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A Message from the Pastor
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Happy September!
All our jobs have certain rhythms to them, as do our lives. If you help prepare taxes, April is a big time. If you play professional sports, whatever your respective season, it is when you have more games and practices. In the life of the church, people always name Christmas and Easter as the two big times of the year. Which they are, but I also always find that my rhythm changes in September. Fall is before me. We start looking at our ministries, our budget, our leadership going into the next year. As I get excited for the many things coming up this fall and in the next year, I encourage you to look to the next year as well and begin reflecting on what ways you want to be involved. Look through this
newsletter and talk with myself or staff members about opportunities you may have some passion around. Let us step into our faith a bit more this year.
I also wanted to let you know of some opportunities if you are a leader in the life of the church. There are many opportunities to learn and grow that are offered by the United Methodist Church. I will share these below so you can mark your calendar or see more about them on
novaumc.org.
Mark your calendars for these great learning opportunities:
September 20 - Graham Standish - Becoming a Spiritually Vital Leader,
7-8:30pm - Dulin UMC
October 19 - Jacob Armstrong - How to Structure your Church for Evangelism,
9:00am-3:00pm - Christ Church (satellite site) (for this event, contact Susie Street by
September 13 for possible group rates)
February 21 - Brian Brown - Anatomy of Peace,
7-8:30pm - Annandale UMC
March 15 - Phil Maynard - Intentional Discipleship Workshop,
9:00am-3:30pm - place - TBD
April 12 - Sue Nilson Kibbey - Breakthrough Prayer,
7-8:30pm - Centreville UMC
- If you are interested in being a District Delegate to the Virginia Annual Conference (which takes place
June 15-17, 2018
in Hampton, VA), please contact Rev. Snow before September 7th.
Blessings!
Pastor Jason
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For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-all things were created through him and for him.
-Colossians 1:16
(Thank you to Chuck Smith for sharing this incredible photo of the recent eclipse - taken with
500mm zoom at 1/250 sec exposure.)
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The Youth Group ended the summer with a couple of water events. After discussing what it means to be a "bucket filler" and how to fill up other people's "buckets", the youth raced to actually fill each other's team bucket with water. Several water balloon games followed culminating in an all out water balloon fight.
After a week of 90 degree temps we held our year-end pool party on a 74 degree Sunday evening. With teeth chattering the Youth swam, ate tacos in a bag and played games on the pool deck. With no spoons available, they improvised a game of "forks".
Youth Group Fall Kick-off
"Mega Game Night"
Sunday, September 10th
5-7pm at BUMC
All youth (7-12th grade)and their parents are welcome to join us! Come meet the youth volunteer team, enjoy a pasta dinner and play some "mega games" including Inflatable Twister and Giant Jenga.
You won't want to miss it!!
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Next Level Innovations (NLI)
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In the spring of this year, Burke UMC was invited by the Alexandria District of the United Methodist Church to be a part of a new program called Next Level Innovations. Only a handful of churches from the District were invited and it was based on the Districts belief that the church and its leadership had potential for vitality, risk-taking and growth. It's something I have seen in the leadership and the church since I came last July and am so glad it was recognized by the District. Our Administrative Board agreed to accept the invitation and we began the NLI journey at the end of this summer. You may ask what is NLI all about? Good question!!
First off, you can go to
www.nextlevelinnovations.org and read more about it. We have an NLI team who will meet periodically and will be a resource if people have any questions (they are listed below). The church is assigned a mentor (ours is Marg Kurtz, a retired pastor in the Richmond area) In the fall and into the winter, Jason will be reading assigned books and meet with the clergy of the other churches participating in this NLI process. He will have a couple continuing education events to attend as well. In the beginning of 2018, Katie will be joining Jason for some of these events as well as have an opportunity to meet with the Associate Pastors of the other churches. The NLI team will also have a couple group meetings during that timeframe as well.
In late spring, the District will host a Ministry Focus Event at the church which will be open to everyone. It is a time for them to talk with the congregation and learn a little more about Burke UMC. All this leads to what they call our Innovation weekend which will happen in Fall of 2018. This will be a weekend where the District NLI leaders will come and talk with various people and groups and ultimately, have a Saturday where they will gather the congregation again. The weekend will culminate on Sunday where the District NLI leaders will reveal 5 Innovations they see would be helpful for Burke UMC as we move into the future. There will be a time after that for the church to decide whether we want to move forward with these 5. If we vote to do that, then we will have a coach that will walk with us as we look to make these innovations a reality.
So what can you do to participate in NLI? You can pray, first and foremost. Include this process in your daily prayers. Pray for Pastor Jason, Pastor Katie and the NLI team in the coming months. If you would like to read some of the books Pastor Jason is reading, he will try to make those known in newsletters of Tidings (the first book he recommends reading is "The Necessary Nine" by Bob Farr and Kay Kotan). Then the most important thing you can do is participate in the two weekends and honestly and openly share about what has been meaningful for you in participating and being a member of Burke UMC. The more open and willing to participate in the process, the more fruitful the innovations and future will be for Burke UMC. If you have any questions or want to learn more about the process, feel free to ask any of our NLI team.
NLI Team:
Pastor Jason
Pastor Katie
Robert Greenwood
Kim Helms
Barbara Nowak
Ellen Quisenberry
Grant Thornton
Jane Wilson
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Free tickets available in the church office or from Katie Glick, Preschool Director.
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Gleaning? What's that?
by Don Harris
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Bet you can't guess what our local Starbucks, Chipotle, Whole Foods, Einstein Bros. Bagels and Outback Steakhouse have in common with BUMC's mission of serving our community!
Have you stumped? Well, they all participate in an effort called Food Connection whereby local businesses donate excess food to community based organizations to feed the hungry. BUMC participates in this gleaning effort by providing the transportation link to get the donated products to the Kate Hanley Shelter located just off Lee Highway. We have a team of volunteers who on Monday and Thursday mornings of every week go to these establishments, collect the donated goods and deliver them to the shelter.
The Kate Hanley Shelter provides needed, temporary housing to families, most of whom are mothers and their children and who, for any number of reasons, find themselves homeless. BUMC fulfills a great need for these families by providing food items from our community partners. Just this week when we delivered 7 storage boxes of dry and frozen food items from Whole Foods alone, you should have seen how excited and delighted the kitchen staff were when they saw the variety of products donated for their use! Was an inspiration, indeed!! Think about it- what would have been food waste will now be put to use to serve people in need.
What do we need now? YOU! We have a group of dedicated volunteers from our congregation who routinely have served as our transportation network but, since we just recently added Whole Foods in West Springfield to our list of participating businesses, we have needed to create a separate volunteer list just for them. So, if you have a couple of hours on any Mondays and/or Thursdays mornings and a vehicle and would like to be part of this mission commitment of BUMC, please talk to Don Harris, our gleaning coordinator. He can be reached at 703-969-4749 or via email at
[email protected]. He develops the schedule for each month so you will be given the opportunity to volunteer for days when it is convenient for your schedule.
Think about it! Pray about it! Is this a calling where you can truly be Christ's hands and feet here in our community? If so, please volunteer!
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Burke Gives Back
Helping Feed Hungry People
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The planning for our first ever "Burke Gives Back" event is rolling along!
Kevin Taylor is spearheading the effort, with a dedicated team assisting. The idea behind this event is 2-fold: package 25,000 dehydrated meals for kids school lunch programs in Africa, and collect non-perishable food to benefit local food pantries. The other goal of this is education of the community about the food insecurity issues here in our neighborhood as well as in famine-ridden counties internationally. It is easy when you live in the second wealthiest county in the United States to forget that many people in our community and world are not sure where there next meal is coming from.
HELP NEEDED FOR THIS EVENT!
As the primary sponsors of this new community event, we are looking to our congregation to volunteer that morning in the following ways: (sign up for specific tasks/shifts at burkegivesback.org or in the entryway!)
- Help at the food packing site (Terra Centre Elementary School) registering workers, directing traffic , answering questions
- Hand out "food needed" lists at Walmart, Safeway, Giant or Shoppers
- Collect, sort and transport collected food to food pantries
- Help set up or clean up from the event
You can also help by:
- Taking a coin jar the tables in the entryway , fill it up and return it to church by 10/15.
- Take extra cans and tell your friends and neighbors about the event!
- Collect non-perishable food items from your clubs, bridge groups, Scout troops and bring them to Terra Centre on 10/21
- PRAY FOR THE COMMITTEE. This is a huge "step out in faith" as we try to do something we haven't done in a very long time. We hope this event will be a model for events we can do in the future with other community partners.
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Music Ministry
Kickoff Dates
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Mission Marketplace
A Craft Fair with a Purpose
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In addition to the great crafts you will be able to purchase, there will be a selection of handmade items from Cambodia. Each year, when our missionary teams go to Cambodia, they buy items in the marketplaces to stimulate the local economy. We offer these items at our Missions Marketplace and use all the profit made to support ongoing women's ministries in Cambodia. Your purchase of these things helps girls in Cambodia get the much-needed education they may not otherwise receive.
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Children's Ministry
Kristin Kelso, Children's Ministry Coordinator
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In the Beginning...
Sunday School Kick-off for kids ages is Sept 10th! We have an amazing year planned and our Preschool through Club 56 students will start the school year with Genesis - literally going back to the VERY beginning of our Bibles - and hearing the Creation story! Sunday School meets at 10:30AM every Sunday except for Family Worship Sundays which are the first Sunday of the month when we celebrate Communion together with our families.
Preschool through 4th grade uses the Spark! Activate Faith curriculum which is a comprehensive Bible-based Sunday School program. We have two dedicated classes for Preschool: one for our 3 year olds and a separate class for 4 year olds. Kindergarten through grade 4 meet in The Dock for gathering time and opening worship together and then break into small groups by grade. Each class has two Sunday School teachers who lead Bible stories, games, activities, discussion, and prayer. We believe that these lively, age-appropriate activities-such as games, crafts, or creative play-accommodate all the ways that kids learn.
Club 56 will use the Connect curriculum this year which is specifically designed with preteens in mind. Their lessons combine solid theology with quirky humor and use videos, Bible exploration, and hands-on projects to drive the stories home. Club 56 will start with the Creation story and will spend the next few weeks diving deeper into Genesis and piecing together various stories about "Beginnings." Our Club 56 teachers have been leading this class together for over five years and are dedicated to engaging young minds and developing their love and understanding of the Bible.
We look forward to welcoming your to Sunday School children this month! Please remember to register
online or pick up a form in the entryway. We need to have every family register their children (all ages) at the start of each school year.
If you're interested in learning more about our curriculum, lesson plans, or want to get involved in Children's Ministries, please contact
Kristin Kelso, Children's Ministries Coordinator, for more info.
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BUMC Leadership Structure
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One of the things I find myself sharing with clergy who are first stepping into ministry is that when we get ordained as an Elder, the language we use is that we are set apart for the task of Word, Sacrament, Service and Order. Most pastor's call comes from a desire to share the Word, administer the sacraments or live out a life of service to others and God. I imagine it is rare that pastors say, "I just am so jazzed up about ordering the institution of the church". I was no different. I loved helping people and felt blessed to be called to do that from a faith perspective. But what I tell young clergy is that on a pie chart of what you do on a regular basis, word, sacrament and service combined might fill up 40-50% of your role. Order is the rest of the pie. And you learn that this part of our call, when done poorly, can be devastating in living out the other parts. When we take that part of our call seriously, ministry can flourish in pretty amazing ways.
So when I come to a church, I ask a lot of questions about how the church is ordered. What structures and processes are in place and how are they best facilitating ministry. What I learned in my first six months at Burke was the leadership structure that the church has was not facilitating ministry in quite the way it was designed. And also, there was not a lot of understanding by staff and laity of why we had this particular leadership structure when many churches had moved away from that structure years ago. This began a conversation with my chairs and some staff members about what steps might we take to better structure ourselves. Over the last six months this group has looked at what other structures are present in other United Methodist Churches and what might work best at Burke UMC. This group is hoping to bring some recommendations to Administrative Board in November with the hopes to hold some open meetings to present to the congregation and get any other input that may help us finalize a structure that may begin as early as June of next year upon approval by the DS at a charge conference.
Please be in prayer as the leadership begins looking at this and if you are interested in learning more about our current model or what we are looking to move toward, please feel free to talk to any of the group and find out more. Again, we hope in January/February time frame to have some time to share in more detail, so you will have opportunity to hear more about it.
Leadership Structure Group: Ken Panos, Robert Greenwood, Susan Kinsley, Bruce Tiso, Wes Griffin, Katie Webster, Jane Wilson, Susie Street, Jason Snow
Blessings,
Pastor Jason
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On
ce again, BUMC has responded to needs in our community in an OVERWHELMING fashion! Our school supply drive provided:
- 109 backpacks filled with supplies, distributed to ECHO, Bethany House, Wesley Housing, Duffy House, and the Camp Joy participants
- A preschool scholarship
- 3 months funding for Middle School Munchies
- Enough money to buy now the school supplies we need for the 150 UMCOR school bags we will pack at Change the World (what a huge savings it is to be able to buy the supplies now while they are inexpensive!)
VBS collected school supplies, which amounted to school supplies for 50 kids at Rising Hope, in addition to the filled backpacks we gave to all children attending Camp Joy .
In addition, the proceeds from the "Battle of the High Schools" totaled $400, which when added to donations, will provide over $700 toward our Weekend food bag ministry.
Thanks so much to everyone who contributed - so many families have been touched by your generosity.
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"Do you have the gift of compassion and encouragement?
Are you a good listener?
If you find it in your heart to care for others, our newly created Nurturing Care Ministry may be for you! We are ready to form and train Care Teams to visit those in our congregation who are hospitalized, having surgery, in rehab, or who are "shut in" and unable to attend church.
The two teams will be led by Karen Evans, Karen Panos, April Kaminski, and the Pastoral Staff. Training will be provided early summer. If you have questions or are interested, please contact
Karen Evans or sign up is in the Narthex.
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September & Upcoming Mission Events
Help us make a difference in our community & world!
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Can You Offer A Ride?
We have a church member living at the Braddock Glen Assisted Living Facility in Fairfax who would like a ride to/from worship each week. If you are willing to be part of a monthly rotation to pick this member up (walk inside to get her from her room, bring her to worship, drive her back and assist her back to her room), please let
Pastor Katie know.
This is a beautiful way for us to be family to one another.
Thank you!
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Listen on line any time! Click on the Sermon Archives image (or the same image on the main page of our web site) to listen to sermons from previous Sundays.
Sermons are uploaded each week by Thursday if not sooner.
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Burke UMC: Welcome Statement
Welcome! We are a caring community from various backgrounds, drawn together by the love of God and the transforming message of Jesus. We believe all persons are of sacred worth and dignity as part of God's creation and as demonstrated by the ministry of Jesus Christ.
We welcome everyone without exception - everyone means everyone - regardless of age, race, ethnicity, gender, family structure, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, economic background, political affiliation, physical or mental ability, faith history or life experience.
We recognize among us differences in theology and biblical interpretation, and we covenant to accept, respect, and love one another along our faith journeys. Please join us, because wherever you are on life's journey, there's a place for you here at Burke United Methodist Church!
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