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First Mennonite Church
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What's Happening @ FMC8/21 9am Pastor Tim Preaching
8/28 9am Pastor Phil Preaching
9/1 6:30p Church Board Meeting
9/2 6:30 Ladies Night In
9/4 9a Pastor Phil Preaching
9/8 9a FMW Sewing
9/11 9a Pastor Phil Preaching
9/12 10a-3p Health Dept Immunization Clinic
9/12 Worship Commission
9/14 5p Preschool Advisory Board
9/14 6:30p Administration Commission
9/17 Keith Weaver, LMC Moderator Meet & Greet
9/25 Fellowship Hall Reserved
10/8 Fellowship Hall Reserved
10/23 Fellowship Hall Reserved
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Sunday Worship: 9:00 AM (Sunday School following) You are welcome to join us on Sunday, or stop in for a chat! We want to meet you! |
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On the Journey...
Monthly Insight From Pastor Phil Yoder August 2022 Extending Grace
Philip Yancey, in his book, What Is So Amazing About Grace, tells the story of a Spanish father who longed to restore a relationship with his son who had run away from home to Madrid. The father, wishing to be reconciled with his son, but not knowing where or how to find his son, took out an ad in the El Liberal newspaper which read: “PACO, MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA AT NOON ON TUESDAY. ALL IS FORGIVEN. – PAPA.” (Paco is a common name in Spain). When the father arrived at the square where the Hotel Montana is located, he found eight hundred young men named Paco waiting for their fathers. This world is starved for grace! Secular culture, and it doesn’t seem to matter where that culture exists in the world, tends to be graceless. Our own culture is becoming increasingly graceless. If you do not agree with me, I will have nothing to do with you. Let’s split and go our separate ways. The grace-deprived thinking of our culture fuels polarized politics, racial tensions, hatred, and name-calling, which only deepens the divide, and church splits. If we can’t agree, we have nothing in common, we can’t work together, we can’t even exist together. And many feel their disagreements to be a mandate to actively work against those with whom they disagree and seek their harm and destruction. Gracelessness fuels hatred, brokenness, and wars. Gracelessness is anti-Christ! A missionary I know who has spent the past 30 years ministering in Muslim cultures, says that one of the things Muslims find attractive about the Gospel of Christ is that there is forgiveness and grace. These are largely absent in Muslim cultures. But look at our own culture. Are we not becoming just like that? Politicians can’t work or even speak respectfully to each other. People in our culture can’t seem to respect or relate humanly with those who disagree with them. Churches and church denominations are splitting because they have bought into the modern mindset that if you don’t agree with me, we can’t exist together. We are convinced we can’t possibly have any fellowship with those with whom we disagree. People now believe that the things that divide us are greater than the things that unite us, even people in the church. Most of the major church denominations have split in recent times. The spirit of vengeance, and noncooperation, and war has become dominate in our own culture, and even in our churches. I can’t believe this is what Jesus has in mind for His church! Paul speaks much about “Grace” in his letters to the churches. I think Paul was overwhelmed with the grace of God, because for much of his own life, there was not much grace in it. And when he discovered the grace and forgiveness of Jesus which is poured out on us with little regard for its enormous cost, and when he was brought to the truth Gospel and given a chance to repent, to change the course of his life, and to live God’s agenda instead of his own, Paul went for it, and he never got over the Grace that God lavished on him. We as God’s people in the church have an opportunity to show the world a better way, to extend the grace that God has lavished to us, to minister God’s grace in a world that is starving for good news, but I am afraid, we might just be blowing it! Written By Philip Yoder |