Marengo United Methodist Church VO LU ME X I
I SSU E 7
TH E M U STARD SEED JU L Y 2 0 0 8
Inside this Issue: Anniversaries & Birthdays 6 Baptisms 7 Calendar insert Co-op Coffee/ Tea insert Co-op Coffee/ Tea 5 Finance Secretary 6 Gas Can Mission 7 Have You Heard? 7 Keeping the Dream Alive 6 Library News 3 M.O.R.E 5/7 Mailbox 7 Parent s Day Out 4 Prayer List 6 Roots to Wings 3 Senior Moment 4 UMW 3 Welcome Pastor Keck 2 Worship Information for July 2 Worship Schedule Back
New friends, As I prepare to join you in July, following the excellent and grace filled ministry of Rev. Bullmer, I am aware of just how dependent we all are upon the work of others, and the unity and consistency of that work. In 1 Corinthians 3:5-9, Paul speaks to this truth, when he discusses the rising divisions within the Corinthian community. What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. The conflict that is dividing the people is their attachment to Paul or Apollos. Paul tells them, in essence, that they are behaving like "mere infants". He explains to them that "the man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose"; and that purpose transcends both of them. "Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything". We are simply "fellow workers" laboring in "God's field". Paul says these things realizing that if division continues to grow in the church then nothing will be able to grow. He understands that it is essential that a church be unified in purpose and effort. Therefore, rather than playing into the divisions, Paul acknowledges that he is dependent upon Apollos to water the seeds that he had planted. Likewise, Apollos is dependent upon Paul and the seeds he had sown. "By the grace God has given me," writes Paul, "I laid a foundation as and expert builder, and someone else is building on it." We are always dependent upon "someone else". As the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote: "Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone, therefore we are saved by love."
Continued on page - 2