The newly formed Leadership Team met for the first time on September 15. The team, open to everyone who wanted to be a part, focused on the first Practice of Fruitful Congregations: Radical Hospitality. (Please see highlights on the cover of “The Visitor” - Oct 2009.)

We discussed why people visit First UMC, Reno on an average Sunday morning:

●  They are new to the area and are “church shopping.”

●  The beauty of the building and sanctuary.

●  Word-of-mouth or invitation of a friend or neighbor.

●  They are experiencing a personal crisis.

Most likely the “only Sunday we have to make an impression is that Sunday”!

Here are some of the conclusions we drew:

●  Radical Hospitality, being welcoming to newcomers, is the responsibility of every member of the church, not just a select few. This extends not only in worship but also into Fellowship after worship.

●  The ushers and greeters need specific training and procedures for welcoming visitors.

●  We need to develop very intentional ways for following up with visitors the first week after they visit.

●  We need to improve our signs inside and outside the building so first time visitors can find restrooms, the nursery, the Fellowship Hall, etc.

We also brainstormed about the needs of our community and how we are being called to meet these for those not yet coming to our church or any church. This will be an on-going and growing discussion!

The sermon series during October will highlight The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations and the dialogue and planning will continue over the next six months. Being a part of the team is still an open invitation. We are reading the book “Cultivating Fruitfulness”, by Robert Schnase. All 28 of the books were purchased; you can order a copy on-line or borrow one from another member.

I have been invigorated by the response of our church’s willingness to look very honestly at our strengths and our weaknesses. A mathematician in the group calculated that in our first meeting those present represented almost 500 years in Reno First UMC! And we felt challenged to provide “a place we love” for the next generations.

For Jesus’ sake. Faithfully, Judith

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September 2009

Your Church Council met on August 11th and agreed to embark on an exciting journey together; everyone in the congregation is encouraged to join in!

We will each be reading a 10-minute daily devotion from a book “Cultivating Fruitfulness” that is a companion to the larger book “Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations.”  Whoever wants to participate will be part of the First Church Leadership Team. We will meet monthly for one hour to discuss and implement for the five practices:

•    Radical Hospitality

•    Passionate Worship

•    Intentional Faith Development

•    Risk-taking Mission and Service

•    Extravagant Generosity

Where are we excelling and where do we need to improve? Where do we discern God is calling us to reach out and in what ways? What are some tangible and concrete ways to put these practices into…well, practice?

If you would like to participate you may pick up a copy of the book in the church office during the week or on Sunday mornings. The suggested donation is $6.00 per book. You will find the readings inspirational and thought provoking.  And we will value as much input from the congregation that we can gather.

First Church Leadership Team will meet the third Tuesday of each month from 7:00 to 8:00 PM in the parlor or sanctuary. At 8:00 if there is any business to come before the Church Council, those interested are encouraged to stay until 8:30. So the first official meeting of the First Church Leadership Team is Tuesday, September 15th.  Consider this an invitation to take your place in helping to chart our future; you will find your own faith journey enriched along the way!

Faithfully,

Judith

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August 2009

Reno has been a pleasant surprise in so many ways: the lovely flower baskets along the bridges, concerts and art everywhere I look, people who offer to help in the church and a general excitement about our new beginning. And what a treat to live surrounded by mountains and along the river!

It’s always a bit odd to move to a new church in July because so many people are taking vacations and committees often take a well -deserved break. But that gives me time to ease into a routine while still unpacking boxes and deciding where to place the furniture. Once the painting in completed in the parsonage, I can really begin to settle in with hanging my favorite things on the walls and organizing books on the shelves in my home office.

Speaking of offices, I will do most of my work at the church office and will generally be in Tuesday- Friday from 9:00 to 3:00. I will do my reading and sermon preparation at my home office where there are fewer distractions. Monday will be my day off (my Sabbath, if you will), and I will only be available for real emergencies. Those working in the office will always be able to get in touch with me, so it is best to go through them in the case of an emergency. I will plan an afternoon a week for visitations and always available to go to the hospital when someone is admitted or before a surgery. When I have to be out of town for a meeting, I will be sure there is pastoral coverage for such occasions.

Please continue to be patient as I learn your names. The nametags help a lot, as I am a visual learner. If you do not have one, please let the office know and she will have one made just for you!

As you will notice in this issue of “The Visitor” I am preaching a sermon  series this summer with some very basic faith concepts in order for you to get to know me.  Feedback is always appreciated and will help me to get to know you as well. I am looking forward to my first meetings with the major church committees as we listen to God together to discern where God is calling us in this time and place. It is an honor to be among you in these times where the light of Christ is needed so desperately.

Faithfully,
Judith

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July 2009

I am eagerly awaiting my move to Reno and getting to know the congregation of 1st Reno. This first year will be one of getting to know one another. It will be a time of waiting, watching and wondering. Some have described our denomination as one of “arranged marriages”! This we know: God is good! Christ has gone before me to prepare a place and a people in Reno as Christ has prepared the congregation in Manteca to welcome their new pastor. It’s the genius of the United Methodist system, but it doesn’t come without some challenges. Change is rarely easy or welcome; it forces us into places we may rather not go. And it will be a time of celebrating new life for both of us as well. I am eager to be back in the mountains and living on the river. Those are life-giving forces for me.

Here’s a brief bio: I was ordained in 1974, graduated from Pacific School of Religion in 1975, and after serving for five years in California, I moved to Alaska to be a missionary. I was serving on the General Board of Global Ministries at the time where I discovered this awesome possibility for ministry. As an avid back-packer and hiker, with an interest in Native American cultures, Alaska appealed to me in many ways. My husband and I moved to Seward in 1980 with a nine-month-old son; our daughter was born there in 1982. I was the only patient in the hospital that Mother’s Day and a doctor in my congregation delivered her! I was selected to serve as “Minister-in-Residence” in 1986 at Pacific School of Religion and assisted in teaching “United Methodist History and Polity” and “Women in Protestantism”. That June we returned to Alaska where I served as the pastor of the UMC in Chugiak for six years. I was elected by the Jurisdictional Conference to serve on the General Board of Church and Society and worked with the Department of Environmental Justice and Survival for eight years. I continue to have a passion for environmental issues.

In 1988 my life was turned upside down after major surgery, a divorce and the following year the death of my father from cancer. In 1992 I returned to California where I served a church in San Jose for four years. The stark change from Alaska to San Jose was difficult; I then served churches in Montana and Wyoming for six years, returning to California in 2002. My mother lived with me from mid-2006 until her death in February 2007. Both of my children graduated from Willamette University in Salem, OR. My son is currently a doctoral student at UNC, Chapel Hill in Comparative Politics (Latin American emphasis) who plans to teach after receiving his degree. He is helping with my move so you may meet him! My daughter is married and working on her credential to teach English (while being fluent in French)! They have one child, a 17 month-old son. Yes, I am a proud grandmother and you will meet them soon as well; they live in Sacramento and both are avid rock climbers! My grandson is not far behind in his climbing adventures. And last but not least, I have a two-year-old dog named Boo, (a golden retriever -mix). I love all kinds of music and have sung in church and community choirs since the third grade! I look forward to the rich tradition of music at First Reno and in the greater Reno community. I am an avid reader and love to cook and bake when I can share the results with others. Like your former pastors, I am also a lover of congregations. I have been trained as a spiritual director in the contemplative tradition and have attended the Academy for Spiritual Formation through the Upper Room. My passion is creative worship (that incorporates liturgy and tradition) and spiritual formation that moves us from looking inside to turning outside, serving the world as Jesus calls us. Above all I believe we are each called to love God with all our hearts, minds and spirits and our neighbors as ourselves.

Faithfully, Judith

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June 2009

With little bottles of bubbles left from son Jacob and Sonya’s wedding in San Rafael the week after Easter, we summed up my mother’s burial on my dad’s birthday just before Mothers Day, on the banks of the Fox River, St. Charles, IL – leaving the air above the family plot shimmering with fragile resiliency! A gentle playful foretaste of another side of the Holy Spirit whose wind and fire ignite and inspire the DAY OF PENTECOST May 31! It’s my favorite day of the church year –  the culmination of resurrection in the form of Christ’s Spirit returning to fill his Body the Church with continuing presence and power of his life and work!

I believe there is no other “return,” no “second coming,” no more excuses – We are it! Jesus has no other plan than us! I hope that I will be remembered, now that my fulltime work for the church is done, as part of the gentle playful side of the Spirit. I am serious about things to be serious about. But I am always humbled by how little we ever grasp of our all-too-human role and responsibility as consciousness of creation to “represent Christ” whoever, wherever we are. Like Jesus, each of us has our ways to let go. Mine is undoubtedly too verbose.

Since I came to ministry in response to Dr. King’s death, I am specially thankful for chances to offer our community the yet-to-befully-revealed gift of the weekends we did to remember and recommit to his “unfinished business” – of poverty, racism, war. I am a child of the sixties. Beginning seminary in 1968 and becoming a 3-year student pastor, I have been preaching for 40 years! Get the hook!! As we all preach with one foot in heaven, one foot on earth, so I have tried to preach one foot in the church, one in the community. Thanks to this congregation, “like a tree that’s planted by the water,” for not moving but being moved by the chaos/community, wilderness/promised land, staying “downtown!”

Now that I have grown to accept and appreciate this best possible circumstance for all, Julie and I look forward to adventurously beginning again, as we have our whole life together – from Showboat days on the Ohio River and Peace Corps in Turkey, through conversion and call (or was it call and conversion?), 25 years in Chicago as an adoptive family, California  and even Nevada! As usual, we did not know exactly where or how we were going. We came here with no other plan.

This was to be (for better and worse – as all things are!) last stop on our fulltime itinerancy. The “state of the church” was good when we got here. It is good now. My mother, among all the words of wisdom we attribute to her, said all comparisons are odious. We are at a different, newer – perhaps edgier, even riskier place – still on the journey – still responding to God’s still gracious invitation to follow Jesus at all costs – still revealed to, for, with, through, in spite of us by the Holy Spirit – leading, guiding, evoking, inspiring, cleaning up after us!

Thanks and Love Always, John and Julie

PS – Most of these words served as introduction to a “state of the church” report I left with Church Council. You are welcome to a copy. Let me know you want it.

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May 2009

Dear “Springers” to Life!

Praise the Lord – CHRIST IS RISEN!  I am so thankful for all the good preparation and participation in Holy Week and Easter Sunday services!  The Tongan Youth Band arrived from a church engagement in San Francisco at 2 AM Palm Sunday morning to be able to accompany the procession into Jerusalem! 

The children and families of Sunday School led us through Thursday supper with communion – the older students moving among tables to ask questions revealing the biblical persons they were – the younger creating a handwashing table in spirit of Jesus’ footwashing! The Youth Group then read the Passion narrative for Tennebrae.  Friday the Tongan Youth Choir gently accentuated personal witnesses to Jesus’ last words. As Pastor Art Griffen witnessed, the work of the one on the cross is not done until we all come together and just get along!

I had one of those grandfathers who always reminded me to return anything I borrowed in as good or better shape than I found it. Those terms are always relative. But Julie and I are privileged to have “borrowed” pastoral leadership of this congregation a while. We have respect for the past, excitement about the present, and belief in the future of the life, mission, witness and service of this congregation! 

We love how the more traditionally “administrative” teams of us – Finance, Trustees, Staff-Parish Relations, Stewardship – are connecting with one another and with the common concern and commitment to our ministries.

Please nurture and nourish the existing and emerging  “program” teams –  Artown (led by Cheryl Shingler),  Missions and Social Concerns (Priscilla Barton, Patti Bengtson, Mike Faulstich), Nurture and Congregational Care (Susan Miller, Ruth Stacy, Young Lowe), Witness and New Member Support (Paula McDonough, David Shintani), and Worship and Sanctuary Adornment (Zona Hairgrove, Mary King). Of course, the life and work of this congregation spring up and thrive in all sorts of spontaneous and less “organized” ways. There is a group and/or project for everyone, it seems – and where none is at the moment, there may be soon!

“Order” follows from “word” and sacrament” in our life together -- what we proclaim and practice of Christ – how we walk the talk of the Holy Spirit.  As lovers of congregations for the past 41 years, we know of their power in larger community near and far. Please, carry on that crucial interfaith and ecumenical work toward “faith-based organizing!” We all are so desperately needed. Now Julie and I – as we seek to “heal and make whole” in our own lives and life together -- go back to the “real work” of being “laos,” laity, the whole people of God! The work subversive of “what is” in behalf of “what can and should be” is here, there, and everywhere! Jesus is calling – We hear his voice over the deep!

Love, John and Julie

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April 2009

Dearly Faithful to the End --

I am proposing to call Holy Week “King for a Day – Fear-Breaker Forever!”  In our Lenten studies of the prophets with Joan Chittister, and in news of the world all around us, fears possess us – for our jobs, our homes, our savings, our general sense of sell-being and security, yes!  But also for our powers and prerogatives to speak up and out about what we perceive in light of our faith.

Amos, for instance, was “Mr. Normalcy,” – comfortably part of established propriety and prosperity.  Only he could not help but wonder who was getting poorer as the rich were getting richer.  Now we know: any of us can get poor!

Jesus says only perfect love can cast out fear.  We’ll spend the resurrection season pondering, practicing that.  Living in faith is like falling in love – more than once!  Without growing up much in church, I fell in love with “God” (unnamably) through skies and stars, mountains and trees, rivers and oceans – mystery, grandeur, beauty, wonder.  Then I met a tiny United Methodist congregation on the north side of Chicago who believed as Wesley did, the world was their parish!  I fell in love with Jesus through singing, praying, preaching, studying, speaking and acting out – I have seen Jesus in so many congregational faces ever since.

It took me a while to find the Holy Spirit – even as Pentecost pales alongside awareness of Christmas and Easter in our church and culture.  I fell in love with the Holy Spirit through the biblical record of “Jubilee!” – a time of “atonement,” of radical forgiveness – sins, trespasses, and debts!  The goodness and fairness of God so clearly built into creation itself – in the beginning and in each new day -- are meant to be built into history, human community, as well!  We are entitled to fresh starts and new beginnings – equal access to grace spiritual and material!

At District Training Day, we traced this thread from Genesis through Leviticus, Isaiah, Luke, and Acts – Jesus embodying “Jubilee” once and for all – the Church born to be his witness!  Between scriptures we said the response –

For God makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good.

God sends the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.

Let us be perfect as God is Perfect – Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done – on Earth! – as it is in heaven. 

We also made up a new second verse to “Morning Has Broken” –

Rain on the just, and reign on the unjust.

Debts, sins forgiven – trespasses, too.

Equal beginnings, equal belongings,

Fresh, free, and fair starts – every day new!

 The world within and around our church and culture today are driven by (Nevada-style!) by “boom and bust” cycles of wealth and impoverishment, greed and indebtedness.  Those are precisely the cycles “Jubilee” breaks and mends into ever more diverse and inclusive community of all peoples and with all creation.

I rarely imagined through the years how transparently, practically applicable “Jubilee” might become in a time such as ours!  What choice might save us – but to start over again?  To declare “all-ee, all-ee, all in free” on all that we “owe” one another (other than love, which Paul calls our sole obligation!).  To grant to each (especially the indentured, enslaved, imprisoned, emigrated) equality of access and parity of result – all God’s children provided for equally by God’s resources!

In the End Is the Beginning – Love, John       

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March 2009

A NOTE FROM CURT FONKEN, PASTORAL ASSOCIATE

As you read this, we’ve entered into the season of Lent and our journey toward the cross. Our journey doesn’t stop with the cross, for on the other side of it is the mystery of the empty tomb. Like any journey, it is best approached with a great deal of preparation. Yet we all know that is not always done. 

Journeys can take on a mystical bent and a life of their own, sometimes wondering where we’re headed and sometimes stuck where we’ve already been. As I look back upon my life, I often wonder where this journey is taking me. Embracing where I’ve already been, but praying I don’t get stuck there, knowing that as I look forward the future is full of opportunity.  Yet to take advantage of the opportunities requires choices. Once the choices are made, the preparation begins again and new opportunities arise. 

Jesus, Moses and Elijah each spent 40 days in the wilderness. It was not just a time of wandering, but of choices and preparation. As we enter this 40 days of Lent, what new choices can we make and how do we prepare ourselves once the choices are made for the journey ahead?

In Christ’s Love,

Curt Fonken - Pastoral Associate

Pathwalkers & Patchworkers!