This update is from African mission developer Kalengule Kaoma.
GCI pastors and their wives met recently in Zimbabwe and Zambia for pastor retreats. These retreats foster teamwork and good pastoral relationships, and provide opportunities to discuss doctrinal matters.
The pastors’ retreat in Zimbabwe took place at Lake Chivero near Harare; 23 attended.
Part of the Zimbabwean pastoral team
The pastors’ retreat in Zambia took place in Chongwe, east of Lusaka; 27 attended, including (pictured below, left to right) Kennedy Musopelo with his son Divine, Christopher and Judith Simbeye, and Aaron and Maggie Ng’ambi.
The Zambian retreat was enhanced by a worship service that included all of our churches in the Lusaka area. The service featured singing, drama and poetry.
Edna Barr sent us this prayer request concerning her husband, retired GCI district and church pastor Allan Barr.
Allan recently visited a urologist regarding a growing lump, which may be testicular cancer. The urologist prescribed a CT scan and surgical removal of the tumor, which will be followed by a biopsy to determine if it is malignant. The surgery will be on July 25 with a follow-up visit a week later to discuss possible treatment. We are thankful for the answered prayers that made the first appointment possible, since for weeks they said that the first available appointment was August 2. We also give thanks for the prayers of church members. We’re expecting that things will go according to God’s plan.
Pastor Becky Deuel of Wisconsin is celebrating the birth of her first grandchild, Lillian Leigh, born June 16 weighing 6 lbs. 15 oz. and 20-1/4 inches long. The parents, Scott and Melissa Abney, are adjusting well.
Taking care of our denomination’s financial affairs may not be one of the more glamorous functions of our work, but it is one of the most important. As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth: “It is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy” (1 Corinthians 4:2, NRSV).
Our Glendora office accounting team takes stewardship of GCI’s finances very seriously. They maintain meticulous professional standards and work hard to meet the requirements of the law. This includes submitting our financial records to an independent external auditor. Our staff then devotes many hours in responding to the auditor’s requests. This is time well spent because it shines an outside light on our financial management records and processes and helps us improve each year.
Capin Crouse LLP recently finished auditing our financial records for 2011 and 2012. They presented their findings to our Board of Directors in a written report that summarizes the audit and suggests ways that we can improve our financial systems. The report also notes forthcoming changes to legal and financial requirements for churches. The report’s cover letter includes this summary statement:
In our opinion, the combined financial statements [from GCI]…present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of Grace Communion International and Affiliate in the United States of America as of December 31, 2012 and 2011, and the changes in their net assets and their cash flows for the years then ended in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.
This statement means that our external auditor has given us a “clean” or “unqualified” report. They noted to us informally that our financial systems are “stellar.” This is significant, for in a world where institutions, including churches, are often distrusted, our members and other donors can have peace of mind knowing that their contributions and financial sacrifices are respected by their church and that its financial resources are being handled with the greatest of professional care. Any GCI member in the US may obtain a copy of Capin Crouse’s audit report by sending their request to Grace Communion International, P.O. Box 5005 Glendora, CA 91740, attention Mat Morgan.
The pictures below show our home office financial team. I thank all of them, including Mathew Morgan, our treasurer and Robert Meade, our accounting manager who lead us in financial stewardship. I also thank the many others in our home office and in our congregations who diligently strive to be trustworthy stewards of the finances entrusted to us for the work of the gospel.
Left to right: Celestine Olive, (donation processing), Cheryl Corson (executive assistant), Mat Morgan (treasurer), Gwen Schneider (payroll), Pam Morgan (accounts payable).Robert Meade (accounting manager)
On a related note, I urge all pastors and treasurers in our US churches to stay current with requirements for reviews of financial records as detailed in the GCI-USA Financial Management Manual. An internal review is required each year and an external review is required every third year. Although these reviews can be time-consuming, they are essential in helping us properly steward the finances within our churches.
Due to the upcoming International Denominational Conference, we will not be publishing GCI Weekly Update next week. I look forward to seeing many of you in Orlando.
Your brother in Christ,
Joseph Tkach.
PS. As you may know, churches, denominations and ministry organizations are seeing significant changes related to financial stewardship and fundraising. Ted Johnston tells me that this important topic will be the focus of the August issue of Equipper. I hope you will read it when it’s published in early August. Equipper is emailed to all GCI-USA pastors and to others who request it. It also is posted online at http://mindev.gci.org/equipper.htm.
Congratulations to GCI pastor Brian Carlisle who on June 28 was married to Anne Kimani. Brian’s new family includes step-son is Cedric (age 9) and step-daughter Maryanne (age 13). The new family (pictured below) is looking forward to traveling to Nairobi, Kenya to meet and enjoy Anne’s extended family there.
Is your congregation looking for a place to hold worship services? In the US, many Regal Theaters have special arrangements to rent their facilities to churches.
Timothy (“Tim”) Brassell pastors the GCI congregation in Baltimore, Maryland and serves as a district pastor.
Tim’s father Rufus was a professional heavyweight boxer, so while growing up, Tim met many interesting and famous people. “My dad fought with Muhammed Ali, George Foreman, Jimmy Ellis, Jerry Quarry and others. He had a winning record of 18-7 and was ranked as high as eighth. Like Ali, he trained with Angelo Dundee at the 5th Street Gym in Miami.”
Tim was born in Nuremberg, Germany, where his father served in the Army. “I grew up in Lima, Ohio, my parents’ hometown, and then in Bluffton Ohio. In my adult years I returned to Lima. In ministry I’ve lived in various places in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and now I live in Baltimore, Maryland.”
Tim and his family started attending WCG around 1973/74, “although my entire life I was under the influence of Armstrongism since my dad was a long-time Plain Truth reader.”
Tim began serving in pastoral ministry in Findley, Ohio. “Due to the doctrinal changes in 1995 our pastor left. The pastor from our sister congregation in Toledo became the new pastor, but needed help serving the two congregations. A coupon appeared in The Worldwide News that invited those sensing a call to pastoral ministry to reply. Many members in my congregation encouraged me to do so. I did, and was appointed to serve on the pastoral team in my congregation.”
Tim now is the senior pastor of GCI’s Baltimore congregation, serving with his wife, Donna. “Without her, there would be no ministry of Jesus through Timothy Brassell. She has been a great support and an active participant in the journey every conceivable way: relationally, physically, mentally and emotionally. We’ve always been on the same page–being reformed together. Through it all. she has held down a job and taken care of the home!”
Tim and Donna recently celebrated 22 years of marriage. They share family life with three others: “Our oldest daughter, Jocelyn, is completing her first year in the Coast Guard and serves in the Cape Cod area, pursuing a career in the intelligence field. Our youngest daughter, Autumn, is wrapping up 10th grade and already is pursuing a career as a cosmetic dentist while enjoying softball. Remy, our dog, still tries to lick us to death—but we’re ‘still ticking’ and loving on her!”
When asked what he enjoys most about being a GCI pastor, Tim said this: “My favorite thing is proclaiming the good news of the relational God revealed in Jesus; declaring, against the wisdom of the world, that every human is in him. I share this every way I can, full- time, starting with family. My love relating, thinking, living and speaking out of the love and life of the Father, Son and Spirit shared with all creation all the time—without the religion and right in the middle of the deep brokenness we all share! I greatly enjoy being in a world-wide fellowship of ever-reforming, loving, humble, accessible, free, open and risk-taking people (they hired ME! Ha!).”
Tim has many interests beyond his primary vocational calling. He enjoys doing commercial voiceovers “I have done voiceovers for national, regional and local commercials around the world. I’ve even been the voice of a roller coaster! I record voiceovers from time-to-time in my home studio. I would love to do more of these when I retire from working full-time as a pastor. Tim also enjoys watching movies and shows with his family; traveling to the Islands; listening to, writing, playing and recording music; collecting rocks and lots of reading.”
Tim’s most memorable moment as a pastor has to do with when he became one. “My parents told me all my life I should be one. Coworkers on my job told me I should be one. I felt I should be one and tried doing everything right and going to all the right places, but I was turned down at every point. Finally, in his own time and radical way, God brought it about. Wow!”
Tim feels closest to God when “proclaiming the gospel of the relational God revealed in Jesus, especially when preaching and teaching. He also feels close to God when thinking and praying, hearing about God in all kinds of ways from others and when dancing and seeing others dance distinctly and freely in the joy of the Lord!”
Going back to his early childhood, Tim shared that, “because of my dad’s fame as a boxer and because of my parent’s good character, our family had a lot of favor with many people. My dad trained many young kids in Lima to box, helping keep them off the streets. As a result, I experience favor to this day whenever the family name is mentioned.
GCI pastor Mike Rasmussen and his wife Juli—both avid skydivers—are seen tandem jumping in the video below (at 24 seconds). The video advertises the Rasmussens’ home state of Oklahoma.
We are saddened to learn of the death of long-time GCI elder and employee Joseph (“Joe”) Kotora on July 12. Joe’s wife Mae preceded him in death as did his parents Michael and Barbara Kotora and his two brothers and three sisters. Joe is survived by his three children: Jana Cardona (married to Mark Cardona), Sandra Kotora and Daniel Kotora; and by his many grandchildren.
Joe was born in Pennsylvania and in early adulthood worked there building steel mills. During WWII he worked building ships and met his wife-to-be Mae. They married and settled in Monessen, Pennsylvania where they raised their family. Joe became a deacon and then an elder in the Worldwide Church of God in Pennsylvania. In the 1970s, he and Mae moved to Pasadena, California where Joe attended Ambassador College. He then worked for many years for the church, serving in several capacities, including traveling with Herbert Armstrong. Due to ill health, Joe and Mae moved back to Pennsylvania in the 1990s where he served WCG churches as a volunteer assistant pastor. In 2007 the couple moved to Memphis, Tennessee to be near family.
Joe was born with a congenital heart defect. Later in life he made medical history twice: once when becoming the first person in the US to have his particular heart defect repaired, and again when he was the first person to survive receipt of an artificial heart valve.
In our modern age of smart bombs and unmanned drones, it may seem hard to believe that not so long ago one of the most effective unmanned flying machines used in warfare was the humble pigeon.
The homing, or carrier pigeon, is able to find its way home over hundreds and even thousands of miles. Approximately 250,000 of them were used in World War II as a low-tech but highly effective way to carry messages. Because the enemy would deploy air-to-air anti-pigeon hawks to bring them down, these messages were often written in secret code.
Last November, one of these coded messages was discovered in a canister attached to the leg of a dead pigeon that had become stuck in a chimney. There are few secrets remaining from that war, but this is one of them. The message, which has 27 five-letter code groups, is said to be impossible to crack without its codebook. It may never be deciphered, but here it is (see picture at right) if you want to try.
There is something fascinating and challenging about coded messages, isn’t there? Some people seem to think the Bible is just as mysterious as that pigeon’s message, containing coded information that must somehow be unraveled so the real truth may be known.
Perhaps you remember a book that was published some years ago, The Bible Code. The author claimed that there were secret messages hidden in the original text of the Hebrew Bible. By looking at the sequence of Hebrew letters—for example, every 50th one—the secret information could be deciphered. That information, encoded into the text thousands of years ago, revealed specific details about contemporary events.
If you think this sounds a bit far-fetched, you’re right. It just doesn’t work. The Bible Code failed to predict some important developments and history has shown it to be quite wrong in many others. Also, computer analysis has shown that you can actually do this with almost any book. One critic, presumably with tongue firmly in cheek, showed how Herman Melville anticipated the assassination of Martin Luther King in the text of Moby Dick.
To study the Bible in this way is a waste of time. It is not what it is for. The Bible is certainly profound and repays in-depth study. Ever since it was written, scholars have poured over Holy Scripture in search of a better understanding of God’s character and will. Studies of the Hebrew Scriptures by Jewish scholars before the time of Jesus left them with unanswered questions. This is what Paul was referring to when he wrote to the church at Colosse that the word of God was to some extent a “mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations” (Colossians 1:26a). However, as Paul notes, it is no longer a secret and we are called to proclaim the word: “I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness” (v 25).
That fullness is the core message of the gospel, which, through Paul, “God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ (vv. 27-28).
Paul’s point is that the Sender has given us the code to the mystery. We don’t have to be expert code-breakers and we don’t have to be stumped. We can shout the message from the highest hill. We don’t have to spend hours struggling to work it out because the mystery has been revealed. God has come to us through his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ with unbounded grace for all. God is the Sender and we are the recipients. Jesus, himself, is the deciphered message of God to us.
The essential starting point of correct Bible interpretation is to read and interpret it through the lens of the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus told the biblical scholars of his day, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40 ESV).
Sadly, for many, that is still the case. They spend their lives trying to decipher what the Bible “really says,” coming up with a never-ending stream of bizarre and inaccurate ideas. You’d think they’d learn, wouldn’t you?
But the hope of unlocking “secret knowledge” lures them on—like, I suppose, those people who are still trying to decipher the message strapped to the leg of that long-dead carrier pigeon. Though the pigeon’s message may never be decoded, we most certainly do not have to be confounded by the message of the Bible. Jesus not only decodes it, he is the code and the message.
Your brother in Christ,
Joseph Tkach
PS: We will publish Weekly Update on July 24 and then skip July 31. The triennial GCI Denominational Conference will be held in Orlando, Florida during the week spanning July 29-August 4. I hope to see many Update readers there.
