Dear Church,
In preparation for our Society Meeting on January 27th, I have been looking for the ways God is forming us into community of people who live like Jesus. Living like Jesus means saturating our lives in prayer, embodying the love of God, reading Scripture, living uprightly, being filled with the Spirit’s power, and establishing God’s justice around us. As we live like Jesus, we are healed and made whole, and we can then go out into the world bringing that same healing and wholeness to others. This is the Gospel!
As I seek God’s will for our church, I envision us as a community both gathered and scattered. I see us gathering each week to participate in the work of worship: to bring our offerings of presence and song and finances, to anchor ourselves in the words of scripture, to saturate our time in prayer, and to receive the healing of grace and truth once again at the Table of Jesus. And then I see us scattering each week, taking the healing we have received at the Table out into the community by the way we talk and act and work and serve all the people who cross our path: friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, or complete strangers.
In the days when we are scattered, I see us as a people who sees needs and who meets needs, who brings Jesus’ healing and wholeness to everyone who crosses our path rather than waiting for them to show up at our church on Sunday. Let us be the kind of people who bring a meal as a way to show love, who give honor and dignity to every story we hear, who pause to pray over someone, who hunt for creative ways to use our time to serve the community, who pay attention to what God is doing in our own lives and tell others about it.
Pastor Kevin and I believe with our whole hearts in the work Jesus is doing here in Monroe, and we want to partner with Him. Jesus is stirring in us a vision for how He wants to grow our church in the coming months, to multiply leaders and to plant fresh expressions of churches throughout our community. As I continue to lead our worship service each Sunday morning, I am also envisioning planting a Dinner Church, a mid-week gathering around a meal and around the Lord’s Supper. (Anyone want to join me?) Kevin envisions planting a “Church for Skeptics,” a gathering where hard questions and deep conversation are welcome and where the sacrament of Communion brings unity. What do you envision? What ideas are coming to your mind about how we can do church in new ways? How can we bring Jesus to where the people are, especially the people who might not ever want to come to traditional Sunday-morning church?
I envision us being a church whose budget is driven by our mission: a mission of joining Jesus in his work of bringing healing and wholeness to the world. When our money focuses solely on our church building, it is not accomplishing the mission. Let’s become a church whose money brings healing and wholeness by funding fresh expressions of churches and by giving away to local ministries and global missionaries. Let’s give away more than we keep.
Here’s where it gets tricky, where our commitment to the mission of Jesus comes face-to-face with our fiscal reality. I believe our church’s next right step is to sell the parsonage. Yes, the house that has become our home. The house we have lived in for 7 of our 10 years of marriage, where we have lead youth groups and shared meals and brought both our babies home. The parsonage has been a very meaningful part of our story, a landmark of our lives for sure. Many of you have value and meaning stored up in these walls as well, having laid the foundation and driven the earth-mover, worked on electrical or plumbing and mowed the lawn. For the 30+ years this house has served well.
The only thing truly holding our church back is our finances. I believe with my whole heart every one of you is doing your absolute best to support the church with your finances. As a family, we Eccles believe with everything we have in the work God is doing through MFMC, so much so that Kevin has “put his money where his mouth is” by getting a second job working full-time at LaZBoy to contribute even more resources to the church. Yet the bottom line remains: MFMC just doesn’t have the finances to maintain our facilities.
Our congregation’s financial mindset has been in a constant state of worry and scarcity for over two decades. It’s time for that to change. Selling this beautiful house will provide MFMC with the financial freedom to multiply ministries and leaders, to bring Jesus’ healing and wholeness into the world, to no longer live in financial fear! We will be able to send our $12,000 in over-due apportionments to the Conference, as well as completely repay the generous $30,000 loan they provided for our HVAC renovation. We will repair and replace windows (some of which are literally held together with duct tape), creating a more energy-efficient building. We will be finally update all of the broken light fixtures that exist in every room of the church as well as upgrade the sound system. For the first time in years and years, our church treasurer won’t have to fret over which check to send late: the pastors’ paychecks or the bills? We will have enough in reserves to provide a housing allowance for us, while no longer needing to pay for the utilities and maintenance on a parsonage. And before all of that, we will set aside a full 10% of the sale of the house for the purposes of giving generously to global and local missions. This will set the tone for future financial decisions! We can give to Free Methodist World Missions (like our Connected Community in Togo, Africa with Pastor Dosseh, Vickie + Mike Reynen) and to Southern Michigan Church Planting initiatives (like Pastor Megan Weber’s house-churches among Arabs in Dearborn or Pastor Mark Cryderman’s Dinner Churches in Detroit) and to Monroe ministries (like Heartbeat + Paula’s House + GodWorks!)
It’s so easy to cling to what we have, isn’t it? I mean, I love our house. I love that MFMC built this place and provided many pastors with a home. But I also want to let go of anything that is hindering me or our church from taking the healing and wholeness of Jesus beyond these four walls. It’s like the story of the Young Ruler in Matthew 19. He went to Jesus and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:16, 21). Let’s follow Jesus together, friends. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!
grace + peace be with you.
Pastor Melanie Eccles
