Action Team Action!

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Writ­ten by Tom Miles Tom Miles

Cre­ated: 20 May 2015 20 May 2015

Thrivent Finan­cial is throw­ing Saint John’s a party on Decem­ber 6. Instead of our usual First-​Sunday Eat and Greet potluck, Thrivent will pro­vide food and enter­tain­ment for the mem­bers of Saint John’s. Why the big hur­rah? Well, Saint John’s was one of the nation’s most active churches in Thrivent’s new Action Team program!

The idea of Action Teams is to sup­port small teams doing impor­tant projects. Indi­vid­u­als are encour­aged to apply for action kits, which include pro­mo­tional items, t-​shirts, invi­ta­tion cards and thank yous as well as a $250 “Com­mu­nity Impact Card” to be used as seed money for sup­plies and pro­mo­tional mate­ri­als. Using these kits, the appli­cants form small teams to address unmet needs in their community.

Each Thrivent mem­ber is eli­gi­ble to lead two Action Teams per year. That’s two projects that receive spe­cial atten­tion and start-​up fund­ing every year! Saint John’s has many mem­bers who have accounts with Thrivent, so that’s a lot of poten­tial projects. And we’ve been putting those teams and dol­lars to good use this year. Here are a few of the things that have hap­pened because of the Thrivent Action Team program!

Trustee Projects

Our Trustees pur­chased some bins, hooks, clips and peg board and spent a week get­ting the cus­to­dial closet under the stairs of the south entrance cleaned up and orga­nized. This space is used for paint­ing, elec­tri­cal, plumb­ing and other sup­plies as well as hand tools. It’s also where Don Walker, Saint John’s cus­to­dian, keeps all of his clean­ing sup­plies, vac­u­ums and other tools. It’s an area that gets a lot of use and was in real need of atten­tion! The Trustees brought a bunch of old paint and chem­i­cals to be recy­cled and spent a few days sort­ing through the closet.

You’ll be glad to hear that the closet is still look­ing neat and clean. It helps to have a home for every tool and supply!

Ear­lier this year we also under­took a project to re-​key all of the inte­rior doors in the church. This has been some­thing we’ve wanted to do since get­ting the out­side doors set up on a mas­ter key sys­tem. Over the course of a cou­ple of weeks the Trustees removed all of the door han­dles — a sur­pris­ing num­ber of han­dles! — and brought them to Don’s Key­way for re-​keying. Their work saved us the cost of a house-​call from Don’s, and allowed us to use the money for chang­ing the locks.

Most recently, a few of the Trustees spent a day tear­ing down old ceil­ing tiles in the Food and Cloth­ing Bank area. The six-​by-​six tiles have been drop­ping, one-​by-​one, over the past few months, and were get­ting harder and harder to glue back up. So, after tear­ing the old tiles down, the Trustees spent another morn­ing putting up dry­wall in their place. What a dif­fer­ence this makes! There was even a lit­tle money left over to pur­chase new toi­let seats for the restrooms in that area of the church.

Sun­day School Events

Did you come to this year’s New Life Fes­ti­val? If so, you know how much fun it was to plant seeds, dec­o­rate eggs, see real rab­bits and lambs and learn about Easter and Jesus’ res­ur­rec­tion. This annual fes­ti­val is a great event for Saint John’s and for our neigh­bors and friends. We used Thrivent Action Team projects to sup­port a pub­lic­ity team, an enter­tain­ment team (who coor­di­nated such things as the bounce house) and a teach­ing team (for the var­i­ous sta­tions the chil­dren vis­ited through the morn­ing). It’s always so much fun, and the sup­port from Thrivent means we can pro­vide that much more in the way of activ­i­ties and learn­ing opportunities.

This summer’s Vaca­tion Bible School was also the focus of a Thrivent Action Team. The food crew, who served din­ner and snacks for each of the four nights of VBS, are a huge part in mak­ing our Friends and Fam­ily Nights pos­si­ble. Thanks to our cooks and to Thrivent for help­ing to pro­vide food and supplies.

Equip­ment Upgrades

Thanks to the work of tal­ented and hard-​working indi­vid­u­als at Saint John’s, we were able to put together teams to com­plete a bunch of mis­cel­la­neous upgrades around the church. Our Action Teams …

• … installed new sound equip­ment — speak­ers, a mixer board, addi­tional micro­phones and a fancy power sup­ply — in the Large Fel­low­ship Hall. The old sys­tem was noisy and over-​complicated. The new sys­tem is built to han­dle not only our usual Sun­day morn­ing Bible study needs, but also any other con­certs or events we might want to hold in the Hall. We may be demon­strat­ing this at the Thrivent Party itself! The fund­ing for the new equip­ment came from another source, but the extra wires and other con­nect­ing com­po­nents to put it all together came from the Thrivent seed money, and our team of vol­un­teers donated the time to put it all together!

  

• Replaced old fire extin­guish­ers and removed the old extin­guisher built into the kitchen hood. We had a team go through the church and eval­u­ate the con­di­tion of all of our extin­guish­ers. Did you know that fire extin­guish­ers have expi­ra­tion dates? Well, sev­eral of our had reached theirs. In addi­tion, the sys­tem built into the kitchen hood above the stove) was so out of date that no one would re-​certify it for us. And get­ting a new sys­tem would involve not only get­ting a new extin­guisher, but replac­ing the entire hood with stain­less steel and a new exhaust sys­tem. Which would all be nice, but not in the bud­get at this time! Our only alter­na­tive was to remove the fire sys­tem from the exist­ing hood. Our Action Team made these projects possible.
• Are build­ing new benches for the Wel­come Cen­ter area. We have a high school shop group build­ing some new benches! We’ll have more on this long-​overdue project once the fin­ished benches arrive.
• Will label our library books and shelves. Our office vol­un­teers, espe­cially Joyce Hart and Jane Kin­ney, have been work­ing to cat­a­log all of the books in the library and get the whole thing reor­ga­nized. Now that’s done, and we want to pre­serve their efforts by label­ing and stamp­ing the books and mark­ing the new library cat­e­gories. If you’re inter­ested in being a part of this team, please watch the bul­letin. We’ll be get­ting a group together for a “label­ing party” on a Sat­ur­day morning.
• Are build­ing a cart for the hand­bell equip­ment. We have a team (namely, Eric and Sue Gard­ner) work­ing on a con­trap­tion with which we can trans­port the hand­bell cases and all of the acces­sories — stands, pen­cils, mal­lets — that go along with them. It’s amaz­ing how much time we spend mov­ing all that stuff around, and a cart will make it much easier.
• Will fix up and pol­ish the hand­bells. The brass of the hand­bells need a good clean­ing and sev­eral of the plas­tic parts have cracked or out­right fallen off. We’ll have an Action Team apply­ing the elbow grease at some point in the near future, once the replace­ment parts arrive.
• Rewired the lights in Room 302 and will be installing a ceiling-​mounted pro­jec­tor. Leon Knox fixed the lights so that the fix­tures above the screen can be turned off inde­pen­dent of those in the rest of the room. We’ve pur­chased the equip­ment to get a pro­jec­tor mounted on the ceil­ing in this class­room, and will be installing that sys­tem soon. Watch for this nice tech­no­log­i­cal upgrade, to match the instal­la­tion of speak­ers and the cor­ner cab­i­net from last year!
• Rebuilt and replen­ished the first aid kits in the Sanc­tu­ary and Large Fel­low­ship Hall. Mary Harp, Fri­day morn­ing office vol­un­teer, has been keep­ing an eye on the first aid sup­plies. The only prob­lem: we haven’t had a stock from which to replen­ish any­thing that was used! We’ve finally fixed that with an Action Team project, and have got­ten the kits back up to date. We have a nice stock of sup­plies from which to draw for the fore­see­able future, as well!

  

• Made a few small upgrades and fixes to the Sanc­tu­ary sound sys­tem. We’re work­ing on putting together a team to do some sol­der­ing and run wire to tune up the sound sys­tem. In par­tic­u­lar, some of the chan­cel floor boxes need some atten­tion. We’ve used seed money to pur­chase some of the needed sup­plies and will be lean­ing on some of our technically-​inclined mem­bers to do some work some week­end in the near future.
• Are con­struct­ing addi­tional shelves in the attic. The boys of our scout troop (under the guid­ance of their lead­ers, of course) are plan­ning and will be con­struct­ing shelves in sev­eral of the bays of the attic, pro­vid­ing us some much-​needed space and — hope­fully! — orga­ni­za­tion up there. The attic’s ever a clean­ing project in progress, and we hope that these shelves will not only pro­vide Troop 96 some bet­ter stor­age space, but also open things up for us!

Sup­port­ing Saint John’s Groups

Saint John’s soft­ball is back! We didn’t exactly have what you’d call a win­ning sea­son, but we still had a great time. The play­ers on the field and our loyal fans in the bleach­ers enjoyed Sun­day evenings at the ball­game thanks to an orga­niz­ing Thrivent Action Team. Along with dona­tions from mem­bers, the seed money off­set some of the costs of get­ting started this sea­son, includ­ing pay­ing the entrance fee and off­set­ting the cost of uniforms.

Speak­ing of ball games, the Elder­ber­ries orga­nized a trip to a Col­orado Rock­ies game. The team putting together the game day plan reg­is­tered as an Action Team and used the seed money for van rental, gas and park­ing. It’s nice to be able to keep the trip expense down and offer a com­fort­able ride to our active older members.

Funkes in Tan­za­nia

Eric Funke, grand­son of Bill and Lola Funke, and wife, Linda, are serv­ing as mis­sion­ar­ies in Tan­za­nia. Saint John’s has sup­ported their min­istry since they moved there in 2012. This year the Funkes iden­ti­fied some spe­cific needs that we were able to raise funds for using Action Teams. Early in the year, we held a fundraiser to pur­chase Bibles.

More recently, we had two occa­sions to col­lect offer­ings for a new library being built at the school where Eric teaches. One of the fundrais­ers was dur­ing the fel­low­ship time, where we used the seed dol­lars to pur­chase the day’s refresh­ments so that your offer­ings could go to the con­struc­tion project. Bill and Lola hosted this event.

The Mis­sion Guild then decided to send the money raised at the annual Fall Fair to the library project, as well. They used an Action Team to help with their plan­ning process and to pur­chase the food and other supplies.

Human Needs

Our Human Needs board is always busy find­ing ways to help those in need in the com­mu­nity. The board itself raised dol­lars in sev­eral Action Team-​supported fundrais­ers to pro­vide a sum­mer camp expe­ri­ence for Bauder ele­men­tary stu­dents and to put together Thanks­giv­ing bas­kets for the fam­i­lies we sup­port at Lau­rel Ele­men­tary. They also raised money to pur­chase dia­pers, a much-​needed but rarely-​donated item, for Saint John’s Food and Cloth­ing Bank.

In addi­tion, the Quil­ters, whose quilts are donated for sale in the Fall Fair and for use around the world, were able to pur­chase bat­ting thanks to an Action Team fundraiser.

Open Arms Chris­t­ian Preschool Projects

Our preschool has ben­e­fited from sev­eral Action Team projects this year. At the begin­ning of the year, the preschool hosted an open house for poten­tial fam­i­lies to come see the school. It was a big suc­cess! One Action Team was used for our pub­lic­ity team, to pur­chase a ban­ner and help with adver­tis­ing costs. Another was used for the costs of the event itself.

On the eighth of Novem­ber, the preschool’s bake sale fundraiser was also sup­ported by a Thrivent Action Team. It allowed us to pro­vide some refresh­ments to the morning’s vol­un­teers and the bal­ance will be used to replace some of the play­ground toys. In a year when fundrais­ing pro­ceeds are going to the preschool’s bot­tom line, it was very nice to have some money for a spe­cial project.

We have also been build­ing a preschool tuition assis­tance fund. One of our Action Teams was used for a fundraiser to sup­port this effort.

Mis­sions

The Heseders have been tak­ing advan­tage of the Action Team pro­gram in sev­eral ways. First, they have used them when pro­vid­ing meals to the con­gre­ga­tion, dur­ing Lent, on Easter morn­ing and, soon, dur­ing Advent. The seed money is used for pur­chas­ing food and sup­plies so that the free-​will offer­ing from those enjoy­ing the meal can be put to use for spe­cial Heseder projects, like the sup­port to Wind River Lutheran Church on the Wyoming Reser­va­tion, and to help fund the work of our Heseders at home and abroad.

Action Teams have also been an essen­tial part of the Heseders’ work on the annual Yard Sale. The seed money goes to sig­nage, adver­tis­ing in the Col­oradoan and other basic sup­plies. And it’s nice to have the shirts so all the work­ers have a con­sis­tent “uni­form” the day of the sale.

We put together sev­eral Action Team plans for the med­ical mis­sion work Kim­berly Pep­miller and Nelly San­ford did in Uganda this sum­mer. Seed money pro­vided extra med­ical sup­plies and helped cover the cost of trans­port­ing the sup­plies to Uganda.

Com­ing Soon

Yes, it’s been a busy year of fun, use­ful and valu­able projects at Saint John’s. And we still have a month of projects to go! Still to come this year:

• Repair of nurs­ery pag­ing system;
• Fence repair;
• Advent meal fundraiser for the Human Needs Gift Tree;
• Instal­la­tion of a remov­able out­door ban­ner stand.

Please come help us cel­e­brate all of this work on Decem­ber 6. Our plan­ning team — yes, another Action Team! — has ordered a tasty catered meal. There will be a pre­sen­ta­tion from Thrivent and even live music! You don’t want to miss this free meal. We will be tak­ing a free-​will offer­ing to raise money for the preschool to build a new sand­box out in the play­ground area. But whether or not you can donate, please come enjoy the ban­quet and celebration!

Tom Miles is the Parish Admin­is­tra­tor at Saint John’s. You can reach him at the church office Mon­day through Fri­day, 8:30 am to Noon and 1:00 to 4:00 pm, at 482‑5316 or at This email address is being pro­tected from spam­bots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Time, Tal­ents and Trea­sures

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Writ­ten by Mar­i­lyn Nier­man Mar­i­lyn Nier­man

Cre­ated: 29 Sep­tem­ber 2011 29 Sep­tem­ber 2011

God’s stew­ards are man­agers, not own­ers! God’s stew­ards are given the priv­i­lege to man­age the resources He has so richly orches­trated for each of us. We have been entrusted with these godly gifts. Whether great or small, they are meant to be shared. We are not solo per­form­ers; rather we are empow­ered by God to be a giv­ing con­gre­ga­tion and Chris­t­ian family.

The Board of Stew­ard­ship is ask­ing each con­gre­ga­tion mem­ber to give prayer­ful atten­tion and plan­ning to the task of shar­ing what is rea­son­able for you. Con­gre­ga­tion mem­bers will be receiv­ing an offer­ing pledge let­ter and card in the mail in the next week. The let­ter is sim­ply ask­ing that you fill out the card with a finan­cial pledge for 2012.

Our wor­ship focus through the first half of Octo­ber will be on stew­ard­ship, with the pro­gram Fear­less Giv­ing in Fear­ful Times. We ask that the pledge cards be returned to the church on “Com­mit­ment Sun­day”, Octo­ber 16. (You may drop your card off in the office if you’d like to return it before the sixteenth.)

This pledge col­lec­tion is hap­pen­ing ear­lier than usual in order that the pledges can be used to guide the fis­cal and oper­a­tional plan­ning deci­sions at Saint John’s.

Giv­ing of time, tal­ents and trea­sures is truly a spir­i­tual direc­tion that is between you and God. Please give prayer­ful con­sid­er­a­tion in respond­ing to the pledge let­ter. And, as you con­sider your com­mit­ment of money and time for 2012, con­sider becom­ing a part of the Board of Stewardship!

Saint John’s Stew­ard­ship Board pro­motes the devel­op­ment of good stew­ard­ship and giv­ing pat­terns among the mem­bers of Saint John’s.

Show­ing Forth

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Writ­ten by The LCMS Office of National Mis­sion, Stew­ard­ship Min­istry The LCMS Office of National Mis­sion, Stew­ard­ship Min­istry

Cre­ated: 01 Feb­ru­ary 2011 01 Feb­ru­ary 2011

The four Sun­days in Feb­ru­ary are in the Epiphany sea­son of the Church Year cal­en­dar. Epiphany is a word that means “show­ing forth” or “man­i­fest­ing.” The Epiphany sea­son begins on Jan­u­ary 6 with the visit of the Wise Men to wor­ship the baby Jesus as the new­born King of the Jews. The sea­son con­tin­ues with the bap­tism of Jesus in the Jor­dan River, the call­ing of his first dis­ci­ples, his preach­ing the good news of sal­va­tion and the open­ing of his famous Ser­mon on the Mount.

In the four Gospel read­ings for Feb­ru­ary we find Jesus teach­ing that we are lights in this spir­i­tu­ally dark world who give evi­dence of our new birth as Chris­tians as we love even our ene­mies and seek first the King­dom of God and his right­eous­ness. To live that way is truly an “epiphany expe­ri­ence,” show­ing that we really belong to our Lord Jesus Christ and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, live renewed lives.

That’s what Chris­t­ian stew­ard­ship is all about! Wise Chris­t­ian stew­ards man­age all of life and life’s resources for God’s pur­poses and do it freely and joy­fully! We prac­tice the kind of stew­ard­ship that is pleas­ing to our Lord when we give freely and gen­er­ously of our time to serve in spe­cial ways that bless the mis­sion of the church and the peo­ple liv­ing in our com­mu­ni­ties. This kind of stew­ard­ship is also shown when we freely and joy­fully offer our tal­ents and skills to help the church pros­per and make life sweeter for those around us. This kind of stew­ard­ship con­tin­ues when we give freely and joy­fully of our finan­cial resources to sup­port the work of the church in nur­tur­ing believ­ers and reach­ing out to invite oth­ers to know Jesus.

Many peo­ple view Chris­t­ian stew­ard­ship as some­thing that we have to do — a com­mand — in order to be true fol­low­ers of Jesus. That sim­ply is not true! Real Chris­t­ian stew­ard­ship is the priv­i­lege of offer­ing all that we are and have to make a dif­fer­ence in this world of spir­i­tual dark­ness. Just as Jesus came on that first Christ­mas to bring light to a dark­ened world, so we are called to fol­low his example.

Will we fol­low in his foot­steps per­fectly, using all that we are and have in truly unselfish ways and mak­ing sac­ri­fices so the mis­sion of Christ’s church on earth may pros­per and become a home for many more redeemed peo­ple? No, of course not! We are sin­ners and will fall short of the glory of God. But, in Christ, God has declared us to be saints because our sins and short­com­ings have been for­given and the Holy Spirit empow­ers us to let our lights shine so that peo­ple will see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven. \

The bot­tom line for Chris­t­ian stew­ards is to hear and obey our Lord’s words when he taught: “Seek first his king­dom and his right­eous­ness, and all these things will be given to you as well. There­fore do not worry about tomor­row, for tomor­row will worry about itself.”

Saint John’s Stew­ard­ship Board pro­motes the devel­op­ment of good stew­ard­ship and giv­ing pat­terns among the mem­bers of Saint John’s.

Make the Most of New Starts

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Writ­ten by The LCMS Office of National Mis­sion, Stew­ard­ship Min­istry The LCMS Office of National Mis­sion, Stew­ard­ship Min­istry

Cre­ated: 24 Decem­ber 2010 24 Decem­ber 2010

Matur­ing stew­ards make the most of new starts. St. Paul wrote the fol­low­ing words in 2 Corinthi­ans 5:17: “There­fore, if any­one is in Christ, he is a new cre­ation; the old has gone, the new has come!” What a mar­velous thought for Chris­t­ian stew­ards enter­ing into a New Year.

2010 is gone and with it go the fail­ures and sins of the past. Yes, they remain in our mem­o­ries and can pro­vide us with good lessons of life as we look to the future, but the real good news is that we have a fresh new start, and matur­ing stew­ards make the most of each new start.

A new year reminds us of God’s gift of time and points us to Scrip­ture pas­sages like Psalm 90:12: “Teach us how short our life is, so that we may become wise.” Gala­tians 6:10 also pro­vides words of encour­age­ment: “There­fore, as we have oppor­tu­nity, let us do good to all peo­ple, espe­cially to those who belong to the fam­ily of believers.”

Yes, the past is gone and the future is not yet ours, even though it holds out hope. What we have with each new year and day is the present and God’s for­give­ness and strength to live renewed lives, using all of life and life’s resources to give glory to God and pro­vide bless­ings to those around us.

There’s an old poem that talks about two peo­ple rid­ing in a cov­ered wagon — one in the front, look­ing for­ward, and one in the back, look­ing behind. Both peo­ple were in the same place, but their per­spec­tives were very dif­fer­ent. As new cre­ations in Christ, we, like St. Paul, adopt the motto: “for­get­ting what is behind and strain­ing toward what is ahead, we press on with the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heav­en­ward in Christ Jesus.”

Happy New Year, matur­ing Chris­t­ian stew­ards, and may God bless you richly as you say and do those things that honor him and bless others!

Saint John’s Stew­ard­ship Board pro­motes the devel­op­ment of good stew­ard­ship and giv­ing pat­terns among the mem­bers of Saint John’s.

Did You Know? (Part 4)

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Writ­ten by The LCMS Office of National Mis­sion, Stew­ard­ship Min­istry The LCMS Office of National Mis­sion, Stew­ard­ship Min­istry

Cre­ated: 27 Novem­ber 2010 27 Novem­ber 2010

Con­tin­ued from “Did You Know (Part 3).”

The Lutheran Church — Mis­souri Synod adopted eight Stew­ard­ship prin­ci­ples at its 1998 national con­ven­tion. These prin­ci­ples reflect a def­i­n­i­tion of stew­ard­ship com­monly used through­out the LCMS. Each prin­ci­ple stands alone as an impor­tant guide for the church, yet all eight prin­ci­ples stand together as a sum­mary of how we live our lives of stewardship.

Prin­ci­ple Seven — God’s Stew­ards are Served and Serv­ing

God’s stew­ards rec­og­nize that their stew­ard­ship involves a Gospel-​powered style of life which is demon­strated by ser­vant­hood within every arena of life.

Who­ever wants to become great among you must be your ser­vant, and who­ever wants to be first must be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ran­som for many. Matthew 20:26b – 28

Prin­ci­ple Eight — God’s Stew­ards Live With an Aware­ness of the Present and the Future, of Time and Eter­nity

God’s stew­ards live inten­tion­ally in the light of the Lord’s eter­nal pur­pose while being firmly com­mit­ted to His rule in the here and now.

Do not store up for your­selves trea­sures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for your­selves trea­sures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your trea­sure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19 – 21

Saint John’s Stew­ard­ship Board pro­motes the devel­op­ment of good stew­ard­ship and giv­ing pat­terns among the mem­bers of Saint John’s.