KEEP SMILING

We had a perfect Disciples Sunday School class today. How do I know that? Because in the Bible, 7 is the perfect number and we had 7. (If we had 21 we would have been pluperfect! Or maybe 28 - that would have been everyone.) This quarter we are studying unity in the church, based on Paul's chewing out of the Corinthians for not working together. While discussing how we can work together in our congregation, Patsy Harelik noted that the choir looks at the congregation during church and she never sees anyone smiling. So this morning I sat next to the Thrashers and told Blanche to smile. She said she didn't have anything to smile about, but then in the sermon Jim told us his favorite joke and when we left Blanche had a big smile on her face. So I guess the solution is for Jim to tell more jokes and for all of us to appreciate each other and smile more.

This week is Annual Conference. We need to pray for our lay member, Carol Bennett and our clergy members, Jim Senkel and Wallace Bennett ( and I guess we count Bill Reed as another clergy member). Under the rules of the AC there must be as many lay members as clergy, but when I insisted on more members from our church, I was told that they allocate the extra lay members to the large churches because they have more members. Of course I objected but was overruled. In an email to Carol I asked her to amend the pastor's pension fund motion to eliminate the cap that stated large salary churches only paid their percentage up to the average salary. I argued that Methodists suggesting taxes for the government always tax the rich and not the poor and that here they should have the rich churches pay either the entire amount or at least the same percentage that us small churches pay. The removal of the cap would reduce the percent we would all have to pay. But since the membership is overbalanced with lay and clergy from the large churches, her amendment will probably fail. Just something for you to watch in the daily reports from the Annual Conference.
Charles