Muscatine Presbyterian Church Blog

United Methodist Bishop Robert Schnase writes of the Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Faith Development, Risk-Taking Mission and Service, and Extravagant Generosity. He says each one of these practices is essential for a church to be vital and fruitful, and failure to perform them in an exemplary way leads to congregational deterioration and decline.

We studied this book as a session in the spring. In September I began to encourage you in my sermons to focus on two of them: Radical Hospitality and Intentional Faith Development. I set a vision before you, asking you to imagine, pray for and work towards inviting, welcoming and embracing the next 100 people into the life of the church.

It is my role to keep this vision before you. And to encourage you as I have been encouraged. Since September, we have a new mom’s group that is beginning to meet (see Elizabeth Negus) and a new Bible study is beginning this week on Fridays during lunch (see Kate Anderson or Mike Eversmeyer). I am starting a new weekly prayer group on Wednesday mornings. A group went to a wine tasting at a local winery. Our church joined with Emmaus Café guests and ate together as Jesus taught us to do, as we celebrated 10 years of this “risk-taking” ministry. Yesterday 18 men gathered to listen to Father Richard Rohr talk (via webcast) about the role of men and male spirituality. These are all signs of God doing a new thing in our midst.

Hospitality: let’s be aware of those who come to this building and invite them to our small groups (faith development). But more importantly, let’s be the church in the world, knowing that many people will not come to be with us on Sunday mornings, but they will come to Ardon Creek Winery or to a bible study at your house.

As I near the end of three years as your pastor, I am encourage and inspired. We continue to be savvy, letting go of some things, gathering up new. But in all things we must be faithful to the gospel good news of Jesus, news that teaches us to be people of resurrection living in a world that seems to love fighting, death and war.