A Word From Our Pastor - A New Beginning

Hello Friends,

Over the last few weeks, the piles of boxes and crates in the garage have slowly been shrinking in size and number. Stacks of books in the office have gradually found homes on shelves. There has been a steady decline in instances where I turn the wrong way to walk toward my office, or toward the church office, or the restrooms. Names are slowly soaking into my memory with the faces, and some of the names are even correct!

Starting out new in a strange community is never simple or easy, but I have been thankful for the grace extended to my  family over these first weeks, from the meals shared while we pondered the      location of our silverware, plates, and cookware, to the relaxed smiles of people hearing me need their name repeated for the 3rd, 4th, or 10th time, grace has been extended, and gratefully received.

Thank You.

These early weeks of my time at Hoffman are filled with watching and learning. The staff here already know what they are doing, as do our scores of volunteers, so it is up to me to learn about the work they are already doing so I can do my best to equip and empower the ministries of this congregation. The Lunch Bunch, Kids’ Club, Grandma’s Kitchen, as well as meetings and gatherings both formal and informal have been slowly painting a portrait for me as to the work Hoffman UMC accomplishes as we  Make     Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World.

In the coming weeks there are many events I want to make certain you know about. The Staff Parish Relations representatives and myself are going to be working to schedule various “house meetings” to give congregation members opportunities to meet with me and share some of your hopes, dreams, or even fears as we move forward. We will do our best to offer these gatherings at various times, from weekdays to evenings to Sunday afternoons, so I hope you will be able to attend one at a time convenient for you. We are hoping to schedule these through August and September, and if necessary, we will schedule more to assure everyone who wants to participate has a chance.

In the coming weeks, you can expect our new website to  go “live,” and we are excited at the additional opportunities we have to connect not only with the congregation, but  also with those in our community who explore it searching for a home church. At this point I really don’t know a great deal about it, but at least I am aware that I don’t know. The pile of information about this congregation and community that I “don’t know what I don’t know” certainly must be vast, but I am committed to learning what I can before making assumptions that could very well be wrong.

I’ve been a pastor since 1997, so while I am experienced in serving Christ’s Church in this capacity, I also know I have much to learn about this new very active mission field I am called to serve here at Hoffman UMC.

Throughout August we have a few community-building activities we hope you can take part in. On August 2nd is our Annual Church Picnic, hosted by Marty and Wendy Black. Swimming begins at 2:30, with the carry-in dinner at 5:30. Please bring lawn chairs with a covered dish.  On August 9th we hope to be blessed with a report from our Redbird Mission Team.  The August sermon series will focus on Joseph and the School of Hard Knocks he endured. As we have many students and teachers returning to classrooms this month, we thought it would be nice to tie into the difficult lessons we learn in life, some similar to Joseph’s. We intend to have a time set aside to pray for our students and teachers during worship on August 16th. I hope all can attend. While joining you in the journey (and learning names), I am,  In Christ’s Service,

Rev. Robbie D. Scott

From Disney to Lent- February 2015

Dear Church Family,

      I believe that 2015 is off to a great start. In addition to starting a new year, I have also started serving as the director of Young Spirits.  It has been an exciting time to work with them each week.  There are about 80 7th-12th graders registered this year.  Please continue to keep this vital ministry in your prayers. 

      Of course, the highlight of January at my house was the birth of our new little boy.  We named him Walter Randall Williams.  He arrived on Sunday, January 11 at 3:19 PM.  Chanda and I left church that day and headed straight for the hospital. Walter, Chanda, Wesley, and I are doing great.  We are thoroughly enjoying welcoming Walter into our home.  We want to thank everyone for the cards, gifts, and meals during this time.  It has been greatly appreciated.

      Following Walter's birth, I took some time off to spend with my family.  It was great being able to spend some time with Chanda, Wesley and Walter. I appreciate Chris Miller and Tim Benkert for graciously filling in and keeping our series going during this time. 

      Speaking of our series, The Gospel According to Disney has been a great hit.  It has been creative and fun, but most of all, it has been convicting.  The series has challenged us to become the people God has created us to be.  The series will continue into the month of February.  I hope that you will continue to come and invite your friends and family as well.  On February 4th at 6:30, we will be showing the movie Cars in the Activity Center.  I hope that you will join us for this family movie night.  Refreshments will be available.  

      As the Disney series comes to an end, we enter into the season of Lent.  Lent is a season where we prepare ourselves to celebrate the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It is a time of spiritual growth and reflection.  During Lent, we are often challenged to "give something up" in an attitude of fasting.  I invite you to consider what you might fast from during Lent.  As you subtract something from your daily life, I invite you to consider what you might add to draw you closer to God this season.  For example, you might give up television, Facebook, a particular food, a computer game, etc.  You might add reading your Bible, spending time in prayer, reading an inspirational book , etc.  The possibilities are endless.  Make this Lent one where you focus on your relationship with God.  

      Our end of the year figures are completed.  Since 2010, we have had a steady an increase in giving every year.  Also, our Sunday School attendance is the highest it has been in the past 5 years.  That being said, 2014 was the first year since then that our average worship attendance has declined.  I am confident that 2015 will be a year where we can have our highest attendance to date.  We can do that by doing three key things:

1. Make church a weekly priority in your own life.

2. Invite at least 1 person each month to join you at Hoffman.  

3. Pray that God will send us people who need to experience his love and grace.  

      We commissioned our new Church Board on January 11th during worship.  Their first meeting was Thursday, January 29.  We are excited to live into this new structure.  Establishing the Church Board was the first phase of this project.  Now, we are prepared to move into the second phase where we will be developing some new ministry teams.  If you are interested in serving on a ministry team, please let me know.  You can also talk to the members of our Lay Leadership Team (Carol Carter, Julia Circle, Nancy Curry, Ben Garrett, Kathy Kinsey, Denise Sanderson, and Les Trittschuh). They have already met this year to begin the process of starting new teams.  

     Yours in Christ’s Service,

         Pastor Justin

A New Year Brings New Excitement- January 2015

Dear Church Family,

      It is hard to believe that 2015 is right around the corner.  It is an exciting time as we finish out one year and prepare to begin a new one.  We want to thank the church for the generous Christmas gift that we received at the Christmas party.  I also appreciate all of the other cards and gifts.  You are a very supportive and caring church family.  Hoffman is an amazing place to serve.  Thank you!

      While this is our January newsletter, I realize that you will receive this before Christmas. With that in mind, I want to remind you to join us for Christmas Eve services at 7:00 and 10:00 PM.  This year, we will be taking up an offering at our Christmas Eve services.  All money given will go to support the Red Bird Mission.  This is a mission to people living in poverty.  This is a great opportunity to give to those in need this season!

      As we move out of Advent and into a new year, our church eagerly anticipates the arrival of several baby boys who are on the way.  Of course, Chanda, Wesley, and I are one of the homes that is expecting.  While  Chanda may be ready for the pregnancy to be over, we are in no way ready for this baby’s arrival.  We still need to decide on a name, prepare the nursery, and do some shopping.  When I ask Wesley what he is going to do with his baby brother, he says, “Play with cars and toys and sing him lullabies.”  It is certainly a fun time at the Williams’ house. 

      Each year, our Annual Conference invites us to set Breakthrough Goals for our church.  These goals give us a benchmark to look at throughout the year.  Let me show you where we currently stand with our goals for this year:

	2014 Goal	YTD Actual
Average Weekly Worship Attendance	193	178
New Members	5	17
Baptisms	5	10
Weekly Giving	$4734	$4637
Apportionment Giving	100%	100%

      As you can see, we have exceeded our goals for new members and baptisms for 2014.  This is very exciting news, because these are the two goals that relate directly to our mission of making disciples of Jesus.  We have fallen short of our attendance and weekly giving goals. These were both directly related to the winter weather that we had in 2014.  Now, that 2014 is almost over, we are ready to look at our goals for 2015.  Our average weekly worship goal is 185.  We hope to have 12 new members and 10 baptisms in 2015.  We plan to pay 100% of our apportionments.  Let’s pray for the breakthrough that God wants to do in Hoffman UMC in 2015.

      Coming to Hoffman UMC in January is “The Gospel According to Disney.”  During this 7-week series, we are going to look at the stories of transformation found in several Disney films and how they relate to our life and faith.  Here are some of the titles of our upcoming sermons: “Frozen: From Fear to Love,” “Aladdin: From Bondage to Freedom,” “The Lion King: From Defeat to Deliverance,” and “Cinderella: From Rags to Riches.”  During the series, we have some exciting surprises planned.  We will also be showing two of the movies in the Activity Center.  Frozen will be shown on January 7^th at 6:30 PM and Cars on February 4^th at 6:30 PM .  We hope that you will join us for the series. This series was designed to attract people in our community.  So, we hope you will invite your friends and neighbors.  We will have postcards available for you to use to welcome others to join us for this series. 

      As we have talked about throughout this year, 2015 is also a time when we are moving to a new governance structure at our church.  Our new Church Board will begin in January.  Please be in prayer for them as they take on this new role and as we move in a new direction.  It will take some time for us to live into this and continue to work out all of the details.  We will also be spending January and February recruiting people for some of our new ministry teams.  I hope you will consider joining us as we seek to be in ministry to our community and world.

     Yours in Christ’s Service,

        Pastor Justin

 

The Journey to the Manger- December 2014

Dear Church Family,     

      As I write this Decembers Towers article, I have good news—November isn’t over yet.   This coming week is Thanksgiving.  I want to challenge you to look back over the blessings of this year.  Consider all that God has done for you and be thankful.  As we prepare to enter into the last month of 2014, I enjoy looking back at the blessings and looking forward to my hopes for the coming year.  As a church, we certainly have a great deal to be thankful for.  Perhaps even more exciting is that we have great hopes for what God has in store for our future in 2015.

      Speaking of Thanksgiving, we will be joining the Milton Union Council of Churches for a Thanksgiving service hosted by Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on Wednesday, November 26^th at 7 PM. Hoffman is always has one of the largest represented churches at these services.  We hope that you will join us for that special evening as we worship with our brother and sisters from many of the churches in our community.

      As we finish up our Treasure series where we have looked at how you can invest your treasure in the things you treasure, we enter in to our Advent series entitled The Journey to the Manger.  For those of you who were with us during Lent, this series will be similar in that it will give me the opportunity to share some images and stories with you from my trip to the Holy Land this past February.  We had the opportunity to travel to the several of the locations mentioned in the Christmas story, like Bethlehem and Nazareth.  I hope to be able to bring new light to this familiar story as we look at it through the lens of the Holy Land.  I hope that you will join us for this series that will begin on November 30^th and culminate on Christmas Eve.

      Speaking of Christmas Eve, Christmas is right around the corner, which means we have some exciting events on the calendar.  I have been invited to participate in the David Wion and Friends Holiday Concert this year.  The concert will be held at the Dayton Art Institute on Sunday, November 30 at 2 PM.  Our Church Christmas Party will be on December 6^th at 6 PM.  Come with a covered dish to share.  On December 14^th at 12:30, the Future Seekers class will be hosting a Pasta Luncheon with a dessert/gift auction to raise money for Helping Hands.  On December 21^st, the children’s choir will be doing their Christmas performance during the Sunday School hour at 10:15. 

      We will also be having two services on Christmas Eve.  Our 7 o’clock service provides the opportunity for families with children to worship and be home early.  Our 7 o’clock service will also feature our Praise Team from the Open Door Service.  Our 10 o’clock candlelight service is a traditional service with the choir providing a musical Christmas celebration.  Then, we will finish up the Christmas Season with our Service of Lessons and Carols on Sunday, December, 28^th.

      This month we talked about the importance of generosity.  As we move into the month of December, we enter into the season where we remember God’s generosity to us.  He gave us the gift of Jesus.  God became one of us to show us his love.  May we respond to that generosity by continuing to be generous to God and others this Christmas season. Find a way this month to share your time, energy and money in a way that glorifies God and shares with others. 

     Yours in Christ’s Service,

      Pastor Justin

Grateful for Your Generosity- November 2014

Dear Church Family,

      November is here already, which means Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and I certainly have a great deal of to be thankful for. I want to thank all of you for your gifts, cards, and words of encouragement during Pastor Appreciation Month.  Your support and encouragement mean more to me than you know.  I am thankful for the staff that I get to work with at Hoffman.  It makes the work of our church so much easier.  I am thankful for each one of you and what you do to make Hoffman UMC what it is today.

      I am thankful for our growing family.  Chanda is doing well with her pregnancy.  The January 16th due date is coming very quickly, and we have so much to do before then…pick out a name, paint and decorate a nursery, re-baby proof our house, etc.  It is an exciting time!  While Wesley is full of energy and learning more and more each day, we cannot imagine what it will be like with two little boys running around, but we know it will be an adventure!

      Last month was a busy one.  We had the Fall Festival of Praise, Activity Center Dedication, Charge Conference, Crop Walk, Trunk or Treat, and much more.  You would think that things might slow down a bit, but we have a great deal planned for November as well.  We will be hosting our Annual Election Day Dinner (November 4^th) and Craft Show (November 22^rd).  In addition, we will be participating in the Milton Union Council of Churches Thanksgiving service on Wednesday, November 26^th at 7 PM.  Since December is a busy month, I thought you would like to put the date of our church Christmas Party on your calendar for December 6^th.  We will also have our two Christmas Eve Services at 7 and 10.   

      In November we are doing a sermon series on Matthew 6 entitled Treasure.  The study will be based on Jesus’ words, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).  In addition to a daily devotional book that goes with the series, there will be several small groups that you can take part in. Over a period of four weeks, we will look at the many ways that our treasure (time, energy, money) affects our hearts. We will consider how financial challenges in our personal lives affect our relationships with people and with God. We will see how giving helps to determine the way we feel and act. If you have stress related to money or feel there may be more that God is calling you to do with your resources, this will be a helpful series.  We look forward to an exciting month considering our treasure and God’s treasure. Here is what you have to look forward to this month:

· Where Is Your Treasure? (Matthew 6:19-21)                

· Week 2: The Problem with Two Masters (Matthew 6:24

· Week 3: Giving Your Treasure Back to God (Matthew 6:1-6)

· Week 4: Don’t Worry ’Bout a Thing (Matthew 6:25-34)

      As I mentioned earlier, we had our annual church charge conference on October 15^th.   During this charge conference, we approved our new structure for 2015.  I took the opportunity to share a little of the rationale behind this new structure during our sermon series in October.  We are eager to move into this new structure at Hoffman Methodist Church because we believe it will  maximize our mission and ministry.  The main administrative body of the church will now be called the Church Board, and the model we used for developing this new structure is called the accountable leadership model.  One of our goals for 2015 is to make sure that everything we do as a church connects with our mission and ministry. We are excited about being creative as we try to make these connections happen.

      As we move into November and prepare for our time of talking about stewardship, I always like to spend some time to reflect on how we are doing financially as a church.   First of all, we have reason to celebrate.  We paid off our Activity Center this year.  We are now a debt free church.  Your generosity and commitment made this possible.  As I mentioned at the dedication, this is a building that has been utilized by our church and our community a great deal over the past 11 years.  I am grateful for your generosity to this project. 

      For 2014, our budget required an income of $246,175.50.  As you may remember, we celebrated the fact that we met our budget goal in 2012 and 2013.  As of September 30, 2014, we are $7,042.32 behind our YTD budget goal.  While our church has experienced growth in membership this year, our giving has gone down when compared to YTD last year.  This is partially due to the winter weather that fell on Sundays to start the year off.  In March of this year, I reported to you that average attendance for the year was 148 and that giving had been significantly impacted.  We never really came out of that slump.  While I am not convinced that 2014 will be a year that we meet our budget goal (remember faith is not one of my top 3 gifts), I know and trust that God will continue to work through our church to do miraculous things as God has done in 2014. 

      Through your generosity this year, the church has continued to reach more and more people in our community.  So far, we have had an average worship attendance of 178.  We have also had 11 baptisms and 15 new members.  We sent a mission team to Haiti, and donated significantly to the Imagine No Malaria and other missional efforts.  We have a developed a vibrant youth ministry, and our Bible Studies and Sunday School classes are reaching more people.

      On November 23^rd, as we finish up our series on Treasure, we are going to give you the opportunity to make a commitment to giving to the ministries of Hoffman.  We invite you to do so by filling out a Commitment Card (attached at the bottom).   The cards will also be available on Sunday mornings.  These commitments help us be responsible stewards of what you give.  With these cards we can establish an estimated income for the coming year.  We can better discover how 2015 will become a year where we meet our budget as we did the last two years.  Last year, we only had 46 commitment cards submitted; however, this year, we are hoping to receive at least 60.  I hope that you will prayerfully consider filling out a commitment card and bringing it to church with you on Sunday, November 23^rd or mailing it to the church to the attention of Joy Paulus, our financial secretary.

      We hope that you will join us in making 2015 one of the most fruitful years in the history of Hoffman United Methodist Church!
Yours in Christ’s Service,

    Pastor Justin