Its Been a Beautiful Day

It’s been a beautiful day.  Some would say, “You’re retired.  Isn’t every day a beautiful day?”  No. Its not.  The day the tornadoes almost dropped out of the sky on us at Flagler, Colorado, and we had to drive for an hour or more in hail and heavy winds ($7,000 for entry door and AC cowling repair) was not a beautiful day. But OK, most days are pretty nice.  Today, however, was beautiful. And today even began with an alarm clock.

It was Sunday, and we were parked at Bull Shoals UMC in Bull Shoals, Arkansas along the White River in the rolling Ozark Mountains. Church was at 9:00 am and we arrived across the parking lot at 8:45. 

Sometimes you go in as a visitor at a church and people don’t know what to do with you.  Even the greeter doesn’t know how to handle someone whose face they don’t recognize.  They want to be welcoming but just haven’t learned how to welcome the stranger.  That was not BSUMC (I just love our use of acronyms in the United Methodist Church!)

We were quickly made to feel at home and introduced to the coffee pot, so I was instantly comfortable.  Then one of the women of the church engaged Mona in conversation and was genuinely interested in our life on the road.  Pastor Donnie came over and apologized for not being able to greet us before this morning but he had told us he would be on vacation and away so no problem there.

Then the service.  Traditional United Methodist the way I remember it at Lititz, Pa 20 years ago.  But so what.  The people were here to worship God and be in community with each other and the theme of Donnie’s sermon, and it was very well received, was service in the community. What are we willing to sacrifice for God in carrying out nurture, outreach, and mission?

After church here Donnie and wife Annette head off to a small UMC in Yellville (Don’t laugh too hard.  Pennsylvania has Ono, Blueball and Intercourse, to name a few interesting moniker’s for small towns) about twenty minutes away and past the town of Flippin. 

We were invited to one of two adult Sunday School classes at 10:30 and the one we chose is using a really provocative book published by the UMC Upper Room called DISCIPLE.  A Daily Bible Study Guide and Devotional that about eight of us covered the past week’s discussions in under Tom and Jane’s able guidance.

And wouldn’t you know?  We learned in class that this church, just like some of the others we have visited in these first three months on the road has leaders who are wondering if they should

   -Create a second service of more contemporary music and projection.

   -Develop new classes or small groups.

   -Create new and exciting ways to help people say yes to taking on and being

   supported in leadership roles.

The bottom line we’ve found in so many UMC’s is that if key people in a church, along with the pastor, are able to prayerfully risk everything for God, God will move the hearts of enough others in that fellowship to do what He wants done in the church and community.

National Park PHOTO

We drove south through the beautiful and slow winding and rolling Ozarks along the Buffalo River National Park to Conway, Arkansas. No pics of the river from us, though.  This is a wilderness river and you must see it from the water, not a car.  It was about a two and a half hour trip at an average 45 miles per hour.  That is always beautiful.

Then we arrived at our destination, First UMC in Conway.  The largest UMC and one of the largest Christian churches in the county.  

The original stone pantheon-like building was attractive enough, but the newer construction which included new worship space, classroom and day care room, and parking, makes the church now take up an entire large city block.  Over 500 worship regularly and our friends who attend here, Vicki and Clayton Crockett, arranged for us to stay for two nights, and possibly more, if we decide we would like to.  They only live about four miles or so away.

We arrived this evening just in time to be invited by them and a bunch of their friends from the University (Clayton is a professor of religious studies at the University of Central Arkansas at Conway).  His department was having an informal family get together of religious and philosophy profs at the senior profs home and pool.  It was good old potluck, though decidedly not just old time southern.  The profs come from many backgrounds including Japan and China so the eclectic menu was great, and so were the chicken, hot dogs, popsicles and watermelon.  We brought a Kroger’s Pineapple Upside Down Cake that we discovered was still partially frozen when we opened it.  It was amazing to see how the profs and families seemed not to mind the ice crystals at all as they wolfed it down!

Vickie the Managing Director of the Conway Symphony.  She says its a part time job. Yeah, like a PT pastor is part time.  She does , or sees it gets done, everything nonmusical about the orchestras performances and needs. They are blessed to have a solid relationship with the university.

We met a first grade teacher, wife of one of the profs, who told us the story of the tornado that totally destroyed Vellonia’s (a smaller town near Conway) newest grade school building just before it was to be opened this past April. We talked with Clayton about the exciting Exchange of ideas happening with Chinese Universities through the ‘Confucius Institute’, a mostly Chinese funded way for schools all over the world to get Chinese and indigenous students to study together and learn from each other.

And we learned from Vicki that tomorrow NO ALARM CLOCK.  Their two kids are off to sleepovers tonight so they are sleeping in!  We’ll join them about 11:00 for lunch at their home and then head to a local state park lake for a relaxing sit on the grass, and picnic supper.  A Labor Day, an end of summer day, perhaps the way it was always meant to be.

-Ken