January 4, 2008

Dear Resurrection Family,

I'm writing you from my hotel room overlooking the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. I'm here to attend a conference today for presidents and board chairs of the 13 United Methodist seminaries (this fall I became the chair of the board at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City). I'll fly home Saturday morning so I can preach the weekend services.

I came to D.C. two days early, and brought Danielle, our oldest daughter with me (she is a political science major at K-State and had never been to our capital). I wanted to see, once again, the icons of our democracy as I prepared this weekend's sermon entitled, "Where Faith and Politics Meet." We toured the Capitol, walked through the halls of the Supreme Court, visited the Smithsonian, read Lincoln's Gettysburg and Second Inaugural addresses from the walls of the Lincoln Memorial, and stood where Dr. King stood to deliver his most famous speech. We visited the war memorials and the Holocaust Museum. And then we sat together last night and watched the election returns come in on the Iowa Caucuses (flipping back and forth to the Orange Bowl to see KU beat Virginia Tech).

I can't imagine a timelier sermon series than the one we're embarking on, and this weekend's sermon in particular following the Iowa Caucuses and moving in the coming week to the New Hampshire primary. I'm excited about this series of messages.

Here's what I'll cover in today's email:

1. Christmas Eve Attendance, Special Offering Results, Thank You
2. A Report from One of our Mission Partners
3. Free Gift to All Visitors This Weekend: Bring a Friend
4. Final Update on 2008 Stewardship Campaign
5. Reflections from Washington D.C.

1. Christmas Eve Attendance, Special Offering Results, Thank You
We had a terrific and inspiring series of worship services around Christmas Eve this year. Not counting the morning worship services we had 22,647 in attendance, up slightly over last year's numbers. We had a large number of new visitors with us and I am grateful for all of you who worshiped on the two days leading up to Christmas Eve, making room for the unchurched on Christmas Eve night.

I am excited to share with you the results of your special offering on Christmas Eve. $259,000 was collected for our work with the two inner city schools!!! This will be divided between our work with a school in Kansas City, Kansas (the details for that project are still being worked out) and our work with Troost Elementary School. I had hoped we would raise at least $200,000 and once again you've exceeded my expectations. Over the coming months you'll hear more about how you can get involved with these projects. For now know that there is a great deal of planning happening behind the scenes. I am so proud of you, Church of the Resurrection, and of your generosity and your heart for children in poverty.

Finally, I want to thank each of you who helped make Christmas Eve happen this year. There were hundreds of you who sang, played, ushered, greeted, served in the parking lot or on our medical or security team, who worked nurseries or handed out candles (or lit them outside), who logged new visitors or delivered coffee mugs, who served communion and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Each of you who gave your time and gifts by serving at the candlelight services were used by God to touch thousands of people, many of whom don't normally attend church. I want to personally thank our CART team for the blessing they were to me when I was feeling a bit under the weather on Christmas Eve. They were terrific.

2. A Report from One of our Mission Partners
Our JOY in Service campaign that takes place through the holidays was a tremendous blessing and witness to so many who are in need here in Kansas City. I was in awe of the many ways you, our members, gave of yourselves to minister to others during November and December. I wanted to pass on one note I received this week from just one of our many mission partners we work with. This is from Pastor Gary Roellcheng at Central United Methodist Church in Kansas City, Kansas:

I just wanted to give you some report of what happened because Resurrection partnered with Central to bring Christmas to Armourdale. Between the Christmas Program and the toys that were left over from that, and the Christmas store, which we were able to run for one extra day because of the abundance of donations, we were able to help 270 families to have a Christmas experience. This does not include those who received a wonderful Christmas dinner and presents from Kathy Baldwin and her group. All of us here at Central want to express our deepest gratitude to everyone there. We appreciate the relationship we have with your congregation and your concern for our participants in the inner city.

On another note. We started using the new computer and projector that Resurrection purchased for us in our worship service on December 23. It has been used twice more since then. The new ministry has been received with great enthusiasm and delight. What a blessing. Would you please share these thoughts with your congregation? I would like everyone at Resurrection to know what an impact they are making in helping Central to reach out to our neighborhood in such a large and meaningful way. Again, thank you so very much!

Blessings,
Pastor Gary

3. Free Gift to All Visitors This Weekend: Bring a Friend
I want to encourage each of you to bring a friend this weekend as we kick off the new sermon series. The publisher of my books has donated to us 3,000 copies of my book, Confronting the Controversies (a revised edition just came out and these 3,000 were left from the previous edition). We'll give one per household to every visitor who comes to worship this weekend. If you are a visitor to our church, please join us this weekend and receive your free copy of this book which examines seven controversial issues including euthanasia, the death penalty, abortion and homosexuality among others.

4. Final Update on 2008 Stewardship Campaign
I wanted to give you a final update for year-end on our 2008 Stewardship Campaign. Once again I'm appreciative of your faithfulness in fulfilling the commitments you made when you joined the church, and, more than that, of your commitment to Christ and his work through our church. As of last weekend we have received 3,532 commitment cards returned, up 310 or nearly 10%, from last year. That's terrific! Last year 62% of our members returned their commitment cards. Our goal was to raise that to 65% for this year. Right now we are at 64.64%. The average commitment this year is $3,663. The total committed to date is $12,938,821. If you have yet to return your commitment card or make your pledge for 2008, I'd like to encourage you to do so at this time. We're finalizing the budget in the next few weeks, which you will then be voting on at our Church Conference later this month. Click on this link to make your commitment online. Again, thank you for your faithfulness in your tithes and offering and in supporting God's work through our church.

5. Reflections on Faith and Politics and Washington D.C.
I wanted to end with a few random thoughts and reflections from my time in D.C. this week:

• If you stand in front of the Supreme Court, to your back is the Capitol, to your right is the Library of Congress, and to your left is the only non-governmental building on the square: The United Methodist Building which houses our Board of Church and Society. It was built about the same time as the Supreme Court building and is a reflection of our church's belief that faithful Christians should be salt and light influencing our nation and world; seeing that building made me proud to be a United Methodist. Inside on its walls is the Social Creed of our church as it was originally adopted in 1908. Methodists were the first denomination in America to adopt a social creed to go alongside the historic theological creeds of the church. It called for equal rights and complete justice for all people, for safe working conditions, an end to child labor, and for all of society to live by Christ's Golden Rule.

• I've been to the Holocaust Museum three times and each time the experience moves me profoundly. This time I spent a bit more time reading the stories of some of those non-Jews who refused to capitulate to the Nazis and who, at great personal risk, sheltered Jews. I will share one of these stories with you this weekend, regarding a husband and wife and the Protestant congregation they pastored in France who helped save the lives of 5,000 people who would have been killed by the Nazis. I left thinking about moral courage and wondered if we as a church were placed in a similar situation, would we show the same moral courage? I hope we would.

• Danielle and I stopped by the White House to snap a quick picture as part of our tour of D.C. It was 30 degrees and I was freezing. All I could think of was stopping in Starbucks for a cup of hot chocolate. We took a couple of photos, and then turned to go when we saw the demonstration across the street. I thought of how, every time I come to the White House there is someone demonstrating something across the street. The demonstrators were bundled up so I could barely see them. I thought how committed they must be to be out here in this cold. On either side were two large signs calling for nuclear disarmament. As I got a little closer I noticed that this demonstration had been manned continuously, 24 hours a day, for the last 26 years. This was the same demonstration I'd seen and passed each time I'd been here. When I got back to the hotel I decided to find out more about the demonstration. It is maintained by a husband and wife team of William and Ellen Thomas, who have both been jailed at some point in conjunction with the demonstration. I noticed a document on the Thomas' website about Ellen's faith. It was a court document in which she described her motivation for demonstrating for peace, and in it she described her faith in God, her experience of his grace and of her belief that God had called her to stand vigil for peace. It includes copious scriptures and was disarming in its humility and earnestness. Here was another example of someone seeking to bring together faith and politics.

• Finally, on Wednesday evening Danielle and I took a cab to the Lincoln Memorial. This is my favorite place in D.C. I am moved by Lincoln's words on the walls inside the monument, and by the image of this man sitting overlooking the National Mall. I am reminded of the great battle in our country over slavery and race. The most moving part of the experience of being there, for me, is walking down the steps, until I come to the very spot where Martin Luther King, Jr. stood when he delivered the "I Have a Dream" speech. There is an engraving on the steps that marks the spot. That speech represents both the epitome of spiritual leadership and role that faith and faithful people are meant to play in politics. King called our nation to a vision that was rooted in God's kingdom and so compelling and so inherently right that it literally changed a nation. This too was an example of the connection between faith and politics.

Well, that's a bit of what I've been up to this week. I'm looking forward to this weekend as we embark on a new series of sermons about faith, morality and politics.

In Christ's Love,

Adam Hamilton