A WORD FROM PASTOR ANDREW HOOK

May 6, 2021

So, from a technological point of view, Sunday was interesting. Midway through worship, when all eyes were on the screen, the projector momentarily died. Then, while Mrs. Shirley Jensen was speaking about all the work that SOS does in our community, the microphone was cutting in and out and buzzing, just generally dying a slow death. And least to me, it was very distracting. 

We’ve done a lot of work to make our sanctuary space more inviting for our members and our guests. It’s helped us connect and minister to our community. We’ve installed new flooring, having gone from brown and stained carpet to a laminate wood flooring. We’ve taken the brown carpet and trim off the walls and gone to a brighter wall paint. We’ve replaced our old and blown speakers with a current portable speaker system. The old sound mixer that was obsolete and dying has been replaced with a digital mixer. To assist with the need for streaming worship, we’ve installed two cameras to allow us to minister to those who can’t return to worship quite yet or who live out of state. 

Taken individually, these seem like trivial or superficial things. Yet, they’ve all been done in order to allow us to better minister to our congregation and community. And I can’t tell you how many compliments we have received on the work we’ve done and how excited our community is about the direction of the church. But we’re not done yet. 

We need to get new screens that don’t rely on a projector that can’t handle the signal from our computers and that will burn out sooner rather than later. And we need to reposition them in the sanctuary to help orient us in worship. We desperately need to update our decades old microphones so that people can hear what is going on better. Sight and hearing are two of our most important senses, after all, Paul says “faith comes by hearing.” Okay, so I jokingly took that out of context. But if people can’t see or hear what’s going on, then we’re not ministering as faithfully as we could. 

To that end, our conference has invested $7500 toward the work we’re doing. It will help us tackle at least one of the projects ASAP. But it’ll take more to do both the screens and the mics. We’re not where we need to be…yet. But our church’s Board of Stewards is hard at work. And if you want to help us get there quicker, ask myself or Kyle how you can help. 

Church is done together. It takes all of us. And here in Magnolia, we’ve got an unbelievable group of people who call ourselves Magnolia Methodist and who worship and serve together. God is doing something here.

Finally, I have to say, Sunday was awesome. I could hear our congregation singing, filling our sanctuary with the sound of people praising God together. I had goosebumps. Thank you!

Friday night, at 6:30, in our sanctuary, we will be having a movie night. As our worship series this month is based around Disney Pixar’s “Soul”, I hope you’ll join us to watch the movie. It’ll help make more sense of our next couple of weeks. 

Saturday, at 10:30 am, our church will celebrate the life of Kathleen Robinson. Kathleen was an incredible and sweet lady who will be greatly missed. I hope you will come and join her family as we say “goodbye for now” to our friend. 

Next Sunday is our next Board of Stewards meeting. All are welcome to join us for a discussion about the state of the church and what work is on tap for us to tackle. 

Sunday is coming, and I can’t wait to see everyone here!

Andrew Hook

Pastor