Newsletter - Saint Luke Evangelical Lutheran Church
Transcription
Newsletter - Saint Luke Evangelical Lutheran Church
A NEWSLETTER FOR MEMBERS AND FRIENDS OF ST. LUKE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN DEVON PA JUNE,Worship 2015 Outdoor & Annual Church Picnic Dedication of our new labyrinth Sunday, June 7 Worship at 9:30; the picnic follows. For the Picnic: Last names beginning with: A-M bring sides or salads N-Z bring desserts Main course and Beverages provided. Dress is casual. Please bring Your own lawn chairs or blankets for worship and picnic seating. 1 FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR? Welcoming All Worship this Summer page 3 Equipping Everyone Vacation Bible School page 4 Serving Others Global Mission News Blood Drive Feeding Thousands page 5 page 6 page 7 Telling Our Story Financial Summary June Birthdays page 9 page 10 CHURCH OFFICES: 610 688 0122 LOOK LINE (PRAYER REQUESTS) 610 688 LOOK (5665) ONLINE AT WWW.SAINTLUKEDEVON.ORG Lead Pastor, The Rev. Susan Ericsson 610-644-3835 [email protected] Pastor for Youth, Family & Service, The Rev. Matt Staniz [email protected] Director of Church Music, Jack Charles, AIM 610-287-9366 [email protected] 2 ~ WELCOME EVERYONE ~ Summer Worship 9:30 a.m. Sundays We continue with the one-service Schedule through Labor Day. Summer Midweek Worship Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. in the Chapel. Gather for Midweek Worship, a quiet evening service with Holy Communion, Wednesdays July 1 through August. It's a great opportunity for a different experience or for those who may be out of town on the weekends. Members of St. Luke bring the word at the services. This year’s theme is “God’s Work, Our Hands”. Rejoicing Spirits is a joy-filled worship service for children and adults with developmental disabilities, their families, friends, caregivers, and the St. Luke family. We rejoice this month on Sunday, June 28 at 4:00 p.m. We hold a Rejoicing Spirits worship service on the fourth Sunday of every month at 4:00 pm … think of it as the fourth at four! Our goal is to fill a spiritual need for those who may not be able to attend church services in the community on a regular basis. You can lean more at rejoicingspirits.org 3 ~ EQUIPPING EVERYONE ~ Vacation Bible School 2015 August 3-7 9:00 a.m. to noon At G-Force, kids will experience God's Love in Action as they explore how God puts our lives into MOTION! Each day will focus on an ACTION WORD: Move! Act! Care! Follow! Share! Kids will have a great time exploring these ACTION WORDS through Bible Stories, Games, Crafts, Music, Snacks and more! VBS 2015 will include a water day (weather permitting), Thursday evening program and Water Ice Social, and the opportunity through our offerings to help purchase and support the packaging of THOUSANDS of meals for Philabundance this fall. VBS registration is open for children age 4 through 6th grade. There is no registration fee for Vacation Bible School, but registration is required by June 30, 2015. Go to SaintLukeDevon.org and click on the “Register for VBS” button on the home page. Offering donations (which will support the purchase and packaging of the meals for Philabundance this fall) can be made online or during VBS sessions. Get involved! There are a number of ways to be a part of VBS. Teaching or assisting in the classroom, helping with registrations, the music program, recreation, snacks, crafts – Contact Pastor Staniz [email protected] for more information or to help out. 4 ~ SERVING OTHERS ~ GLOBAL MISSION NEWS HOST FOR A DAY. The Global Mission team is looking for St. Luke members who would be interested in hosting our two visitors from Mikanjuni Lutheran Parish for a day when they are with us in October 2015. Hosts for the day will include driving guests to the local activities on the itinerary for that day and eating lunch with them. Tentative dates of the visit are October 3-11, 2015. If interested in being a host, contact Nancy Shaw, team leader, at [email protected]. Thank you St. Lukans for your generous contributions to Compassion House at SEKOMU. SEPA Synod congregations raised $13,000 for the new building! The Summer Choir Summer Choir begins Sunday, June 14 at the 9:30 service. Rehearsal each Sunday morning runs from 8:45 to 9:15. The anthems chosen for Summer Choir are easily learned in the halfhour rehearsal preceding the service. Please join us for this fun filled experience. Get a brief, short-term experience of joining the choir Participate if Thursday evening rehearsals don’t work for your schedule Join in if you are home from school for the summer. 5 ~ SERVING OTHERS ~ BLOOD DRIVE Friday, July 10 1:00 – 6:00 p.m. Schlack Hall MAKE YOUR APPOINTMENT TODAY! Go to www.redcrossblood.org and use sponsor code: stlukeofdevon or see the article on the home page at SaintLukeDevon.org Watch your Sunday bulletins for information about signing up after Worship on Sundays Summer Food Drive We begin a collection of food for the Great Valley Food Cupboard this month. In addition to the usual non-perishable goods, they can use juice or juice boxes, cereal, crackers, snack items, oatmeal, granola bars and honey at the moment. “Shopping lists” are at the Welcome Center. If you’re able to provide these for one of the 200 individuals served each month by the Food Cupboard, please drop them off in the box outside Schlack Hall. The GVFC is based in the Baptist Church of the Great Valley, just up the road. 6 ~ SERVING OTHERS ~ In celebration of our 60th anniversary, Saint Luke has committed to package a total of 60,000 meals during 2015. However, with partners from throughout the community, the sky is the limit! 1012 people can package 2,000 meals in an hour. The ingredients for those meals, along with everything needed for safe, clean packaging, can be provided for $500 (yes, that's right: 25 cents per meal!). St. Luke will be opening our doors to groups across our community. All that is needed are people to package the meals and funds to provide the ingredients and supplies. On Saturday, October 17, 2015 (the week of World Food Day), volunteers will gather at St. Luke Lutheran Church to package meals. Visit SaintLukeDevon.org and on the “Feeding Thousands” article on the home page you will find a link to sign up for a table (or various other volunteer jobs). Interested groups should have a contact person connect with us at [email protected] so that we can work together to fight hunger. Funds to cover the cost of ingredients and supplies ($500 per 2000 meals) must be raised and sent to St. Luke Lutheran church on or before September 17. If you know of groups through school, scouts, or local business that you think would be interested in participating please get them involved! We can provide written materials to distribute (or just direct them to the website)! This event is fun, appropriate, and meaningful for just about everyone! Elementary-school 7 ~ SERVING OTHERS ~ children can participate alongside adults. Senior citizens can work alongside teenagers. Volunteers will work for approximately 2 hours, but most tasks are very simple to learn. Volunteers who need to sit while working can be accommodated. Volunteers that like to move around and carry big bags of rice or macaroni will also have plenty to do! If you have particular questions for your group, let us know! Our past events have distributed food through both Philabundance and Chester County Food Bank. We expect to work with these groups and are also exploring the possibility to send some of the meals to Liberia to continue relief efforts after the recent Ebola outbreak. We are committed to making sure that every meal is donated through channels that will quickly and effectively get the meals to people who are facing hunger. Please contact Meredith Moore ([email protected]) or Pastor Matt with questions. 8 Financial Summary We are still facing a growing deficit, significantly larger than last year, which is directly attributed to current giving being too low to support the budget we adopted at our annual meeting in February. Last year through the end of April our deficit was about $15,000. This year we are facing a deficit of almost $84,000. This larger than anticipated deficit has caused us to at least temporarily curtail gifts to the Synod as well as the funding of our Major Maintenance Reserve. In addition, all Councilors have been asked to analyze their budgets for opportunities to reduce spending. We prayerfully ask that you consider reviewing your stewardship commitments especially as we approach the summer. We do not want to reduce mission support or make additional cuts to our programming, but those decisions may be necessary. Any accelerated gifts in an effort to address our deficit would be greatly appreciated. 9 June Birthdays 1 Lynne d'Entremont, Megan Connors 2 Julie Lojek 3 Miranda Miller, Herta Flanagan, Joan Praplaski 4 Joanne Crozier, Stephanie Funk, Rob Loose 5 Katharine Gilbert 6 Judy Milby 7 Peter Shickel 8 Melora Bauman, Kelsey Loose, Laura Grace Ailor 9 Lois Mamourian, Hannah Kelly, Brayden DiPrinzio, Thomas Slomeana 11 Lindsey Varrelman, Joyce Bustard, Roberta McCandless 12 Thomas Silvia, Jodi Donohue, Donna Weinstein 13 John Bernier 14 Karen Lenker, Anita Mayberry, Ryan Jones 15 Karen Vermillion, Alexandra Rokke 16 Carrie Stackhouse 17 John Nansteel 18 Don Christensen, Lukas Milby, Kaitlyn Williams-Koester, Ingrid Spangler 19 Kenneth Cowperthwait, Mark DiPrinzio, Linda Brown 20 Jason Heid 21 Scott Clay, Anne Johansson, Marie Cuthbertson, Judi Silvia 22 David Baugher, Courtney Hanifan, Mike Derkacz 23 Robert McClay, William Houck 25 Ann Kruzel 26 Claire Jenkins, Avery Fuhr 27 Alessandra Russo, Allison Hickey 28 Deborah Clay, Monica Gilbert, Rebekah Houck, James Madden 29 Mark Reber 10 ~ TELLING OUR STORY ~ Jesus welcomes everyone – No exceptions! Jesus was famous for extending a radical welcome to everyone he met, crossing over all kinds of human-made lines and boundaries. Having received Jesus’ radical welcome ourselves, we extend that same welcome to all people. At Saint Luke, every person’s identity is recognized and celebrated as a gift from God –no exceptions! Whatever our race, culture or color, we are welcome here. Whatever our marital status, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, political philosophy, physical or intellectual ability, we are welcome here. If we are inked, pierced, both, or neither, we are welcome here. When we come with squirmy toddlers, expressive infants, or no kids, we are welcome here. Whether we have a background in the Lutheran church, some other church, or no church, we are welcome here. Whether we are excited about what we believe, or are unsure if we believe anything, we are welcome here. This welcome extends to the celebration of Holy Communion: Jesus welcomes everyone to his table -- no exceptions! 11