Hello, Friends!
     In this issue you’ll find a message from Gale Houston, who is serving as coordinator for our church’s engagement in a new initiative, called Holy Boldness.   You’ve already hear me mention this new program for our conference, and now that three of us have attended our first session of the training academy, we have some directives for St. Luke’s process.    
   I hope you’ll attend carefully, and prayerfully, to Gale’s wise and inspiring words of introduction and invitation.  Most particularly,  I hope you’ll make time for some focused prayer and reflection about St. Luke, her gifts, her opportunities for growth, and her essential identity and mission in our community.
    Gale, Anita, and I are excited about this, and hope you will be, too.   Please let us know if you want to be part of the planning team, which we hope will be a fun and freeing activity, as well as a productive and practical enterprise.
     We all want St. Luke to be all she can be, for the sake of joy and fulfillment within, and for the cause of energetic, hopeful service beyond the church.  The Holy Boldness Urban Ministry Academy promises to afford us some valuable guidance, focus, and inspiration.
     I look forward to being inspired with you this Sunday, and all our days to come.

Shalom,
Sarah

Holy Boldness Report
To St. Luke UMC
From Gale Houston

     Two weeks ago, Sarah, our pastor, Anita Barrick, and I attended the Holy Boldness National Urban Academy in San Antonio.  Sarah and Anita attended all three days, and I attended both the Friday evening and Sunday morning sessions and worship.  On Saturday, Sarah led the worship service and presented two workshops, and Anita attended several workshop sessions.  We had a good time and felt like we learned a lot that could be applied here at St. Luke so I’d like to begin to explain what all this is about.
     The Holy Boldness initiative is a collaborative effort of the work from several national organizations with the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church.  It is an urban ministry plan for the United Methodist Church to organize and mobilize people and resources to transform urban congregations and communities through the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It involves a two-year training program, consisting of six weekend seminars, three each year, and there is a participant’s manual, which we each received, which we can duplicate for our church’s use.
     This initiative is based in scripture and seeks to accomplish the primary calling of the church which is to be the body of Jesus Christ in the world by:

• sharing the faith
• receiving people as they are and relating them to the faith
• developing people in the faith, and
• sending people to live in the faith.

     Now, I’d like to tell you what I feel it is…   It is a plan based on the church’s calling as described in scripture, and it involves both an inward and outward journey.  The plan encourages congregations to enrich their inward spiritual condition so as to be better able to give and reach out to others.  As we all know at St. Luke, you can’t give what you don’t have; therefore, I am committing to you that this shouldn’t be “one more thing to do” on top of everything else we have going here nor will it be a change in the current direction of St. Luke.   There will be an emphasis on the inward journey of individual spiritual growth and nurture.  This renewed strength also forms the basis for the outward journey which is to reach out to the world whenever and in whatever ways we can.
      Some words that capture the essence of the plan in my mind are:  energizing, enlivening, refreshing, refocusing, refining.  It is a rekindling of excitement in our church and a reexamination of what we’re doing so as to work smart and best utilize our human and physical resources. What do we need and what is the next step?
     First, we need to recruit individuals to be part of a Holy Boldness Planning Team.  We need open minds, cooperation, boldness, and willingness to “pump it up.”  This team will be a group of people who want to participate in the process and help our church move forward, and there is no limit on the number of folks for the team.
 We are aiming at forming the team in the next two weeks so please speak to any one of the three of us (Sarah 476-8164; Gale 257-1395; Anita 453-2437) if you are interested and willing.  We will start meeting soon and will meet several times before the end of the year as we have assigned tasks to complete before the next seminar in January (which you can see on the page number 46 in your handout).  Other people may also attend the seminars as well.
     One of our first actions we are proposing here at St. Luke is a Bible study which will be offered during the Sunday school hour during the Advent season.  We hope all the Sunday school classes, along with any one else who is interested, will come together for this.
     The bottom line, in my mind, is not that we are to suddenly change all we’re doing here at St. Luke.  The point of this plan is to reexamine the focus of the church, be sure all of the  congregation agrees on that focus and work together to nurture each other as we continue to spread as much of the love of Christ in the world as we can.
    We are already doing a good bit of that, but how can we involve our community and move beyond even what our imagination might lead us to do in being Christ to the world?

Thank you,
Gale Houston