John Louk

When I was preparing to start a new church, I learned that a new church is a movement, a group of people working together with passion and excitement. At some point, for that movement to continue it needs to organize. When it does and becomes an institutionalized congregation, however, the movement begins to die because the institution seeks to preserve itself. Churches in that situation, often have lengthy committee meetings that produce very little if nothing. “We met for three hours but we couldn’t decide whether to paint the fellowship hall beige or off-white. So we established a task force to study the issue.” The Sunday after our General Conference concluded, I asked the congregation if they had ever heard of a church meeting where nothing happened. People chuckled. I explained there had been a church meeting but nothing had been accomplished. Of course, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Still, it’s not much of an exaggeration. Bishop Will Willimon from North Alabama said it...

General Conference , The United Methodist Church’s top legislative body, has begun meeting in Tampa, Florida. Nearly a thousand delegates from around the world set policy and direction for the church, as well as handle other business. General Conference is the only entity that speaks officially for The United Methodist Church. As always, there are many issues discussed and voted upon such as sexuality (the subject of homosexuality has been debated at every General Conference since 1972), abortion, church membership, immigration, war and peace, financial reform, and the environment. In the midst of this, the Council of Bishops and the Commission on the General Conference are calling for peace and sharing what God expects of us in our Holy Conferencing ( Colossians 3:12-16a, 17 ). I think three issues this year have the potential truly to change The United Methodist Church. STRUCTURE Much research (the Call to Action ) has been done and it says the majority of United Methodist ...

The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. (Mark 4:26-27 NLT) Why do some people respond positively to God’s word while others do not? In the Gospels Jesus tells the parable of the sower ( Matthew 13 , Mark 4 , Luke 8 ). It’s a story about a farmer planting seed. Probably Jesus’ listeners immediately knew he was talking about teaching or preaching. Sowing was a stock metaphor. Jesus says that some seed fell on the path and birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on rocky ground. It sprouted immediately but died because of a lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns that choked the seeds. Other seed fell into good soil and grew and the harvest was a hundredfold or sixty or even thirty. A first century Galilean farmer would be very excited with a tenfold harvest, taking in ten bushels for every one bushel of seed planted. About seven bushels wou...

We are making a big transition in one of our communication practices. This week we are mailing a paper copy of the monthly newsletter for the last time. We will no longer print and mail in bulk The Forecaster . Rather, we will email it to as many people as possible. We will still print and mail a paper copy to our shut ins, of course, and to those who do not have electronic access, and we will still print and have some paper copies available at the church. We are transitioning to a new way of communicating. This is good stewardship as it is cost effective (the new postage rate just about doubles our cost of mailing), saves paper, and utilizes the technology that many if not most people already have in their homes or access to elsewhere. We are certainly not the first congregation to make this change. Many churches have already begun this practice. The Iowa Annual Conference also continues working to have good stewardship practices. The Bishop announced that the Sessions Committee (...

Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ who will transform the world. So how are we doing? I want to tell you about Deb Black and Ed Foss. Deb, our staff person for care ministries, brought Ed onto the Care Team. It started when Ed was in the hospital having major surgery. He was touched by the care he received from the visitation team who came to him and prayed with him each day. During that time, God touched Ed and opened his heart to be a part of that ministry. Deb did a wonderful job. She invited him to shadow her when she made visits in the hospital. She did the ministry and Ed watched her. Then she invited Ed to do the ministry with her. Then she went with Ed while he did the ministry. Finally, she turned him loose and now Ed (and Diane!) are ministering as part of the Care Team. And they are caring for people beyond the hospital! In assessing the state of Salem, besides the anecdotal evidence there are some benchmark statistics to which we want to pay attention. The...

"Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come" (1 Timothy 4:8 NLT) . January 1, on our Western calendar, marks the beginning of a new year. Many people make resolutions for the upcoming year. Some of the most popular resolutions in our culture include exercising and losing weight, being more healthy, getting organized, learning something new, and getting out of debt. Unfortunately, most resolutions fail before the month is over because often we don’t have a plan to make it happen or we don’t have the discipline. As Christians, rather than simply making resolutions for the new year, we talk about the habits we practice that form our lives in the way of Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells us that physical exercise is good but spiritual discipline is better with benefits now and in the life to come. One of the early Church Fathers, Tertullian (c.160 – c.225) said “Christians are made, not born.” It...

Our Study Committee did a wonderful job this summer preparing a report to meet the requirements of The Book of Discipline for our future construction. Anna Dunnwald, Kristy Flack, Dave Jandik, Dan Whitaker, Kathy Wickham, and I presented the Study Committee Report to the Leadership Board and Staff this fall and together discussed Salem’s strengths and weaknesses. All of this information will be shared with the Charge Conference in order to authorize the building project and elect a Building Committee at the beginning of 2012. They will work with an architect to develop preliminary plans. Salem has nearly $500,000 from the buyout. This is good seed money. Salem will need a capital campaign to raise money for construction and will most likely need to build in phases. Near the end of the Study Committee/Leadership Board/Staff conversation, the questions was asked, “So, what did we learn tonight?” It was a great question. In many ways, there were no big surprises. We know that Salem ...