Burns Flat Cumberland Presbyterian Church

Update Provided to the Board of Missions, Red River Presbytery

August 2008

Burns Flat Cumberland Presbyterian Church

Box 8

Burns Flat, Oklahoma 73624

13 August 2008

The Board of Missions

Red River Presbytery

404 N. Magnolia Avenue

Hubbard, Texas 76648

Grace and peace to you!   We the session of the Burns Flat Cumberland Presbyterian Church are thankful for you and for the work that your committee does to fulfill the mission of the church in the Red River Presbytery.

We are always delighted to share what is going on in God’s grace here in Western Oklahoma.  I hope that you will find the following sufficient to answer your questions and find that every word—even the issues that must be worked through—are written in faith, hope, and love.

On May 3^rd, 2008 the session was pleased to call Tom Spence as our stated supply.  Our intent is that once he is licensed, we will call him as our pastor.  Tom was honored to accept our call.  We did not give up our search.  This was the fruit of our search--a year’s worth of faithfulness by the session, search committee, and the congregation. All of us are excited about where we are headed as a church and confident that God rewarded our faithfulness.  We notified Clifton Key and Norlan Scrudder the following week and sent the appropriate correspondence to Presbytery (stated clerk) with copies to your board and our moderator, Dale Nease of the Clinton church.  I hope that you will take the opportunity to talk with one of our elders at the fall meeting of Presbytery so you can hear of this journey first hand.

We submitted three letters requesting authorization to serve communion.  One of those requests, James Hendrix, we respectfully withdraw at this time.  James, though active in the life of the church is not active on the session at this time.  We have selected Dana Ellis as the elder to serve communion and renew our request for Presbytery’s approval in accordance with 4.6 of the Constitution.  We sent a third request asking that Tom Spence be authorized to serve communion.  Tom was authorized to serve communion as an elder, but now that he is a candidate for the ministry, the general thought on this matter seems to be that he may not now serve communion, even though the constitution does not expressly prohibit such service.  Our preference is that Tom be authorized to serve the Lord’s Supper and this authorization is in harmony with the purpose of church government as described in the Preamble to the Constitution—to aid the church in performing its mission.  We do understand, however, that the perceived risk here will be great from your perspective and may be more than your committee is ready to address; therefore, we patiently persevere with other alternatives—Dale Nease has been very cooperative—until the day where we can once again worship in the fullness intended in 5.27 of the Confession of Faith.  We know that there is light at the end of this tunnel as Tom is proceeding with all deliberate speed at completing his program of alternate studies authorized by the Presbytery.

The past year has been challenging, exciting, and fruitful.  As you know, about two years ago we began a contemporary service called first light at 9:00 a.m.  The order of worship is much like our traditional service that begins at 11:00 a.m., but the music is, as the name suggests, more contemporary.  The excitement over this service is not that it offers some another time frame to worship—though this has been a blessing to many—but that it gave more of our congregation a chance to participate in worship by leading music or serving as liturgist.  This service has now become a staple of our Sunday mornings.  Many that come to this service remain for Sunday School and the traditional service.

For the past 3 years we have held an elder’s retreat in January.  This is a time for prayer, reflection, elder training, planning, and fellowship.  This January, one of the things we committed to was to put Vacation Bible School back on the life map of children in our church and our community.  At the time, we didn’t know how we would do this, but we made the commitment.  What a blessing to have two amazing young ladies answer the call and put together what was truly a spectacular VBS with about 15-20 adults and 35-40 children participating each of the 5 days in spite of competing with summer sports.  We have captured our lessons learned and are excited about what our next VBS will be!  During this retreat we also committed to a Spring Revival and invited our previous pastor, Duawn Mearns, to be our speaker.  The revival was wonderful and this was also something of a reunion for our church family with the Mearns family.  There was ample food for the spirit and for the body.

We remain active in the Ministerial Alliance (1 Assembly of God church, 3 Baptist churches, and us).  We use our church for collection of food and gifts for Thanksgiving Baskets, Christmas Baskets, and Angel Tree Gifts as well as using it for the distribution point.  This past year we gave out more food baskets, had more volunteers to help in all areas, and had the best community offerings ever.  Our church hosted the Holy Week Services prior to Easter Sunday.  Tom delivered the sermon for the Alliance at the Baccalaureate Service and the local churches have committed to adding the 2009 National Day of Prayer as an Alliance sponsored event in our area.  Since May 2008, we as an alliance have also started a Meals on Wheels program for Burns Flat. Participation by elderly shut-ins varies from about 6-8 deliveries each day as a norm to close to 20 at peak times.

We have continued with F-4 (Faith, Food, Fellowship, & Friends), our Wednesday night program, which includes an evening meal at 6:00 p.m. followed by classes for all age groups.  This year between the meal and the classes, we will include a few minutes of singing.  For the fall semester of F-4, we are also combining the men’s and women’s adult groups to study the Gifts of the Spirit.  This Wednesday night fellowship and education continues to produce good fruit.  People often say that exhausted from the day they just finished, they barely dragged themselves in the door of the church, but they leave renewed.  In fact, the 8:00 p.m. completion time for classes often ends up being just another transition time to the ad hoc groupings that continue for an hour or more thereafter. 

These past few months, we have ventured into some new areas.  In years past, we did not attempt to hold Wednesday evening meetings during the summer months.  Schedules are hectic with sports, vacations, summer jobs and a plethora of other things that seemed prohibitive to coming together and meeting on a regular basis—or not.  This year we held a June Jam and a July Jam—good old fashioned just show up an holler out your requests and we’ll sing ‘em until we get tired or run out of hymns.  This was great!  Not everyone can be here every time, but we opened our eyes to the fact that enough of us could that we could shout to the Lord and know He heard us.

Also this August, we will hold a church-wide bible study entitled Breaking Away From Busy.  This will ask and answer the question:  If the yoke that Jesus offers is easy and His burden is light, Why am I so burdened?  We have publicized this study to the community in hope that it will include outreach as well as education.  Tom is having a blast putting this together and we expect a good turnout.

A few days ago, we held our Back to School Splash at the pool with finger food, soft drinks, and a chance to relax before the school year begins—teachers started Monday, students Thursday.    I hope you can sense our excitement over what we will do next summer.  Here is a look at where our planning stands so far for our Wednesday evening education (August to August).  We still have some decisions to make on some curriculum, but we are underway and expect great things from our meetings.

Our youth camps were fantastic.  Counselors as well as youth were moved to dedicate themselves to Christ’s purpose.  Two of our young men that were serving as counselors answered a call to the ministry.  We are ecstatic!  Joel Delp and Lee Delp quit kicking against the goads and answered this call on the final evening.  We as a session will talk to them both soon to see where they are led.  God blessed us with these two servants and we ask you to join us in praying for them.

This weekend, we are sending our first group from the church to the Promise Keepers 08 convention in Dallas.  Some of those attending have attended before on an individual basis, but this is the first time that we have done this as a church group.  Our women have attended the Women of Faith Conference in Oklahoma City every year for the past 9 years.  The guys just got tired of waiting for PK to come to OKC and decided to go to Dallas.

On September 3^rd—yes, that’s getting close—we are holding a one-day revival to kick off our Fall F-4.  The theme is Who is Jesus? and the scripture will be the 7 I Am statements made by Jesus as they appear in the Gospel of John.  Our speakers are the lay speakers that filled our pulpit over the past year, to include one of our youth.  This group has met for planning, discussion, and prayer—mainly for prayer—for the past 3 months.  Between each 7-minute message, we will have time for prayer, special music, the Apostle’s Creed, and silent meditation.

For the past 4 years, we have also maintained a web site:  www.burnsflat.org.  The main items on the website for internal use are our prayer list and our monthly newsletter.  The website gives us a community and denominational presence as well.  Items of interest include our history, service times, directions, and information about our committees, youth events, and other events that we desire to publicize.   We will ask Tom to add you to the electronic distribution list for the newsletter.

This year, we decided that we would commission a technology workgroup in January 2009.  The group will be charged with doing a front end analysis of our needs as a congregation, determining if there are appropriate technology solutions, and recommending solutions or combinations of solutions to the session.  Technology is enticing, but not always the best solution—or not always the best solution here.  Sometimes a piece of equipment or software looks really ‘neat’ but may not meet any need.  We expect to balance this commission with some members that are technologically savvy and some that are skeptical.

For the past few years we have also supported the Adventure Program sponsored by Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU) by providing cookies and snacks on a recurring basis.  This program is for at-risk youth, and for many of them, their last chance to get a handle on life before their next step lands them in the criminal justice system.  The snacks are well received and these young people known that somebody outside of their immediate group cares for them and is praying and pulling for them to succeed.

We love God and we love our church.  We rotate an assignment which we call Elder of the Month.  This elder is responsible for delivering the devotion at the session meetings, serving as the worship leader, and just keeping everything afloat if our pastor (stated supply) is away. 

Of all the things that we could report, this last is the greatest.  We pray.  When our session meets, we begin with prayer and a devotion, but when we adjourn, we go into the sanctuary, get on our knees in front of the altar and all of us pray.  Our prayers are answered.  The revival group does the same thing.  Our committees are praying more.  Of all that we do, faithfully abiding in our time of personal and corporate prayer has had the greatest impact in the life of our church.  If you want to share something with other churches, it is this:  Pray!

What do we need from you?  Perhaps the item of most urgency is some sort of update on the lay ministry program that we will vote on at the fall meeting.  While right now we probably don’t have any candidates for this—Tom is pursuing ordination and we expect that Joel and Lee will do the same at some point—but we need to see what we are to vote on by our September session meeting so our elder delegate to Presbytery will know how to vote.

In closing, we are thankful to be a congregation full of blessings.  We send our blessings and encouragement to you as together we serve our Risen Lord, Christ Jesus!

For the Session,

Gene Reeves

Session Clerk

cc:  Clifton Key

        Dale Nease

        Post (Session Read Board)

        File

Cumberland Presbyterian Church

Burns Flat, Oklahoma

God's Love in Action