It is not too late to get signed up for the 201st Annual Sessions of Indiana Yearly Meeting. The setting will be the beautiful Quaker Haven Camp. Some of the highlights will be a Bicentennial Program, Feast of Faith (with Gospel Music from the Halcomb Family), and the annual Missions Luncheon (with Speaker, Dr. Luke Fetters from Huntington University). Click HERE for registration information.
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Pat Grubbs, Bear Creek Friends, has published a short memoir of her childhood, My Life as a Missionary Kid. In it, Pat tells of her childhood with missionary parents in Haiti. Dunkirk Friends (Central Yearly Meeting) was her home church, and her late husband, Richard Grubbs, served as a pastor in IYM. For more information, contact Pat through the IYM office.
Pastor Phil Abram at Van Wert Friends reports of a wonderful outreach time past Sunday. They had a cookout with burgers and hotdogs and all the fixings. Dave Forman was the grill master. Ralph Mell helped organize the kids for setup. The ladies provided potato salad and pies. The attendance was around 30, with many from the surrounding neighborhood attending. Phil also reported that numbers are up in Sunday morning attendance and in Sunday school!
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The board of Evangelical Friends Mission is excited to announce the calling of former Southwest Yearly Meeting Superintendent, Stan Leach as the new Executive Director. Click HERE for a more detailed announcement.
Pictured here is Stan with his wife, Sandi.
Please pray for the Friends in Cuba. The unrest there has made the COVID situation even worse as protests continue and necessary medications are not getting there. Pray for peaceful actions that will bring about Kingdom purposes for the Friends there and for the nation of Cuba.
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Wabash Friends is having prayer meetings every Tuesday, from 5:30-6:30 pm, regarding the future of their sanctuary renovation, seeking further clarity from God's Spirit as they move forward.
From the Advancement Committee:
With about a week to go in raising funds for the 2022 budget, we have received $116,451.30. We will keep at it as we head into IYM sessions. It is thrilling to have our IYM community support our ministries in such amazing and generous ways. If you have any questions regarding these fundraising efforts, please contact Damon Seacott at 517-204-5348.
If you have not given toward the 2022 budget yet, please do not hesitate. These funds will be put to valuable use as we move forward in all our services, programs, ministries, and new endeavors that keep being placed before us -- God is using IYM -- we are grateful for His confidence in our willingness to be His hands & feet!
From the Christian Service Committee:
It is good to see action in the midst of struggle. Take a look at what these Christian service organizations are doing in Indiana and around the world, serving Jesus Christ our Lord.
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The camping season at Quaker Haven Camp for 2021 has come to a close. At this time, estimates are that there were more than 570 total campers - a record number! A large number of those were from IYM churches. Another large number of them were not from Friends churches. What a gift we have in the outreach that happens at Quaker Haven each summer in introducing young people to Jesus Christ! Thank you to all who served, counseled, led music, spoke, and generally stood in the gap for young people in this vital ministry! Please continue to pray for these young people as they live into the work God has done in their lives at camp.
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Our Deepest Sympathy:
Recently, two prominent IYM members passed away. Bob Garra pastored many churches in IYM, and he was a staple presence at pastor gatherings over the years. Dale Salsbery was a member of Hemlock Friends and was the father of Kris Shoemaker, wife of former Super-intendent, Doug Shoemaker. Dale loved Jesus, the Bible, his family, farming, music, and laughter. Both will be missed. Please keep their families and loved ones in your prayers.
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Upcoming Events:
July 29 - 31: IYM Bicentennial Sessions @ QHC
August 24 - Committee Night @ Marion First Friends; 6:30pm
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Good Morning!
Recently, our family has found ourselves in “historic villages”
in two different states. These are collections of old, unused, and unique buildings moved to a central location for preserva-tion. Both collections are somewhat run-down, rarely used, and seldom visited. And, both, for reasons connected to their local histories, include Quaker meetinghouses. As we visited and our children explored, I was struck by several thoughts.
While I personally favor and enjoy preservation of historic structures, especially Quaker ones, the earliest message of the Friends movement was in preciously the opposite direction. The reason that the early Friends resisted calling their buildings “churches” was because the Friends’ understanding of the Gospel is one of a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, a relationship open to all who believe. The institutional church of the day, whether Roman or English, with ritual and hierarchy, had too little to offer for those seeking personal transformation through faith. The Quaker meetinghouse became a place for the church to gather but not a place capable of any special power on its own outside of the faith and practice of those who gathered there.
I also thought about the place of the church in the lives of many twenty-first century Americans: it has been relegated to an out-of-the way place, where it serves as a poorly main-tained reminder of the ideals of a past generation. The local church, in this view, serves the same role today as the blacksmith shop, the general store, and the one-room school-house, and it gets about as much attention. In this view, the church matters very little to modern life.
The early Friends loved to use the words of Stephen to the Sanhedrin, “However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands” (Acts 7:48), and of Paul in Athens, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands” (Acts 17:24).
These apostolic words are good reminders to us as Christians and as Friends today. The work of the local church is not about preservation or maintenance beyond the need to maintain the tools that we are to use to win others to faith in Jesus Christ. It is only as we offer the world the one thing (Person) that can fulfill their needs as those created in the image of God that our work as the Church has meaning. Stephen, speaking to religious leaders, and Paul, speaking to learned philosophers, both knew that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was a message for all people and all times, whether in the first century, the seventeenth century, or the twenty-first century!
How is your local church, in small ways or large ones, working to extend the Kingdom of God? What gives meaning to your weekly efforts? In our current world, the maintenance of buildings or institutions will matter little, but the word that goes out from God’s mouth will not return void (Isaiah 55:11). Spend your time and energy on the things that will last!
-Greg Hinshaw, IYM Presiding Clerk
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