2024
A Letter from Pastor Andy: April 24, 2024
Dear U Park Family,
Have you ever experienced something that seemed miraculous? Someone is healed from a terminal illness. You know something before it happens. What looks like certain disaster is somehow averted. Someone who couldn’t possibly know your situation somehow does. These things are real. I’ve seen them, and probably you have too.
Of course, sometimes it’s the opposite: those horrible moments when something awful happens for no reason, or a person we love falls on hard times they don’t deserve. Most of us have probably experienced those things too. And as easy as it might be to believe that God is favoring us when things go well, it’s hard (and cruel to ourselves and others) to believe that God decides to make things go badly for us when they don’t. “It’s God’s plan” is cold comfort when we’re grieving. “God is punishing us” is even worse. Human beings have always tried to understand the workings of the universe, and usually we end up mystified.
This Sunday, I’ll conclude our “What Now?” sermon series looking at how the first Christians set the direction of the church, and how in some ways that direction still holds for us today. We’ll be looking at stories from the Book of Acts in which terrible things happen, and how the people of the early church responded. I hope you’ll join us for worship at 9:00 in Wasser Chapel, or at 11:00 in our main Sanctuary. If you can’t be here in person, our worship service will be live on Facebook at 11:00 (https://www.facebook.com/UParkumcdenver/) and uploaded to YouTube by Sunday evening (https://www.youtube.com/c/UniversityParkUMCDenver).
On Mother’s Day, May 12, our Children’s and Care ministry director Bethany Hader Crabbs will be hosting our quarterly Family Sunday School. All ages are invited to gather in the East Fellowship Hall at 10:00 to participate together in games and conversation, and for the adults to gain a sense of what our church’s children are learning in our Sunday School program. The family Sunday School is a fun way to live into our vision of being an intergenerational congregation, and I hope you can be there.
Our celebration Sunday is coming up May 19, as we mark the beginning of our Summer programming for the church. We’ll also be celebrating our congregation’s graduates that day, so if you’re graduating or someone in your family is, email Bethany Hader Crabbs (bcrabbs@uparkumc.org) with a picture of the graduate and information about their degree, diploma, or certificate.
After the 11:00 worship on Celebration Sunday, we’ll have lunch in the courtyard prepared by Chef Stephen Rohs of Painted Bench Catering, and we’ll have a bounce house on the courtyard lawn for the kids of the neighborhood. This is a great day to invite friends to church, especially if they have children or youth in their household or family. That day will also be the last day of our choir’s performing in worship until September, so join us for our 11:00 worship to hear them, or come by at 9:00 and then come back for lunch (or stick around through the morning).
The United Methodist General Conference is meeting this week and next in Charlotte, North Carolina. The General Conference is the meeting of United Methodist delegates from all over the world to make policy and doctrinal decisions for our denomination. General Conferences are usually held every four years, but because of the COVID pandemic in 2020 this will be the first General Conference in 8 years. This year we’ll be editing our Book of Discipline (the United Methodist rule book about church governance, doctrine, and theology) to accommodate the ongoing split in the United Methodist Church. In the next few weeks, as news becomes available and we understand what decisions have been made, I’ll be passing along my thoughts about what the Conference will mean for our congregation and our region. In the meantime, please pray for all the delegates present, that they may be guided by God in making the best possible decisions.
I hope you’re enjoying springtime as much as I am, and I look forward to seeing you at church!
Grace and Peace,
Andy
March 2, 2022
Dear U Park Family,
Blessed Ash Wednesday to you. I hope it’s been reflective and rewarding. We have services at the church today at noon and 6:00 P.M., and I hope you can join us for one of them.
I’ve talked with several Pastor friends of mine, and we are unanimous about one thing: traditional Ash Wednesday and Lenten themes don’t resonate very well this year.
Traditionally, Ash Wednesday is a time to reflect on the transience of life and to think about how we can appropriately use the time we have. It’s the beginning of Lent, and the Ash Wednesday liturgy usually includes what’s called the “invitation to the observance of Lenten Discipline.” Traditionally, when we make the sign of the cross in ashes on the hands or foreheads of worshipers, we say, “you are dust and to dust you shall return.” It’s meant to be a solemn reminder of our mortality, as the beginning to a season of reflection and repentance.
But discussing it this year, my friends and I all agree that we’ve had more than enough reminders of mortality over the past couple of years. Thank God, vaccinations continue to increase and the pandemic mortality continues to decline. But the pandemic is far from the only thing reminding us of our mortality lately. Climate change (complete with the recent, bleak IPCC report), escalating rates of violence in our nation, Russia’s sudden and disturbing attack on Ukraine: it seems like everywhere we turn we’re being told that we’re dust and to dust we shall return.
For that reason, I’ll be approaching Lent differently this year. What if the Gospel stories are not just stories about Jesus, but stories about us? What if the resurrection story isn’t just about Jesus’s miraculous triumph over death, but a template for us? In our Lenten reflections this year, I’ll be focusing on what we’re called to leave behind in order to be resurrected – to be formed into the joyful and thriving people we’re called to be. This Sunday in worship, I’ll focus on the story of Jesus’s temptation in the desert, found in the Gospel of Luke. I’ll be asking the question of what the story asks us to leave behind. I hope you’ll join us at 10:00 A.M. in the Sanctuary, or later that afternoon from home by watching on our YouTube Channel.
Speaking of things we’re leaving behind, this coming Sunday we’ll move from “masks required” to “masks encouraged” status. As always, I’m very grateful to our congregation’s medical professionals who have advised the staff throughout the pandemic. We’re all agreed that this is the right move. Of course, there are a number of people in the congregation who need or wish to remain masked, and we completely support that need and encourage you to do so. Others may decide to go unmasked. What’s most important, it seems to me, is that we continue to respect one another and support one another’s needs just as we have done throughout the pandemic.
On the 20th and 27th of this month I will be in Guatemala with our church’s mission team, serving a medical clinic operated by the nonprofit agency Salud y Paz (“health and peace”). Those two Sundays, we’ll have guest preachers – I’ll keep you posted here about who they will be.
May your Ash Wednesday and Lent strengthen and ground you in these unsettling times, as we begin this season of reflection.
Grace and Peace, Andy