Welcome to Fulton United Methodist Church. We welcome you to grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ and share in his ministry with our church family.
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Our regular services are held at:
Traditional Worship - 9:30 am
Children's Message - 9:30 am
Sunday School - 10:30 am
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Pastor's Office Hours 9:00 - 12:00 (Mon, Wed & Thurs)
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IMPORTANT NOTICE:
Each Wed, 6:30 pm Beth Moore Bible Study on the Letter of James
Sat, Feb 11 6:00 -10:00 pm Silver Ball Valentine's Dinner at Advance UMC. The young adults & youth of Fulton, Advance, and Elbaville UMC's are thrilled to announce the first ever Silver Ball - to be held on February 11 in the Advance UMC Fellowship Hall. Please join us for a night of dinner, dancing, and doo-wops. Purchase your tickets or purchase tickets for someone you know. Please contact Cheryl Skinner, Sarah Young, Travis Young, Robin Oliver, April Livengood, Carmen Minor or Abby Riddle for more information. Tickets must be purchased by Sunday, February 5.
Sun, Feb 12 9:30 am Don't forget to save your spare change for Thunder Sunday. The children will be taking up a collection in coffee cans every second Sunday for missions. Let's see how much "thunder" we make to help others.
Sun, Feb 12 L.A. Bridge Worship 5:30 pm - Snack Supper; 6:00 pm - LA. Bridge Disciple Classes; 7:00 pm - L.A. Bridge Worship Gathering
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Scriptural Reading - February 5, 2012
First Reading: 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
2:1 When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
Second Reading - Mark 1:29-39
1:29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. 30 Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told Jesus about her. 31 So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.
32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. 33 The whole town gathered at the door, 34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.
35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: "Everyone is looking for you!"
38 Jesus replied, "Let us go somewhere else - to the nearby villages - so I can preach there also. That is why I have come." 39 So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
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Weekly Message: January 29, 2012
Message: “Lord of All Creation”
In the book “The Passionate Church,” Mike Breen tells about a day in the life of the people who lived on the coast of Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. February 3, 1931, began as a quiet day on the beautiful coastline. The coastal residents of Napier and Hastings went about their day just as they had for years. Stores were filled with shoppers. Restaurants were clearing away the breakfast dishes and getting ready for lunch. People on vacation were headed to the beach.
Then at 10:46 in the morning, everything changed. An earthquake measuring 7.9 struck, and for three nerve-wracking minutes, most of the buildings in the area were destroyed, and hundreds of people were killed. After the earthquake faded away, fires started and swept through the ruins.
Once the smoke and the dust cleared, once the aftershocks had settled down, once the dead were buried and the sick and wounded cared for, the residents began to rebuild. But they were met with a great surprise. The shattered landscape had changed. Bluffs overlooking the bay were torn away and tossed in the sea. What had once been flat ground was now a series of hills. Where there had been valleys, there was now level ground. And an inland lake had been swallowed up, leaving nine thousand acres of dry ground.
When the people set out to rebuild, they faced a dilemma. Survey maps and property lines no longer worked. Road maps showed roads running along land that no longer existed. The people that led the rebuilding effort had to throw out all the road maps and property deeds and start over by relying on a compass. When the landscape changes, maps and deeds are useless, but the compass still works.
Throughout history, seismic cultural quakes have affected our social landscape and affected the life of the church. Jesus was born in the midst of economic and political turmoil in the Roman-controlled territory of Israel. A few decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Jews rebelled, and the Romans leveled the Jewish temple, dismantled the Jewish government, and drove the Jews into exile around the Roman empire. In the midst of this chaos, some of the Jews began following the teachings of this man known as Jesus, also known to have experienced a miraculous resurrection.
Five hundred years later, another cultural quake occurred. The Roman Empire, weakened by years of corruption, fell apart. The church, led by a Bishop from Northern Africa named Augustine, brought a compass to a world whose maps and structures were falling apart. The compass? Jesus. The church led the way for the next thousand years.
The next seismic shift occurred in the 1400 & 1500’s. The invention of the printing press led to a revolution in education. Many people began to learn to read, and their primary book was the Bible. With access to the Bible freed from control by the church, which was also beginning to fall into corruption, people began to seek reform in the church. At the same time, a new science-based world view emerged. Market capitalism replaced feudalism. Gunpowder replaced the bow and arrow. Once again, old maps were tossed aside as no longer useful. New ways of understanding God found by people reading their own Bibles brought about a reformation in the Catholic Church and a reformation that led to new denominations being created.
We are in the midst of another seismic shift, and it has most likely been going on for forty to fifty years. Technology, communications, entertainment, the global economy. We are surrounded by a world that no longer forms community in the familiar way we grew up with, and this profoundly affects churches, for what are churches but communities where the faithful gather to follow God?
Many of our old maps no longer work for most people. Even though long-time church-goers continue to be fed, our cherished programs like Sunday School and Vacation Bible School and weeknight Bible Studies no longer reach new disciples.
In our discussions over the last six months, you all committed to work to strengthen and revitalize the church right here. Yes, we can not only survive but thrive here in this place. We have made a great start by committing to pray. Now it is time to let go of our old maps. It’s time to return to our compass, return to Jesus.
No matter how much we cherish our programs, our studies, our hymns, our classes, the era when they worked to reach new people is gone. If they still work for your faith development, by all means keep them going. Use them to strengthen your own faith. But don’t expect them to reach new people. In order to reach new people, it’s time to walk around the community, see where people are, and see them as Jesus sees them. To do that, we must return to our compass, return to that which points us to true north, which points us to God. It’s time to return to Jesus and give our church back to Jesus.
We say in our faith statements that Jesus is Lord. What do we mean by that? Just who is this Jesus? Notice that Mark says the demons were paying attention to Jesus? They know exactly who he is. They know what he means for their very existence. So pay attention to Jesus. He is teaching, he is healing, he is casting out demons.
Of course being a teacher isn't very impressive when you think about some of the other things Jesus did - like calming the storm on the sea, or curing a blind man, or raising a young girl from the dead. But Mark tells us that all who heard his teaching were astounded because he taught them as one having authority.
We’re continuing with chapter one of Mark. Like last week, the story is compact and concise, but with a lot packed in. In these seven verses, there are two major events, two stories put together, one centers on Jesus teaching in the synagogue and the other on healing a man with a demon. The first two verses present Jesus as a teacher: "They went to Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teachings, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."
But the most striking thing in this passage is that Mark considered it important to tell us the story of driving out an unclean spirit in the middle of telling us about Jesus teaching in the synagogue. What does that tell us? Why did Mark tell us this story and not some other? What are we supposed to get from this?
Mark is a short gospel, only sixteen chapters. You probably could read it through in one sitting. But what's amazing in Mark is that the references to Jesus as teacher are more numerous than in Matthew or Luke. And even more noticeable is the way Jesus is shown as teacher in connection with the power from God: The teacher calms the storm; the teacher raises a dead girl; the teacher feeds the hungry crowd; the teacher cures a person with an unclean spirit; the teacher speaks and a fig tree withers. Notice the power of Jesus' teaching.
Jesus brings words of power to teach, to heal, to help, to give life, and to restore. Mark doesn't tell us what Jesus taught. Instead, he tells us how Jesus taught - with authority, authority over the spirits that torment people, authority over life and death, authority over good and evil. Jesus is the powerful teacher whose teaching is not only in his words, but in his powerful love and compassion for all people. Every one of us needs to learn from this teacher. If you're three or ninety-three years old, there are many things you can learn from this teacher. If you've quit learning, you have quit living.
As Christians, we are called to help people learn more about themselves, about each other, and about God. We do that by building one-on-one relationships with people where they are in life. Modern life is confusing. There is a lot of stuff out there the seems out of kilter, out of our control, as chaotic and confused as that poor, demented man in the synagogue that day who was screaming at Jesus. Jesus the teacher healed that man. Jesus the teacher silenced the raging spirits, and taught the people with authority.
Things happen to us that we can't explain. Not everyone in this world is trying to follow God, and some who claim to follow God are actually causing chaos and destruction. This world sometimes gets to be more than we can handle, more than we can figure out. And sometimes the most confusing thing in my world is me, my thoughts and actions. We need a teacher who is also a healer.
Mark says that we have a teacher who ordered the stormy waves to be silent. This teacher raised a little girl from the dead so she could grow up and live a happy, healthy life. This teacher fed thousands of people with just a few loaves of bread, and this teacher cured a man with an unclean spirit.
All of this is told to us as Mark's way of reassuring us: you have a teacher, one who teaches with authority, one who offers you compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. Jesus is our compass, our guide, our teacher. Open your hearts, be taught by him, and be healed.
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Pastor Kirk
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God’s Time for Children – February 5, 2012
Message: “An Apple – A Reminder of Our Blessings”
Kirk asked the children, “What do I have today? Jake said, “An apple!” Jack said, “A nutritious fruit.” Kirk asked, “What else would you say about this apple?” Then Jake remembered studying about the fruit of the spirit in our L.A. Bridge Elementery Disciple group, and he said, “It means faithfulness.”
Then Kirk said, “I brought an apple for a couple of reasons.” Then Jake asked, “Is it because Adam and Eve ate an apple in the garden?” Kirk responded, “Adam and Eve did eat the fruit from the tree in the garden, but I brought an apple today for a couple of other reasons.
“Jake you were right before, this apple is like the fruit of the spirit.” Kirk continued, “We’re going to have lunch today after church and Sunday School. I love to eat here, because you are all good cooks, and we have good fellowship with each other. I brought an apple today to remind us how blessed we are.”
“When I got this apple this morning, there were about 15 apples in our refrigerator. By the end of the week, they will all be eaten, but there are people in our area who don’t have enough to eat.”
“The Bible tells us that we are to be thankful for what we have and to share with others.”
Kirk then closed by praying with the children.
Pastor Kirk
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