Faith UMC, Denton County, celebrates with Bishop

BY DR. JOAN GRAY LABARR
Editor

The North Texas Annual Conference will celebrate the completion of the highly successful VISION 2020 Campaign at the June 3-6 North Texas Annual Conference. As the Conference celebrates, one of the congregations launched with VISION 2020 funds will be hard at work, laying groundwork for its first building.

On Feb. 26 Faith UMC, Denton County, closed on ten acres of land located at 6060 Teasley Lane in the fastgrowing Denton/Corinth area. A few weeks later the church began holding services at John H. Guyer High School, just across the street from the newly acquired land.

Bishop Alfred L. Norris helped the Faith UMC congregation and its pastor, Rev. John McLarty, celebrate their accomplishments when he visited and preached on March 25. There was another reason to celebrate that particular Sunday as the congregation welcomed its first mission trip participants back after a week working in New Orleans.

The 17 mission trip volunteers were in New Orleans March 18-23 to work on homes in the area around Mount Zion UMC. This is the home congregation of Faith member Hilda Sills, who relocated to Denton County following Hurricane Katrina. She returned to Mount Zion with the mission team as the New Orleans church helped host the volunteers.

The New Orleans trip was one kind of reunion. The Bishop's visit to Faith UMC was another. Bishop Norris served Mount Zion earlier in his ministry, and Mrs. Sills is one parishioner he remembers well.

One Sunday Mrs. Sills missed worship to cook for Mount Zion's scholarship breakfast. When her pastor took her to task for missing worship, Mrs. Sills responded with a reassuring word, "Just one of your sermons will last me for two weeks."

Bishop Norris' message gave the Faith UMC congregation an enduring word, one to take them into the future challenges of growing faithfully as the Body of Christ and building a new church on the new land.

Taking his text from Matthew's account of how the devil tempted Jesus as he was set to launch his ministry, Bishop Norris acknowledged that seeing mission trip video clips of lingering devastation in New Orleans evoked conflicting emotions, as he reflected: "Jesus must have had conflicting emotions inside himself when he was in the wilderness being tempted by the Devil."

Observing that Jesus, the One whom Divinity and humanity meet, withstood the temptation to veer off course, the Bishop observed that occasionally, and sometimes repeatedly, the same temptations threaten to take us off course.

"There are meetings, and God knows, in the United Methodist Church, we have them...If the world could be saved by meeting, it would have been saved by the UMC a long time ago," Bishop Norris joked.

He then explained how God, who gives human beings life, has also given the Son to us, the best, highest, most complete example of what it means to be Divine and to be human.

"In all our lives, there are moments in which we feel God is speaking to me and wrapping me in his arms, speaking to me as if I were his own.

"I wish we could stay on the mountain with God, where God speaks to us...I wish we could stay here in Guyer School with everybody embracing, but we still have to get out these doors," he warned.

How do Christians withstand out in the world? Bishop Norris held up Jesus' words that people can't live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Bishop Norris commended those who went on the New Orleans trip, "because of why you went, as evidence that humanity is an interlaced network...Sometimes people from other parts of the country come and remind us that God is alive and well," he said.

In the mixing and mingling of those who come to serve and those who are survivors, the outcome becomes "thrivers," who deal with situations much better than anyone could have expected.

"When you have attended the meeting --- when you know who causes problems, but also, who solves problems, you can make it," the Bishop declared.

How? Because Jesus Christ, fully Divine, fully human, is strong enough to prevail, just as Jesus endured through uncompromised faith in God and his inseparable relationship to the Father.

"All Christians ought to be persons of uncommon faith because they have been to the meeting and have come from the meeting knowing that the God of the past is also the God of the future, and whatever temptations and problems arise, faith in God will get us through it," said Bishop Norris.

"When you go to New Orleans, when you gather for worship, say to Satan and all evil forces in the world, 'we are going to the meeting where we learn of God's presence, power and love'," he emphasized.

Following the sermon, Bishop Norris presided at Holy Communion, assisted by Rev. McLarty and NTC Mission Director Mary Brooke Casad.

Until the new building goes up, the congregation will continue to grow and serve, gathering for worship at Guyer High, 7501 Teasley. Worship services are at 9:20 and 10:40 a.m. For more information on Faith UMC and its ministries, contact Rev. McLarty at 940-535-2267, www.tryfaith .org.