Tutoring Opportunity in the Madison Schools
We have been contacted at Westwood by an organization that trains and places volunteer tutors in the Madison schools and other Dane County schools that is looking for tutors to assist under-achieving students in learning. If you would be interested in such a service opportunity, contact the Westwood office, and we can provide more details.
Who Can You Share Christ With During the Christmas Season?
Around Thanksgiving time, we will make available to the congregation cards that you can use to invite friends and family to our Christmas services and activities. You could begin now to think about people you could invite. People are often more open at Christmas that at any other time of the year to attend church and to consider their relationship with God. Take advantage of this opportunity to try and reach people you know.
In a couple of weeks I will give you information about the Christmas sermons I am planning. I am already working on them and think they will be a help to our faith and growth in Christ and will also help others consider their relationship to Christ.
National Missionary Convention
As you saw in November’s Caller, the National Missionary Convention meets in Peoria, IL, on November 19-22. Attending this convention for a day or more would provide you with an excellent opportunity to hear about missions works all over the world, including missions that Westwood supports. Our entire congregation is already registered, so your only cost for attending would be travel to and from Peoria and expenses while you are there. If interested, you can find more information at www.nationalmissionaryconvention.org.
2009 Westwood Kids Christmas Play
Here is an announcement from Sandy Polcyn about our Kids Christmas Play and rehearsals for it:
Announcing our 2009 Westwood Kids Christmas Play called "Deck the Halls and Trim the Tree" presented on Sunday, December 13, during the service. This includes 4-5 year olds through K- 8th grade.
PRACTICES begin Sunday, November 1, during the sermon time, downstairs in the grade school classroom. The 4-5 year olds will have class in their room through November 8, and will join the rehearsals on November 15.
PARENTS: I hope that you will encourage your kids to participate in this Play. This will be an exciting time to share the Good News of Jesus through drama!
I'm looking forward to working with your kids!
Sandy Polcyn
Christmas Play Director
Only One Gave Thanks
There is a fascinating account in Luke 17:11-17 of one of the encounters of Jesus that resulted in a healing miracle. The passage tells that Jesus entered an unnamed village and was met by ten men who had leprosy.
Leprosy was the most dreaded disease of that time, a distinction it continued to carry in many places in the world until recent years. Now we know the cause of leprosy and that the disease is not contagious, but in first century Judea anyone who had leprosy was a social outcast. Today, AIDS carries a similar stigma.
So these ten lepers asked Jesus to have pity on them, to heal them. Jesus sent them to the priests who could declare them cleansed, and on the way they were cleansed. One of the ten returned to Jesus, praising God, and thanked him. Jesus said to him, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”
People still fail to give thanks to God. God has freed us from sin and provides for us in extraordinary ways, so as we celebrate Thanksgiving this month, we should thank him.
Share Christmas With Others
Later in November, as we move from Thanksgiving toward Christmas, we will invite people from the community to our services during the Christmas season. We have been listed this year in the Welcome Wagon book for the area of Madison around our church building. Later this month, we will mail to the people who have received the Welcome Wagon book and invite them to Westwood.
Please begin to pray for this outreach effort, not that we will draw people to Westwood, but that we might draw them to Christ.
We will also make the contents of the mailing available to everyone in the congregation as a tool for you to use to invite people you know to attend worship during the Christmas season. We all know more people than we imagine who might respond to a simple invitation to attend a church service. There is no better time to invite them than during the Christmas season.
Food Pantry Donation from Roundy’s
For the second year in a row, Westwood’s Food Pantry has received a donation of food and cash from Roundy’s Foundation (Roundy’s owns and operates the Copps and Pick ‘n Save grocery store chains). Seven other Madison area food pantries received identical donations. This year Roundy’s donated 2,950 pounds of food and $500 cash to each recipient food pantry. They are donating to 50 food pantries in Wisconsin and Minnesota this week. Rob and Gloria Jean Ehlers received the food and check for Westwood, delaying a fall ten-day vacation to do so. Thanks to all of who work in our food pantry, enabling us to help people in our community. WKOW TV, channel 27, did a brief news story on the donations. The text of the story is posted on their web site if you would like to look at it.
Prayer Requests for Other Churches
I received two prayer concerns this week from other churches that I would like to ask you to pray for, one from a church planted over 150 years ago, and one from a church plant that will launch next September.
Williamsville Christian Church in Williamsville, IL had their long-standing church building struck down by a tornado on August 19. They were in the midst of a renovation project on the building at the time. I drove by the building many times in the early 1970’s driving through Williamsville on historic Route 66. The congregation has moved to temporary quarters, but plan to construct a new facility on or near their present site. The Lord has met many of their needs in the last two months, but they have many significant challenges yet before them as they make plans to rebuild. Please pray for their continuing efforts to minister in their community.
Lakeside Christian Church will launch in Hobart, IN on September 19, 2010. A longtime friend of mine, Steve Campbell, is the lead planter for this new church project of Ignite Church Planting, a Chicagoland church planting organization. Please put Steve and his team on your prayer list and pray for them over the next several months.
Christian Women’s Fellowship of Madison’s Fall Brunch
Dawn Baird, the speaker for our 2009 Women’s Retreat, will be coming to Madison to speak for the CWF Fall Brunch. The brunch will be held on October 24 at 9:00 AM at Community Christian Church, 5020 Maher Dr. This will be a great opportunity to get reacquainted with Dawn, to hear about her summer return to Africa where she and Bob have been long-time missionaries, and to fellowship with the women from other area churches.
Upcoming Dates This Fall
November 22 2010 Budget Presentation at 11:00 am
November 22 Harvest Dinner at 5:00 pm.
December 3,4 Salvation Bell Ringing at Copps on Whitney Way
December 6 Annual Meeting at 11:00 am
December 11 Women’s Annual White Elephant Gift Exchange at 6:00 pm
December 12 Christmas Open House at the Henes’ from 2:30 to 5:00 pm.
December 19 Christmas for Kids at 9:00 am
December 24 Christmas Eve Service at 5:00 pm
Many churches choose new leaders in the Fall, including the congregation where I serve. Often these leaders begin officially serving at the first of the New Year. While we call ours elders, other names are used in some churches. Whatever title you give to these leaders, however, it is important that they be chosen from among the mature Christians in your congregation.
Unfortunately all Christian leaders do not prove to be mature or they take a major fall along the way. R. Kent Hughes, in his book of expository sermons on 1 Timothy, says, by his mid-thirties, after a little more than a decade in the ministry, he had "seen it all" as to “the duplicity and hypocrisy and immense evil that can exist in church leaders.”
He knew a man who was prominent in his denomination and community, a married man with a family, who was discovered to be a practicing homosexual and regularly consorted with several of his male employees. In another instance the church treasurer appeared in the church narthex on a Sunday morning dead drunk, glass in hand, wildly whispering that he was leaving his wife and family, and was departing that day on a private jet for the Middle East! And over the years, while speaking at pastors' conferences, he and his wife have had pastors' trembling wives seek them out and reveal abuse and perversion by their publicly straight-laced husbands.
I can tell my share of such stories, as could some of you who are reading this piece. Each story has a great sadness to it and leaves in its wake hurting family and church members who had put their trust in the fallen leader. Not only are families torn apart when leaders fall, but churches are affected. Some churches, of course, are severely wounded, but I have also known some to split or close when a leader fails them.
Of course, we all know that the leaders we choose are not perfect. After all, we all are sinners, and sometimes sin causes even leaders to fall. Yet, we can and must do our best to select mature Christian leaders for the church: leaders who have demonstrated strong Christian character by how they live in their homes, in the church, and in the community. Whenever you select leaders for your church, please do your best in this regard.
Paul suggests this very thing in both 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. The moral characteristics for leaders that he includes in those two chapters really define the marks of maturity for all Christians. We should all review those chapters periodically and examine whether we possess those marks.
We have often failed to take as seriously as we should the marks of maturity that Paul presents in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 because we have created a check list out of Paul’s teaching. Then we try to determine whether leaders meet most of the “qualifications,” excusing them if they do not claiming that no one is perfect and no one can meet all the “qualifications.” However, Paul is not suggesting that these are maximum qualifications. He is suggesting that the various characteristics he lists are examples of one primary mark of maturity: being blameless or above reproach.
In both passages to which I have referred Paul puts being blameless or above reproach first, not as the first item on a list of qualifications, but as the primary qualification. All the other items on his two lists are examples of what it means for an elder, a leader, a mature Christian to be blameless. That is, someone who is not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, etc. will be above approach, because his character cannot be called into question.
It is important that we make every effort to get this selection of leaders in the church right. It is important because the leaders of the church represent God. They are entrusted with God's household, God's possessions, God's treasures, and God's riches. They act on behalf of God's interests. I hope your church will work to select mature leaders and help people in your congregation develop the marks of maturity for Christians.
On October 11, we will begin a new adult class on Sundays at 11:00 am. I would like to invite you to attend the class and join in the study and discussion.
We will begin a study of John MacArthur’s book The Jesus You Can’t Ignore. MacArthur’s book deals with the question, “Do you have any idea who Jesus really is?” This is an important question for us to consider because, as MacArthur writes, “What you think of Jesus Christ will thoroughly color how you think about everything else.”
The flyleaf of the book presents the issue like this: “These days, Jesus is often portrayed as a pacifist, a philanthropist, or a docile teacher. He strikes a plastic — and sometimes pathetic — pose in the minds of many. Some prefer the meek and mild Jesus who heals the sick, calms fears, and speaks of peace and goodwill. These things do represent a portion of the Messiah. But tragically, too many have never been exposed to the rest of him. They have never seen a full 360-degree view of the Savior…. MacArthur walks through the gospel records and shows you a remarkable and compelling picture of the Jesus you can’t ignore.”
MacArthur writes this book against the background of changing Christian attitudes about truth and certainty and therefore of the gospel itself. As he studied these attitudes, he found that they presented a different view of Jesus than the view he saw in the Gospels. While much thinking in the contemporary church calls for Christians to meet other worldviews with conversation, he saw Jesus preaching hard truth to the crowds who were representing to them “a style of religion and a system of belief that was in direct conflict with the very heart of the gospel.”
As we study The Jesus You Can’t Ignore, then, we will “move chronologically through the gospel accounts of how Jesus handled the religious elite of Israel. We’ll look at how He spoke to individuals, how He responded to organized opposition, how He preached to multitudes, and what he taught His own disciples.”
So I invite you to join us for this thought-provoking look at Jesus. We may not agree with everything MacArthur says, but we will get a closer look at Jesus, because the one thing you cannot do with him is ignore him.
