Being Thankful

Every day should be a day of Thanksgiving, but we can still appreciate the national Thanksgiving holiday that occurs every 4th Thursday in November. It’s a set aside time for us to count our many blessings and give thanks for all that God has provided.

Be thankful for:

• Paying taxes, because it means you have a job!

•  Clothes that fit too snug, because it means you have more than enough to eat!

•  A lawn that needs mowing and windows that need cleaning and shutters that need painting, because it means you have a home!

•  The parking spot at the far end of Wal-Mart’s parking lot, because it means you can still walk!

• The huge heating bill in the winter and the high electric bill in the summer, because it means you are comfortable all year long!
• Birthdays, because it means another year of life!
• Paying your rent or mortgage, because it means you have a roof over your head to live in!
• The complaining you hear about the government, because it means we have freedom of speech!
• The folks in your church who sing off key, because it means you can hear!
• The pile of laundry and ironing, because it means you have clothes to wear!
• The alarm that goes off in the early morning hours, because it means you are alive!
• Jesus who saw us in all our sin but still loved us and gave His life for us and then adopted us into His family!

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

What to Wear to Evangelistic Retreat

Piedmont Region Lay Academy 
Black & Gold Business: CLC Membership pin, Life Member Stole or Medallion       

Friday Tours   
Black & Gold Casual: CLC apparel, CLC Membership pin/Medallion      

Welcome Program and Communion Service   
Black & Gold Church: CLC Membership pin, Life Member Stole or Medallion      

Challenge Breakfast    
Black & Gold Business: CLC Membership pin, Life Member Stole or Medallion      

Luncheon   
Black & Gold Business: CLC Membership pin, Life Member Stole or Medallion      

Fellowship Banquet  
Black & Gold After-Five
      
Life Members Vesper Hour   
Black & Gold: Come as you are

Sunday Worship @ Host Church   
Black & Gold Church: CLC Membership pin    

Church Music Academy

Calling All Musicians & Vocalists...The Connectional Lay Council is sponsoring a Church Music Academy on October 30th. The purpose is to enhance the spiritual experience and appreciation of different types of church music and their proper use in Zion Methodist worship. Participants will be exposed to a diversity of church music genres.

Topics:

• God's purpose for music ministry in the church
• Diversifying your music ministry (reaching the needs of all age groups)-including the role of instruments
• Advantages of technology in the music ministry
• Using what you have to have to create an effective music ministry

Facilitators/Musicians
Crystal Bailey-Midwest Episcopal Area
Jonathan French-Piedmont Episcopal Area

Location
Renaissance Charlotte Suites Hotel
2800 Coliseum Centre Drive Charlotte, NC 28217

Schedule
9:00 – 10:45am    Lay Academy for youth and young adults
11:00 – 6:00pm    Music Academy
6:00 – 7:30pm      Free time
7:30pm                Mini concert at Fellowship Dinner (black and gold attire)
  
Registration - $25.00
Includes music academy instruction packet, boxed lunch and fellowship dinner

Listen As God Says "I Love You"

Good morning Facebook family
Woke up a little earlier than usual. Give all the credit to my granddaughter. Now we are in the middle of a stare down. Determined not to smile first, I pulled out the usual tricks, but no success. Now she's closer to crying than smiling. My brain is racing trying to think of something creative and exciting to make her smile. Then it hit me. I started to simply sing "I love you, Zyllah" over and over again. Within seconds, she laid her head on my chest and just laid still and listened to me sing.

All this just to say, God loves each of us. While we are waiting to see miracles signs and wonders, we are missing the best thing about our father, LOVE.

Listen as God says "I love you" and lay your head/worries/concerns on God's chest. Just like I did with my granddaughter, God will wrap his arms of love and affection and provide peace and protection.

Father thank you for loving me unconditionally.

Baby Zyllah

**Excerpted from Jason Linton's facebook status. Edited for clarity.**

Hymnody

Your Education Committee thinks well, quite well indeed, of a special daily routine of setting aside time to Spiritually energize with God. Further, we believe God put into the hearts and souls of many men and women lyrics and music that has sustained and blessed thousands of believers. These Hymns have also shone light into dark areas of lives that are blighted by sin and have caused folk to seek the Favor of Almighty God. Thus, this maiden voyage into the realm of a Meditation/Hymnody publication.

We are seeking contributors who will entwine the beauty and impactful value of the Hymns of the Church with a Meditation that will inspire, bless and help us through the vicissitudes of life. It is our desire to provide 365 days of Spiritual enhancement.

We are excited about this venture and we invite, nay urge Volunteer contributors to share our Meditation/Hymnody publication anytime before Monday, October 10, 2010.
Choose your favorite Hymn; wrap a Meditation around it in 300 words or less. Our publication will be ½ page of an 8 ½ by 11” sheet. Please email your contribution to J. Fairbanks Leach -jfairlea3671@sbcglobal.net - Call Margaret Brown at 1-910-347-1521 or J. F. Leach 937-372-1079 for further information.

What If There Were No Bibles?

This past weekend I watched the movie, “The Book of Eli” starring Denzel Washington. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic 2043 where Washington’s character, Eli, is coming to the end of a 30 year journey. In his possession is the last remaining copy of the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

While watching the movie, I picked up on many themes—faith, perseverance, and illiteracy. But the most striking was the idea of scarcity and how it drives our behaviors. Throughout the movie, we see how scarcity creates fear and further divides the haves from the have-nots. In one powerful scene, Eli shares that before the War people had more than they needed and threw away things that others kill for today (such as shampoo, batteries, wet naps, water, and even the Bible). Are things more valuable to us when we can’t have them? What if we were faced with living in a world where there were no Bibles? Would that affect our desire to be in possession of it? Read it? Study it? Learn it?

Fortunately, in our current reality we have free and unrestricted access to the Bible. Let’s not wait until we are faced with the possibility of losing it before we start to treasure the message of God’s love, grace, and salvation.

Vacation Bible School Memories

I love Vacation Bible School! I look forward to it every year. Some of my earliest memories of church are about VBS week. I most vividly remember the songs we sang, the games we played and the cookies we ate for refreshments. And although I don’t remember all the lessons, it made an impression on me that church could be a fun place.

Throughout the years, I’ve had the pleasure of being involved with VBS in several different ways, even serving as director while I was still in high school. But most of the time, my VBS experience has been as a teacher. And after teaching all levels from nursery through adults, I must admit that preschoolers (ages 2-5) were my all-time favorite. That’s because they get to do all the fun stuff like singing, dancing, coloring, cutting, pasting, drawing, and acting out bible stories.

Despite the many joys of teaching, leading and directing; my favorite VBS role is that of student. It doesn’t happen very often, but when the opportunity presents itself, I’m ready to jump all over it. That is why I was so excited when a friend invited me and my children to attend VBS at her church last month. The theme was “Step Up and Go Green For Jesus” and provided me with a new perspective of the creation story (more on that in a later post).

Now it’s your turn. What are your favorite VBS memories?

Evangelism

Our quadrennial theme is "Maximizing Our Mission By Managing Our Ministry", with this year's emphasis on  EVANGELISM. Zealous proclamation and spreading of the gospel to those who have not received it. Witnessing of the love, compassion, grace and Zion's definitive rules and regulations. Follow the mandates of the Scripture and implement the Great Commission. Tell erring men and women, boys and girls of the goodness of God.

When was the last time you extended a serious and personal invitation, "Come With Us to Christ" to someone who was in need of saving grace?

What's New?

The Connectional Lay Council’s (CLC) Expanded Young Adult and Youth initiative, which is an interdepartmental collaboration with the Christian Education Department and the Women’s Home & Overseas Missionary Society, continues to move ahead full throttle toward reaching the ambitious goal of increasing the young adult/youth membership to 5,000 by the Convention in 2013.

Like the journey of a thousand miles incremental progress is being made with the accomplishment of tangible objectives. An operational matrix for the initiative now includes a three pronged Call To Action engagement plan. The Call To Action, introduced at the 9th Quadrennial Convention in July 2009, was formerly adopted by the CLC Executive Board at it’s meeting in Feb 2010 as a component of the Strategic Plan.

In order to raise the level of accountability and to measure progress at the local, district, and conference levels, CLC Regional Directors are being required to include the Call to Action performance matrix tool as an element of their standard report at bi-annual board meetings. Measurement targets include the number of regional lay academies conducted tailored to the needs and interest of young people, the number of mentoring programs at the local and conference levels and the number of new young adult and youth lay memberships.

The Connectional Lay Council will continue to champion the effort to edify, encourage, recruit, and train Zion’s youth and young adults for lay ministry by sponsoring promotional activities at all denominational meetings. Our next promotional event will take place at the Quadrennial Christian Education Convention July 2010 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The format will be similar to the one hosted at the 2009 CED Winter Meeting in Dallas, Texas. Youth and Young Adult attendees will be encouraged to participate in a “How Well Do you Know Your Church?” contest. Individuals will be asked to complete a Zion focused historical quiz, answer questions related to the worship experience, and to offer ideas and recommendations on how the church can be more effective in reaching and retaining the young people. The goal in Raleigh will be to reach a larger audience than in Dallas. Prizes will be offered as incentives for participation. The CLC leadership is also exploring the feasibility of conducting a lay academy at the 2010 CED convention for Christian Educators utilizing the Christian Education Department theme.

The CLC is pleased to report that the results of the 2009 survey can be viewed on the CLC web site (http://www.clcamezion.org/) by clicking on the Youth Initiative banner. Please take a few minutes to visit the site and review the results. The headline measures are most enlightening. Next steps in support of the retention initiatives include a formal report out of the survey results to Christian Educators at the CED winter meeting in Phoenix, AZ. December 2010.

In closing, I leave with this quote from John Maxwell (lead¬ership expert), “The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership”. The CLC through its young adult/youth initiative is fully committed to the highest calling.


Submitted by Yvonne Baskerville, 1st Vice President