Weekly Update from Pastor Adam - July 26, 2024

July 26, 2024

Dear Resurrection Family,

This year, the last three weeks of July at Resurrection have been focused on children. We had an awesome Vacation Bible Camp where nearly 1,000 children learned about Jesus. In addition, they were engaged in supporting mission projects to bless children by donating $7,564 to help children in Malawi through permaculture projects there. How cool is that? As a congregation, through your Mission Ministry, you provided an additional $10,000 grant to support this effort to ensure children have a sustainable source of food in villages we work with in Malawi. Our VBC kids also brought in nearly 8,000 books and packs of Play-Doh for kids in Kansas City!

This weekend we’re wrapping up our school supply drive for under-resourced children in the Kansas City metro area, providing supplies for 4,410 preschool and elementary school children who otherwise would be missing these supplies. LaVon and I loved last weekend’s worship and message as we worshiped while away on vacation (more about our vacation at the end of today’s eNote). There are a lot of exciting things happening at Resurrection this summer! Here’s just a few…

THIS WEEKEND: GOOD CHURCH, GREAT LIVING

This weekend each of our location pastors will be sharing a special message based on Psalm 63. This joyful scripture praises God’s faithfulness and love that is “better than life itself.” They’ll each be sharing some ways we can experience God in the way the Psalmist describes as “fully satisfied – as with a rich dinner.”

Pastor Robert Johnson will be preaching at Leawood, online and television, Pastor Bill Gepford at West, Pastor Ann Williams at Downtown, Pastor Penny Ellwood at Blue Springs, Pastor Suzy Ayres at Overland Park, and Pastor Wendy Lyons-Chrostek at Brookside. We have amazing location pastors, and I am grateful for their leadership. If you are in town, make sure you worship in person and hear the message from your location pastor. If you are traveling or out of town, join me in worshiping online. I’m looking forward to worship and this inspiring message!

WE NEED YOU! FIND JOY AS YOU SERVE ON ONE OF OUR WORSHIP TEAMS! 

This weekend, we’re also highlighting the volunteer opportunities that help make our worship services possible. Creating a meaningful experience requires a dedicated team, and that’s where you come in. We’re looking for folks passionate about serving others and building a welcoming community at Resurrection. Whether you have a gift for music, enjoy working with technology, excel at making people feel welcome, or want to help with communion or seating, there’s a place for everyone. Use this online link to let us know your interest, and one of our ministry leaders will then contact you to help find your ideal role on one of our worship teams.

CHRISTMAS AT RESURRECTION, IN JULY?

It’s never too early to prepare for Christmas! We have an opportunity for you to experience the magic of Christmas in July with a buy-one-get-one-free ticket offer for Christmas at Resurrection’s 2024 program, Illumination! The Christmas at Resurrection musical production (Dec. 12-15) is a Kansas City tradition featuring over 300 actors, singers, dancers, and instrumentalists celebrating the Christmas story with a fresh twist. Enjoy classic favorites alongside a new program filled with dazzling music and performances. You can create lasting memories with your family and friends and get two tickets for the price of one from July 28 through August 4! Here’s the link to purchase tickets beginning Sunday.

PARTNER SCHOOL SUPPORT DRIVE CONCLUDES SUNDAY

Don’t forget to return your bags with school supplies this weekend at any of our locations. If you can’t get out to go shopping for these supplies, you can click hereto give financially or click here and go to a page we’ve set up with Amazon to purchase items on an Amazon wish list and have them sent directly to the church. (This is what LaVon and I did since we’re travelling.) Thank you to everyone who has already purchased supplies to bless children in Kansas City who otherwise would struggle to have school supplies.

EXCITING YOUNG ADULT WORSHIP NIGHT

On Tuesday, we had about 60 young adults gather for our Young Adult Worship Night. They shared that it was an incredible night with lots of energy. This worship night offered a glimpse into our new young adult weekly gathering called The Dwelling which will launch next month on August 27. I’m really excited to speak at The Dwelling the first two weeks. If you’re a young adult, check out The Dwelling here and mark your calendar for Tuesday, August 27.

PRIMARIES ARE COMING UP, BE AN INFORMED VOTER

We don’t endorse political candidates at Resurrection, but we do encourage you to be engaged in the political process. Resurrection regularly supports opportunities for bi-partisan voter registration and provides our facilities as voting sites, and we encourage you to do your homework and to vote for candidates whose ideals, character, policies and vision align with your faith in Christ and his teachings, and the values and ideals these engender.

As you prepare to vote in the primary elections (Aug. 6 in Missouri and Kansas) and the national election Nov. 5, I want to encourage you to be informed about the candidates running in your area. One resource that might be helpful to you is The KC Media Collective’s 2024 KC Voter Guide. This guide is a collaboration between multiple newsrooms and nonprofit media organizations in the Kansas City metro area: The Beacon, Kansas City PBS/Flatland, KCUR, Missouri Business Alert, Startland News and The Kansas City Star, along with American Public Square, RevEd and the Latino Education Collaborative. It covers 100 races across five counties in the KC region.

In the guide you’ll find information on how to vote in Missouri and Kansas, articles explaining all the federal, state and local races in the Kansas City region, and profiles on each candidate in both English and Spanish, with links to candidate websites to learn more about their positions. The guide contains no advertising and no opinions, just verifiable facts. You can view the 2024 KC Voter Guide online here. This digital version will be updated after the primary elections, and printed copies will be available closer to the Nov. 5 election. We have a Civic Engagement Ministry here at Resurrection. Their website has a host of additional voting information.

LAVON AND MY VOYAGES THIS WEEK

For my 60th birthday, LaVon and I planned a three-week vacation of bucket list places. We began with four days south of London in Winchester, England, as we prepared for the first leg of the adventure, a seven-day cruise to see the Norwegian Fjords. LaVon and I rested, played, hiked and kayaked and just enjoyed one another. I’ve been posting pics on Facebook if you are interested, inviting people to guess where we visited.

Our actual itinerary began with a sail out of Southampton, England, and through the British Channel. The next day we arrived at Bruges, Belgium, touring this beautiful ancient city. The next day was at sea on the ship as we travelled to Norway. We awoke the next morning in Flam, Norway, at the end of a long fjord. We took a bus tour to the top of a mountain where we hiked to a waterfall, then left to visit an ancient Church and ate lunch at a quaint village, before returning to Flam and the ship. That night, the ship sailed to and through Geiranger Fjord where we disembarked at the town of Geiringer. There we hiked for several hours, and in the afternoon, we rented a two-person kayak and kayaked the fjord to another beautiful waterfall. Yesterday we were in Bergen, Norway, where we visited the old city with its Hanseatic Wharf and had fish and chips at the famous fish market. Today, as I’m typing this, we are spending the day at sea heading back to England – at this moment I’m sitting in my room looking out at the North Sea. It’s a bit too chilly to sit outside! Later today we’ll enter the British Channel.

Tomorrow, we begin the second leg of our trip, as we fly to Ireland where we’ll drive across the island for seven days. I have longed to go to Ireland for years. On Sunday, in addition to worshiping with Resurrection online, LaVon and I will be worshiping in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.

On a related note, if you have the time and interest in taking an educational, fun and inspirational cruise, we have about 20 rooms still available for our August 2025 Wesley Heritage Cruise visiting England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. I think there will be about 400 United Methodists on this trip. Some days are just exploring the British Isles, but we’ll also spend seven days retracing the story of John Wesley and early Methodism. Click on this link to see a short video I recorded describing the journey.

That’s all I’ve got for today. I’m looking forward to worshiping with Resurrection online this weekend and at St. Patrick’s in Dublin!

Adam

P.S. Check out your location newsletter on Tuesday for more opportunities to get connected with Resurrection. Here’s the link to subscribe.