ITLOTC 8-12-16

ITLOTC

(In The Life Of The Church) 

Pentecost

The Olympics, of course!

I had a season of faith when I believed the thing God wanted most was for souls to be saved.  I had a season of faith when I believed that the thing God wanted most was social justice.  I had a season of faith when I believed the thing God wanted most was the Kingdom to come.   I’ve had enough seasons now to learn that God wants all those things and more.  At some point, though, I began to notice (among other things) how badly God wanted us all to get along.

That same Paul who was used to systemize theologies of salvation, creation, restoration, and all other “tions” had an awful lot to say about reconciliation.  Paul wants the church to get along.  The epistles that I grew up reading in search of  verses that made sense of my notions of how to get saved were couched in larger letters about answering the question, “What are we saved for?”  It turns out that we are saved, in part, for each other.  To be the body.  Romans 1-8 with all of its brilliance sets up 12-16, which is about the church getting along.  Ephesians 2 addresses Jew/Gentile strife.  Galatians talks about Jesus who overcomes the us/them problem.  

The more I began to pay attention to this theme of reconciliation, the more relevant Paul’s letters seemed to our contemporary situation.  As has been made poignantly clear by the racial sin that has bubbled up these last few years, we still need to hear about loving the other.   For some reason, one of the scariest things to a human being is another human being who is not like them.  Perhaps it’s instinctual, or perhaps we’ve been conditioned by our cultures to be this way, but either way, we have a problem that we need help with.  

I’ve been heavily influenced by theologian Stanley Hauerwas.  Hauerwas puts an inordinate amount of importance on the church.  He says that the job of the church is the tell the world what it is.   Maybe there’s a less preachy/dogmatic way to put that.  Bill Hybels says that the local church is the hope of the world.  There’s something about that sentiment that rings true for me.  

That being said, sometimes I think the world can be a mirror to the church.  Not always, perhaps even rarely, but sometimes.  

I have no doubt that I have a naive perception of the Olympics.  Hosting the Olympics.  Setting up for the Olympics.  Poor cities incurring debt to provide the needed infrastructure for the Olympics.  Deciding which athletes will compete in the Olympics.   Surely there’s an ugly underside to this, just like there is with other major institution.  Still, I can’t help but be taken in with the some of the images coming out of Rio.  

In Revelation 7, we are given an image of a worship scene.  People are dressed in white robes.  The text includes lyrics.  It’s an image of how things are going to be.  In the middle of it, we are reminded that God will finish the work of reversing Babel that was started at Pentecost.  Verse nine reports, “There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”  When I watch the Olympics, I see glimpses of this.  

I’d like to tell you about two of them.  

In Hebrews 11, God’s people are described as strangers in a strange land.  Homeless.  Resident aliens.  It’s an identity marked with meaning.  We are those who belong to something more than what can marked with boundaries and GPS coordinates.  So there’s this moment in the parade of nations where Team Refugee  comes out, and they get a standing ovation from the world.  Something about that was just right.  Here as a symbol of what is to come, the world applauded the courage of the destitute.  It’s a foreshadow of the truth of the great reversal.  The least will be the greatest, and the kingdom will cheer humility, selflessness, and sacrifice.

The other powerful image for me was that of a female beach volleyball player from Egypt.  She played in long sleeves, leggings and a hijab.  For reasons that are obvious, the Olympics have strict rules for uniforms.  But concessions were made for the sake of inclusion.  And in a world full of strife and violence based on difference, here in the middle of sport was a demonstration of mutual acceptance and respect between cultures and religious suppositions.  This kind of anthropological patience is striking, and it is a symbol of the grace to come.  

So it’s rare, but I find myself confessing, “Go team world.”

New HR and Leadership Team Members

The leadership team met this last Sunday night and at that meeting they selected a new member for their squad and also someone to serve on the HR team.  I'm excited to tell you that our new leadership team person is Emma Wood and that Jerad Gould has been selected to serve on HR.  This week and next week I'd like to introduce them to you.  

Name: Jared Gould.  Family:  Wife Kelly and two rescued German Shepherds (Gordon and Lady)

What brings you to Waco: 
I moved here in 2009 to live closer to my friend's Hermann & Kristi Pereira and to work with Dr. Nancy Grayson at Rapoport Academy Public Schools. Where I worked for five years and was the a teacher, coach, Dean of Students/Campus Administrator for the high school in the early days. I stuck around for some reason (the plan was always to move back to Colorado Springs after a few years and teach in a mountain town or go back to school to become a counselor), stayed sane by running in Cameron Park (closest thing to Pike's Peak I could find) and eventually met my wife. I now work for the Texas Hunger Initiative at Baylor. 

Movie and/or TV Show: 
Movies: I only own a few, but lately it's a toss up between Back to the Future and Lonesome Dove. 
TV: I don't like TV other than sports.  Recently though, I really wanted to take a trip to Valles Caldera in New Mexico and had to cancel last minute due to work. So I settled for binge watching Longmire (filmed in part in the National Preserve) on Netflix the past two weeks. See photo:

Best Restaurant in Waco: 
Tony DeMaria's

Favorite book/chapter/verse of the Bible: 
BOOK: Recently completed Eugene Peterson's book, Run with Horses - I have a new appreciation and better understanding of Jeremiah which makes it what I am reflecting on most lately.

Verses : 
-Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. - James 1:12
-I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. - Phillipians 1:3-6

Something we might now know about you: I never thought I would do two things in life: 1) work in ministry proper 2)attend seminary. Prior to moving to Waco, I lived in Colorado Springs working for a spin-off of Young Life at a place called The Dale House Project, where I lived with homeless, transient, displaced and/or incarcerated youth prior to parole. The goal was to help them learn to live on their own prior to emancipation. As a part of the job, I also attended Fuller Seminary - Colorado. 

Discernment Team Update

As you may or may not remember we formed a discernment team in June to help us figure out possible solutions to the space problems created by the growing number of children in the children's ministry.  One step in that solution process is to create a survey to help us figure out what people know and think about the ministry.  The survey is open to everyone and we want everyone's feedback, but we are especially hoping that volunteers and parents will fill it out.  You can start the survey by clicking here. 

Uniforms for CC Middle School

It's been our commitment over nearly the last decade to find ways to support and love the folks that fill this campus from August to May. The care we show these young neighbors is a reflection of our community's belief in the importance that all lives be lived "to the fullest."

To that end:

    1) If you have some fashion sense, a child whose school clothes you'll be shopping for anyway, or a heart for youth, you can consider participating in our ongoing uniform drive.

    2) If you want to spend an hour a week building a relationship with a student who would benefit from a kind and wise voice in their life, please consider being a mentor to a Cesar Chavez MS student in the coming year. 

If you'd like more info about either of these opportunities to serve our young neighbors, please contact marshall@ubcwaco.org for more information.

Work is Worship

Greeters: Team Blaylock 

Coffee Makers: Fountains

Mug Cleaners: McNamees 

Money Counter: Doug McNamee 

Announcements

• Sunday Sermon: 
• UBC will be helping with student move in on campus the week of August 17th and 18th.  If you'd like to help our team email Toph@ubcwaco.org 
• Kindergarten Commission August 28th.  If you have a child going into Kindergarten and would like to be part of our commissioning service, please email emily@ubcwaco.org 
• We are gearing up for another school year which means we will resume our work with Ceasar Chavez middle school.  If you would like to mentor a student or serve the middle school in another capacity email marshall@ubcwaco.org 

Do you have an emergency and need to talk to a pastor? 

254 413 2611

Leadership Team

If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members. 

Chair- Jon Davis: jdavis83@gmail.com

Joy Wineman: joy.wineman@gmail.com

Stan Denman: Stan_Denman@baylor.edu

David Wilhite: David_Wilhite@baylor.edu

Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com

Sharyl Loeung: sharylwl@gmail.com

Emma Wood: Emma Wood <emmaj.wood@yahoo.com>

UBC Finance Team

Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.

Josh McCormick: Josh.McCormick@dwyergroup.com

Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com  

Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com

Anna Tilson: Anna_Tilson@jrbt.com

Doug McNamee: douglas_mcnamee@baylor.edu

UBC HR Team

If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.

Maxcey Blaylock: maxceykite@gmail.com

Mathew Crawford: mathewcrawford@yahoo.com

Rob Engblom: Rob_Engblom@baylor.edu

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu

Jared Gould: jared.gould1@gmail.com

Setlist 8-7-2016

This was the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with anticipation of the Kingdom in mind. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Chariot by Page France

Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Bonfire by Jameson McGregor

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Chariot: This song embodies the longing for God to break into history and deliver the distinctively untragic end to the story God is weaving.  The history of Christianity has been marked by a constant sense of waiting on this moment, and this waiting is significant in at least two ways.  The first is direct in that we await the return of Christ and the resurrection of the dead.  The second is indirect in that this waiting for God's redemptive project to be completed colors the way we move about in the world--namely, we should allow the vision of the Kingdom in fullness to be the pattern that we live by.  We don't have to wait for the Kingdom to come in fullness to live as though it's already here.  Because it is here--or can be-- among those who have been shaped by the story of Jesus.

Amazing Grace: This song engages our anticipation of the fullness of the Kingdom of God by reflecting on the way that God's rule has already been present in our lives through God's grace, and it also looks ahead to the joyous abundance of the Kingdom (when we've been there ten thousand years...). 

Pulse: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Pulse then: We sang this song to be reminded of the gift of life that God has given to all of creation, and to lament our tendency to ignore the dignity of this gift in people who are different than us.

Bonfire:  This song traces the vast difference between what it is to be God and what it is to be us, and looks forward to the fullness of the Kingdom where the pain brought by this difference is mended.  It also notes the fact that the Kingdom breaks through even now and undermines the fears that we have called our refuge. 

Wayward Ones: We sing this song every time we take communion to remind ourselves of a couple of things.  First, we are a broken people--though we are seeking to become more like Jesus, we often fail at this.  Second, Christ has given Himself for us despite our brokenness.  We take communion to remember the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, even though we did not, and do not, deserve it.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

ITLOTC 8-5-16

ITLOTC

(In The Life Of The Church) 

Pentecost

Five Things I've Learned About Grief (so far) 

1. Everyone grieves differently, and my own grief expressions have taken a variety of forms.  When all was said and done, there were 25 of us piled into my oldest sister’s house: my mom, my uncle, my sister’s family (7), my brother’s family (4), my other sister’s family (6), and my family (6).  One day I calculated that that was 300 relationships in one house.  With that many different personalities, you will see different expressions of grief.  I cried a lot the day I found out that dad was going to die.  I cried a little less the day I saw him in the hospital.  Even less on the Friday he was moved to my sister’s house and put on hospice. I didn’t cry at all in the moments when he passed.  I cried less the next day and I cried the last time the day before we buried him.  Different moments touched me.  When the receptionist at the oncology center came to say goodbye, I was deeply moved.  Watching my mom grieve moved my own grief along.  The thousands of messages, phone calls, and Facebooks posts also helped me grieve.  Some of my family members grieved by talking.  Some of them grieved by doing and helping.  Some of them grieved quietly in silence.  All of those expressions were good and healthy.

2. People may not remember what you said, but reaching out matters.  I’ve gotten lost in the sea of grace that has come in the form of people’s compassion.  I’ve gotten messages of care and compassion from people I have not heard from in fifteen years.  The accumulation of that care is part of what carries people through these difficult moments.  If you are on the fence about sending a kind word, do it.  If your relationship with someone is unsettled or maybe even a little rocky, but you’d like to send words of care to them anyway, you should do it.  One of the messages that touched me most deeply was this: “I know we don't know each other well, but when my mom died every kind message or thought meant a lot to me. So I try to speak up now in other people's grief; to be present there with them, even though it's awkward. I am so sorry, Josh. And so glad you were there and able to be with him. Peace and light and love to you and your family during this hard time.”

3. Memories give life.  If you write something like, “I’m sorry for your loss,” or “Thinking of you,” or “Your family is in our prayers,” those are all wonderful and appropriate messages.  Again, what mattered most to me is that people did reach out.  I scroll back through my messages to remind myself of who did reach out, and it means the world.  That being said, the messages that stood out are those in which someone articulated a memory of my father (however big or small that memory may be) or shared how he impacted them (however big or small that impact was).  I think in the immediate aftermath, one’s instinct is to try and establish a narrative full of meaning.  One of the ways you can help the grieving do that is by adding bits of data to that meaningful narrative.  

4. I was surprised I laughed.  My dad was the first person I ever watched die.  He was the first person I ever rode in an ambulance with as he was moved from a hospital to a house for hospice care.  He was the first person I observed with organ systems shutting down.  And while that whole experience was cause for deep emotional cognitive dissonance, none of it was scary. I had and still do have a feeling that I describe as hollow, but I was surprised by how much my family was able to laugh as my dad was dying.   I imagine that the type of relationship you are losing makes a big difference.  Had I been losing a child, I don’t think I would have laughed at all.  But we reminisced and celebrated my dad’s life together as he lay in the living room dying beside us, and we laughed.  That surprised me.

5. Death is more subjective than I thought.  As we watched my dad die, my brother stopped his watch at 3:06 AM.  That is the time on my father’s death certificate.   My dad died on July 23rd.  And yet dying seemed to be happening in my dad for a while.  Last year, Lindsay and I watched the movie Still Alice.  Julianne Moore won best actress for her role as Alice, an Alzheimer's patient.  One thing that painfully emerges in that movie is the long and slow goodbye that Alzheimer’s disease creates.  We seem to be a people who can best make sense of the world when we can clearly see it.  The problem with death is that often, we are no longer sure what we see.  Over these last eleven years, my dad had a pretty remarkable life all things considered.  But death took its toll on him.  Chemo drugs altered his chemical makeup and emotional responses.   In these last few weeks, my mom noticed increased agitation.  Sometimes my dad would say things that seemed silly or out of character.  Sometimes he would get short with people.  On the Wednesday before he died, his blood pressure dropped to dangerously low levels.  It never came back up.  Because of that, his brain stopped getting the amount of oxygen it needed.  Sometimes he seemed lucid, and then he would follow up those moments with a nonsensical statement.  The last thing my dad said was directed at me.  He told me he loved me.  I have no doubt that he knew and meant what he was saying.  I’m not sure if he knew where he was or the circumstances in which he was saying it.  I’m not sure if he was aware that he was dying.   But the reason I know that his statement was true was because of the million moments over the course of my thirty-five year life that he did love me.  His words were vindicated by a lifetime of actions.  I have spent so many years talking to people about being formed and becoming something.  No one told me that death can undo all of that.  This brings me to my last point:  I did not have to wait for the finality of my father’s death to set in.  Truth be told, it still hasn’t.  My faith in Jesus Christ and the consequent worldview I have because of it have already made sense of all of this for me.  I have been given a narrative and a language to speak sensibly about my father’s death.  My father was baptized, got married, preached, and shared communion with the church.  He was never his own.  He was never even my family’s; we were just entrusted with his care.  My dad belonged to the church and is now held in Christ eagerly awaiting for the adoption and redemption of his body.  As my dad passed out of time and into eternity, he took with him all of the insecure moments in which I guessed might be my last.  Every attempt I made to see his face for the last time, to hear his last breath,  to see his coffin one last time.  The moment I shuffled down the driveway to extend my view of the hearse.  All of those goodbye moments are now held together in the life of God with every precious greeting and hello that my dad and I shared.  And God, who is now and always has been perfectly present in every moment we shared together, holds us together in an eternal hello.

Uniforms for CC Middle School

It's been our commitment over nearly the last decade to find ways to support and love the folks that fill this campus from August to May. The care we show these young neighbors is a reflection of our community's belief in the importance that all lives be lived "to the fullest."

To that end:

    1) If you have some fashion sense, a child whose school clothes you'll be shopping for anyway, or a heart for youth, you can consider participating in our ongoing uniform drive.

    2) If you want to spend an hour a week building a relationship with a student who would benefit from a kind and wise voice in their life, please consider being a mentor to a Cesar Chavez MS student in the coming year. 

If you'd like more info about either of these opportunities to serve our young neighbors, please contact marshall@ubcwaco.org for more information.

Leadership Team Meeting

We have a leadership team meeting this Sunday evening.  Please be in prayer for our team.  All of this was covered in the town hall last month, but as a reminder here is what will be covered. 

1. Finance Update.  We are one month into our new fiscal budget. 

2. OAR update.  Toph wrote a report before he left to be given at this meeting 

3. Discernment Team update. 

4. scholarship recipient verification 

5. youth group update 

6. new leadership team/hr team selection 

Random Cool Picture to be used as thumbnail to generate more Traffic

Ancient Road of Vindhellavegen

Work is Worship

Greeters: Evie & Walters  

Coffee Makers: Angel

Mug Cleaners: Leigh & Cooleys

Money Counter: Justin Pond 

Announcements:

• Sunday Sermon: "Waiting with Abram and the Saints" Gen 15/Luke 12
• MD Chains Location: Freddy's (by Baylor)  last one for the summer 
• Youth Group Meeting:  We are having a meeting after church this Sunday August 7th for UBCs youth group.  Our initial effort will focus on our group of middle school students.  If you have a child that this age and have not been contacted please email josh@ubcwaco.org. 
• Kindergarten Commission August 28th.  If you have a child going into Kindergarten and would like to be part of our commissioning service, please email emily@ubcwaco.org 

Do you have an emergency and need to talk to a pastor? 

254 413 2611

Leadership Team

If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members. 

Chair- Kristin Dodson: kschwebke@prodigy.net

Joy Wineman: joy.wineman@gmail.com

Stan Denman: Stan_Denman@baylor.edu

David Wilhite: David_Wilhite@baylor.edu

Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com

Sharyl Loeung: sharylwl@gmail.com

Jon Davis: jdavis83@gmail.com

UBC Finance Team

Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.

Josh McCormick: Josh.McCormick@dwyergroup.com

Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com  

Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com

Anna Tilson: Anna_Tilson@jrbt.com

Doug McNamee: douglas_mcnamee@baylor.edu

UBC HR Team

If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.

Maxcey Blaylock: maxceykite@gmail.com

Mathew Crawford: mathewcrawford@yahoo.com

Rob Engblom: Rob_Engblom@baylor.edu

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu

Setlist 7-31-2016

This was the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with God's gift-giving in mind. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Come Thou Fount

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Death In His Grave: We sang this song to begin our time together by singing about the gift that God gave to humanity in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  In the Incarnation, God gave Godself to the world. In the Crucifixion, Jesus gave Himself for the world. In the Resurrection, God gave Hope to the world.  And through all of this, God gave us a story that we now carry that critiques the assumptions we have about love, life, sin, death, and the divine-human relationship as a whole.

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song as a petition that the Spirit would tune our hearts to embrace and be grateful for the many gifts that God gives us, knowing that it's difficult to get this right even on our best days, and knowing that we have wandering hearts that threaten to skew the way we think about where our gifts come from.  Also, we sang it to make a blanket statement of the "Here I raise my Ebenezer" line--an Ebenezer is a monument of sorts that signifies the gift of God's active presence that has carried us through every chapter of our lives.  (I am aware that I explain "Ebenezer" pretty much every time we sing this song, but let's not pretend that isn't an obscure concept.  If you already know what it means, that's great, but many people probably don't.)

House of God Forever: This song is more or less an arrangement of Psalm 23, and we sang it to voice the gift that God gives us in providing for our needs.  This makes it possible for us to let go of our anxieties.  I am personally not good at acknowledging this gift--worrying comes quite naturally to me and I do it all the time.  I have a feeling I'm not the only one.  We sang this song to put voice to the truth that God is our provider and comforter in hopes that we would embrace this idea a little more.

Pulse: We sang this song to be reminded of the gift of life that God has given to all of creation, and to lament our tendency to ignore the dignity of this gift in people who are different than us.  

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

ITLOTC 7-29-16

ITLOTC

(In The Life Of The Church) 

Pentecost

Better That Some Words Be Lost

This is Malcolm Guite:

isn't he magnificent?

In the short bio on the back of his books, he’s described as “a poet, a priest, and a songwriter.”  I came across his work earlier this year, and it has been life-changing for me.

There is one poem in particular that dug its way into my mind and made a home there, and now it sort of haunts me.  It’s called “What If…”  Here is a video of Guite reading this piece (he sets it up first, so hang in there).  I’ve pasted the words to the poem below the video if you want to go back and look it over after you’ve watched it.  [Note: This whole video is excellent, and you should definitely start back at the beginning and watch the whole thing]

“But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” – Mathew 12:36-37

What if every word we say
Never ends or fades away,
Gathers volume, gathers way,
Drums and dins us with dismay,
Surges on some dreadful day
When we cannot get away
Whelms us till we drown?

What if not a word is lost,
What if every word we cast;
Cruel, cunning, cold, accurst,
Every word we cut and paste,
Echoes to us from the past,
Fares and finds us first and last,
Haunts and hunts us down?

What if every murmuration,
Every otiose oration,
Every blogger’s obfuscation,
Every tweeted titivation,
Every oath and imprecation,
Insidious insinuation,
Every verbal aberration,
Unexamined asservation,
Idiotic iteration,
Every facile explanation,
Drags us to the ground?

What if each polite evasion
Every word of defamation,
Insults made by implication,
Querulous prevarication,
Compromise in convocation,
Propaganda for the nation
False or flattering persuasion,
Blackmail and manipulation
Simulated desperation
Grows to such reverberation
That it shakes our own foundation,
Shakes and brings us down?

Better that some words be lost,
Better that they should not last,
Tongues of fire and violence.
Word through whom the world is blessed,
Word in whom all words are graced,
Do not bring us to the test,
Give our clamant voices rest,
And the rest is silence.

I think the text in Matthew that inspired this poem is often neglected because we simply don’t know what to do with it.  It’s so harsh, so final, and presents a sort of scorekeeping that is at odds with the kind of grace Jesus usually talks about.  And yet, it’s there.  And we need it. 

The collection of our words and actions is more or less the representation of who we truly are to the world around us (we’re good at skewing that image, but that’s beside the point). Ideally, we would make the two of those paint similar pictures.  Here in the future, we have the opportunity to allow our words to have much greater reach than our actions, so the things we say (or type) account for a large portion of the mosaic that makes up the version of ourselves that the rest of humanity experiences.  Or perhaps, we might say our words impact the life experience of those we encounter.  That means our words matter.

Our words outlive the vibrations they make in the air or the illumination of the pixels they inhabit on a screen.  This is easy to lose sight of in a world where we talk through the internet.  We can simply rattle off, close our browser and go do anything else in the world.  But our words remain, doing what they do. Guite presents the image of a sea or a storm cloud for the mass of our words—specifically those used for harm.  They follow us, chase us down, overwhelm us. 

Guite highlights several kinds of speech in his poem, and there is not space to talk about each one here.  I think most of the categories he presents are difficult for us to weed out in our own speech (and I don’t think he wrote this poem to eradicate useless or harmful speech).  But I do think this poem should give us pause.  As a culture, we drum up so much noise.  I’ll go out on a limb and say that most of it is useless.  This poem is (slowly) changing the way I talk.  “Better that some words be lost,” flashes into my head on a daily basis, and I’m thankful for it, though it has made writing this post excruciating.  I wanted to highlight it here in the event it might be significant to any of you. 

JM  

Work is Worship

Greeters:  Blaylocks 

Coffee Makers: Chad

Mug Cleaners: Emma 

Money Counter: Hannah Kuhl 

Announcements:

• MD Chains Location: KFC (YES) 
• Next Leadership Team Meeting: August 7th 
• Youth Group Meeting:  We are having a meeting after church on August 7th for UBCs youth group.  Our initial effort will focus on our group of middle school students.  If you have a child that this age and have not been contacted please email josh@ubcwaco.org 

Do you have an emergency and need to talk to a pastor? 

254 413 2611

Leadership Team

If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members. 

Chair- Kristin Dodson: kschwebke@prodigy.net

Joy Wineman: joy.wineman@gmail.com

Stan Denman: Stan_Denman@baylor.edu

David Wilhite: David_Wilhite@baylor.edu

Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com

Sharyl Loeung: sharylwl@gmail.com

Jon Davis: jdavis83@gmail.com

UBC Finance Team

Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.

Josh McCormick: Josh.McCormick@dwyergroup.com

Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com  

Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com

Anna Tilson: Anna_Tilson@jrbt.com

Doug McNamee: douglas_mcnamee@baylor.edu

UBC HR Team

If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.

Maxcey Blaylock: maxceykite@gmail.com

Mathew Crawford: mathewcrawford@yahoo.com

Rob Engblom: Rob_Engblom@baylor.edu

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu

Setlist 7-24-2016

This was the tenth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with the intent of re-tuning ourselves to enter into the work of God. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

How Great Thou Art

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Lord, I Need You by Matt Maher

Hope by Jameson McGregor

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

How Great Thou Art: We sang this song to begin our time together with a confession of God's greatness.  After another in a series of weeks marked by pain and uncertainty, it is easy to lose sight of all the glory in the world.  In voicing these words, we began to tune ourselves to regain whatever has been lost through navigating the complexity of the world this summer.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to confess our need for the Spirit to transform us into people who are working together with God in God's reconciliation project.  We are prone to growing so familiar with our own ideas of who God is and what God is like that we functionally fall asleep to the movement of God.  Thus, we continually need a wake-up call from the Spirit, breathing new life into our dry bones.

Lord, I Need You:  We have had many reminders over the past few weeks that we are a part of several systems of violence.  Our complicity in these systems is at odds with our being formed in the way of Christ, and is thus sin.  This song speaks to personal struggles against sin, and allows us to rehearse turning to God for help rather than only attempting to self-regulate ourselves out of destructive behavior. 

Hope:  For the past several weeks, the offering song has been used to give voice to lament.  This week, it seemed fitting to give voice to hope.  Lament and hope are directly connected to one another, and may well be considered two sides of the same coin.  Lament is but noise without the hope of change, and hope is only a facade if it is not born from lamentable circumstances.  This song picks up on the image in John 1 of God setting a light in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome.  We might see this as a statement about the Incarnation in general, the Crucifixion in particular, or maybe the Story of God and creation as a whole.  This image gives us hope because it acknowledges darkness and almost axiomatically establishes that the darkness will not overcome the light.  

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what was said of There's a Wideness in God's Mercy then: We sang this song to meditate on God's mercy.  For the past  several weeks, we have been bombarded with news of various horrific kinds of violence.  Humans are particularly skilled at finding ways to reject the divine image in one another.  With what I know of God from Scripture, my assumption is that God is deeply grieved by our violence, and if we had one of the prophets writing today, God would most certainly talk at length about how God wanted to be rid of us.  And rightfully so.  But God's not going to rid Godself of us.  Because that's not who God is.  The Noah story shows us this quite clearly.  God wanted to start over, and started that process, then realized how terrible that was--how deeply painful that was--and resolved never to do that again.  Instead, God decided to fix things from the inside, entering into the story to suffer our violence and conquer it with love.  That conquering is accomplished, but still unfolding.  It's horribly slow for my taste, but it's there nonetheless.  

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

ITLOTC 7-22-16

ITLOTC

(In The Life Of The Church) 

Pentecost

Praying With Form and Heart

“Lord, teach us to pray.” Luke 11:1

I’ve been trying to make sense of all the phases of my spiritual development.  As far as I can tell there are three major ones:  the eighteen years I spent in WI before I went to college, the four years I spent in Minnesota at college, and the twelve years I’ve spent down here in Waco since then.  I’ve had three pastors my whole life, one in each state, and now I am one.  

Of course each of these three stints comes with subsets and unique times of development.  I’d summarize my three experiences this way.  First I learned to use my heart.  Then I went to college and learned how to use my head.  Then when I attended seminary those two things went to war with each other, and I’ve spent the rest of my formative years trying to figure out what it means to put them back together again.  

Let me give you a concrete example.  I grew up in a charismatic church.  Charismatic churches produce believers who pray with vigor, passion, and spontaneity.  I remember being as moved by tone, earnesty, and fervor listening to those prayers as I was by the words that comprised them.

From that vantage point I judged liturgical worship settings.   Yes, every church has liturgy, but you know what I mean, high church liturgical.  The prayers seemed dry, lacking in passion, and canned.  They came out of a book for cripes sake.  The people didn’t even take time to write their own.  

Eventually I began reading theologians, deepening my theology, and noticing how much precise wording mattered.  Every once in awhile I’d follow a friend to an Episcopal Church or attend Catholic Mass with my wife’s family.  Slowly, subtly, I began to appreciate those other prayers.  They did lack emotion, but that assured me they weren’t performances.  Their prayers were also free from, “ums” and “justs” and probably for pretension reasons, that mattered to me.  You see what happened?  I began to judge the other prayers.  One had form and one had heart.  Neither seemed to have both.  

This issue i’ve just laid out for you in the example of prayer happened in a lot of my formational experiences.  Then in the spring of 2014, I read Richard Rohr’s Naked Now.  I don’t want to overplay the importance of this book because you might read it and think nothing of it, but this book set me free.  In Naked Now, Rohr talks about the Western tendency to see the world through dichotomies.  That is, as black and white, with clear right and wrong.  His thesis states that mystics see the world differently--meaning you might have two rights and no wrongs or a bunch of wrongs.  

It got me thinking.  What if both prayers were bad … or good?  Or what if they were both the best attempts at prayer in different phases of my life?  It was Thomas Merton who prayed, “It is my desire to please you that pleases you.”  I’ve always liked that.

I was listening to Rob Bell’s podcast a few weeks ago when he interviewed a friend.  This friend, a Jewish Rabbi, has a child the same age as one of Rob’s kids and so they’ve gotten to know each other.  The entire hour long podcast was about six words.  Rob asked Rabbi Joel to pick six of his favorite Hebrew words and tell everyone why he loved them.   Kavannah.  I’d not heard of it.  Rabbi Joel explains it comes from Keva and Kavanah.  Keva means something like structure.  You have to know what you are praying for, and you have to know how to pray for it.  Language offers us tools that make our pleas, petitions, praises, and thanksgiving more precise and beautiful.  But as Rabbi Joel explains, he prays over 100 blessings a day and so one must also have Kavanah, which is intention.  Structure must not be a crutch to take your emotional self out of prayer.  Prayer must also involve heart.  Form and heart is what I call it.  This is how Jesus teaches us to pray.  

 

Finance Update

If you were at the July town hall meeting you already saw these numbers, but here they are again.  We closed out the 2015/16 fiscal year ahead of budget.  UBC budget about 310K and brought in about 355K.  We had surprisingly large giving numbers in May and June (2 of our 4 biggest), which historically have been two of our lowest giving months.  We began the new fiscal year on July 1st.  As you can see below we have about 100K in checking and 90K in savings. 

Harry Potter Party

As you may or may not know, JK Rowling is spoiling the world yet again with the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Sunday July, 31st at Midnight.   UBC will be anticipating the moment together on Saturday July 30th, with a little shindig at the church.  Festivities will begin at 6:00 PM.  Participants can expect a costume party, trivia game and other fun activities with fellow Potter nerds.   We are still looking for volunteers to help pull off the event, so if you'd like to help please email josh@ubcwaco.org. 

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Under the Aurora 

Work is Worship

Greeters:  Blaylocks 

Coffee Makers: Emmy 

Mug Cleaners: Leigh & the Cooleys 

Money Counter: Hannah Kuhl 

Announcements:

• Sunday Sermon Text: Gen 18/Luke 11: "Using Words to Pray" 
• MD Chains Location: Buffalo Wild Wings 
• Next Leadership Team Meeting: August 7th 
• Youth Group Meeting:  We are having a meeting after church on August 7th for UBCs youth group.  Our initial effort will focus on our group of middle school students.  If you have a child that this age and have not been contacted please email josh@ubcwaco.org 

Do you have an emergency and need to talk to a pastor? 

254 413 2611

Leadership Team

If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members. 

Chair- Kristin Dodson: kschwebke@prodigy.net

Joy Wineman: joy.wineman@gmail.com

Stan Denman: Stan_Denman@baylor.edu

David Wilhite: David_Wilhite@baylor.edu

Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com

Sharyl Loeung: sharylwl@gmail.com

Jon Davis: jdavis83@gmail.com

UBC Finance Team

Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.

Josh McCormick: Josh.McCormick@dwyergroup.com

Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com  

Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com

Anna Tilson: Anna_Tilson@jrbt.com

Doug McNamee: douglas_mcnamee@baylor.edu

UBC HR Team

If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.

Maxcey Blaylock: maxceykite@gmail.com

Mathew Crawford: mathewcrawford@yahoo.com

Rob Engblom: Rob_Engblom@baylor.edu

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu

Setlist 7-17-2016

This was the ninth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with the weight of systemic violence in mind. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

There by Jameson McGregor

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)

Up On A Mountain by The Welcome Wagon

Burn It Down by Jameson McGregor

Be Thou My Vision

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

There: We sang this song to begin our time together proclaiming God's transcendence.  God was there before there was anything (including the kind of pain that we've been living in the midst of in a particularly acute way for the past several weeks), God is there now, and God will continue to be there after the last star burns out.  This song focuses on the fact that God stands above and beyond any source of pain or anxiety, and so there is always hope--God will not be toppled by even the most terrible evils we experience in the world.  This transcendence is a part of what we can say about God, but it is thankfully not the only thing we can say.  If it were, this transcendence would mean little to nothing for us in the midst of the world's chaos.  In truth, God has chosen to be involved in what God has made, interacting with creation with the most absolute of loves.  This love from-without is the source of our hope.

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: We sang this song to meditate on God's mercy.  For the past  several weeks, we have been bombarded with news of various horrific kinds of violence.  Humans are particularly skilled at finding ways to reject the divine image in one another.  With what I know of God from Scripture, my assumption is that God is deeply grieved by our violence, and if we had one of the prophets writing today, God would most certainly talk at length about how God wanted to be rid of us.  And rightfully so.  But God's not going to rid Godself of us.  Because that's not who God is.  The Noah story shows us this quite clearly.  God wanted to start over, and started that process, then realized how terrible that was--how deeply painful that was--and resolved never to do that again.  Instead, God decided to fix things from the inside, entering into the story to suffer our violence and conquer it with love.  That conquering is accomplished, but still unfolding.  It's horribly slow for my taste, but it's there nonetheless.  

Up On A Mountain:  We sang this song to contrast There, and to proclaim the work of Jesus.  Up On A Mountain contrasts There because it focuses on God's immanence.  God is not just "out there," removed from the weight of the violence of the world.  Instead, God came down low and entered our mess, experiencing anxiety, fear, betrayal, suffering and death.  And so, we aren't alone.  Jesus has shared our experiences, and has sent the Spirit to carry us through the best and worst parts of life.

Burn It Down: This song is a plea for the Spirit to shape us into people who can tear down systems that impede the hope of Christ.  These systems are legion--we could think of the rampant racism and xenophobia that we encounter so often through our TV's, phones, and laptops, or perhaps the ways that culture elevates the voices of particular kinds of people, while silencing the voices that have not been endowed with the privilege of assumed legitimacy, on and on.  Yesterday, Amy preached an incredibly brave and prophetic sermon on sexual violence.  When we talked about sexual violence during Lent, one of the driving themes was that the Church's silence on that issue in some way authorized the prevalence of sexual violence that plagues our culture, and that this silence was sin because it did not mirror in any way the response of Jesus to affronts on the dignity of a human person.  So we sang this song in order to petition the Spirit to shape our lives and words into firebombs that target the system of sexual violence that we are living in. 

Be Thou My Vision: We sang this song to close every liturgy during Lent, which was also when we were first wrestling with our place within a culture of sexual violence.  We sang Be Thou My Vision today in response to Amy's sermon and the Litany of Commitment we read together as a way of acknowledging that we rely on God to shape our imaginations to enact change within systems of violence.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

ITLOTC 7-15-16

ITLOTC

(In The Life Of The Church) 

Pentecost

Martha Spirituality

“But Martha was distracted by her many tasks.” —Luke 10:40

If you’ve been at UBC for a while, you’ve likely heard me mention the enneagram.  I have friends—some of them my closest friends—who regularly make fun of the enneagram.  I get it.  It is, in a sense, another personality profile test, and, yet, for me, it has been more.  But my point in this post is not to convince you of its legitimacy; it’s to say that I do think all of these personality profile tests accentuate something that is biblically true: namely, the body of Christ is diverse, and it’s made up of different kinds of people.  

Some of us have the gift of wisdom.  You know when to say something and when to be silent. Others of you have knowledge. You’re the person we all call when we need to know. Some of you are prophets.  You tell the world what it is. Some of you can speak in other tongues. You know other people’s language, and you have an ability to make people feel like you just “get them.”  Some of you are healers. You know how to prescribe medicine or a home remedy.  You know a gentle word to speak that can soothe the soul.  

In Luke 10, Mary and Martha are juxtaposed with the specific purpose of showing that it’s better to appreciate the presence of Jesus while you have it than to get caught up in the pragmatic tasks of life that can weigh us down.  Confession: I hate this passage.  I’d much rather be doing what Martha is doing than what Mary is doing.  I am an enneagram Three.  I won’t presume that the enneagram can describe who you are, but it has me pegged.  Threes are achievers.  I initially thought that this meant I wanted to achieve something big.  But the truth is, it’s not even that grandiose.  I just have to achieve something.  That’s when and how I feel fulfilled: by doing something.  I love the sense of completing a task, whether it is the dishes, raking the yard, finishing a book, or changing.  There’s something in me that lights up when I make a mental goal and then a achieve it.  I love checking things off a list.  

A few years ago, Donald Miller wrote a controversial blog about why he doesn’t go to church much anymore.  It caused quite a stir.  Leaving the point of the blog aside, I’d like to share a quote with you that set me free:

How do I find intimacy with God if not through a traditional church model? 

The answer came to me recently and it was a freeing revelation. I connect with God by working. I literally feel an intimacy with God when I build my company. I know it sounds crazy, but I believe God gave me my mission and my team and I feel closest to him when I’ve got my hand on the plow. It’s thrilling and I couldn’t be more grateful he’s given me an outlet through which I can both serve and connect with him.

It should be obvious that I take issue with Miller.  I’m a pastor of a church for crying out loud, but I love what he says.  So what does a guy like me do with Martha and her predicament? 

I think a wonderful conversation partner for this text is Brother Lawrence’s Practicing the Presence of God.  Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite monk who was tasked with the mundane work of doing dishes.  Through his work, he discovered something profound about enjoying the presence of Christ:

“[Brother Lawrence] thought it was a shame that some people pursued certain activities (which, he noted, they did rather imperfectly due to human shortcomings), mistaking the means for the end. He said that our sanctification does not depend as much on changing our activities as it does on doing them for God rather than for ourselves.

The most effective way Brother Lawrence had for communicating with God was to simply do his ordinary work. He did this obediently, out of a pure love of God, purifying it as much as was humanly possible. He believed it was a serious mistake to think of our prayer time as being different from any other. Our actions should unite us with God when we are involved in our daily activities, just as our prayers unite us with him in our quiet devotions.”

SummerSide (TONIGHT)

Painters, Poets, Singers and Beauty Lovers.  Calling all artists and art appreciators to the SummerSide is tonight @ 7:00 PM.  UBC will host a space to display art with either wall space or mic space.  So if you have a talent that you'd like to display or if you'd like to come and appreciate the work of others join us for SummerSide at UBC.  For more information about attending or performing email jamie@ubcwaco.org.  

Looking for a New L-Team Member

The time has come for the amazing Kristin Dodson to rotate off the leadership team.  We are grateful for the time energy and careful thought that Kristin has given our community.  If you would like to serve on the Leadership Team please discern by reading the following and sending an email to josh@ubcwcaco.org to let him know you are interested.  The new leadership team rep will be selected by leadership team at our August 7th meeting.   

(A) Purpose.  The Leadership Team shall be the primary decision-making body of UBC.  The Leadership Team will oversee all the business and property of the church, as well as make the final decisions regarding hiring and dismissal of staff and the acquisition and selling of assets that are beyond budgetary provisions.  

(C) Qualifications.  Each member of Leadership Team shall have been a member of UBC for at least one year, exhibited an understanding and commitment to the mission and values of the church, and be willing to fulfill all responsibilities in the Leadership Team job description.

(E) Term.  Members of Leadership Team may serve for a duration lasting up to three years.  While they are encouraged to remain the full three years, members may voluntarily remove themselves from their position at any time.

Looking for a New HR Team Member

The fearless Callie Schrank has served us well, but now her time is up.  We are grateful for Callie and her help in launching and refining the review process.  If you would like to serve on the HR Team please discern by reading the following and sending an email to josh@ubcwcaco.org to let him know you are interested.  The new HR rep will be selected by leadership team at our August 7th meeting.  

(A) Purpose.  The Human Resources/Staff Support Team shall exist for the following purposes:

a.     To establish procedures for the hiring of ministerial and non-ministerial staff, and to enact those procedures when advised by Leadership Team to do so.

b.    To advise Leadership and Finance teams on issues regarding long-term staff needs.

c.     To create and implement staff review procedures.

d.    To advise Leadership and Finance teams on matters regarding staff compensation, benefits, grievances and termination.

e.    To be a liaison between the congregation and staff during times of conflict after all attempts at personal, one-on-one resolution has been made. 

(C) Qualifications.  HR/Staff Support Team members shall have been an active participant in the life of UBC for no less than one year, have received a bachelor’s degree (or roughly an equivalent amount of experience in personnel management, ministry, or other related field,) and have a demonstrable understanding of organizational management. 

(E) Term. HR/Staff Support Team members shall serve for a duration lasting up to five years.  All efforts shall be made by the HR/Staff Support Team to ensure that no more than two members in a given year rotate off of the team due to duration requirements. While they are encouraged to remain the full five years, members may voluntarily remove themselves from their position at any time.

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Renndolsetra

Work is Worship

Greeters:  Will 

Coffee Makers: Angel Snow

Mug Cleaners: McNamees 

Money Counter: McNamee 

Announcements:

• Sunday Sermon Text: John 4: Special Guest Preacher Amy Smith Carman 
• MD Chains Location: Jersey Mike's Subs (Hewitt) 
• Next Leadership Team Meeting: August 7th 
• Harry Potter Party @ UBC on July 30th @ 6:00 PM 

Do you have an emergency and need to talk to a pastor? 

254 413 2611

Leadership Team

If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members. 

Chair- Kristin Dodson: kschwebke@prodigy.net

Joy Wineman: joy.wineman@gmail.com

Stan Denman: Stan_Denman@baylor.edu

David Wilhite: David_Wilhite@baylor.edu

Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com

Sharyl Loeung: sharylwl@gmail.com

Jon Davis: jdavis83@gmail.com

UBC Finance Team

Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.

Josh McCormick: Josh.McCormick@dwyergroup.com

Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com  

Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com

Anna Tilson: Anna_Tilson@jrbt.com

Doug McNamee: douglas_mcnamee@baylor.edu

UBC HR Team

If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.

Maxcey Blaylock: maxceykite@gmail.com

Mathew Crawford: mathewcrawford@yahoo.com

Rob Engblom: Rob_Engblom@baylor.edu

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu

Setlist 7-10-2016

This was the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered around the themes of lament and hope. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Rescue Is Coming by David Crowder* Band

Peace (Change Everything) by Jameson McGregor

Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither

For Those Tears I Died by Jameson McGregor (adapted from M. Stevens)

All Creatures of Our God and King

Doxology

Recordings:

From time to time, we'll post live recordings of the songs from Sunday morning.  These recordings aren't what you would call polished--sometimes guitars are out of tune, sometimes the vocals are off--but they are records of moments we've shared together.  Here's one from this week.

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Rescue Is Coming: In the wake of a week full of pain, anger, and longing, we began our time together proclaiming that this present darkness is not the final word.  Now is a time when we need to address systemic issues of racism, police brutality (both racially motivated and not), cultural addictions to violence, and overall division, but we placed those conversation on hold as we entered worship to reorient ourselves toward our only Hope.

Peace (Change Everything):  As we have been moving through these difficult weeks, we have been singing Advent songs, because Advent is the time where we look around, see how dark the world is, and voice our longing for a Light.  We sang Change Everything again this week because it afforded us the chance to voice our longing for change, and to turn to God as the catalyst of this change.  

Because He Lives:  We sang this song with a couple of things in mind: First, the claims made in this song are true—Jesus is alive in a way that is more  than real.  And so, we as individuals can stake our hope in One who is outside of ourselves and be held there.  Second, Jesus is alive in another way in the people of Christ, those who have been and are being formed by His story and Spirit.  Because of this, the people of Christ are partnered with Jesus in actively reconciling the world to God.  But we need to know that sometimes that might mean doing things.

Furthermore,  we need to know that the true claims to hope that Because He Lives makes are quite difficult for some people to claim for themselves.  Namely, the “calm assurance” that our children can face uncertain days because He lives.  If we listen to the cries of the black community in America, there is a decided lack of this "calm assurance," because their life experience says otherwise.  And, yes, there is a way in which the "calm assurance" of Because He Lives is rooted in what Jesus' resurrection means broadly for the whole of human history, but if the church is the body of Christ, and this body is living and breathing in the present, that should bring some measure of hope to the present as well. 

So we sang this as a proclamation of something true, but also as a challenge to ourselves to take seriously the fact that being the people of Christ demands something about the way we move about in the world, and that when we see that life experience makes it difficult for someone to claim the same hope that we do, we should make it our purpose to do something about that.

For Those Tears I Died:  I came across this hymn text a couple of months ago, and started to reimagine it.  After a few weeks of this "reimagining," I had stripped the text down to about 4 lines, knowing that they contained an important truth, but not knowing how to structure the rest of the song.  In the wake of the attack on the LGBT community in Orlando, I started keeping track of things that I was praying as I expressed anger, confusion, and ultimately self-loathing for my own complicity in systems of hate by not being very vocal in combatting them.  The song continued to take shape this past week as I felt more of those same emotions.  This song isn't finished, and I don't know what it will look like when it is.  At the moment, it's part existential despair, part personal confession, and part proclamation of hope.  Probably the most personal side of it for me is the line in the second verse, "I've made an idol out of comfort, praised by keeping my mouth shut//but now it's found a thirst for blood."  I'm what you might call incredibly talented at not speaking out against something I know to be wrong when I feel I can slip by unscathed if I keep my head down.  This is fundamentally unchristian, and I am attempting to lean into repenting of it.

All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to stand alongside creatures of all kinds in acknowledging God as our creator, sustainer, and the One who is  reconciling all things to Godself, knowing that the Story that God is weaving is far from over.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

7-8-16 ITLOTC

ITLOTC

(In The Life Of The Church) 

Pentecost

The New Standard

Then the Lord said, See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; Amos 7:8

The following was originally posted on Neotorama in September of 2013

Hidden in a vault outside Paris, vacuum-sealed under three bell jars, sits a palm-sized metal cylinder known as the International Prototype Kilogram, or “Le Grand K.” Forged in 1879 from an alloy of platinum and iridium, it was hailed as the “perfect” kilogram—the gold standard by which other kilograms would be judged.

Although it’s arguably the world’s most famous weight, Le Grand K doesn’t get out much. Since hydrocarbons on fingertips or moisture in the air could contaminate its pristine surface, it goes untouched for decades, under triple lock and key at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. Every 40 years, however, it makes an appearance.

The weight is ushered from its chamber, washed with alcohol, polished, and weighed against 80 official replicas hand-delivered from laboratories around the world. Today, whenever scientists need to verify something is precisely one kilogram, they turn to one of these replicas, over which Le Grand K reigns supreme.

This system sounds absurd, but not too long ago, lots of units relied on similar methods. The kilogram was just one of seven standards of measurement established by the French Academy of Sciences in 1791, all based on physical prototypes. These benchmarks caught on worldwide because standardization was sorely needed. At the time, some 250,000 different units of weights and measures existed in France alone, which meant that the only constant was complete chaos.

While basing measurements on tangible benchmarks was an improvement, using physical standards wasn’t without its flaws. For one, they have a nasty habit of changing. In Le Grand K’s case, it’s been losing weight. At its most recent weigh-in in 1988, it was found to be 0.05 milligrams—about the weight of a grain of sand—lighter than its underling replicas. Experts aren’t sure where this weight went, but some theorize that the replicas have been handled more often, which could subtly add weight. Others postulate Le Grand K’s alloy is “outgassing,” which means air is gradually escaping the metal.

Whatever the reason for Le Grand K’s gradual wasting away, it’s got scientists scrambling for a more reliable standard. Some argue that this is long overdue, since all other units of measurement are already defined by fundamental constants of nature that can be reproduced anywhere anytime (provided you’ve got some sophisticated lab equipment). The meter, for example, used to be defined by a metal rod stored alongside Le Grand K. But in 1983, it was redefined as the distance light travels in a vacuum during 1/299,792,458 of a second.

Standardizing the kilogram has been trickier, though. Australian scientists are polishing a one-kilogram sphere of silicon, hoping that they’ll be able to count the number of atoms it contains to create a more accurate standard. American physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are attempting to redefine a kilogram in terms of the amount of voltage required to levitate a weight. But so far, neither approach can match Le Grand K’s accuracy.

Why should we care whether a kilogram in a vault is “perfect” or not? Because it’s bad news when your standard is no longer standardized. While no one’s worried whether a single kilogram of apples is a hair lighter or heavier at the produce stand, a small discrepancy can become a gargantuan one if you’re dealing with, say, a whole tanker of wheat. The kilogram is also used as a building block in other measurements. The joule, for instance, is the amount of energy required to move a one-kilogram weight one meter. The candela, a measure of the brightness of light, is measured in joules per second.

These links mean that if the kilogram is flawed, so are the joule and candela, which could eventually cause problems in an array of industries, particularly in technology. As microchips process more information at higher speeds, even tiny deviations will lead to catastrophes. Le Grand K’s unreliability “will start to be noticeable in the next decade or two in the electronics industry,” warns NIST physicist Richard Steiner. If your next smartphone is buggy, you’ll know which hunk of metal to blame.

So scientists continue to chase the perfect kilogram. “Maybe we have all been looking for too high-tech an answer,” says Stuart Davidson of England’s National Physical Laboratory. “There could be something really obvious out there we’ve missed.” The NPL’s website encourages others to give it a shot: Any better ideas on a postcard please. Until then, Le Grand K will remain king—short of true perfection, but as perfect as it gets.

SummerSide

Painters, Poets, Singers and Beauty Lovers.  Calling all artists and art appreciators to the SummerSide July 15th @ 7:00 PM.  UBC will host a space to display art with either wall space or mic space.  So if you have a talent that you'd like to display or if you'd like to come and appreciate the work of others join us for SummerSide at UBC.  For more information about attending or performing email jamie@ubcwaco.org.  

Looking for a New L-Team Member

The time has come for the amazing Kristin Dodson to rotate off the leadership team.  We are grateful for the time energy and careful thought that Kristin has given our community.  If you would like to serve on the Leadership Team please discern by reading the following and sending an email to josh@ubcwcaco.org to let him know you are interested.  The new leadership team rep will be selected by leadership team at our August 7th meeting.   

(A) Purpose.  The Leadership Team shall be the primary decision-making body of UBC.  The Leadership Team will oversee all the business and property of the church, as well as make the final decisions regarding hiring and dismissal of staff and the acquisition and selling of assets that are beyond budgetary provisions.  

(C) Qualifications.  Each member of Leadership Team shall have been a member of UBC for at least one year, exhibited an understanding and commitment to the mission and values of the church, and be willing to fulfill all responsibilities in the Leadership Team job description.

(E) Term.  Members of Leadership Team may serve for a duration lasting up to three years.  While they are encouraged to remain the full three years, members may voluntarily remove themselves from their position at any time.

Looking for a New HR Team Member

The fearless Callie Schrank has served us well, but now her time is up.  We are grateful for Callie and her help in launching and refining the review process.  If you would like to serve on the HR Team please discern by reading the following and sending an email to josh@ubcwcaco.org to let him know you are interested.  The new HR rep will be selected by leadership team at our August 7th meeting.  

(A) Purpose.  The Human Resources/Staff Support Team shall exist for the following purposes:

a.     To establish procedures for the hiring of ministerial and non-ministerial staff, and to enact those procedures when advised by Leadership Team to do so.

b.    To advise Leadership and Finance teams on issues regarding long-term staff needs.

c.     To create and implement staff review procedures.

d.    To advise Leadership and Finance teams on matters regarding staff compensation, benefits, grievances and termination.

e.    To be a liaison between the congregation and staff during times of conflict after all attempts at personal, one-on-one resolution has been made. 

(C) Qualifications.  HR/Staff Support Team members shall have been an active participant in the life of UBC for no less than one year, have received a bachelor’s degree (or roughly an equivalent amount of experience in personnel management, ministry, or other related field,) and have a demonstrable understanding of organizational management. 

(E) Term. HR/Staff Support Team members shall serve for a duration lasting up to five years.  All efforts shall be made by the HR/Staff Support Team to ensure that no more than two members in a given year rotate off of the team due to duration requirements. While they are encouraged to remain the full five years, members may voluntarily remove themselves from their position at any time.

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Brogan Stave Church 

Work is Worship

Greeters:  Rick 

Coffee Makers: Emmy

Mug Cleaners: Leigh & the Cooleys 

Money Counter: Anna Tilson 

Announcements:

• Sunday Sermon Text: 1 Corinthians 8: Special Guest Preacher Rev. Dr. Burt Burlesson 
• MD Chains Location: Pot Belly 
• Next Leadership Team Meeting: August 7th
• Harry Potter Party @ UBC on July 30th @ 6:00 PM 

Do you have an emergency and need to talk to a pastor? 

254 413 2611

Leadership Team

If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members. 

Chair- Kristin Dodson: kschwebke@prodigy.net

Joy Wineman: joy.wineman@gmail.com

Stan Denman: Stan_Denman@baylor.edu

David Wilhite: David_Wilhite@baylor.edu

Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com

Sharyl Loeung: sharylwl@gmail.com

Jon Davis: jdavis83@gmail.com

UBC Finance Team

Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.

Josh McCormick: Josh.McCormick@dwyergroup.com

Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com  

Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com

Anna Tilson: Anna_Tilson@jrbt.com

Doug McNamee: douglas_mcnamee@baylor.edu

UBC HR Team

If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.

Maxcey Blaylock: maxceykite@gmail.com

Mathew Crawford: mathewcrawford@yahoo.com

Rob Engblom: Rob_Engblom@baylor.edu

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu

Setlist 7-3-2016

This was the seventh Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered around the theme of transformation. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Come Thou Fount

Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) by Hillsong United

Peace (Change Everything) by Jameson McGregor

I Love You by Mike Robinson

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to begin with a plea that God would transform us into people who know how to find God in the world around us and how to express ourselves when this happens--the second stanza is the heart of the first reason (raising an "Ebenezer" is depicting solidifying the realization that God has been with you), and the second reason is embodied especially in these lines: "tune my heart to sing thy Grace" and "teach me some melodious sonnet sung by flaming tongues above." 

Oceans: We sang this song to ask God to make us into people who are willing to traverse uncertainty and seek God in the midst of that uncertainty.

Peace (Change Everything): Like the Advent song we sang a couple of weeks ago in the wake of the attack on the LGBT community in Orlando, we sang this in response to the attacks in Istanbul, Bangladesh, and Baghdad.  Advent is a time where we look around and see how dark the world is and how very badly it needs a light, but there are moments all throughout the year that remind us of this darkness without our having to take the time to think specifically about it.  We sang this song to make a plea to God to transform the world around us.  Since this song has not been recorded, here is a video of it if you would like to listen again:

I Love You: This is a song written by Mike Robinson, a professor at UMHB and a beloved part of the ubc community.  The lyrics depict the narrative of the last supper, and Mike shared it with us this week because we were participating in communion.

Wayward Ones: We sing this song every time we take communion to remind ourselves of a couple of things.  First, we are a broken people--though we are seeking to become more like Jesus, we often fail at this.  Second, Christ has given Himself for us despite our brokenness.  We take communion to remember the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, even though we did not, and do not, deserve it.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

ITLOTC 7-1-16

ITLOTC

(In The Life Of The Church) 

Pentecost

Who's Included?

Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife.  2 Kings 5:2

This is a verse from a story about Naaman.  Naaman is the commander of the armies of Aram.  Naaman has leprosy.  His Israeli wife tells him about Elisha.  Drama ensues in which Namaan communicates with Elisha.  Eventually, Naaman finds Elisha and is healed.  

I wonder what the author had in mind while writing this story?  Is this about establishing Elisha's credibility?  One thought I've had is that it's about inclusion.  In this story, we have another example of God's chosen, in this case Elisha, extending grace to an outsider, Naaman.  This theme is found throughout the scriptures.  Rahab the prostitute welcomes the Hebrew spies and is consequently included in the people of God.  After Nehemiah and Ezra institute reforms of exclusion returning from exile like "divorce your foreign wives," someone jotted down the story of Jonah to serve as a counter-narrative.  God would give grace, even to the rascals in Nineveh.  Or the lectionary reading from July 10th, which is what we call "the good Samaritan."  The Bible does this all the time.  It takes the person the audience likes the least and makes him or her the hero.  

This time, when I read this story from 2nd Kings, I couldn't get very far past vv. 2.  A young girl was taken captive in a violent raid and made to be Naaman's wife.  I'm sure that when this story was written there was no cultural force at work to cause someone to care about this woman's agency.  But now, hopefully, we've become a people who can at least pause and cringe at what used to be normal.  

I wonder how old she was when she was taken?  Granted, it was common for young teenage girls to marry, but I'm not sure the terror of being forcefully ripped away from your family is made easier by that fact.  

I'm pretty sure the narratival function of the girl in the story is to give Naaman a link to Israel and, ultimately, to Elisha.  Somehow, that thought makes this worse for me.  She volunteers the information that Elisha might be able to help Naaman.  It was given freely. I think that does a little to help give her a sense of agency in the story, but, still, it's a detail that I can't get past.  She's an afterthought and not critical for the outcome.  After she makes the connection, she's done.  We might be tempted to think that her whole purpose in life was to be Naaman's wife so that she could point him to his healing.  

But then I had a thought: What if everything I've wondered about the young woman taken captive is true and the point of the story is still to show that God showed grace to Naaman?  There are other stories in the Bible where grace is given to the marginalized woman.  Hagar comes to mind as does Jesus's conversation with the woman at the well in John 4.  So as a whole, I can't conclude that this was just not a possible thought at the time.

I think what I'm avoiding is the piercing suggestion that God's grace might even extend to the kidnapper.  

Over a year ago, I read Nadia Bolz-Webber's book Pastrix.  She's a former comedian turned Lutheran Pastor who has started an untraditional church.  Her church is filled with LGBTQ folks.  What's interesting about her church, then, is who the potential outsider is.  Denver, where her church is located, had a city-wide celebration for Easter.  She preached there and shortly thereafter was featured in the Denver Post.  Soon after that, new people started coming to her church.  She describes these new people, these outsiders,  as soccer moms and a few other caricatures that I no longer recall.  What I learned from this part of the book and in the story of Naaman is that who we consider an outsider is different for all of us.  

There's this great quote of which the original attribution is unknown.  Someone said, "The gospel is meant to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."  This reminds me of a Bible verse from 2 Corinthians.  In chapter three, Paul talks about moving from glory to glory.  This pattern of comfort and affliction is the engine of that glory moment.  Learning to grow comfortable with the outsider until they become the insider and then finding another outsider is what the gospel does in our life.  

The characters ripe for inclusion get more offensive the longer you stick around.  The gospel gets more offensive. 

Looking for a New L-Team Member

The time has come for the amazing Kristin Dodson to rotate off the leadership team.  We are grateful for the time energy and careful thought that Kristin has given our community.  If you would like to serve on the Leadership Team please discern by reading the following and sending an email to josh@ubcwcaco.org to let him know you are interested.  The new leadership team rep will be selected by leadership team at our August 7th meeting.  

(A) Purpose.  The Leadership Team shall be the primary decision-making body of UBC.  The Leadership Team will oversee all the business and property of the church, as well as make the final decisions regarding hiring and dismissal of staff and the acquisition and selling of assets that are beyond budgetary provisions. 

(C) Qualifications.  Each member of Leadership Team shall have been a member of UBC for at least one year, exhibited an understanding and commitment to the mission and values of the church, and be willing to fulfill all responsibilities in the Leadership Team job description.

(E) Term.  Members of Leadership Team may serve for a duration lasting up to three years.  While they are encouraged to remain the full three years, members may voluntarily remove themselves from their position at any time.

Looking for a New HR Team Member

The fearless Callie Schrank has served us well, but now her time is up.  We are grateful for Callie and her help in launching and refining the review process.  If you would like to serve on the HR Team please discern by reading the following and sending an email to josh@ubcwcaco.org to let him know you are interested.  The new HR rep will be selected by leadership team at our August 7th meeting.  

(A) Purpose.  The Human Resources/Staff Support Team shall exist for the following purposes:

a.     To establish procedures for the hiring of ministerial and non-ministerial staff, and to enact those procedures when advised by Leadership Team to do so.

b.    To advise Leadership and Finance teams on issues regarding long-term staff needs.

c.     To create and implement staff review procedures.

d.    To advise Leadership and Finance teams on matters regarding staff compensation, benefits, grievances and termination.

e.    To be a liaison between the congregation and staff during times of conflict after all attempts at personal, one-on-one resolution has been made. 

(C) Qualifications.  HR/Staff Support Team members shall have been an active participant in the life of UBC for no less than one year, have received a bachelor’s degree (or roughly an equivalent amount of experience in personnel management, ministry, or other related field,) and have a demonstrable understanding of organizational management. 

(E) Term. HR/Staff Support Team members shall serve for a duration lasting up to five years.  All efforts shall be made by the HR/Staff Support Team to ensure that no more than two members in a given year rotate off of the team due to duration requirements. While they are encouraged to remain the full five years, members may voluntarily remove themselves from their position at any time.

Town Hall Agenda

Friends this Sunday after church, July 3rd we will have a town hall meeting in the sanctuary.  We have town halls quarterly so that we can communicate what will be on the working agenda for the leadership team meeting that corresponds.  Our meeting will begin 10 minutes after the conclusion of the church service.  

Here are the items that will be covered: 

Finance Update: I'll give you the May numbers for the financial status of the church.  

Youth Group Update:  I will explain what the committee has decided and what will be proposed to leadership in our August Meeting 

Scholarship Verification:  We will verify all the scholarships that were signed in this quarter so that they are in our minutes. 

Oar Team Update: Toph gave me an OAR update for the August meeting before he left for sabbatical. 

Discernment Team Update: I will give leadership team a real time update on the discernment team.  For information on what our first meeting was about, please see the previous weeks newsletter.  

Survey Help (Last Time)

Champions this is your last opportunity to help our friend Katie Lauve Moon.  If you don't help her, your favorite sports team will never win another game and the person you want to win the election won't win.  "So no pressure ... no diamonds" - (Bob Griffin 3).  Original message below. 

Friends, one of UBC's former employees and fearless warrior champions, Katie Lauve Moon (pictured below), is doing PhD work at Tulane.  As part of her research she is asking that people from our community take this survey.  I will include this survey 3 times over the next 6 weeks.  So if you are annoyed, you can help make it disappear by participating now.

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A Place in Norway that looks like the Shire. 

Work is Worship

Greeters: Evie & the Walters 

Coffee Makers: Chad 

Mug Cleaners: Nelsons 

Money Counter: Doug McNamee 

Announcements:

• Sunday Sermon Text: Luke 10:1-11
• MD Chains Location: Panera Bread 
• Next Leadership Team Meeting: August 7th 

Do you have an emergency and need to talk to a pastor? 

254 413 2611

Leadership Team

If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members. 

Chair- Kristin Dodson: kschwebke@prodigy.net

Joy Wineman: joy.wineman@gmail.com

Stan Denman: Stan_Denman@baylor.edu

David Wilhite: David_Wilhite@baylor.edu

Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com

Sharyl Loeung: sharylwl@gmail.com

Jon Davis: jdavis83@gmail.com

UBC Finance Team

Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.

Josh McCormick: Josh.McCormick@dwyergroup.com

Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com  

Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com

Anna Tilson: Anna_Tilson@jrbt.com

Doug McNamee: douglas_mcnamee@baylor.edu

UBC HR Team

If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.

Maxcey Blaylock: maxceykite@gmail.com

Mathew Crawford: mathewcrawford@yahoo.com

Rob Engblom: Rob_Engblom@baylor.edu

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu

ITLOTC 6-24-16

ITLOTC

(In The Life Of The Church) 

Pentecost

On Not Inheriting the Kingdom

5:19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness,

5:20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions,

5:21 envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before:"those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." Galatians 5:19-21

 The context  for these bible verses is freedom and slavery.  You are so completely free, Paul contends, that you have the freedom to love self sacrificially, which will mimic slavery in form.  But it's freely chosen and counter cultural and all the other Paul things.  

I don't know what do with these bits in Paul.  I don't have problem with them or that fact that Christian faith demands something from us morally, I just think it can make our theology inconsistent.  

Let me get straight to it.  In the backdrop of what i'm pondering is the tension between faith works.  Nothing new. 

Does Paul really mean that I won't inherit the kingdom of God if some of these are found in me?  Well then crap, because I struggle with a lot of the things on that list.  And what is this promise of grace?  And Martin Luther's claim that I have righteousness imputed?  If that is the case then why does it matter what I do?  Paul anticipates that question.  It's at the beginning of Romans 6.  "what shall we then say, shall we go on sinning? Certainly not!" or "May it never be!"  

Still, the mechanics seem to break down for me.  This inconsistency matches my own faith journey experience.  Sometimes I feel the Spirit's rebuke.  I know i'm a sinner and in need of repentance and repair.  At other times, I feel the Spirit extend the grace and love of God to me.  

Could a set of actions actually keep me from inheriting the kingdom?  And what does that mean, "not inheriting the kingdom?"  Does that mean my sin sends me to hell?  Can parts me inherit the kingdom but not others?  In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul talks about a person whose work gets burned up and only partly survives, barely making it through the flames.  I've always thought that that's the kind of Christian i'd probably be.  After 34 years of doing this, I still feel like such a mess.  

Hell has come under scrutiny, not lately, but again.  It's always been viewed with some scrutiny.  A few years ago Rob Bell wrote a book about it.  He didn't really say anything that CS Lewis hadn't said in The Great Divorce fifty years earlier, but for some reasons it made a large constituency of CS Lewis loving evangelicals really uncomfortable.  I like both books.  Not because I believe hell doesn't exist, but because they made me think harder about what hell is.  

Undoubtedly the Bible offers us images.  And even those images, given the physics of space and time come into conflict.  For example, hell is described as dark and as fire.  In most cases heat gives off a form of light.  But those are images and taken in context don't intend to compete with incompatible notions of each other.  

In high school I read this book called Letters From A Skeptic.  It's a book of letters written back and forth between a pastor/theologian and his atheist father. His father has a number of standard objections.  One of them was about hell.  His father was talking about Hitler and said something like, "well I think, even God after 1,000 years,  would get tired of hearing Hitler being tortured."  That was the first time I thought about that.  And then I thought about Jesus words on forgiveness and violence and how that seemed incompatible with the goal of hell as I understood it.  

Eventually I found my way to the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church.  They had a way of talking about heaven/hell that made sense to me for the first time.  They used the metaphor of light.  Light they said, can either illumine or burn depending on how it is received.  That's it!  That's got to be it.  God is fair and God is just.  God doesn't get vindictive and angry like we do.  God is not an ant bully delighting the in destruction of individuals.  Why hell then?  Because the light can burn if you don't to receive it.  

What if that's what hell is?  The presence of God for those who don't want it.  Have you ever seen an addict confronted by an intervention?  It looks like hell for them.  What if we cultivated a life filled with the things that Paul called don'ts?  My guess is that the presence of God would be suffocating.  We'd be an incompatible people.  We'd be unable to receive the kingdom because we'd find it repulsive.  

Maybe then, this can also explain what grace does.  It connects us with the lovely things in the world.  It feeds us the fruit of the Spirit and grows us into Jesus people. Those who can receive the kingdom. 

Meet Our Newest UBCer

Name:  Ruth Anna VanDyke

Birthday: 6/13/16

Birth Height: 20.5

Birth Weight: 7lb 10oz

Enneagram Number: 2

Discernment Team 

As you may have seen, I have asked for some of you to consider joining me on a discernment team to decide what to do about our growing number of kids.  After of a fews weeks, that team has been assembled.  Here's a list of the people who volunteered: 

Dustin Ward: dustinrward@gmail.com

Kristen Davis: kristentdavis@yahoo.com

Kristen Richardson: Kristen_Richardson@baylor.edu

Rob Engblom: robengblom@hotmail.com

Paul Fillmore: Paul_Fillmore@baylor.edu

Breck Gamel: breckgamel@gmail.com

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu

We are looking to have our first meeting this week.  Here is what we plan to discuss:  

1. identifying the problem 2. talking through solutions 3. identifying the actions to needed to present a realistic version of that solution to leadership team.  (i.e. do we need an architect, do we need a capital campaign, do we need a sermon series on being better stewards of what we already have, etc.)

If you would like to share concerns or ideas about this, please contact any member of this team. 

Editor in Chief

Friends, I would like to take a moment to thank my friend Hannah Kuhl.  As have probably come to understand if you've read my writing over the last few years, I'm not a very careful writer.  I make mistakes, miss words, use words incorrectly and misspell.  Hannah has patiently edited newsletters for me the past few years.  She has entered a season of busy and graciously asked to step down.  So I need a new editor in chief.  Time commitment is about ten minutes a week and can be done digitally.  email me @ josh@ubcwaco.org if you can help this way. 

Random Cool Picture to be used as thumbnail to generate more Traffic

A Place in Norway that looks like the Shire. 

Work is Worship

Greeters: Juliet & Ricky   

Coffee Makers: Angel Snow 

Mug Cleaners:  Dodsons

Money Counter: Justin Pond 

Announcements:

• Sunday Sermon Text: Luke 9:52-62
• MD Chains Location: Taco Bell 
• There will be a UBCYP Board Games Night on Friday, July 8th at 7pm.  Sign up in the lobby on Sunday to get the address!  Space is limited, so be sure to sign up asap if you are interested.  If you aren’t going to be around on Sunday, you can sign up by emailing jamie@ubcwaco.org.
• Next UBC Town Hall will be after church on July 3rd. 

Do you have an emergency and need to talk to a pastor? 

254 413 2611

Leadership Team

If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members. 

Chair- Kristin Dodson: kschwebke@prodigy.net

Joy Wineman: joy.wineman@gmail.com

Stan Denman: Stan_Denman@baylor.edu

David Wilhite: David_Wilhite@baylor.edu

Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com

Sharyl Loeung: sharylwl@gmail.com

Jon Davis: jdavis83@gmail.com

UBC Finance Team

Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.

Josh McCormick: Josh.McCormick@dwyergroup.com

Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com  

Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com

Anna Tilson: Anna_Tilson@jrbt.com

Doug McNamee: douglas_mcnamee@baylor.edu

UBC HR Team

If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.

Maxcey Blaylock: maxceykite@gmail.com

Mathew Crawford: mathewcrawford@yahoo.com

Rob Engblom: Rob_Engblom@baylor.edu

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu

Setlist 6-19-2016

This was the fifth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered around the theme of perseverance (this is the best one-word way I could think of to describe this--more broadly, they were gathered around the theme of clinging to faith in the midst of difficulty). Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Noise by Jameson McGregor

Hope (There Will Come A Light) by Jameson McGregor

Future/Past by John Mark McMillan

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Amazing Grace: We sang this song to proclaim the saving work of God in our lives, and to cite the ways that God has been faithful to us in our stories as cause to expect God to continue to be faithful to us.  

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to ask the Spirit to continually renew our zeal for life, to provide strength to press on through woundedness, and to transform our hearts of stone into hearts that are attuned to the movement of God.

Noise: This song traces out the gap between what is it to be God and what it is to be us, acknowledges our tendency to make broken promises of our lives, and rejoices in the reality that God continually works to repair us.  As no recorded version of this song exists, you can listen to it again through this video:

Hope (There Will Come A Light): Before I played this song, I read the following preface:

In December, we enter the season of Advent, where we sort of put blinders on and enter a drama where Jesus has not yet come.  During this time, we look around and see how dark the world is and how it very badly needs a Light.  And then on Christmas, God puts a light in the darkness.  Over the next few months, we watch the Light grow, until, on Good Friday, the Light is snuffed out.  But then, on Easter, the Light comes blazing back onto the scene, and we see that things are changed. And they are. But sometimes this feels less true than others.  Like the Kingdom of Heaven, this change is already and not-yet. It’s as if Hope has been planted in the midst of creation.  Paul gives us an image of history being “pregnant”—Hope is among us and it is growing. And so, we wait.  We wait for a Birth.  And now the story has circled back on itself, hasn’t it?  In a minute, I’m going to play an Advent song called “Hope,” because we carry the longing of Advent with us all the time, and—even through grit teeth—it is fitting to proclaim that a Light will come into this darkness.

Future/Past:  We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Future/Past then: This song presents the grandeur of God and underscores the fact that God has called us "friends." Taken with the idea of God's faithfulness, this song bolsters our assurance that God is with us in the same way in the midst of the joy and the pain of life, and that, just as our past has been marked by this, we can remain confident that our future will be as well.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

ITLOTC 6-17-16

ITLOTC

(In The Life Of The Church) 

Pentecost

"Legion"

I’ve often said in sermons that Jesus’ miracles do more than heal/fix/restore.  They add commentary to the story and/or the mission.  Very often the same could said of the Jesus’ exorcisms, though those may be a kind of miracle.

There’s an interesting story that shows up in Matthew 8/Mark5/Luke 8.  

Jesus heads to the region of the Garasenes, which is on the east side of Galilee.  Most of Jesus’ ministry occurs on the west side, but if you map Jesus story in say, the gospel of Mark, he looks like a ping pong ball being shot back and forth across the lake. Jesus is going to the area of the Gerasenes.  It’s really the southeast side and it’s where Decapolis (ten federated cities of the Roman Empire) was located.  There he meets a man living among the tombs.  He’s untouchable for many reasons.  Here i’m just going to give you some facts in short hand so you can appreciate this for all it is worth.  

·       The region of the Gerasenes was a place where land was granted for Roman military veterans with status--a retirement village of soldiers if you will.

·       The demon possessed man (hereafter “dpm”) could not be “subdued” by anyone because he was “occupied” by demons

·       The space the dpm was in, the region of the Gerasenes, for a Galilean, was occupied by a force that no one could subdue.

·       The dpm is said to be living among the graves.  This is a violation of the Holiness code.  

·       When Jesus asks the dpm for a name, he Jesus it is “legion.”  Legion is a word used to describe a division of Roman Soldiers (scholars estimate that number to be around 2,000).

·       Nearby was a “band” of pigs.  Band is a word often used to describe military cadets

·       The demons ask to into the pigs.  There are about 2,000 of them and they are also symbols of uncleanliness.  

·       The 2,000 pigs “charged” into the sea, this undoubtedly is an allusion to Pharaoh’s army that also “charged” into the sea. (1)

It would not be disingenuous then to conclude that Jesus is suggesting that the people in this region were made sick by the imperial rule and power.  In the Christian tradition we have one final authority and that is Jesus.  

I sometimes argue with my friend David Wilhite about the attributes of God.  The first five centuries of church theology, which is Wilhite’s specialty, pretty much figured most of this out.  Part of what they figured out is that God is impassive.  In case you don’t speak nerd language that means without change in emotion.  Or even more simply, God doesn’t change.  That used to bother me especially since Jesus wept in the garden and at other places, but then I began to see the benefit of the doctrine.  God, who is perfectly present in every emotion all the time, doesn’t make Jesus our authority because God needs some kind of loyalty or affection from humans.  One of the reasons God makes Jesus the final authority because every other possible leader, including every human there was or is, ends in idolatry.  Humans will fail humans.  

In this particular election it's not hard to convince people that Jesus is Lord.  There are enthusiasts in both parties, but more than I remember in past elections, people are disappointed with their party candidates on both sides.  I simply take this to mean that Jesus was right back when he casted the demons into the pigs.  

Pray for our politicians, they need all they can get.

(1) Interested readers can read more about this in most biblical commentaries on Matthew, Mark and Luke or for a simplified easy to read version … Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw’s Jesus for President.

Grills and Chills 

Friends, this Wednesday, June 22nd we will have a grills and chills event at the Wren Household.  We will have sign ups this Sunday after church so we know how much food to get.  if you include your email you will then be sent an address.  UBC will provide drinks, burgers, dogs, and a veggie alternatives.  We are asking participants to bring a side.  If you will not be at church this Sunday and would still like to sign up please email josh@ubcwaco.org. 

Discernment Team

Wanted to put out one last call for our discernment team.  We are looking for individuals in the church who are passionate about the future of our kids ministry and can help us dream about how to solve our space issues.  If you are interested in being on this team, please email josh@ubcwaco.org.  PS: we have plenty of men that volunteered, i'd love for a few our women to throw their names in. 

Survey Help

Friends, one of UBC's former employees and fearless warrior champions, Katie Lauve Moon (pictured below), is doing PhD work at Tulane.  As part of her research she is asking that people from our community take this survey.  I will include this survey 3 times over the next 6 weeks.  So if you are annoyed, you can help make it disappear by participating now.

Random Cool Picture to be used as thumbnail to generate more Traffic

A Lord of the Rings Kind of Place that is in Norway 

Work is Worship

Greeters: Will 

Coffee Makers: Emmy 

Mug Cleaners:  Leigh & the Cooleys 

Money Counter: Hannah Kuhl 

Announcements:

• Sunday Sermon Text: 
• MD Chains Location: Panda Express by Target 
• Summer Grills & Chills @ the park ... Wednesday June 22nd.  More information to come. 
• Special thanks to my friend Taylor Post for brining word to the herd this last Sunday. 

Do you have an emergency and need to talk to a pastor? 

254 413 2611

Leadership Team

If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members. 

Chair- Kristin Dodson: kschwebke@prodigy.net

Joy Wineman: joy.wineman@gmail.com

Stan Denman: Stan_Denman@baylor.edu

David Wilhite: David_Wilhite@baylor.edu

Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com

Sharyl Loeung: sharylwl@gmail.com

Jon Davis: jdavis83@gmail.com

UBC Finance Team

Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.

Josh McCormick: Josh.McCormick@dwyergroup.com

Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com  

Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com

Anna Tilson: Anna_Tilson@jrbt.com

Doug McNamee: douglas_mcnamee@baylor.edu

UBC HR Team

If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.

Maxcey Blaylock: maxceykite@gmail.com

Mathew Crawford: mathewcrawford@yahoo.com

Rob Engblom: Rob_Engblom@baylor.edu

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu

Setlist 6-12-2016

This was the fourth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with the faithfullness of God in mind. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

Future/Past by John Mark McMillan

Fever by Jameson McGregor

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)

Doxology

Recordings:

From time to time, we'll post live recordings of the songs from Sunday morning.  These recordings aren't what you would call polished--sometimes guitars are out of tune, sometimes the vocals are off--but they are records of moments we've shared together.  Here's one from this week.

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

House of God Forever:  We sang this song to express Psalm 23 together.  If we're honest, this psalm calls us to make claims about the way we trust God that are more intense than we can honestly say most of the time.  Because of this, House of God Forever pulls us along--asks us to claim a greater reliance on the faithfulness of God than we might carry at this moment, but this draws us closer to living in that place.

Wandering: This song contrasts God's faithfulness to us with our own attempts at being faithful that usually have a self-serving bend to them.  The point isn't to beat ourselves up about this--I think this is something we should combat and of which we must be aware, but it is also part of what it is to be human.  Instead, the point is to recognize that God's faithfulness to us is unwavering.  Because of this, we can fail again and again and still be pulled along on the Way of Christ.

Future/Past:  This song presents the grandeur of God and underscores the fact that God has called us "friends." Taken with the idea of God's faithfulness, this song bolsters our assurance that God is with us in the same way in the midst of the joy and the pain of life, and that, just as our past has been marked by this, we can remain confident that our future will be as well.

Fever: This song makes a metaphor of the relationship between fever and virus.  Fevers are used to restore order to the body when it has been invaded by a virus/bacteria--to move toward regaining the status quo.  Fever imagines a scenario in which the thing that we keep pulling ourselves back to is in fact the worse thing, and it seeks out a wilder pathogen to overtake the attempts to restore "order." As for what this means, I think that's pretty pliable--you could probably find your own meaning in it.

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about There's A Wideness in God's Mercy then: This is a song that deals directly with mercy in the context of Jesus, but that is far from the only lens we can use when looking at There's A Wideness in God's Mercy.  For instance, the Spirit's transformative presence with us is no doubt an example of the wideness of God's mercy.  As we traverse the varied terrain of our day-to-day, we do so in cooperation with the Spirit, who is shaping us and our stories into something new, beyond the measure of our minds.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

ITLOTC 6-10-16

ITLOTC

(In The Life Of The Church) 

Pentecost

You Are That Man

"You are that man!"  2 Samuel 12:7

1. Parables

Jesus wasn't the first person to use parables.  The tradition of parables is older than the incarnation portion of his story.  The most obvious place to see this is in Nathaniel's rebuking David. 

David saw Bathsheba bathing on the roof.  He had her husband killed. Their consequent sexual relationship lacked consent.  

It's an awful story with an awful ending.  Their baby dies.  

God is angry.  David won't get off the hook.  

Sometimes we become so immune to criticism that we need to hear it creatively.  That's how God cracks David's heart, with a creative story. 

The prophet Nathaniel shows up and tells David a story about rich man with many sheep and a poor man with one sheep.  The rich man steals the poor mans sheep.  

It's more descriptive than that though.  Nathan describes this lamb--the lamb plays with the poor man's children.  There's clearly affection between the family the animal.  The rich man takes it to feed a visitor. He didn't want to tap into his own flock so he robs the poor to feed the rich. 

It's outrage!  

The strategy works.  David is furious.  He even calls for the death penalty.  

Then the micdrop.  Nathan tells David, "You are that man!" 

2. Automatic Video Feeds 

Have you ever watched a video and then because you didn't close the screen after the video, the video feed cues another video.  Yesterday I clicked on a video of a hydraulic press crushing a can of silly string because I like those kind of videos.  Then it showed me a video of a hydraulic press crushing a diamond.  

Enthralling!  I was hooked. 

The next video was a hydraulic press crushing a hydraulic press.  Best one yet.  

Then a video of a fight between high school students in a bathroom. Confession, I should have turned off the video feed at this point, but curiosity get the best of me.  "They looked like middle schoolers," I thought, "surely this ends in comedy or it wouldn't survive on the internet."  There's an inaudible exchange of words.  Then the bigger kid attacks the smaller kid.  Other kids watch.  I've not been in a fight, but this doesn't look too bad.  Then, the big kid picks up the little kid and slams him to the ground.  I'm hoping his backpack breaks the fall, but I'm concerned about his head.  It could have really gotten hurt.  

Then the most heart crushing thing I've heard in a while.  The kid on the floor cries a deep cry of agony.  Something took my heart and wrapped it in knots.  

I couldn't believe how angry I got.  Every ounce of pacifism in me was swallowed up in rage.  I wanted to storm the school scream at the Principal.  I wanted to find the parents of the bigger kid and lecture them for raising such a terrible human being.  I wanted to throw that bigger kid against a locker and scare the hell out of him.  

Here's what was happening in me.  I found an entry point.  I have four kids ... and for a split second I imagined that it could have been one of mine getting beat up.  Vicariously, I was involved in that situation. That's usually the best way for me to do empathy.  

About 30 minutes later I recalled a moment from middle school.  Our teacher informed us that we'd have a substitute the next day.  It was a sewing class.  Occasionally we needed copies of a pattern to be made on the copy machine in the office.  

Jake devised a plan.  He'd send our naive substitute to make a copy so that one girl in our class could pummel another.  I knew about the plot and I did nothing.  And then the next day when it happened, I did nothing.  

I was that man. 

3. Prophets and Judgement

There is a motif of prophetic judgement in the scriptures and there is a motif of repentance.  They are not mutually exclusive, but as I do my own journey, I'm sometimes confused by which voice i should employ.  

There are so many instances that need leadership and truth telling.  Thank God for those voices.  And still, Christian faith is relentless in it's demand that our primary work be introspective.  

Judgement is a theological necessity that ought to be exercised carefully.  Some of us should share opinions and educate people.  But some of us should probably listen.  Because if we are too hasty in our condemnation, we just might find that, "we are that man." 

Children's Ministry Info for Sunday

This week Emily will be on vacation, so Liz Andrasi will be at the UBCKids helm!  To our UBCKids community, be sure to ask Liz if she needs any extra hands, or a refill on her coffee, or anything else!  She’s going to do an amazing job, there is no doubt, but extra help is always welcomed!  Thanks, Liz and thanks in advance to UBC!  

Textile Generosity and other Interesting Points: By Marshall Cook

We all remember middle school. Oh the memories:

• Concert band renditions of Queen's "We Will Rock You",

• Significant others that you hold hands with if your buddies aren't around, 
• The agony and confusion over why your boyfriend won't hold your hand when his buddies are around,
• The inexplicable and pungent mix of industrial grade cleaner, sweat, and over zealously applied drug store fragrances.

Sadly, these halcyon days have passed many of us by...

BUT WAIT, what if you could reach in to that world and give a middle school student the one thing universally desired by these precious, pubescent, proto-people: The gift of looking and feeling Fresh to Death.

Through Our Church Family's partnership with Cesar Chavez Middle School and Communities in Schools, this opportunity is within your reach. Please consider the following options:

• Donate a new or gently used uniform to Communities in Schools; Bring it by the church and Marshall (that's me) will get it to the right place. Anything sized for K-12 is wonderful!
• Write a check to Communities in Schools of the Heart of Texas and write "uniforms" in the memo line. Again, I'm happy to collect at the church 
• Donate online here  ( For reference, the boys "Husky 14" size shirt that I would have worn in Middle School runs a cool $12).

I hope you'll join me in this opportunity to love our (adolescent) neighbors. 

Love y'all,

Marshall Cook

Former Middle Schooler 

UBC T-Shirts

If you ordered a UBC t-shirt ... great news.  you can now pick them up. please find Josh or Jamie on Sunday or whenever and we'll hook you up. 

Harry Potter Party

We will be hosting a Harry Potter party at then end of July to celebrate the release of the new book.  If you are interested in either Harry Potter or parties, and would like to help Josh plan and execute this party, that would be greatly appreciated.  interested persons should email, josh@ubcwaco.org 

Random Cool Picture to be used as thumbnail to generate more Traffic

Work is Worship

Greeters: Rick 

Coffee Makers: Chad

Mug Cleaners:  Emma 

Money Counter: Josh McCormick 

Announcements:

• Sunday Sermon Text: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 Please be in prayer for my friend Taylor as she prepares to bring us a word this Sunday.  
• MD Chains Location: Viteks by Baylor. 
• Summer Grills & Chills @ the park ... Wednesday June 22nd.  More information to come. 

Do you have an emergency and need to talk to a pastor? 

254 413 2611

Leadership Team

If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members. 

Chair- Kristin Dodson: kschwebke@prodigy.net

Joy Wineman: joy.wineman@gmail.com

Stan Denman: Stan_Denman@baylor.edu

David Wilhite: David_Wilhite@baylor.edu

Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com

Sharyl Loeung: sharylwl@gmail.com

Jon Davis: jdavis83@gmail.com

UBC Finance Team

Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.

Josh McCormick: Josh.McCormick@dwyergroup.com

Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com  

Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com

Anna Tilson: Anna_Tilson@jrbt.com

Doug McNamee: douglas_mcnamee@baylor.edu

UBC HR Team

If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.

Maxcey Blaylock: maxceykite@gmail.com

Mathew Crawford: mathewcrawford@yahoo.com

Rob Engblom: Rob_Engblom@baylor.edu

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu

Setlist 6-5-2016

This was the third Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were once again gathered with the Holy Spirit in mind. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)

Your Love Is Strong by Jon Foreman

Come Thou Fount 

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Doxology

Recordings:

From time to time, we'll post live recordings of the songs from Sunday morning.  These recordings aren't what you would call polished--sometimes guitars are out of tune, sometimes the vocals are off--but they are records of moments we've shared together.  Here's one from this week.

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: This is a song that deals directly with mercy in the context of Jesus, but that is far from the only lens we can use when looking at There's A Wideness in God's Mercy.  For instance, the Spirit's transformative presence with us is no doubt an example of the wideness of God's mercy.  As we traverse the varied terrain of our day-to-day, we do so in cooperation with the Spirit, who is shaping us and our stories into something new, beyond the measure of our minds.

Your Love Is Strong: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Your Love Is Strong last week: This song is essentially a meditation on the Lord's Prayer, with an emphasis on being transformed into Kingdom people.  When we think of transformation, we think of the Spirit--the Spirit is the One who does the weaving of our stories, who dwells in our interconnectivity and helps to shape us.  We sang this song to ask the Spirit to continue this work.

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to continue to call upon the Spirit to tune us into instruments of grace, and to call upon ourselves to look back on the way God has been faithful to us as we face new challenges in life (that's the Ebenezer part--and I know I've talked about this before, but "Ebenezer" is maybe the most obscure word that we sing on a regular basis.  The idea of an Ebenezer calls back to a moment in 1 Samuel 7 when Samuel makes a monument to embody the recollection of God's showing up in the midst of an impossible situation.)

Pulse:  This is a new song.  As some of you know, I'm recording an album right now called Wild One.  A couple of months ago I started to get kind of burnt out picking apart those 10 songs for the recording process, so I decided to start writing another album to keep my wheels moving.  I've been writing about the Holy Spirit and the Church (and I struggle to speak meaningfully about one without the other).  Pulse embraces the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Life--the breath that we see breathed into Adam in the garden story--and leans into the idea that it is possible to experience life without fully embracing the breadth of what this means (and in turn tries to remedy that disconnect).  Namely, that we are all connected--we are children of the Living God.  We have a tendency to be selective with whom we count as "us."  And we are amazingly skilled at creating various kinds of "them." But this seems to be undermined by the Holy Spirit.  This song is a petition for the Spirit to make this interconnectivity real to us and to teach us how to love one another as we should.

Wayward Ones: We sing this song every time we take communion to remind ourselves of a couple of things.  First, we are a broken people--though we are seeking to become more like Jesus, we often fail at this.  Second, Christ has given Himself for us despite our brokenness.  We take communion to remember the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, even though we did not, and do not, deserve it.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

ITLOTC 6-3-16

ITLOTC

(In The Life Of The Church) 

Pentecost

Questions About Sexual Violence

his week my friend and colleague Kyndall Rathaus, who is a pastor at Lakeshore Baptist Church here in Waco, wrote an article for the Baptist Standard entitled "A Christian Feminist Response to Baylor."  The article has been part of my formation this week.  By that I mean it has caused me to stop and think and ask questions about my Jesus following in this particular area.  Sometimes discipleship means asking, "do i know everything I should know about this?" and "how might the Holy Spirit be challenging me to grow?"  So in response to this article I decided to interview another friend, our own Dr. Emma Wood who has a PhD in clinical psychology and specializes in questions about gender.  Instead of writing an article this week, I thought I'd share that interview with you. 

Summer Fun

Friendly reminder that this Sunday is the beginning of summer Sunday School.  Even if you didn't sign up for the breakfast potluck you can still come, please bring a savory or sweet dish to share. Also, this Tuesday will be our first MD Chains lunch.  We will be meeting by Fuego by Baylor.  

Meet Our Newest Pastoral Associate

This June marks the conclusion of our time with our first year of pastoral associates.  We couldn't have been more thrilled with the work Liz Andrasi and Luke Stehr did for us.  As we get ready to say goodbye to them we welcome two new pastoral associates.  We introduced Marshall last week and this week we'd like to introduce Kim.

______________________________________________________________

Name: Kim Minnick

Reason you are in Waco:  Working on my MDiv in Spiritual Formation at Truett Seminary

Best restaurant in Waco: Bangkok Royal. 

Scripture that means something to you: I tend to stress and get anxious over things I can't control - John 16:13 reminds me that the Spirit is constantly at work, which pairs nicely with Matthew's reminder in 6:25-34 to not worry. 

TV Show?:   Currently caught up on Gilmore Girls and catching up on Parks and Rec. I'd like to watch Lost again.  Sunday nights are devoted to Game of Thrones. 

Book?: Ender's Game and really the whole Enderverse 

Something we’d never know about you: I was a percussionist in high school and received a "1" at UIL for a 4-mallet marimba solo. I hope to have my own marimba one day. 

Survey Help

Friends, one of UBC's former employees and fearless warrior champions, Katie Lauve Moon (pictured below), is doing PhD work at Tulane.  As part of her research she is asking that people from our community take this survey.  I will include this survey 3 times over the next 6 weeks.  So if you are annoyed, you can help make it disappear by participating now.

UBC T-Shirts

if you ordered a UBC t-shirt ... great news.  you can now pick them up.  please find josh or jamie on Sunday or whenever and we'll hook you up. 

Work is Worship

Greeters: Evie & the Walters 

Coffee Makers: Van Dykes 

Mug Cleaners:  Leigh

Money Counter: Anna Tilson 

Announcements:

• Sunday Sermon Text: 1 Kings 17:8-16
• MD Chains Location: Fuego by Baylor 
• UBC Roots class welcome camp in is tonight.  If your child is entering 1st grade or is between 1st and 4th grades and they would be interested in joining our children for an overnight of fun and fellowship email emily@ubcwaco.org. 
• Summer Grills & Chills @ the park ... Wednesday June 22nd.  More information to come. 

Do you have an emergency and need to talk to a pastor? 

254 413 2611

Leadership Team

If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members. 

Chair- Kristin Dodson: kschwebke@prodigy.net

Joy Wineman: joy.wineman@gmail.com

Stan Denman: Stan_Denman@baylor.edu

David Wilhite: David_Wilhite@baylor.edu

Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com

Sharyl Loeung: sharylwl@gmail.com

Jon Davis: jdavis83@gmail.com

UBC Finance Team

Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.

Josh McCormick: Josh.McCormick@dwyergroup.com

Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com  

Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com

Anna Tilson: Anna_Tilson@jrbt.com

Doug McNamee: douglas_mcnamee@baylor.edu

UBC HR Team

If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.

Maxcey Blaylock: maxceykite@gmail.com

Mathew Crawford: mathewcrawford@yahoo.com

Rob Engblom: Rob_Engblom@baylor.edu

Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu