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The Upper Room magazine’s mission is to provide a model of practical Christianity, accessible in varied formats, to help people feel invited and welcomed into God’s presence to:
listen to scripture as God’s personal message, linking their stories to God’s story;
commune with God in prayer;
see their daily choices and small acts of obedience as part of God’s work;
realize our connection through Christ as a universal family of believers;
encounter the living Christ and be transformed into Christ’s likeness.
From Chuck Knows Church. The Upper Room. It’s the place where Jesus had his last meal with his disciples, but it’s also the world’s most widely read daily devotional guide. Chuck explains the significance of this “little book”.
Thank you for your generous support of building the flood buckets. Pender completed 11 buckets and we had extra supplies to donate also.
There was even show and tell with some of the Burke UMC preschoolers. The kids were very interested to see what was inside the buckets and what they were for. You’re never too early to learn about missions.
Pender United Methodist Church is requesting that each family donate ONE item in support of our assisting our neighbors in Florida and Puerto Rico who are working through the devastation and impact of natural disasters, specifically hurricanes. It is our hope that everyone will join with us in assisting to build flood bucket cleaning kits that will assist the families.
All items must be new. All cleaning agents must be in liquid form. No powders can be accepted. Items for donation may not be imprinted with cartoon characters, advertisements, religious, patriotic, military, or camouflage symbols.
Requested Cleaning Kit Materials:
One Five-gallon round bucket with lid (14.35″ h x 12.19″ w x1)
No screw lids
This may be used, but it must be free from all residual product
Advertisements on the outside are acceptable.
No patriotic or religious symbols are to be displayed.
One 32-64 oz. bottle liquid laundry
One 16-40 oz. bottle liquid concentrate household cleaner (please, no spray cleaners)
One 16-34 oz. bottle liquid dish soap
One 4-8 oz. pump spray air freshener
One 6-14 oz. pump spray insect repellent (pack of 10-20 wipes also acceptable)
Pump spray bottles must have protective covers
One scrub brush (with or without handle)
18 re-usable cleaning wipes
No terrycloth, microfiber or paper towels
Remove the packaging
Five scouring pads
No stainless steel or pads with soap on them
Remove from packaging
36-50 clothespins
One 50-100 ft. clothesline (cotton or plastic line)
24 roll of heavy-duty trash bags (33-45 gallon sizes)
Remove from packaging
Five N95 particulate respirator dust masks (1-3 mm thickness)
“Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling”
Will Thompson UM Hymnal, No. 348
The Pender UMC Traditional Service Final Hymn “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” on Sunday September 11, 2022 was played by Liz Eunji Moon on piano, accompanied on guitar by Brian Stevenson and sung the Pender Sanctuary Choir and congregation.
Undoubtedly, many readers of this column grew up in a revival tradition that included an extended invitation hymn—a congregational hymn at the conclusion of the service that focused on those attending who may be called by the Holy Spirit to make either a profession of faith or a recommitment of one’s life. In services of this nature, the direction of the entire liturgy points to the sermon and this time of commitment. Our hymn is a classic invitation hymn from the 19th-century revival tradition.
Will Lamartine Thompson (1847-1909) was born in Pennsylvania and died in New York City. He attended Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio, and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, before continuing his musical studies in Leipzig, Germany.
In addition to being a composer of secular, patriotic and gospel songs, Thompson was a music publisher. When his songs were rejected by publishers of his day, he formed his own enterprise, Will L. Thompson & Company, with offices in Chicago and East Liverpool, Ohio. By the 1880s the company expanded beyond publishing music and sold pianos, organs and other instruments and supplies.
The words and music for “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” first appeared in Sparkling Gems, Nos. 1 and 2, a collection compiled for Thompson’s company in 1880 by singing-school teacher J. Calvin Bushey.
Other well-known gospel songs by Thompson include “Jesus Is All the World to Me” (UM Hymnal, No. 469), and two with strong eschatological leanings, Lead Me Gently Home, Father” and “There’s a Great Day Coming.”
UM Hymnal editor, the Rev. Carlton R. Young, notes: “This is a typical lullaby in the gospel hymn tradition that characterizes Jesus as a mother, gently rocking and comforting a child. This attribute contributes to the continuing popularity of this genre of religious song that presents Jesus as waiting, caring, and forgiving in intimate—and for many, compelling—metaphors.”
Perhaps Revelation 3:20 captures the spirit of the hymn: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” (KJV) This patient Jesus stands “on the portals . . . waiting and watching . . . for you and for me.”
The second stanza takes a different approach: How can we reject the “pleading” one who offers “pardon”? The third stanza increases in urgency: “Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing . . . shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming. . . .” The final stanza returns to the theme of Jesus who offers “mercy and pardon” for the sinner.
The genius of a gospel song is usually found in the refrain and this one is no exception. The refrain extends the invitation to “come home” four times in the melody, and an additional two times in the accompanying lower voices.
Interestingly, though “Softly and Tenderly” is the quintessential invitation hymn in the revival tradition, the invitation to “come home” may also be seen as the invitation to join Jesus in heaven. Indeed, two examples attest to this: The hymn was used during the memorial service for assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on April 8, 1968. It was also a recurring song in The Trip to Bountiful (1985), an Oscar-winning movie about an older woman in the 1940s who wants to return one last time to her girlhood hometown of Bountiful.
Hymnologist Ernest Emurian told a story associated with this hymn: “When the world-renowned lay preacher, Dwight Lyman Moody, lay on his deathbed in his Northfield, Massachusetts, home, Will Thompson made a special visit to inquire as to his condition. The attending physician refused to admit him to the sickroom, and Moody heard them talking just outside the bedroom door. Recognizing Thompson’s voice, he called for him to come to his bedside. Taking the Ohio poet-composer by the hand, the dying evangelist said, ‘Will, I would rather have written “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” than anything I have been able to do in my whole life.’”
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