Adrian College Chaplain: We Are Seldom Ever Prepared

By Adrian College Chaplain Chris Momany
As published on the General Board of Higher Education & Ministry website

This year I heard the best Advent sermon in more than twenty years of ministry. It was preached by one of my college students, and his message underscored the way we are seldom ready for God’s majestic love.


Joseph and Mary were hardly prepared for the reality given them. Are we any better prepared? If Advent is all about preparation, let’s be honest. We are seldom ready for the wonder of Christmas.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Preparation can be little more than a way to control our environment.

It is a splendid irony that the best preparation opens our hearts to the possibility that life is not about controlling our fate. I do not say this to excuse purposelessness. I know myself better than that. I am a certifiable control freak most of the time, and I bear a deep anxiety about disorder.

I like the rationale of cause and effect, especially when I possess power over the former. Christmas can seem like a tidal wave – the obligations, family pressures, and cultural demands. Yet the problem has more to do with my desire for control than with the event itself. We are never really prepared for the majesty of God’s love, but grace comes from a realm beyond expectation. That is why we call it Good News.

Seasons like Advent and Christmas make me ponder many things about our church. At the risk of speaking heresy, I question our increasing obsession with models of ministry that worship power and control. Many of these approaches are borrowed from the business world. There is nothing wrong with being intentional about mission, but in an attempt to remain “relevant” we risk swapping the inheritance of grace for a mess of pottage.

Especially dangerous is the conditional nature of many popular “leadership” models. There are always strings attached to the relationships involved. These approaches portray the church’s challenge as a matter of offering better services in an increasingly efficient manner. This may inspire some, but do we really need to be more like the cable company or other self-interested commercial ventures? 

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Bishop’s Advent Offering aims to touch young hearts in Russia

By RJ Walters, Editor

Bishop Jonathan Keaton’s aspiration is to have the light of advent shine half way around the globe, and through the annual Bishop’s Advent Offering at local churches in November and December the Michigan Area is responding to the hungry bellies and often, starving souls, of social orphans in Russia.

Social orphans are children who have parents, but live in crisis conditions due to poverty, alcoholism, drug addictions, etc. There are approximately 270,000 orphans living in Russian “orphan houses”, of which around 7,000 are adopted annually, according to Grace United Methodist Church in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Grace UMC is not a congregation that just acknowledges the epidemic though — they are diligent Methodists who have worked to attenuate the crisis conditions of children all over St. Petersburg through the United Methodist Children’s Center, which it opened in 2002.

Thanks to donations from all over the globe — include funding from The Advance — the Center is able to provide social orphans from “at-risk families” with hot meals, clothes, medicines, education programs, camps and a chance to hear the message of Jesus Christ.

The well-traveled Bishop Keaton said he has much heart for providing young people with hope and necessities and he was led to reach out to the Children’s Center by a few people who support the seminary in Russia.

“One of the best things we can do with our young people here and around the world is to do everything we can to enhance their quality of life number one,” he said. “And to do everything we can to help them to live a life that won’t put them in a position where they will injure their bodies, find themselves incarcerated and/or find themselves on the outs with society and/or their family and extended family.”

According to the Center’s website, www.churchgrace.org, there are only two churches that serve nearly half a million people in the Primorsky district of St. Petersburg.

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Church makes skullcaps to go in military stockings

By Pam Mettler, UMC of the Dunes

Members of the United Methodist Church of the Dunes (UMC-Dunes) in Grand Haven recently knit and contributed nearly 100 hand-made acrylic and wool skullcaps as part of a nationwide effort known as “Operation Shoe Box Skullcaps for Our G.I.’s.”

The skullcaps will help fill Christmas stockings for all branches of U.S. military members currently on duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“These skullcaps have been made by a number of people in our congregation. They supplied both the yarn and the labor, which takes approximately two-to-three hours to make just one hat,” said Joy Shimp, UMC-Dunes Skull Caps project coordinator.

Each skullcap contributed by UMC-Dunes members had a scripture tag attached from Psalms 91:15, which read: ”He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.”

The idea for the church members at UMC-Dunes’ involvement arose from Shimp’s interest in and attendance at cribbage tournaments throughout the country.

In Green Bay, Wisc., a cribbage friend told Shimp that she had made hats as part of “Operation Shoe Box Skull Caps” and asked Joy if she was interested in bringing back the idea to her local congregation.

Shimp brought the idea back, made the pattern and put out a plea to church members for help in making the hats. All conform to the pattern, which calls for four-ply yarn in acrylic or wool ― and there are both knit and crochet patterns available.

“The idea for making hats just blossomed. Our members have made all 91 of the hats, which I am shipping to my contact at The Villages, Florida. From there, the hats will go to our active G.I.’s in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Shimp said.

All hats were blessed and prayed over by senior pastor Dan Duncan and the UMC-Dunes congregation members at a Sunday service.

“As I knitted the hats I made, I also blessed them,” Shimp said, adding, “I feel the idea of adding the scripture tag will help military men and women want to hold it in their pockets as they go about their active duties.”

Anyone interested in receiving further information about “Operation Shoe Box Skull Caps for Our G.I.’s” should contact Donna Miller, Wisconsin project coordinator, at 715-832-8934 or via e-mail at dcmiller2104@hotmail.com.

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