A Message from Our Pastor: October

Dear Church Family:

During this wonderful season of harvest, our church family will be encouraged to focus on our prayer life, and we will begin with a six week study of Reuben Job’s book, Three Simple Rules, A Wesleyan Way of Living. This study is designed to help us return to those early Wesleyan understandings of spiritual disciplines that can transform us and the world in which we live. As we take this journey of reflection and practice, we will discover that these three rules can lead us to a more faithful way of living as disciples of Jesus Christ.

What are the three simple rules for Christian living? Where do they come from? Why are they so important for Christians? How can I practice them? Our study offers opportunities to explore these questions.

Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living by Rueben Job.

These are the simple rules: Do No Harm, Do Good, and Stay in Love with God. We will learn what these rules mean and how we can practice them in our daily life.

In this six-session study, we will explore the study book together, and view excerpts from conversations with Rueben Job in order to learn more about the three rules and how to practice them in daily life. Each rule has a session to help us understand the rule and a session to help us explore ways to practice the rule. Through the words of John Wesley, Rueben Job, and the Bible, we will reflect on what these rules meant during Wesley’s time and what they can mean to us today. We will also identify ways the practice of these rules can change our daily life and the lives of those around us. Each session ends with a guide for daily prayer adapted from the guides in Rueben Job’s book Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living. Participants will be invited to continue using them between the sessions and after the group study has been completed. Elsewhere in this issue we will include the guide which we would encourage, not only study participants, but also our entire congregation, to use daily for the next several weeks.

Three six-week classes on Three Simple Rules will be offered on Monday evenings at 7:30 p.m., beginning on October 7; Tuesday mornings, at 10:30 a.m., beginning on October 8; and Wednesday evenings at 6:00 p.m., beginning on October 10. There is a signup sheet posted on the bulletin board – we’d love to see your name there! You can also call the church office to let Beth know which class you’d like to join. We need to know how many study books to order.

There is something invitational about contemplating those simple rules. One has the sense that, if each of us would begin each day by prayerfully concentrating and focusing on doing no harm, doing good, and staying in love with God, our lives would be dramatically changed.

I wish you an abundant spiritual harvest!

Blessings,
Pastor Chuck