Happy Birthday Medford Friends Church!
On Sunday, October 14, 2012, we will celebrate our 70th birthday as a church, worshipping and serving Jesus in our community. Medford Friends Church began out of a vision of Friends in Salem, Oregon, who recognized the value of planting a new Friends Church in Medford. Our founding pastor, Milo Ross, had that same vision as he moved his family to Medford to begin the work of starting a new church.
The church held its first worship service on October 18, 1942, in the Ross home on the eastside of Medford. When the church was told they couldn’t build a bigger facility on the land they owned they took out an ad in the newspaper announcing they were a church without a neighborhood and if there was a neighborhood without a church let’s talk.
In February 1945, worship services were moved to Howard Elementary until the brick chapel was completed on our present site. As the years progressed the classroom section of the building was added, followed by the current sanctuary and fellowship hall, with numerous remodeling projects to follow, including the total overhaul of the middle section on the building beginning in 2002.
Throughout our 70 years, Medford Friends Church has been a loving body of believers filled with amazing people, and that includes you, who have sought to share the love and truth of Jesus with our families, friends, neighborhood, community and the world. That is still true today and although times, methods and ministries have changed, one thing has remained the same; we exist to worship, serve and glorify Jesus.
I am thankful for every person who has been and those who currently are part of the family of believers who are called Medford Friends Church. As we serve Jesus together, exercising the spiritual gifts and abilities the Holy Spirit has given us and sharing the resources God has entrusted to us, we grow in faith and in the knowledge of Jesus, enabling us to serve in love and bring glory to God.
As we celebrate our 70th birthday, may we commit ourselves to another 70 years of loving, fruitful ministry in the love, truth and power of Jesus Christ!
In Christ,
Mark
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A couple of weeks ago Patsy and I had the opportunity to watch Brett and Curtis Garrett in the Randall Theater production of “Fractured Fairy Tales.” It was great fun to see how the authors had taken the seed of well-known fairy tales, in this case “Cinderella” and “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” and then ran with them in a totally different direction. The trial of Goldilocks was definitely unlike any courtroom I have ever been in.
In Matthew 4 we read about Satan’s attempt to get Jesus to sin after 40 days of fasting in the wilderness. In that attempt we see that Satan fractured or misapplied three Old Testament passages or themes. As Satan used these themes, each had a grain of truth, but then he twisted them to suit his own plan and purpose.
I would like to say that fracturing and twisting God’s word doesn’t happen very much, but the truth is it is done all too often, misapplying or taking God’s word out of context to promote a position that scripture doesn’t support. And the problem is that those who do the twisting can make it sound so good that those who do not really know or understand God’s word can be deceived.
That’s why, as Paul addressed false teachings in the church in II Timothy 2:15, he charged Timothy to, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”
In John 8:31 and 32 we read, “To the Jews who had believed in him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teachings, you are my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”
Correctly handling God’s word of truth takes time, it takes study, and it takes seeking God’s understanding and leading through prayer until we receive it. However, it is all worth it when we experience the power and the freedom, freedom within the boundaries God has set and freedom from others twisting his word, which comes from knowing and understanding God’s truth.
Seeking to Know and Live God’s Truth,
Mark
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I want to thank everyone in our body who participated in the “I Heart Rogue Valley” events last Saturday, July 28, and to thank Dave Gomez and Carla Tappero for all of their leadership in helping to make this event happen. Through the weekend, over 6,000 hours were given in service to our community by over 1,500 volunteers and at the Friday night youth worship event 44 people committed or recommitted their lives to Jesus while 125 people did the same thing at the Saturday night worship event. Praise the Lord!
That is the story of the weekend in numbers, and as important as those numbers are, I think what is even more important is the message that was carried out into our community; Jesus loves you and as His people we love you too.
Sometimes we in the church get upset when we feel like our culture doesn’t understand us or respect our choices and stands. Of course they don’t, how can they understand what the Holy Spirit is saying to us and doing through us when they do not have the Holy Spirit in them? However, just because the people outside of Jesus’ church don’t understand us doesn’t mean that we ignore them or treat them as they treat us.
William Temple, an Archbishop of Canterbury in the 20th century, made this statement about the church, “The church is the only society on earth that exists for the benefit of non-members.”
And Evangelical theologian Stanley Grenz said, “According to the New Testament, God wills that the church be a people who show what God is like.”
These two statements are challenging, convicting and true. And from experience we know how hard it is to live out the truth of these statements in the real world when our beliefs are being assaulted and assailed. So how can we reach out to people outside the church and show what God is like when our beliefs are under attack? Let me share two verses that give us some great direction.
In Matthew 5:44 and 45, Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”
And in Romans 12:14, Paul wrote, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.”
The responses that Jesus and Paul call us to are not normal human responses to rejection and persecution, but they are the responses that allow people to see God and the difference that Jesus has made in our lives.
I am thankful for the “I Heart Rogue Valley” campaign that opened the door for so many to share the love of Jesus with our neighbors and it’s my hope and prayer that as a church family we will continually find ways to share the love of Jesus with people outside of our church so that God may be seen and glorified through our lives.
In Christ, Mark
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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the word surrender and what it means in our relationship with Jesus. To surrender is defined as declaring yourself defeated; giving up possession of something; or voluntarily giving something to another. As we think about surrendering our lives to Jesus we see that all three of these definitions come into play. We recognize that we are defeated by sin and cannot overcome it on our own. We give possession of our lives, hopes, dreams and ambitions to Jesus. And in response to His love, we voluntarily give all that we know about ourselves to all of Jesus that we understand.
As good and rational as all of that sounds the problem is that to surrender to anyone or anything, even to Jesus, isn’t an easy thing to do; it goes totally against our human nature. It goes against our exaggerated sense of individuality and the mistaken belief that we can manage and control our own lives.
However, once we come to recognize how much Jesus loves us, once we recognize how just and fair He is, and once we recognize that Jesus has a plan and purpose for our lives, all of our objections to surrendering our lives to Him are broken. Instead of viewing the surrender of our lives to Jesus as something that is onerous and should be avoided at all cost, as we view most other times of surrender, we see that surrendering to Jesus is the best choice we could ever make.
Surrendering to Jesus is where our relationship with Him truly begins and living in an attitude of surrender to Him helps us to get out of the way so that Jesus is free to work in our lives. With surrender we can receive all that Jesus has planned for us, but without surrender we can never abide in Him.
Total surrender to Jesus is giving to Him all that we know about ourselves to all of Him that we know. Take some time this week to:
1. Invite Jesus to reveal to you any area of your life that you need to surrender to Him.
2. Invite Jesus to reveal more of Himself to you as you spend time with Him in Bible study and prayer.
Then watch and listen with expectation to see what Jesus wants to do in you.
In Him,
Mark
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