This weekend we are going to celebrate Western Hills Church’s 30th Anniversary. (Why we call it an anniversary as opposed to a birthday? I have no explanation.) We’re going to serve coffee, latte’s, and all kinds of other coffee deliciousness as well as bagels, donuts, and pastries. There will be pictures worthy of blackmail material and other fun archival things to see, but I hope you find something else.

What does living out the reality of Jesus look like in your world?

Been asking this question a lot. Of myself, the staff, and the church. I started with the circles that I walk in for the city of Topeka – volunteer Chaplain with the Topeka Fire Department, Freedom Now, and part of a larger community of faith leaders that love this city. It was through these circles that I first met Pastor T.D. Hicks of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church.

A deep friendship developed during the course of all the meetings we ran into each other at. Unbeknownst to either of us, we both grew up in Aurora, Colorado. He ended up going to a rival high school of mine. We both love soul food, BBQ, and the Denver Broncos. He serves Topeka as a police chaplain, I serve as a fire chaplain.

Of course, serving in these places has exposed us to the deep and perplexing issues that are pressing in on our city. Issues like food-insecure children, human trafficking, and racism.

Over many meals, TD and I have wrestled with how the Church could engage in these issues in a redemptive way with city leaders. What is our role as pastors and leaders of local congregations? How can we bring life and hope and healing to these places? What is the church’s role in these places? How can the community of Jesus-followers engage in a redemptive way in these places? Particularly on the issue of racism, which is the ‘third rail’ of conversation topics.

Just in case you haven’t quite picked up on this particular detail yet, T.D. is black. I am white. After a lot of different ideas on the subject of racism in the city, the reality that he and I were faced with was this… The Church is SUPPOSED to be the place of hope for our world, because we are the people of Jesus. But the people of Jesus are still the most segregated people in the world on Sunday mornings. It’s kind of hard to expect something from the community that the church isn’t modeling.

So this Sunday, November 18th, Pastor T.D. Hicks is coming to preach at Western Hills Church. And he’s NOT coming to preach on racism or poverty or human-trafficking. He’s not coming to address how we can solve any problem at all. He’s coming to preach on James 5:7-12.

Why that passage? Because that’s where we are in our series on James.

I do not know what all it will take to heal the wounds of racism in our city. But I do know that one of the things that must happen is that we have to stop seeing T.D. Hicks as a black pastor for the black church and start seeing him as a gifted teacher of the Scriptures, a man of God, who just so happens to be black.

I’m really looking forward to Sunday so that you can meet my friend, T.D. See ya there.

As many of you know, we kicked off our Discipleship Coaching Ministry last fall. The plan was to make sure that every Western Hills family had someone who would check on them at least one time a month asking them, “How can I pray for you?”  The ultimate goal was for these coaches to help people grow in their faith in the areas of Love God, Live Connected, Serve All, and Multiply Another. In order to complete this picture, each of our coaches had an elder that was responsible to check up on them and was available for further questions and training.

Over these months, we’ve learned a couple of things. First, our coaches told us clearly that having ten families (or more) was WAY too many. They could consistently hit three or four families with deep, meaningful conversations, but beyond that was proving to be very difficult. The second thing we learned was that we needed more training.

So we’ve had to make some changes, and we are already in the middle of some of those changes.

First, we trained our elders on how to train coaches. Next, our elders spent a couple of months training our coaches. We gave our current coaches permission to choose three to four families that they could continue to stay connected with and to help identify new coaches who could possibly pick up some of their other families. Between now and the end of August, we will be training these new coaches and re-organizing how all of these parts fit together: elders, coaches, and congregation. This will hopefully put us in a good position this September to have a fully-functioning Discipleship Coaching Ministry!

When we launched this concept, the goal was to become a multiplying church: a place where every person who calls Western Hills home functions as more than just a consumer, but as a Kingdom Ministry Partner. We know that this intersection of the Great Commandment and Great Commission is where real life happens. This is where Love, Live, Serve, and Multiply come to life, and it’s where real change can occur. Therefore, we want to do everything we can to empower people to live in that place.

This is still the goal, and we will get there!! There is so much at stake, much more than just church growth. I firmly believe that every single Christ-follower is gifted and called for a specific plan that will further His Kingdom. We want to be a church that empowers that kind of life. This tool of discipleship coaching can be a huge help for us in becoming this kind of church.

Thank you for being patient with us as we figure this out. We are committed to making this work because we know what is at stake.

Let’s keep chopping wood and praying to the Lord of the harvest!

“Blotch is a boy who lives in a kingdom where everyone has blotches on their skin. Each time a person is mean or does something wrong, another spot appears. Hoping to find someone who knows how to get rid of the spots, Blotch strikes out on a journey. At the first village he meets the Hiders, who merely cover their spots. Next, the Pretenders simply deny they even have spots. A third village is full of the Blamers, who constantly fight and blame each other for their rapidly multiplying stains. Fearful and frustrated, Blotch finally meets a kind stranger who has the solution for removing the spots permanently. But an elated Blotch is shocked to find out that the humble stranger is actually the King, and the solution requires that the King take the spots on Himself, a sacrifice that will change Blotch and his family forever.”

If you’re like me, you created images in your mind as you read this overview of the book Blotch, and you’re completely hooked and need to know how the story ends! 

A friend, who was a retired college professor when I met her, turned childrens books into life changing stories for adults whenever she led training in womens ministry. That’s what the book Blotch can do…change lives! That’s why we are engaging in a church wide Blotch study! Imagine with me car rides home from church where everyone gets to participate in the same conversation. Lunchtime talks with your friend group after Sunday services. Children gathered around at your grandchild’s birthday party as you read Blotch, the gift that you purchased for them. Lives, young and old, changed!

The study centers around a children’s book, but the messages are universal. The curriculum is designed to help “adults better understand our sinfulness, our failed attempts at fixing things and our need for Jesus.”

Buy yours now at the Blotch kiosk in the hallway at Western Hills, and sign up for a Blotch Connect Group with 100 of your friends who have already done so. Become a part of the Blotch movement in and through Western Hills Church. Books are $8 each. Buy one for yourself and one for a friend!

See you in church!

-Mari

Volunteers from Western Hills at McCarter Elementary

Western Hills!!

What a great week! The whole city wins when the Church gathers together in His name to make a difference. That’s exactly what happened last weekend, and I can’t tell you how proud I am of Western Hills.

Yes. I know. “You shouldn’t be proud,” but actually I think I can.  Check these out…

2 Thessalonians 1:4
Therefore, we ourselves speak proudly of you among the churches of God for your perseverance and faith in the midst of all your persecutions and afflictions which you endure.

2 Corinthians 7:4 
Great is my confidence in you; great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort; I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction.

So while Paul would never boast about himself, he would boast about churches making a difference in their world in Jesus’ name. And that IS Western Hills.

We had 88 people sign up to help and about another half dozen that showed up without signing up. We had childcare workers, painters, carpenters, diggers, mulchers, and movers. We updated the teacher’s workroom, painted TWO dark hallways, put in an outdoor reading center, fixed some broken steps, painted outdoor gym equipment and washed windows.

This is just an awesome testimony to our community. We’re going to celebrate a little about it this coming Sunday, so please wear your ShareFest Shirt. We want to say thank you for representing Western Hills and Jesus so well this past weekend.

Following the rabbit around the tree and into the hole turned out to be a lot more difficult than first imagined. I remember making my entire family late because I had to tie my shoes myself. I didn’t want any help. I didn’t want any parent to do it for me either

I can do this all by myself.

What a disaster, and it wasn’t even true! Have you thought about how complicated tying your shoe would be if you had to figure it out all by yourself with nobody else’s help? It’d be nearly impossible.

Yet when it comes to dating and marriage, it’s astonishing how many people try to do exactly that: figure out that complicated mess of string on their own. We’ve got the numbers to prove how nearly impossible it is.

41%   Divorce rate for 1st marriage
60%   Divorce rate for 2nd marriage
73%   Divorce rate for 3rd marriage or more
80%   Divorce rate for couples who live together first

It’s pretty clear that our culture has no clue what it’s doing when it comes to figuring out the knot of healthy dating and marital relationships. And we still seem to have a large group of strong-willed people who want to figure it out on their own. Why? Why is there such a resistance to dating and doing marriage God’s way?

“It’s old fashioned.”
“It’s out-dated.”
“It’s not realistic.”

Dating and marriage is infinitely more complicated than tying shoes, but what if there was a completely different set of numbers? Like a 100% chance to find a spouse that has both beauty and character? Or a 100% chance of a dating relationship that pleases God? Or maybe a 100% chance you’ll be in a marriage that you LOVE being in.

Like those numbers? How much would those numbers be worth to you? Would you buy that book? Attend that seminar?

I’m convinced if more people would study Song of Solomon and model their dating life and their marriage after it, the numbers on marriage would be drastically different. God wants us to have the best: the best dating experience and the best marriage experience. He’s put the blueprint in front of us in Song of Solomon.

The next 6 weeks we’re going to unpack it all and have a ton of laughs along the way. We will walk through all the phases of dating, courtship, marriage, and even the later stages of marriage.

This may just be the most important book on marriage ever written.

Ever.

Take the journey with us. We start it this Sunday.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t command men to gather wood, don’t divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” – Antoine de Saint Exupery

I love this quote! It has easy application to the Biblical command to go and teach.

If you want to build God’s Kingdom, inspire people to yearn for their King.

It’s said by many statisticians that Christ followers have been trained with at least five methods for sharing our faith, and yet, we live in a post-Christian world. Have we relied on training rather than yearning? To yearn means to have an intense feeling of longing for or to be filled with compassion or warm feeling for something.

We love to see our friends and families at church! We catch up on the latest. We schedule coffee dates. We feel good about being in church. But when was the last time we yearned for church so that we could worship freely in Spirit and in truth? (John 4:24) What lyrics recently broke down our walls and left us feeling like a raw, open wound before Jesus? Do we prepare ourselves during the week to hear from God through the spoken word? Are we praying with perseverance for the people who will be sitting with us in the worship center? Do we have compassion and warm feelings for being the church?

It’s frustrating for me as an employee of a church that occasionally, in those times scheduled for worship, well, I’m just on the clock. When those times happen, it’s easy to know that there wasn’t enough preparation in my own heart during the week. There wasn’t enough time spent yearning Jesus. Not enough time spent with Jesus in His word. Not enough time listening to Gods direction. Ignoring the Spirit’s nudgings when out and about with people. Closing my eyes to the needs all around me that require me to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Too much time spent just doing my daily thing.

The words to a song come to mind as I think of what it means to yearn…”Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in his wonderful face; And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace.”

Father, we want to yearn for You, but it’s hard. There’s so much life to conflict with this yearning. We want to be the person that people see Jesus in. We truly desire to make a difference in our world by serving You. Show us how.

Amen

-by Mari Parker

Are you tired from the hurry and go pace of life?

Are you drained from the people in your life taking a piece of you?

Are you exhausted from trying to fill the space around you with your relevance?

A few weeks ago, a friend and I were driving to a meeting and talking about life.  We wondered when should the time come to hit a pause button.

Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time for everything. “…a time for planting and a time for uprooting what was planted, …a time for tearing down and a time for building up, …a time for crying and a time for laughing, …a time for mourning and a time for dancing, …a time for searching and a time for losing”

A pause button: why is it needed?

1. to champion others, and
2. to get back on track with who we are

It’s our turn. Right now. We have the task of being Jesus and sharing Jesus. That’s on us. Now. A whole lot of people had that task before us, and a whole lot of other people will have it after we are gone.  It is our job to champion them. Make known those heroes of the faith who came before. Speak of them. Learn from them. Be inspired by them, and be motivated to do your part. We have to do this right, so those after us have a stronger foundation on which to stand.

Verse 13 of the last chapter of Ecclesiastes helps with the second part of why a pause button is needed: “The end of the matter…Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” That’s also our how-to! This is how we get back on track. Fear God means to respect him. To know him. To be changed by him.

What would a pause button look like for you? A quiet ride through the plains of Western Kansas? A weekend get-away with some friends? Going to a movie by yourself? A massage? A hike around Lake Shawnee? Quiet time to read a good book? Enjoying a hobby for a few hours a week? Going fishing?

The pause is knowing when the time for not doing something is… It’s now time to laugh, or to dance or to let go.

As I wrote earlier, we spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to fill the space around us with our relevance. We are not that special! It’s just our turn! Our space needs to be filled with God, and a pause gives us that opportunity to refocus so that we give our best to God.

-Mari