April 18, 2013 The Methogram is a publication of : First United Methodist Church 670 North 5th Street, Silsbee, Texas 77656 Phone: (409) 385-5568 Fax: (409) 385-7219 Dr. Dan Darby Senior Pastor Rev. Nancy Ratchford Associate Pastor Jennifer Suitt Office Manager Office@silsbeeumc.com Come Visit Us At: www.silsbeeumc.com Inside this issue: The mission of First United Methodist Church of Silsbee is to glorify God, make disciples, and transform lives in Christ We are sending out over 900 invitations to people on our mailing list to come and celebrate Miracle Sunday with us. These include our All Faiths Day School, Upward Soccer, Faith Weaver Friends, and Scouting families. I hope that you will make every effort to be in church that day and to attend the rededication service for McDonough Hall to help us welcome our visitors. At the rededication, we will recognize those who have played such a big part in making this miracle happen. And please bring a dish! After the rededication service at noon we will have a covered dish meal and an open house. It is going to be a great day! I have really been encouraged lately by seeing some of our church members beginning to attend church again, as well as having a few new visitors. Some of our Dan s Divinities church members are taking this work of evangelism and welcoming seriously!!! Thank you for your work! See you this Sunday, Pastor Dan Miracle Sunday! Memorials 2 Gifts and Presence 2 School Bond Information 3-4 Acolyte Welcome 5 Mediation Course Info 5 Youth Collide Event 6 Information 2013 Theme Verse 6 Caring Friends Program Pastor Dan would like to start a Caring Friends program. This will be a prayer centered program. The basic idea is that one person or couple would take the responsibility to call three other individuals, couples, or families in the church on a weekly basis and ask if they have any prayer concerns. Then, after praying for the concerns for a week, call back the next week and ask if there have been any answers to the prayers, and request if there are any new concerns. We want to establish a web of concern, prayer, and friendship within the church, and to support one another in our spiritual lives and Christian discipleship. If you would like to volunteer to be a Caring Friend, please contact the church office at 385-5568 or by email at office@silsbeeumc.com. After we have a list of volunteers, we will call a training session so that we are all on the page. After the initial training session, we may try to have a monthly meeting for feedback, support, and continuing education about how to care for others. If there are some Caring Friends who want to get together weekly for group prayer, we can network that at the training session. Primetimers and some of our adult Sunday School Classes may already have similar prayer and friendship programs started. The Caring Friends program is not meant to supplant these efforts, but to supplement them.
Gifts and Presence Irene Beard Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Cassity Freeda Duffle Gus & Johni Ruth Dunbar James & Kristi Sellers Billy Dinkle Patty Whaley Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Cassity James & Kristi Sellers Bill Barclay Roddy Farmer Ann Jeffrey Charles Breaux Ed and Sonia Cain Sam Tobey IV Roy Fox Sherry Woodard wishes to inform our readers that on April 27th from 8-4 pm in Beaumont at the Christian Fellowship Center, Pricilla Shrier, who has presented with Beth Moore on past occasions, will speak. Cost is $10 and contact # is 409-892- 0412. Worship 03/24 185 03/31 213 04/07 147 04/14 142 Sunday School 03/24 104 03/31 79 04/07 95 04/14 100 Gifts 03/24 $4,886.00 03/31 $7,699.50 04/07 $9,591.00 04/14 $4,433.96 Enclosed in this newsletter is information giving the facts about the proposed Silsbee ISD bond election. That information is not an endorsement of a position, but is intended to help our members gain information about the proposal. National Day of Prayer Thursday, May 2, is the National Day of Prayer. We will have a 30 minute service in the Sanctuary for all those who would like to attend. We will be praying for our nation and our leaders. We plan to start at 12:10 p.m. Please come and invite your neighbors. The church is subscribing to the Right Now Video Library. This is an online library, and will make a wide variety of Christian-based videos available to our church members. The videos come in three main areas. First, bible studies and faithbased studies from several major publishers. Second, training videos for volunteers and staff members, including video clips that can be used in sermons and lessons. Third, videos of Christian Conferences. This subscription will make available to us thousands of useful materials that can be used in the home or in the church by our members. Anyone who would like to be trained in the use of this library is invited to our training session on Wednesday, April 24, at 10:15 a.m. in the Pastor s office. If you have a laptop, you are invited to bring it. If so, please come a little early so you can get online through the church s wireless system.
The local U.S. Post Office recently notified us that our non-profit rate newsletter will now take a minimum of five working days to deliver to Silsbee addresses. As a test, we mailed ourselves our last newsletter, one to the church and one to the parsonage. It took one week to get back to the church office and three weeks to the parsonage. Our conclusion from this test is that the U. S. Postal system non-profit mailing is no longer an efficient, timely method of delivering our newsletter to you. If you are currently receiving the newsletter by mail and you use email and have web access, please consider receiving the newsletter Postal Woes by the Internet. Please notify the church office by email at office@silsbeeumc.com to stop receiving the newsletter by mail and begin receiving an email link from the church office as soon as it is published. You will find the email copy more colorful and timely. For those who do not have Internet and email access, we will have them available on Sunday Mornings. We will have a sign-out sheet for those picking up their newsletter in person. For the remainder, we will mail them either first class (46 cents) or by non-profit rate (29 cents). We are currently mailing 200 newsletters, the minimum for non-profit rate. We can mail it first class for the same amount of money if we mail 126 or fewer pieces. Instrument Needed We are pleased to announce that Olivia and Payton Burleson, Taylor Martin and Brooke Meaders have been commissioned to serve as acolytes this past Sunday. They join Eli Auer, Aiden Delano, Avery Meaders, Gracie Gilchriest, Rebecca Darby and Paula Boothman, all of whom did an outstanding job last year, and will return for the year 2013-2014. We are looking for a guitar that can be electronically connected to a sound system! Philip Self has been playing bass with our praise band for awhile now. We need to move him to guitar, but he does not have a suitable instrument. He faithfully practices on a small acoustic model, but he needs an upgrade to be able to play on Sunday mornings. If anyone has one that is not being played right now, our band could use it! We would even accept a loaner, if someone is not quite ready to part from one permanently. Please call Paula Darby at 385-2467 if you can help with this. Resolving Everyday Conflict Course Beginning Friday, April 26, an 8 week course titled Resolving Everyday Conflict will begin. It will be held each Friday in the Methodist Center beginning at 9:30 am, and lasting for approximately 1.5 hours a week. This course will be led by the Hardin County Mediation Center. If you are interested in attending, please contact John Morrison at RJMFSC1@sbcglorbal.net
This year, our youth will be participating in the C o l l i d e 2 0 1 3 youth event at Annual Conference, May 25 and May26. Collide this year in some ways has changed from in years past, and is now structured as sort of an 'annual conference for youth.' Youth will still be worshiping together, eating together and having times of fellowship and play. Houston Methodist Churches will host the youth for sleeping spaces. In previous years church groups have stayed together to work on a project, this year we will be meeting and gathering at the Hilton Americas in downtown Houston where we will offer five tracks or five workshops for students to choose from. If you would like more information about the event or registration, you may visit www.youthcollide.com. For more specific information about travel information and times for our youth, contact Jenny Pachall at 828-2776. 2013 Theme Verse The leadership and staff of First United Methodist Church of Silsbee have claimed 1 Corinthians 15:58 as our theme verse for this year: Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. I Corinthians 15:58 (NIV) Pray over this verse, study it, meditate on it, and we pray that you will claim this verse for your own this year. First United Methodist Church 670 North 5th Street Silsbee Texas 77656 RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 29 Silsbee, Texas