WITNESS: February 1, 2012 by Park Cities Presbyterian Church

Vol. XXII, No. 1 Park Cities Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in America)

FEBRUARY 2012

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”For You have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.” Psalm 56:13

All Christendom be merry

Bringing the Spirit to artistic expression

Families go caroling

Hong Kong heart change 4 Missions exist because...

The Hispanic catch-22

5,000 blessings by the box 8 Repairing, restoring, and rebuilding

Making gospel gains in the workplace 11 Middle schoolers reap the blessing

he blessed Son of God only In a crib full poor did lie; With our poor flesh and our poor blood Was clothed that everlasting good. Kyrie eleison.

tions of Hodie from the balcony as they antiphonally dialogued with the Chancel Choir. The narrations gave the scriptural account of the Christmas story. Their singing was a particular highlight.

The PCPC choirs and symphony orchestra presented Noël on December 11. A full Sanctuary welcomed the Christmas season by enjoying the epic choral work Hodie, by Ralph Vaughan Williams, and joining in the singing of familiar carols.

Later, during the candle-lighting portion of the concert, all choirs, including the Chapel Choir (grades 2-4), joined in singing.

The Lord Christ Jesu, God’s Son dear, Was a guest and a stranger here; Us for to bring from misery, That we might live eternally. Kyrie eleison. The Covenant Choir and the trebles of the High School Choir sang the narration por-

The evening’s outreach focused on PCPC’s Urban Ministries. All of the offering monies from the concert were given in donation to those in need. All this did He for us freely, For to declare His great mercy; All Christendom be merry therefore, And give Him thanks for evermore. Kyrie eleison.

Martin Luther, trans. Miles Coverdale

Expression with Spirit Art+Spirit kicks off Arts Festival

ast fall, PCPC hosted an outreach to the artistic community called Art+Spirit, offered in conjunction with our Arts Festival, which will take place March 24-April 1. Our goal was to expose artists to the Word and to explore art from a biblical viewpoint. The study drew a regular, devoted crowd. Members of PCPC and other churches throughout Dallas and even Ft. Worth came weekly. “Real relationships began to develop,” said Erika

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art that communicates the deep ideas of culture, and the artist as a prophet to the culture. One lecture revealed how art is grounded in the nature and being of God and His beauty, truth, and goodness. The breakout groups were highly successful as they gave attendees time to talk about the lecture and about their art, their struggles, and their successes as Christians and artists. They supported and encouraged one another to focus their creative direction. “The connections and conversations with my ‘comrades in arts,’ along with the benefit of their extensive talent, insight, and encouragement have inspired me to my core,” related Mo Stanford. Karen Keller said that Art+Spirit was a “place where I had the opportunity to share my thoughts and feelings with other artists.”

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PROMISE 2012 PCPC ARTS FESTIVAL Huddleston, one of our participants. Crafted by Pete Deison and Lawan Glasscock, they and members of PCPC actively participated in the program by leading lectures and break-out groups. Randy Heffner, Matt Rodriguez, and Thomas Stanley led the breakout groups each week, and Pete, Lawan, Randy, and Matt led some of the lectures. Stephen Nielson led one study on musicians as artists. The lectures included slides of recognizable art from artists like Rembrandt, along with anecdotes about these artists’ personal walks with God. Topics covered art as an aesthetic experience, FEBRUARY 2012

One of the sessions featured attendees presenting their work to the whole group. Out of the 40 attendees, eight volunteered to discuss their work, sharing how God is calling them to create art that honors Him and reaches others. One artist, Lou Nell Sims, related how her work “reflects how God can use me to communicate His goodness and mercy in my life.” A large number of the participants want to see this continue or another

study take its place. It reached artists on a deep spiritual and artistic level— an opportunity not readily available for Christian artists in the DFW area.

Arts Festival coming soon As part of the many activities planned around the PCPC Arts Festival, we are hosting several speakers. Following Gregory Wolfe on January 24, on Thursday, March 1, our second of three speakers will be Bruce Herman, also our guest juror for the Festival. He will speak on An Art of Real Presence: Broken for Healing. Bruce lectures widely, and his work has been published in many books, journals, and popular magazines. His art has been exhibited in more than 20 solo and 100 group exhibitions. His paintings, prints, and drawings explore the perennial human dilemma—the longing for transcendence and the paradoxical reality of human mortality. Our final speaker is David J. Goa, coming on Saturday, March 24, as our Festival opening speaker. David hails from Canada and is the director for the Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life. His work focuses on religious tradition and modern culture, culture and the civil life, and on public institutions in service to cultural communities and modern civil society. Past show themes have included the 23rd Psalm; Creation and Redemption as expressed in Genesis 1, 2 and 3; Parables: Surprised by Truth; and The Magi, The Manger, and The Majesty.

Help us at the Festival! Be part of the white glove brigade— volunteers who help receive art on February 25, and then again to help artists pick up their work on April 1. This is a wonderful opportunity to help reach out to the artistic community and make them feel welcome as they come to our church to leave their art. For more information on the PCPC Arts Festival, visit www.pcpcartsfestival.org. —Thomas Stanley

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n o t i Go tell

W e n s t i Dallas) r o ( n i a t n u o the m st is b

i r h C s Jesu

ot chocolate, fellowship, and caroling in West Dallas brought 16 PCPC families together during the early evening of December 18. We met at the home of Trey and Melissa Hill, who graciously welcomed us for cookie decorating and fellowship before heading out. We split into two groups to tour the neighborhood near Mercy Street, one led by Annie Roberson, and the other by the Hills. We visited many of the homes of those involved in the Mercy Street ministry which Trey leads. The responses were diverse. Some who answered the door sang and danced along with us while others shed tears in response to the lyrics of “Silent Night.” PCPC WITNESS

orn!

I believe it was a true blessing for those who sang as well as for those who opened their doors. When Trey asked the carolers, a group of 60, who had ever caroled before, only a Emily McDonald few raised their hands. It is nearly a lost tradition, but it is a great way to share the wonder of the birth of Christ. JOY! —Darian Reichert 3

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AGod usesfarhigh reach school students in Hong Kong

Claire Dillahunty gazes over the city

JULY 12

s the 47 members of the Hong Kong mission team stood before a PCPC Sunday service to be commissioned for our trip, Pastor Mark Davis said this: “God is just as interested in what he is doing in your life as he is interested in what he is doing in the lives of the students in Hong Kong.”

JULY 15

I stood in the Hong Kong International Airport waiting to meet up with the other 45 members of our team. I was exhausted from arriving two days earlier to get some things ready for the group and from the massive time change. Suddently, there they were—a mass of blue shirts coming out of the international terminal with faces full of smiles and bodies with shockingly good attitudes after 21 hours of travel. Energy was everywhere—and it was contageous. I sud-

denly found myself bouncing off the walls with anticipation. It was finally here! The trip we had been preparing for and praying about for over eight months had arrived! We were prayerfully expectant of what was to come, but never could have dreamed what God had in store. Our days were busy. The first few were filled with teaching preparations and getting to know the city. The day before we were to meet our students we went out to Victoria Peak for the evening. There, from the highest 360 degree view of the city, we spent 20 minutes in silence as we read over scripture about God's heart for the city and prayed for the people it holds. Then we started our routine. Our PCPC team was broken into nine different family groups that served alongside nine different Hong Kong churches

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involved in our English camp. Each morning we met as a family group, prayed, had a little breakfast and caffeine, and then hopped on the subway to head to our location to teach. Our mornings were filled with silly English songs and lessons about verbs and adjectives that had very shy and very shocked Chinese students standing on chairs, throwing balls, and acting out talk shows. In the middle of our trip there were two days of Gospel Camp where all nine churches combined for camptype activities, including intricately hard to understand Chinese games and, most importantly, a gospel presentation in their native language by a local pastor. There was also a day in Hong Kong where the students, ages 10-16, planned an entire day of giving their teachers (our PCPC team) a tour of the city. Both of our Sundays were spent in Hong Kong churches with our friends as we worshiped the Lord togther in English and Cantonese.

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JULY 31

Back at the airport our team boarded its flight to the States. We had gotten on a bus at 5:00 am with a last look at the Hong Kong skyline and shared tearful goodbyes with members of the Hong Kong churches who had come see us off at the crack of dawn. Ahead of us was a day's worth of travel, but the only thing that was on our minds as our plane left the airport was the 18 days of blessings God had just showered us with. How does he love us? Let us count the ways: In that 18-day period we taught 27 classes of Chinese students – not just about the parts of

speech, but about the word of God. We had the pleasure of giving the gift of an ESV Bible to each of our little Chinese friends and watching as their eyes lit up as they flipped through a book written entirely in English. We stood beside 275 Hong Kong students as they heard the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ presented, and cried and embraced 57 of them as we welcomed them into the family of God for the first time. We prayed alongside pastors, elders, and voluteers in the Hong Kong churches for the salvation of our students and this great city. They kept thanking us for our leadership and service and for the change they would see in their students’ lives after God's using us there—but we were thanking the Lord for not only that, but the change in our own hearts.

Pastor Davis was right

God didn't send us to China just to get the attention and the hearts of the Chinese. He wanted our attention and our hearts at well. He had grown our perspective of Him in showing us a city of

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eight million people and reminding us how far His reach and how great the beauty of the cross is. In showing us how to love people completely unlike ourselves, He reminded us how relentless His love is for sinners who are not like Himself, and how great His patience is as they fail to see what is true again and again. He reminded us of His great strength and dedication to His church as we were shocked at how willing He was to entrust His good news with 30 high school students and 17 leaders whom He called to use us as the ambassadors on the other side of the globe. The same God who is God of our hearts and our church here at PCPC is the God of Hong Kong as well. He is on the move—changing the lives of those there, and our own as well. What a great God we serve! —Carrie Jussely Above, Gospel Camp Left, Caroline Nielson gives Rondald a hug. Below, the Hong Kong team

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Window to the World:

Worship and Missions

issions exist because worship does not. This keen biblical insight by John Piper helped me make the vital link that exists between missions and worship: the purpose of missions is to produce worshipers of God. Missions is the means, worship is the goal. If so, our first identity statement at PCPC, “We long to worship God together,” means more than that we look forward every Sunday morning to gathering our existing membership to worship. It also means, as Piper rightly discerned from scripture, that we are committed to global missions precisely because we long to join together in worship with God’s elect from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Our longing to worship God, then, is inexorably tethered to a fullyinvested commitment to global missions. Until Christ returns, I think it is fair to say that a sincere longing to worship God will be expressed in the sacrificial pursuit of global missions. PCPC’s World Missions program on last October 30, Window to the World, beautifully captured PCPC’s determination to join in worshipping the one true God together with those who have not yet heard the gospel of FEBRUARY 2012

our Lord Jesus Christ. Two facts hit home hard with me. First, over two billion people living today have not heard and do not have access to the gospel. There are no missionaries and no churches where they live. They are “unreached.” Second, the American church annually spends one penny of every dollar to reach them. The other 99 cents goes to the areas that are already reached. I’m still processing both of these facts. Questions such as, ”How can this be true?” ”Why aren’t we (the American evangelical church) doing more to reach the unreached?” and ”What can we at PCPC do to reach the unreached billions?” rang through my mind.

Rewards and risks

For me, the highpoint of the program was the announcement that PCPC is focusing its foreign missions effort on reaching these unreached billions. This is a daunting task, as Curt Dobbs and Jerry Gibson made clear. It is also a dangerous task. As a church, we are targeting more closed countries than ever. We will be sending our own missionaries to hostile places and hostile people. They will risk their lives to proclaim the gospel of our Lord Jesus

Christ there, to call those who have never heard to become worshippers together with us of the one true God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. In that moment, I was especially proud to be a member of PCPC. I thought, This is exactly what our Lord has called His church to do! What a great, God-glorifying, Christ-exalting, Spiritfilled commitment for our church to make. I know we cannot reach two billion people by ourselves. But, we can do what we can do, God helping us, offering to Him the little we are and have with our fervent prayers and eager expectation that He will make our puny efforts much for His glory. Missions exist because worship does not. At PCPC, because we long to worship God together, it seems to me that there is only one possible response to the change presented to us by Window to the World—“Lord, send us! We will go! To the darkest, most dangerous places in the word, sparing nothing, we will go to gather Your children whom you purchased with the infinitely precious blood of Christ so that together we may worship You in Spirit and in truth.” —Tom Duke

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The Hispanic Leadership Initiative Scaling a culture’s catch-22 barriers

uan, a 10-year resident of Dallas, is “Catholic,” but he doesn’t follow teachings he grew up with. Recently drinking, drugs, and robberies have crept into his life. He keeps finding himself wallowing in a sin pattern that he can’t stop. His cousin Jorge, in Monterrey, Mexico, urges him to seek Jesus Christ and attend a Protestant church that preaches Jesus, but the rest of Juan’s family (both immediate and extended) say “leaving the faith” would be wrong. He has a wife and three children ages five to nine. They are on food stamps, and Juan’s job is not stable. What can Juan do? Where can he go? Who can teach him about Jesus? Who understands Juan’s very important Hispanic roots? Who cares about Juan and the millions like him?

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”

state senator says that “San Antonio looks like what Texas is going to look like in 15 years.” San Antonio’s residents are about two-thirds Hispanic. But the church today is not prepared to meet this challenge, including our denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). There are currently less than five Hispanic-majority, self-sustaining churches in the PCA. Each year, the number of Hispanic men graduating from reformed theological seminaries who want to enter pastoral ministry to Hispanics can be counted on one hand (with

• Encourage those individuals to consider a call to ministry and to begin actively preparing for ministry • Support those individuals with the training, encouragement, and financial resources necessary to develop their gifts for service in Christ’s church • Launch those trained and qualified individuals into Hispanic ministry using the connections and resources within the presbyteries and church planting networks of the PCA

HLI will work to develop both Englishand Spanish-speaking leaders utilizing leadership training, population including efforts such as:

By 2050 this rapidly growing is expected to reach 132.8 million. At that time, almost 1 in 3 Americans (30%) will be Hispanic!

With these words our Lord Jesus Christ called His church in every age and every place to put forth its prayers, its people, and its resources to meet the challenges of reaching the lost in its generation. The Hispanic Leadership Initiative (HLI) has being formed in response to that call in an attempt to meet one particular challenge facing the church today— reaching the Hispanic people of the world.

several fingers to spare!) Together, these two facts create a catch-22: we do not have Hispanic men preparing for ministry because we do not have churches in the Hispanic community—we do not have churches in the Hispanic community because we do not have trained Hispanic men to plant and pastor these churches.

The Initiative

Today, 48.5 million people, or 15.8% of the total US population, identify themselves as Hispanic, making the United States the second largest Hispanic nation in the world. By 2050 this rapidly growing population is expected to reach 132.8 million. At that time, almost 1 in 3 Americans (30%) will be Hispanic!

Hispanic Leadership Initiative (HLI) is being formed to meet this difficult challenge and now has 501c (3) status. It is a cooperative ministry of the Southwest Church Planting Network, PCPC, Cristo Rey, other committed churches, institutions, and individuals who are committed to raising up Hispanic leadership for Christ’s church. The partners in the HLI network will work together to:

Hispanics now make up 38 percent of Texas’ 25.1 million people, up from 32 percent a decade ago. One

• Identify Hispanic men and women who show potential as ministry leaders among Hispanics

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• Study at Redeemer Seminary in Dallas • Use of LAMP training materials approved by the PCA General Assembly. (LAMP provides an alternative seminary education while participants are serving in ministry, working in their careers, raising families.) • Training seminars in Spanish on Bible, theology, and counseling. • Experience with other relevant ministry skills using the resources of Mission to the World (MTW), Mission to North America (MNA) and LAMP materials in Spanish.

These programs of academic study will be combined with mentoring and hands-on ministry experience at Cristo Rey Presbyterian Church, PCPC (e.g. ESL) and other ministries working in a Hispanic context. PCPC (Curt Dobbs) and Cristo Rey (Josh Geiger) are providing key leadership. Other leadership is from Las Tierras Presbyterian Church in El Paso, TX, and Redeemer Presbyterian Church in San Antonio, TX. —Curt Dobbs & Joshua Geiger

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Boxes of

BLESSING

he Christmas season got a little brighter for thousands of Dallas families on Saturday, December 10, as the Lord’s Kingdom was extended to 5,000 families via boxes of food filled by 1,100 volunteers at the BCW Food Products warehouse. Volunteers gathered for four hours that morning to fill the boxes with over 30 food items —enough to feed a family of four for several days. Volunteers from PCPC worked side-by-side with community members, volunteers from corporate event sponsors, and families from partner ministries to fill the boxes with food staples such as rice, beans, salt, flour, sugar, oil, corn meal, pancake mix, cornbread mix, tortillas, canned vegetables, and other items, including food collected in PCPC’s Cans for the Kingdom project. The boxes moved down four assembly lines as toddlers, tykes, teens, twenty-somethings and twenty-plus-somethings filled them to the brim with Christmas cheer. At the end of the line, a special Christmas message was placed at the top of the food. The boxes were then sealed, stacked 40 to a pallet, and hauled by forklift to waiting trailers. From the warehouse, the trailers went to unload their precious cargo at distribution locations around Dal-

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feeding families at Christmas

las such as Voice of Hope, the Salvation Army, the Dallas Leadership Foundation, Mercy Street, Advocates for Community Transformation, Cristo Rey, H.I.S. Bridgebuilders, Young Life West Dallas, Golden Gate Missionary Baptist Church, and a number of other PCPC partner ministries. Volunteers also sat at tables and wrote notes of encouragement to the staffers of our ministry partners and made candy canes and other decorations for the boxes. As the volunteers left the warehouse, many of them took a box or two to deliver to some of PCPC’s seniors and families in need. What makes this event such a wonderful way to celebrate the birth of our Lord? Well, it’s hard to imagine a better way to glorify Christ than to come together with a group of believers to worship Him and to fulfill one of His commandments: “For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me… Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to Me” (Matthew 25:35, 40). —Pete Flowers

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Changing the world together Called to repair, restore, and rebuild our communities CPC can best be described as a committed church—committed to both Christ, the Head of the church, and to His body. To this end, we stress the significance of demonstrating our constant dependence upon Christ, because it is futile to attempt to do anything unless we abide in Him (see John 15:1-5). We have noted five statements of identity, and since we are confident that our hope of glory is the abiding Presence of Christ in us, one identity statement says that we long to change the world together. Together here not only speaks of the enabling and abiding Presence of Christ, it also addresses our church’s commitment to strive together within our congregation, as well as with other congregations throughout the city, the nation, and the world.

Our committee has evaluated our congregation’s strengths, examined our cumulative experience, and determined our goals. As a result, we have prayerfully developed a fiveyear plan which focuses our efforts in four areas: 1. Empirically increasing our members’ participation in missions to the city; 2. Developing a formal process of evaluating the overall effectiveness of our ministry partners; 3. Becoming a significant member in urban church planting; and, 4. Greatly influencing the development of an aggressive indigenous leadership development plan for the city of Dallas.

PCPC’s Urban Ministries Committee is committed to the vision of leading our congregation in serving the poor and needy of Dallas. We are also committed to long-term efforts to see the lives of those same poor and needy transformed spiritually, socially, and physically. Isaiah reminds us that true change takes place when the objects of our Spirit-filled, Gospel-centered ministry themselves become oaks of righteousness who will then repair, restore, and rebuild their own communities (Isaiah 61:1-4). FEBRUARY 2012

We have been delighted in realizing some accomplishment of these goals, especially those celebrating the increasing levels of our members’ involvement in extending Christ’s transforming presence. Having been able to identify home church urban mis-

sionaries is a very significant realization of that goal. Additionally, we want to share with our congregation the many ways the Lord has been using our members to serve throughout the city—in prisons, rehabilitation facilities, crisis pregnancy centers, and with the homeless among us.

Called to serve the homeless... with dignity

Over the years our committee has heard from members such as Mary Jayne Fogerty, Helen May Nichols, Tom Neuhoff, and Selby Harrison. Recently we heard the testimony of a high school senior who has caught the vision in a most profound way. It was a delight to listen to Thomas Neuhoff, Jr. testify how the Holy Spirit has been working in his life. After careful and prayerful investigation, he has started a ministry to the homeless population of Dallas—Give Victory. He told our committee that he responded to God’s call to serve the homeless with dignity. His goal is to supply them with brand new tennis shoes. How? Well, he’ll go where they congregate—under bridges, on river banks, and elsewhere. Thomas’ face lit up when he explained how he has planned to have each person sit while he washes their feet, then place new socks and new tennis shoes on their feet—shades of a scene from the upper room at Christ’ supper with His disciples. Pray for Thomas, asking God to provide the needed resources—tennis shoes and people—to help him serve the least, the lost, and the lonely in our midst. He firmly believes that the Lord can use our gifts and resources to lead others to Himself. Please support this young man and his vision! —Julian Russell

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n 2007, the foundations were laid for a new ministry at PCPC that would focus on ministry in the workplace. The men and women who gathered in a subsequent series of discussions shared in common a conviction that our faith makes a difference in how we do our work—it informs our thinking about how we do our daily work, run our business, and treat our coworkers, customers, and even our competition. Now the fully functioning Workplace Ministry Task Force (WPM) meets monthly, led by pastors Pete Deison and Bill Lamberth, and has initiated a full (and growing) program of events focused on equipping believers to honor the Lord Jesus Christ through our work and to minister to others at our place of work.

Foundational tenets

The WPM has articulated its mission in the following statements: We endeavor to help men and women understand the importance of their daily work in God’s Kingdom; equip them to live their faith in their workplace; and encourage them to build bridges of influence for the gospel to reach the workplace, the community and the world. We envision a day when all followers of Jesus at PCPC passionately pursue their calling, bringing the power of the gospel into their spheres of influence to such an extent that their faithful presence in their places of work impacts the peace and prosperity of Dallas. Keeping the vision in mind as well as our reformed theological thinking, the WPM has identified five key values: 1. Work is a gift of God and a vital way for men and women to express their love for God and to serve their fellow man—it is not an enemy of our spiritual life. 2. Every wholesome vocation should be honored and performed to the glory of God. 3. The workplace is as strategic to God’s Kingdom as are places of worship. 4. Every believer is required by Christ to be a faithful witness in his or her workplace. 5. Equipping men and women to live their faith at work is critical for their own spiritual formation. PCPC WITNESS

Honoring Christ through work, ministering to others at work “We envision a day when all followers of

Jesus at PCPC passionately pursue their calling, bringing the power of the gospel into their spheres of influence to such an extent that their faithful presence in their places of work impacts the peace and prosperity of Dallas.”

Below are some of the activities the WPM has organized to date and will build upon in 2012.

WPM keynote presentations

On an almost monthly basis, the WPM has organized informal breakfasts and lunches where attendees can hear speakers relay their experiences in ministry at their places of work. There have been examples of ministering to others—as well as learning to trust God even more—through successes and failures in business; when there is support for, or opposition to, a workplace ministry; in white collar and blue collar settings; and in the US and in other countries. Presentations have included a wide variety of formats and speakers, including former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, Interstate Battery CEO Carlos Sepulveda, other CEOs and executives, business owners, various entrepreneurs, plant owners, and plant managers.

Educational activities

A variety of activities has also been organized to educate PCPC members in the fundamental values which the WPM believes should guide members in their ministries at places of work and to enlarge their vision for how they can minister to others. These activities (some being rolled out in 2012) include a 3-week series on Theology of Work in adult Sunday school classes; a seminar on Permission Evangelism by Michael Simpson; a Sunday morning presentation on how to leverage the National Day of Prayer as a springboard for generating interest in Christian activities at places

of work; a series, Workplace Grace, for small groups offered on Wednesday evenings; discussions with other area churches to jointly host workplacerelated seminars and speakers offered to a citywide audience; and mentoring and coaching groups organized by profession, industry, age, or other criteria, for workers to meet regularly to pray over and share ideas about their similar circumstances and workplace affinities.

Looking ahead

The Task Force met in December to pray for our work and develop a schedule for 2012. We plan to organize more speaker presentations and seminars, as well as series of different lengths to be held in Sunday schools or other forums. One area we especially want to work on is increasing the communication about this ministry both inside and outside PCPC. Ministries blessed of the Lord often build on themselves, so we want more people to know what we’ve done to date and decide how they can be involved. The Task Force welcomes your input regarding any aspect of the ministry, especially during this time of forming the initial focuses and direction of its activities. Feel free to contact any member of our group to relay our ideas: Pete Deison, Pat Hamner, Bill Henry, Kent Johnson, Bill Lamberth, Bill Peel, Sherry Elston Scheitler, Tracy Taylor, Jay Turner, or Morgan Yeates. —Morgan Yeates

FEBRUARY 2012

Getting a glimpse

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Vol. XXII, No. 1 • FEBRUARY 2012 Park Cities Presbyterian Church 4124 Oak Lawn Avenue Dallas, Texas 75219 www.pcpc.org

Periodical Postage Paid at Dallas, Texas

of the

wonderful nature of

God

ast month the Youth Ministry and the entire church body got into the spirit of Christmas for a time of service and giving. At a time when receiving has seemed to trump giving, the church body joined together to practice the example of God in Christ. Hundreds of PCPC members gathered at Campbell Williams’ warehouse to pack over five thousand Boxes of Blessing to distribute to the needy (see pages 8, 9). Each box was packed to the brim with all the food a family could use for a great Christmas dinner. As boxes zipped by on the four assembly lines, both kids and adults worked side-by-side to fill each one. The joy of serving others was only matched by the joy of serving together.

Not being served but serving The following weekend middle school and high school students gathered in their Bible studies to distribute many of the food boxes to a number of families in West Dallas who are involved with Voice of Hope Ministries. Each Bible

study had also “adopted” the children in a family and purchased presents to bring to them for Christmas. The Bible studies traveled to the families’ homes, delivered the gifts, talked with them, and prayed for them. I thoroughly enjoyed going with a

group of sixth-grade boys to shop for our family and deliver the gifts. They were excited to find the perfect doll for one of the little girls and the coolest Dallas Cowboys shirt for the little boy. Making one family’s Christmas special really affected the sixth graders’ hearts. In serving and giving, the students saw a glimpse of the wonderful nature of God. He freely gave the perfect gift of His Son who came not to be served but to serve. What an important reminder we shared in this past Christmas! —Mike Haberkorn