Clearing the Way For Jesus!

Dear Church Family, 

    

      I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year.  I know that I tried to be more thankful for everything that I have.  I am realized especially how blessed I am to have a wonderful wife, an adorable son, and an amazing church.  I hope that you have been able to look at all the blessings you have been bestowed and be thankful as well. This past month, I received an unexpected honor that I would like share with you.  The Milton Union National Honor Society inducted me in as an honorary member for my service in the community.  I was very surprised to have been honored in this way, and I am thankful to be in such a great community. 

      Believe it or not, Christmas is THIS month.  Of course, we have several opportunities for you at Hoffman.   Our Christmas party will be on December 1^st, featuring the Milton Union Show Choir as our guests.   On December 9^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.  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.  This year, 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. 

     Chanda, Wesley, and I would also like to invite you stop by the parsonage (141 S. Main St.) on Sunday, December 16th for a Christmas Open House.  This is an opportunity for you to visit us in the parsonage and have a time of food, fun, and fellowship as we celebrate Christmas.

      Our Advent series this year is entitled “Christ-mess: Clearing the Way for Jesus.”  In the midst of all the busyness of the season, this happy time can begin to be quite a mess.  Decorations are everywhere waiting to be hung up.  Presents are waiting to be wrapped.  Wrapping paper, scissors, and tape are scattered all over.  Too much money is spent.  I think you are beginning to see what I am talking about.  We are going to talk about how we need to clear the way for Jesus in our lives.  I hope you will join us for the four Sundays in Advent as we look at this together.

      Now, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but we have a very exciting series planned for January.  We are going to be having some of our staff and several guests share their God stories with us.  They will include: an orphan who overcame many trials and founded the American Orphan Association; a man who was saved from a life of addiction; a woman who was a true pioneer, entering into ministry when the church wasn’t sure what to do with those “women pastors”; and a young man who has had his life changed by answering a call from God to be a missionary.  I hope you will join us for this exciting series.  Be sure to invite your friends as well.  These services are sure to be encouraging and inspiring. 

   

     Christmas is a time of giving to others.  It is a time when we can serve one another and help those in need in our community.  We will have several opportunities for you to serve and give this Christmas season.  Our church has  signed up to ring the Salvation Army Bell at Mr. Deals on December 15.  If you would like to help, see Les Trittschuch.  You also have the opportunity to participate in Helping Hands this year.  You can help financially by attending the Dessert/Gift Auction.  You can also help setup, sort, pack, or load boxes.  This is a great ministry that reaches out to those in need at Christmas time.  I hope you will find an opportunity to serve others and share God’s love this Christmas!

Yours in Christ’s Service,

Pastor Justin 

Reach Your God Potential

Dear Church Family,

      It is hard to believe that October is already here.  It seems like yesterday that we were beginning to start a new service at Hoffman.  That was 6 months ago!  We are continuing to see God at work in our church and in our lives.  I don’t know about you, but as I look back over all of my life—the joys and struggles alike—I realize that God has been with me through it all. 

      We have been having a great time at Hoffman.  On our last membership Sunday, we took in 13 members!  We will be having a new member class on the first three Wednesday evenings in October to welcome more into our church family.  On Sunday, September 23, we gathered at the river for a baptism.  Six people were baptized in the Stillwater River that afternoon.  We also had our Back to Church Sunday on September 16th.   We challenged everyone to invite their friends, family, and neighbors to church for that Sunday.   For the day, we had a total of 259 in worship.  What a great day it was!  As a result, Rev. Tim Benkert and I will be rapping in the service on Sunday, September 30th.

      On September 23rd, we began a challenge at Hoffman. We are participating in the 30 Day Church Challenge. We continue this challenge through most of October.  Our goal in this series is to continue to grow as we strive to reach our God potential.  We are doing this by looking at 5 of the purposes that the early church was committed to.  Many have signed up to receive a copy of the devotional book that will take you through the next 30 days with scriptures, prayers, and challenges.  My prayer is that all of us will continue to grow closer to God as we work through this together.

      October is going to be a busy time at Hoffman UMC.  We have many exciting things that will be continuing throughout the month.  Our Fall Talks series will continue on every Sunday afternoon in October at 4 PM.  We have some great talks planned that you won’t want to miss. On Saturday, October 6th, we will be hosting the Triumphant Quartet in concert.  If you are interested in tickets for this concert, contact David Hayes. The Quilt Show is also coming to Hoffman in October.  On October 21st at 2 PM, we will participate in the Crop Walk.

      This past month, we welcomed a new bishop to the West Ohio Annual Conference.  On September 1, Bishop Gregory V. Palmer began as the leader of the United Methodist Church in West Ohio.  We are honored to have such an inspirational leader in West Ohio!  On a personal note, as I am approaching ordination, Bishop Palmer will be the bishop that ordains me. We will have the opportunity to meet Bishop Palmer on Sunday, October 14 at 2:30 PM.  The event will be held at Gighamsburg Church.  If you are interested in attending, please let Pastor Justin know. 

      Our annual Charge Conference will be October 17 at 8 PM.  This is the meeting when we take care of all of our annual business of the church.  During this meeting, we will also be asking for God’s guidance and direction as we set our Breakthrough Goals for 2013.  Please pray daily this Breakthrough Prayer with us:

 O God, renew and revive our church, allowing the Holy Spirit breakthrough and unleash new life. Empower our pastor and staff to proclaim the good news of Jesus’ life-changing love.  Transform and use me boldly, without limits, to reach and make new disciples of Jesus Christ and change the world. Amen. 

    

Yours In Christ’s Service,

Pastor Justin

Life Is A Highway

Dear Church Family,

June has certainly kicked the summer off with activity at Hoffman. Lunch Bunch is going strong. The Garage Sale was a huge success. We painted the Activity Center. Several of our members participated in the West Ohio Annual Conference. It has been a busy time at Hoffman, but a good time. God continues to work in the life of our church. It has also been a busy month for me. I have had two weddings, two funerals, an anniversary, and a class reunion to plan. All of this busyness is beginning to catch up with me.

As many of you know, it is customary for a pastor to take off a day during the week since he or she works on Sundays. (Now, some of you may be surprised that pastors work more than just that one day.) One of my goals for the year was to take off one day per week. Up until now, I have not been able to do that. However, I know that it is necessary. Beginning in June, I have begun to take off Mondays each week. I wanted to let you know of this change in my schedule.

Chanda and I have certainly been enjoying our time with Wesley. He is such a blessing! Everyone keeps asking how we are sleeping. We are sleeping well. If I look tired, it has nothing to do with Wesley. He is growing up quick. If you are on Facebook, you can follow my album “Wesley- One Day at a Time” as I post a picture each day. Someone said that I was the proudest father that they know. I am not sure about that, but I am very proud to have a healthy little boy. Thanks for your gifts and prayers!

Hoffman has received a new addition to our staff in June. Chris Miller joins us as our Children’s Ministry Director. Chris has a wonderful passion for ministry, and we are so excited to be welcoming her to Hoffman UMC. She comes to us from Aley UMC in Beavercreek, where she served as Children’s Ministry Director. Be sure to talk with her and welcome her to Hoffman. She has a passion and love for Jesus that are contagious.

As we move into July, we have many exciting things going on. We are planning to have two floats in the Fourth of July Parade—one for Kids Club and one for the Open Door. The Art Show is also coming to Hoffman July 13-15. Kids Club will start in July and Lunch Bunch will continue. Also, you will want to mark your calendars for our Church Picnic, which will be held on August 5th. I am excited to say that we are seeing many new faces around Hoffman. I hope that you are beginning to meet and welcome new folks. Do not forget the importance of greeting someone that you do not know. Think of how you would want to be greeted at a church you were visiting.

In an effort to get these new folks better acquainted with the church, we are planning a couple of events this summer. Pizza with the Pastor is scheduled for July 8th at 12:30. We are planning a membership retreat on a Saturday from 9:00-3:30. We are trying to see what date works best for all interested. If you are interested in either of these events, call the church office to sign up or sign up at the welcome table.

Also, in July, as many are out traveling on the highways as they go on vacation this summer, we are going to be starting an exciting new sermon series entitled, “Life Is a Highway.” During this series we are going to be looking at different roads in the Bible—the Damascus Road, Road to Emmaus, Romans Road, and Jericho Road. As we look at these roads, we are going to talk about how each of us has a unique faith journey. Each of our lives has different highways that we travel on as we reach out to God. This will be a series affirming each of our faith journeys. I hope you will join us for this exciting time.

I know that the summer is busy, but please make Hoffman a part of your summer plans. We are excited about what God is doing here, and we want you to be a part of it.

Yours In Christ’s Service,
Pastor Justin

Reaching Up, Reaching In, Reaching Out

Dear Church Family and Friends,

What an exciting time to be a part of Hoffman United Methodist Church! I believe that God is going to use our church to do great things in our community in 2012. I hope that you believe that as well.

We have spent the past 5 Sundays talking about prayer—reaching up toward God. I hope that each of you have been able to make prayer a part of your life. We talked about the acronym PRAY—Praise, Repent, Ask, and Yield. So, as you pray, praise God for what he has done through Hoffman, repent as you seek God’s forgiveness of when we have neglected to follow his will, ask God to meet our needs, and yield to God’s will for your life and our church. Pray for our church. Pray for me. Pray for our community. Pray that God will use you and our church to reach new people in our community.

I have had an amazing time throughout this series as I have spent time in prayer each morning (around 5:30) in our sanctuary—praying for you, my family, our church, and our community. It has defiantly strengthened my prayer life, and I hope that your prayer life has been strengthened as well. As you know, Chanda and I are anticipating the birth of our first child. The due date is May 8th. We appreciate your prayers as we enter into this exciting phase of our lives.

As many of you are aware, we have just entered into the 40 days (not including Sundays) leading up to Easter, which we call Lent. Lent is a time for rest, repentance, prayer, service, self-examination, and self-denial. It is a time for Christian growth and renewal. As we prepare for the time when we reflect on Christ’s gift of salvation to us, we generally make sacrifices by fasting. This is not necessarily a fast from food, but it is sacrificially giving up something in our lives. During Lent, we fast from something that we do a lot and find pleasure in. This fasting is done as a discipline of self-control and to help us identify with Christ’s sufferings on our behalf. Consider what you might give up this Lenten season and share it with me and others. It can be an opportunity to share your faith.


To encourage awareness of global health issues, especially in our partnerships, the conference has invited us to participate in a common challenge. Our goal for the Walking to the Four Corners of the World challenge is to get as many people in the West Ohio Conference to contribute to walking the total distance around the world, passing through the four partnerships, and ending at Lakeside, in time for the 2012 Annual Conference to begin. Roughly 27,000 miles.

We have created a team for Hoffman, and we hope you will consider joining us as we walk to the 4 corners of the world. Sign up and be sure to join the Hoffman team and start tracking how many miles you walk today!

During the month of March we are going to be looking at a new sermon series, called Reaching Up, Reaching In, Reaching Out. During this series, we are going to look at how to prepare ourselves to reach out to others. We are going to focus on caring for others, being in prayer for others, and sharing with others. I hope that you will join us for this series as we look at reaching up, reaching in, and reaching out.

Reaching out is always important for us as a church; however, as we anticipate the beginning of a new worship service, it is more important than ever. If our new service is going to be successful, we need to be intentional about reaching out. Our new worship service will be called The Open Door, and it will officially begin on April 1, 2011 at 11:15 AM. We are hoping to reach new people in our community who do not have a church home. The music in the service will be lead by a praise band. Our tagline for the service is “Come as you are,” letting people know that it will be less formal and welcoming to all people. We are excited about whom God is going to bring to Hoffman through The Open Door.


The actual success of this new service relies heavily upon our own members. Statistics show that a personal invitation to someone is at least 20 times more effective than a public announcement. If we wanted 50 new people in our church, we would need to send out about 6,700 postcards to get close to that number, which would cost around $3,000. For the same result, we could ask each of our church members to invite three people, which is FREE. Now, that is statistics, and statistics are not everything, but I think that you can agree that personal invitations are much more effective and cheaper. I hope that you will begin to think about people whom you might invite to The Open Door at Hoffman.

This past month, we had some exciting things happening as we anticipate the start of our new service. We had the opportunity to have an Evening of Praise and Worship at Hoffman to officially launch our promotional efforts of The Open Door. We did not promote this event heavily, but we did invite Young Spirits and our church family. We had 69 people in attendance! We will be having another Evening of Praise and Worship on Saturday, March 17. We hope to at least double our attendance at this event. We want to invite everyone in our community to this evening. There will not be a sermon, but it will be packed with music, scripture, and more. It will give them an opportunity to see a little about what the new service will be like.

March is an exciting month for the Open Door. We will be having three Worship Preview Services. These services will be held on Sundays at 11:15. They will be on March 11, 18, and 25. These services give us the opportunity to get in the rhythm of having two services prior to our launch in April. They also give us a chance to “rehearse” what worship will look like. We hope that you will come and help us evaluate what went well and what we could do better.

We also welcome you to invite friends to the Worship Preview Services. There are several reasons why inviting people to the worship preview service will be valuable for us and possibly easier for you. First of all, you can tell them that it is not really a worship service, but it is a preview of our worship service. When you invite them, you can say something like, “We are getting ready to start a new service at our church in April. We are having some previews for the service in March. We are trying to be open to new people. We would like to get the opinion of someone who is not part of our church. We have been there so long, it is hard for us to get the perspective of someone who is not there. Would you come and help us out?”

This is non-threatening. In asking in this way, you let them know that we value their opinion and feedback. We allow them to have a voice. It also gives them an opportunity to be a part of the service before it officially starts, which may cause them to want to be a part of it or at least to come back to see what it is like.

Because of the cost effective nature of publicity on Facebook, our church has tried to utilize it to keep people in our community aware of what is going on at our church. We currently have 121 fans of our Hoffman page. The Facebook page for The Open Door received 49 fans in its first 4 days. Be sure to go to Facebook and like our pages. Talk about them. Invite your friends to join them.

Well, I have been at Hoffman for 18 months now, and I believe God wants to use Hoffman UMC to reach our community with the message of God’s love, hope, and grace. Pray for our church, our community, and your pastor on a daily basis.

Yours In Christ’s Service,
Pastor Justin