Rodney’s Weekly Enote

Friday July 24, 2015

An eNote from Rodney

Dear Trinity Church Family,

It’s 7:30 on Friday morning and Andrew and his son Liam are getting the van ready for the youth group to spend the weekend at The Hinton Rural Life Center. Hinton Rural Life Center is halfway between Franklin and Murphy on highway 64. It is a United Methodist Retreat Center and has always had a mission of bringing life and vitality to rural churches. The center provides opportunities for groups to come and relax, play and be a part of Christian rural service projects. So that is what our kids are doing this weekend and we pray that they will have fun and return to us safely.

Our fellowship hall was put to a nice use on Thursday. Along with our District Superintendent John Boggs, and the district staff, Deborah Luther and Ruth Kapely, Trinity hosted all the new pastors in the Blue Ridge District. The new pastors met each other and learned about the comings and goings of ministry in our district. There were about 60 people here. How nice it is to have the wonderful facilities we have.

The teaching of the Apostle Paul will be the subject of the sermon on Sunday morning. The Lectionary Epistle Lesson (don’t you love that language, an Epistle is a letter) is from Ephesians 3:14­21. I have a hard time sometimes preaching from Paul’s letters because the language is so dense, good and theologically dense, that unpacking it in a simple way can be difficult. If you have a chance, read Ephesians 3:14­21. It is downright gorgeous language and I’m looking forward to taking a stab at it. Starting in the middle of September we are going to do a six week sermon series on Paul and that could be a great opportunity for us all to get a good grounding in his life and thinking.

Take care and I look forward to seeing you on Sunday morning for worship.

Sincerely,

Rodney

rodhagans@gmail.com