voluntary Agencies Active in Disaster), World Food Program, Red Cross, FEMA, and others.
Participate with thousands of other Presbyterians as we partner with PDA to bring out of the chaos, hope. Follow this link >
10-06-2024 Rev Steven Marsh – Take Courage and Do Not Worry
Series: “Jesus’ Message: You Are Integral For Unity Being One Race And One Blood”
“Take Courage and Do Not Worry” – Job 1:1; 2:1-10
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12, Mark 10: 2-16 (13-16)
Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite authors. Twenty-five years ago, Gladwell published The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference. This month he published Revenge of the Tipping Point. Gladwell writes, “The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea,” I began, “and the idea is very simple.”[1]
It is that best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.[2]
Ideas and behaviors follow strange pathways in Wichita, Sedgwick County, Kansas, The United States of America, and the world.
And so, we face a tipping point in our approach to the 2024 Operating Budget and the 2024Generosity Campaign for the 2025 Operating Budget. Finances, a social epidemic for institutions, individuals, families, and churches are at a tipping point. Listen to our sibling in Christ and Trustee Tom Rhoads. Tom…
Jesus teaches that healthy change occurs from a base of child-like dependence on God. To make any relationship work obstacles need to be embraced as opportunities for making things better. For Christians, having a child-like dependence on God is the best approach. In this regard, Bobby Schuller in Change Your Thoughts Change Your World writes, “When we face setbacks in life, our temptation will be to curse them, dwell on self-pity, blame others, or hurry on to something that isn’t meant to be…. There is no tragedy [setback] God can’t redeem. Though you cannot see it now, God will get you through whatever it is you’re facing, and you might even find a gift within.”[3] Believe that God is with you. Believe that God will see you through to a better outcome. Therein lies the significance of thinking and self-examination: Learn. Evaluate. Plan. Dream. Get back up after a fall. Press through the pain.[4] See obstacles, things that are in the way, as opportunities to grow. The Old Testament and Gospel Readings remind us that obstacles emerge for all people that can become opportunities for growth as a person. Satan tells God that Job only loves God for the things God does for him.
Job 1:1, 12 reads, There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil….The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. And Mark 10:15 reads, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Remember, everything works for good for those who love Jesus, who place child-like dependance on God.
The Pharisees often attempted to trap Jesus over his abandonment of traditional thought and practice in Judaism. And Job teaches us to ask hard questions of God and patiently listen for the answers as an act of depending on God and being faithful to God.[5]
And so here we are experiencing a tipping point. Yes, the financial woes facing Grace Presbyterian Church are staggering, in fact insurmountable. Yes, insurmountable when we try to muster up our strength to solve them. But here is the tipping point. Jesus states that a child-like dependency on God combines God’s action and human action into experiencing the kingdom of God. To trust that God will lead each one of us to sacrifice by increasing our pledge in 2025 and make a sacrificial gift to replenish our cash reserves….is embracing the tipping point idea and its corresponding solution, behavior of sacrificial giving.
Depend on God as you ponder your 2025 Pledge and a gift to replenish our cash reserves. Be that dependent child believing that dependence on God will lead you to obedient and sacrificial behavior in the financial aspect of your Christian discipleship. Remember the tipping point is the unfolding of an idea that develops behaviors of transformation. As Gladwell writes so eloquently, “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.[6]
See God work things out to a good and kingdom end in the obedience and sacrifice of following Jesus in your financial giving. Take courage and do not worry. Amen.
This sermon was preached the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost on Sunday, 6 October 2024
by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Sanctuary at Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas
Copyright 2024
Steven M. Marsh
All rights reserved.
[1]Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2024), ix.
[2]Ibid.
[3]Bobby Schuller, Change Your Thoughts Change Your World (Nashville, Tennessee: Nelson Books, 2019), 147.
[4]Adapted from Bobby Schuller, Change Your Thoughts Change Your World, 33.
[5]In the two paragraphs of textual analysis above, I have benefited from the thinking of Rebecca Abts Wright, Jill Duffield, Kimberly Bracken Long, Osvaldo D. Vena, Michael Lodahl, Leticia A. Guardiola-Saenz, and Peter J. Paris in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year B, Volume 3 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021), 353-356, 356-358, 359-361, 362-364, 364-366, 367-369 and 369-371.
[6]Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point, ix.
From Your Trustees
In August, we shared that we had unexpected expenses this year totaling almost $40,000, and our insurance costs more than doubled. This drained much of our contingency funds.
We had ways to alleviate some of these issues on a short-term basis because of safeguards and other approaches we put in place. But these short-term solutions are stop gaps that cannot answer the ongoing issues we are facing. Our giving this year has not kept up with our budget income expectations. Giving in the past three months has fallen well short of the regular monthly expenses we incur.
We are facing serious cash flow issues as we head into the final quarter of 2024. While we all can point to numerous reasons why this may be occurring, it clearly endangers our efforts to continue our ministries here at Grace. The coming shortfall threatens not only the quality of our experience as members of Grace, but the community work we are already doing, such as bus tickets, mission distribution and family ministries, as well as our promotion of music and the arts.
We have immediate financial needs now and ask you to consider bringing your pledge up to date if you have not, accelerate your giving if you can, or make an additional contribution if possible. Stewardship is not merely a matter of money, but of involvement and commitment. Those unable to contribute more financially can still make a contribution of time and talents.
Some may find it tempting to wait until our future is clearer, to play it safe, and to think about our own survival. That is not God’s call to us as the church; the church is the place God’s grace can be found, and we are compelled to share God’s grace with others. As the town hall process continues and the stewardship season approaches, this is the perfect time to reflect on what you can do to make your Grace Church experience more fulfilling.
Grace must be prepared to reach out in love and compassion as God directs us. We can only do this with the help of everyone here. God calls all of us to action, and we will be blessed and be a blessing as we respond to that call. Listen to God’s call for you and be a part of the great good God does through this church. Let’s all provide the resources, human and monetary, needed to fulfill God’s purpose for Grace in the world. Let us continue to be faithful stewards of all that God entrusts to us and give as we have received. Let’s open ourselves to God so that he can use us for his work in the world. As Rob Bell and Dan Golden wrote in Jesus Wants to Save Christians, “When we do this in remembrance of him, the world will never be the same; we will never be the same.” Be part of the difference God calls us to make in the world. Consider how you can help Grace meet the fiscal challenges we face today.