The River

A group of people are standing at a river bank and suddenly hear the cries of a baby.

Shocked, they see an infant floating–drowning–in the water. One person immediately dives in to rescue the child. But as this is going on, yet another baby comes floating down the river, and then another! People continue to jump in to save the babies and then see that one person has started to run away from the group still on shore.

Accusingly they shout, “Where are you going?”

The response: “I’m going upstream to stop whoever’s throwing babies into the river!”

Where are you in this story? Standing on the riverbank? Jumping in to save the drowning babies? Or running upstream to stop the person throwing the babies into the river?

We are all in one place or another and we can all make a difference when we work together!

An Irrepressible Woman Preacher

Gertrude Pettibon’s favorite hymn was “The Church’s One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Her Lord.” This she lived by and this she preached.

In 1933 Kansas farmers, once supplying the world with wheat, were, because of drought, dust storms and the Great Depression, unable to feed their own people. The United Brethren Church in Republic, Kansas, was on the verge of closing. The pastor had quit to work on the Public Works Administration, a government relief program. The official board refused to accept a woman preacher.

Gertrude McNeill Pettibon, certain of her calling to the ministry, refused to accept the board’s decision and moved with her children into a back room of the church. Her first Sunday she preached and announced a full week’s schedule to a cold and almost empty church. The days and weeks that followed she chugged her ’28 Chevrolet over dusty country roads, more often than not, driving on prayer and the fumes from an empty gas tank.

She stopped at every house inviting folks to church, and the bone-weary farmers came. Soon the board saw something special in this woman’s zeal for God and love for people, and moved her into the parsonage.

Gertrude Pettibon pastored the Republic church ten years, 1933 to 1943, and was ordained in 1936. These were years of great financial problems. Pastor and laity sacrificed together to pay conference quotas, and the pastor’s small salary was supplemented by whatever produce was available.

Four young men of the congregation answered the call to Christian ministry and went on to be ordained.

The church became a stronghold of the community, and remains so today. Most of the town’s six hundred people are gone, businesses have moved, the school is closed and its roof has fallen in. But the UB church (now United Methodist), stands like a beacon on a corner near the center of town. Its brown brick exterior is in good repair, its doors open, its sanctuary warm and welcoming, while a young woman preacher affirms, “The Church’s One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Her Lord.”

In 1943 Gertrude married Clarence Millen, her lay delegate to annual conference and long-time friend, and preached at the Methodist Church in Byron, Nebraska. Eventually they moved to the Otterbein Home at Lebanon, Ohio, as house-parents to teenage boys. Leukemia cut her life short at age fifty. But today her life still shines through many whom she brought to Christ.

(adapted from the Telescope-Messenger, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Winter, 1998) Found on GBGM-UMC.

It seems to me …

It seems to me that …

1. Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
2. Time is nature’s way of preventing everything from happening at once.

3. The school should always have as its aim that the young man leave it as a harmonious personality, not as a specialist. This in my opinion is true in a certain sense even for technical schools… The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge. – Albert Einstein
4. Tobacco is a nauseating plant consumed by only two creatures: a large green worm and man. The worm doesn’t know any better.
5. Tolerance gets a lot of credit that belongs to apathy.
6. Truth is often violated by falsehood, but can be equally outraged by silence.
7. Maybe we were better off when charity was a virtue instead of a deduction.
8. We need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure. - Oliver Wendel Holmes II
9. Do it now! Today will be yesterday tomorrow.
10.Smooth seas do not make good sailors.
11.Part-time faith, like a part-time job, cannot fully support you.
12.Were it not for the doers, the critics would soon be out of business.
13.It is especially hard to work for money you’ve already spent for something you didn’t need.
14.The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies — probably because they are generally the same people. – G.K. Chesterton, 1910
15.It’s extremely difficult to sell anyone a product you’ve never used — or a religion you’ve never lived.

Preach It Oyster Man!

“The early Methodist meetings were often led by lay preachers with very limited education. On one occasion, such a preacher took as his text Luke 19:21, “Lord, I feared thee, because thou art an austere man.” Not knowing the word “austere,” he thought that the text spoke of “an oyster man.” He spoke about the work of those who retrieve oysters from the sea-bed. The diver plunges

down from the surface, cut off from his natural environment, into bone-chilling water. He gropes in the dark, cutting his hands on the sharp edges of the shells. Now he has the oyster, and kicks back up to the surface, up to the warmth and light and air, clutching in his torn and bleeding hands the object of his search. So Christ descended from the glory of heaven into the squalor of earth, into sinful human society, in order to retrieve humans and bring them back up with Him to the glory of heaven, His torn and bleeding hands a sign of the value He has placed on the object of His quest. Twelve men were converted that evening. Afterwards, someone complained to Wesley about the inappropriateness of allowing preachers who were too ignorant to know the meaning of the texts they were preaching on. Wesley, simply said, “Never mind, the Lord got a dozen oysters tonight.”

(From Albert C. Outler, John Wesley’s Sermons: An Introduction, p 79)

Poll: How do we discern that individuals are truly called by God and without personal motives?

Poll: How do we discern that individuals are truly called by God and without personal motives?

Fletcher and the Three Hebrews

JOHN WILLIAM FLETCHER, native of Nyon, Switzerland (1729), and graduate of the University of Geneva, was prevented by an accident from becoming a soldier of the Portuguese Army in Brazil.

As he was about to start, a serving-maid spilled a kettle of boiling water on him, incapacitating him for some time. Later, under Methodist influence, he entered into a Christian experience and became one of Wesley’s preachers. Still later he was appointed vicar of the Church of England at Madeley, a notoriously wicked community.

On Sunday mornings he went about at five o clock, ringing a bell to rouse people in time for service. His church soon was crowded, to the disgust of a group of evildoers who determined to stop him. They arranged a “bull-baiting” near his preaching place and planned to pull him off his horse when he arrived. But, called to a child’s funeral, he was providentially a little late for the service; and, while the conspirators were in a drinking booth, the bull broke loose, charged the tent and scattered them so effectually that he preached in peace.

A butcher forbade his wife attending Fletcher’s church threatening to cut her throat if she went. When she started to go, he exclaimed, “Are you going to Fletcher s church?” “I am,” she replied. “Then, I shall not cut your throat as I intended, he declared, “`but I will heat the oven and throw you into it, when you come home!” Fletcher preached that morning on the first Scripture lesson of the day-the three Hebrews, saved in the flames of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. The message so heartened the distracted woman that, on returning, she courageously faced her husband and conquered his evil spirit until he was convicted of sin.

This article was taken from the book entitled “One Hundred and One Methodist Stories” by Carl F. Price and published by the Methodist Book Concern.