Rule Number One: Do No Harm (T Robertson)

July 21, 2010

Tom Robertson

LDM for Camping & Christian Formation

515.974.8913

Rule Number One: Do No Harm

“By doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which

is most generally practiced.” – UM Book of Discipline, 2004, ¶ 103

I am reading Bishop Reuben P. Job’s book, Three Simple Rules, which explains John Wesley’s three rules of living a faithful life within Christian community. Job states, “I have found that when this first simple rule was remembered, it often saved me from uttering a wrong word or considering a wrong response.”

He adds, “I have also found that this simple step, when practiced, can provide a safe place to stand while the hard and faithful work of discernment is done.” Do we truly understand?

We are surrounded and inundated by media sound bites that are critical and enormously provocative in stirring passions for and against issues and one another. We have allowed such language and attitudes to seep into our workings within the church to the point that we arrive at decisions without regard to how it may actually be harming others. Of course, too, this isn’t a recent phenomenon; it’s been going on for quite some time. Read more

Eric Guy

LDM for Young Adult & Generational Ministry

515.974.8944

Preliminary plans are underway to coordinate an Iowa Conference bus trip to next summer’s Youth 2011 event. If a group from your church is planning to attend Youth 2011 and would like to express your tentative interest, please email Maria Wiblin, Conference Youth Coordinator.

Scott Hibben

LDM for Evangelism & New Ministry

515.974.8926

Declining, or Just Mutating – PART FOUR: Transforming Lives

The Lord said, “I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them…to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey…I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

Exodus 3:7-8, 10

Why does your church exist? – A probing question. And even more so: To what is the future of your church tied? Read more

Naomi Sea Young Wittstruck

LDM for Social Justice & Mission

515.974.8908

Recommended Reading

Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:25-26, NRSV)

This week I have been blessed by the experience of facilitating one of the “Joy to the World” classes for the Iowa United Methodist Women’s School of Christian Mission in Marshalltown. Read more

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