At New Hope This Sunday
We celebrated. Daylight Saving Time ended that morning and the service times didn't move, the congregation brought back the Next Step commitment cards they've been holding for weeks, we shared communion, and then the whole church walked out to the courtyard and the Social Hall for Lunch on the Lawn.
Coming up, and every one of these needs people:
From Monument to Movement, a new message series starting Sunday, November 8. Three Sundays in Acts on how the New Testament church made disciples, sent them out and multiplied. Pastor Roberto Chaple preaches week one.
Starting Point begins Sunday, November 8, 11:00 AM, in room NH-101. If you're new to New Hope, or you've been here a while and never quite landed anywhere, this is the on-ramp.
Women of Hope Pecan Sale pick-up, Saturday, November 14 and Monday, November 16, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, in the Life Center gym. Ordering closed on October 24. Prepaid orders are reserved, and anything not prepaid is first come, first served on pick-up day. All the details are here.
Men of Valor Iron Morning Breakfast, Saturday, November 14, 7:30 AM, Social Hall C. The men eat together, and then the Handyman Ministry runs its first work day. Teams go out to church members' homes, and the ones who stay pray over the ones who go.
Church Conference, Sunday, November 15 at 3:00 PM, Social Hall A. This is the church's business meeting, and members and congregation are both welcome.
Kingdom Impact
"when was the last time you really celebrated?"
That's the first thing Pastor Vicki Harrison says. No wind-up, no opening prayer, just the question. And the room answers it easily, because people are good at this. Birthdays, weddings, a baby on the way, a new house, a retirement. We stop the normal week, we eat too much, we tell stories, sometimes we dance.
Then she turns it around. In the family of faith, she says, we don't do enough of it. We're busy doing things for the kingdom, and that matters, but busy is all we are. We never stop the rhythm long enough to say thank you.
So this message doesn't argue for celebration. It is one.
God put it on the calendar
Pastor Vicki starts in Exodus with the first holiday God ever made: the lamb, the blood on the doorposts, the night the angel of death passes over. Then the instruction in Exodus 12:17 to keep that festival "as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come."
Then Purim, out of Esther. Then Shavuot and Sukkot, with the congregation saying each name out loud. All of them do the same three things, and she names them plainly: "Stop your regular rhythm of life. Remember what God has done, and rejoice and celebrate His faithfulness."
And when God doesn't schedule it, people do it anyway. David dances the ark into Jerusalem, undignified and unbothered by his wife's embarrassment. Solomon finishes the temple and feasts for fourteen days. The sky over Bethlehem fills with angels in front of a few shepherds who weren't expecting company.
Three psalms, standing
This is where the service becomes the sermon. Three times, Pastor Vicki asks the congregation to stand, and three times the whole room reads a psalm out loud together, with a song in between each one.
Psalm 100 first. Then Psalm 136, where every line comes back to the same refrain until you can't help but say it: his love endures forever. Then Psalm 150, which lists instruments until it runs out of them and tells everything that has breath to praise the Lord.
Many of the psalms were written for exactly this. The Psalms of Ascent were sung by people walking up to Jerusalem for the festivals. Her point is that we're doing something old here, not something new.
A gift of land in 1878
Between the psalms, she tells the church's story, and it starts with her own. She and Richard came to New Hope in May of 1996, newly married and looking for a group of young couples to hang out with. What they found was a family. A family that taught two baby Christians how to follow Jesus, loved their kids, carried them through the ups and downs, and paid for her seminary when she got her call to ministry.
Then the longer story. John Brandon gives a piece of land in 1878 for a Methodist church and a cemetery. The little white church gets moved over in the 1930s, and there are still people in the room who sat in it as children. Termites take that building, so Logan Hall goes up in 1962, and the sanctuary opens in 2000. In 2013 New Hope merges with Primera Iglesia. In 2023 it joins the Global Methodist Church.
"150 years of caring for people." That's how she puts it, and then she keeps going. 150 years of preaching and teaching, of serving the least and the lost, of baptisms and weddings and burying the people everybody loved. Whether you've been here sixty years or two weeks, she says, take a minute and celebrate what God has done.
And what he's doing right now
The last stretch is a list, and every item has a photo behind it.
The sanctuary is coming back, and the damage was less than anyone feared. Volunteers showed up on a Saturday to pull the pews out by hand. The men's ministry has turned a corner, with a new generation stepping up to lead and the seasoned veterans mentoring them, and the Handyman Ministry grew straight out of that. The generation that carried this church for three decades is handing off, and Pastor Vicki calls that exactly what it is: the sign of a healthy church.
Spark runs on Friday nights. Adopted grandmas hold babies in the service. New Hope Early Learning is open for its 60th year, and children can learn their ABCs anywhere, so the job there is to tell them Jesus loves them and that they were made on purpose. Women of Hope has taken the lead with the mission partners, and the partners say so: when they need something, they know who to call.
And the church keeps worshiping alongside the Spanish-speaking congregation, "because we are one church in two languages, and we look more like the kingdom when we're together."
What it asks of you
The message ends with a card. Everyone who brought a commitment card back is asked to hold it, lay a hand on it, and pray over it in the quiet. Everyone who didn't finds one in the bulletin. The question on it is the one the whole morning has been building toward: given all of that, how are you going to give back to the Lord?
Still holding a card, or would rather do it online? Download the Next Step packet — the Small Community page and the commitment card are in it together — or fill the card out online. Still looking for a group? Start at findnewhope.com/groups.
En español: descargue el paquete Mi Próximo Paso o complete la tarjeta en línea.
If the last year has gone by in a blur of being busy for the kingdom, this is the one to watch. Give it thirty-five minutes and let somebody else do the remembering for you.
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More Sermons in this Series
Other Sermons from Pastor Vicki
Celebration is not a reward the church earns when things go well. God built it into the calendar. Rev. Vicki Harrison reads Psalm 100, Psalm 136 and Psalm 150 with the congregation standing, and tells the story of a church that has been caring for people in Brandon for almost 150 years.