An eNote from Rodney

Friday October 9, 2015

Dear Trinity Church Family,

Thank you all for supporting our Open House last Sunday as we returned upstairs to our sanctuary.  There were 165 in worship and we had a lot of guests. We brought our sermon series on the Apostle Paul to a close and the music was wonderful.  Thanks to Lee and the choir and the singers. Thanks to all who planned it and thanks to all the cleaners; you did some good cleaning on that Saturday morning.  The Open House was a good day for us and may there be many more.

One of the ways we can prepare for many more good days is to think intentionally about who we are as Christians.  You will remember that last December and January the church held some listening sessions as a first step in developing a vision for our congregation.  What you clearly said is that we want to be a welcoming congregation. You talked about the beauty of our worship together.  You said that we want to be a viable and important presence in West Asheville and that we want all of this to be grounded in a strong message of God’s love for us in Jesus.  The Vision team spent time looking at all of this information. Rather than a vision statement in the traditional paragraph form, the Vision Team came up with three short thoughts that capture who we are and want to be right now. Those thoughts are,  Trinity United Methodist Church; A Place to Belong…A Community to Serve…in God’s Abundant Grace.  Our prayer is that these simple thoughts will help us move forward as God’s people on the corner of Haywood Road and Balm Grove Avenue.  

In order to start thinking about these values, in two weeks we are going to begin a sermon series called “Five Practices”  We will look at five traits that have marked the faith of Christians through the centuries and see how we can embrace them both as a congregation and as individuals.  There will be more information on this sermon series this next week.

On this Sunday we will ask a simple question.  Is God more interested in managing our sin or encouraging our growth as his people?  Would the answer make any difference in our faith lives?  We will see.

You received word yesterday about the passing of Cynthia Banks Henderson.  Cynthia was faithful to us and played music for us for a long time.  She was the right person for us at that time and she was good for us.  She was a blessing to us and now she rest in peace.  From the bottom of our hearts, thank you Cynthia.  

I look forward to seeing you upstairs on Sunday.

Sincerely,

Rodney