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Monday, April 27, 2015
Sunday, April 26, 2015
English Ministry News and Notes 2015-4-26
- Recap of AIF Family Night! A fun-filled evening of Spaghetti, Bingo, Crafts and Games was successful, thanks to all of you who volunteered your time and energy!
- As Pastor Emily and Steven continue to experience the joys and challenges of being new parents of twins, you are invited to help them by preparing a meal. We need sign-ups for 4 Sundays in May and 4 in June. Check the details and sign up at this link: http://doodle.com/pqunw2yuvb4i5zmr
- Pentecost Sunday and our church's Birthday will be celebrated on May 24th with a JOINT service followed with a Potluck luncheon. Mark your calendars!
- Pastor Brenda's year of ministry at CCUMC will come to a close at the end of June. She and her husband, Pastor Jim, will be returning to Pennsylvania in July. The next two months will be busy working on our Summer AIF program and transitioning to having Pastor Emily return from her maternity leave! We will be having a Parallel Worship on June 14th with a special luncheon to thank Pastor Brenda.
He is My Shepherd by Deborah Ann Belka
He is my Shepherd, I am His lamb . . .
He accepts me just as I am.
I will follow Him, wherever He goes
for I am confident the way He knows.
I'll never leave Him, beside Him I will stay
for I know what it's like to go astray.
I'll always look up to Him, He'll always be at my side
I know I can count on Him to lead and guide.
Jesus is my Shepherd, His voice I do hear
as long as I go after Him I'll have nothing to fear!
Copyright 2015
Deborah Ann Belka
Reprinted with permission http://www.faithwriters.com
Monday, April 20, 2015
Sunday, April 19, 2015
English Ministry News and Notes 2015-4-19
Native American Ministries Sunday is TODAY! We will be collecting a special offering along with our fellow United Methodist Churches to support the spiritual development and educate Native American seminary students to serve God faithfully.- AIF Family Night~ April 24th. Please see Pastor Brenda’s article on the previous page.. Connect with Becky or Peggy or the Pastors if you're available to help!
- As Pastor Emily and Steven continue to experience the joys and challenges of being new parents of twins, you are invited to help them by preparing a meal. Meals serving 2-4 people can be brought to her house on Sunday afternoons. Try to make them free of soy, peanuts, gluten, and shrimp. We need sign-ups for 4 Sundays in May and 4 in June. Check the details and sign up at this link: http://doodle.com/pqunw2yuvb4i5zmr
- Pentecost Sunday and our church's Birthday will be celebrated on May24th with a JOINT service followed with a PotLuck luncheon. Please mark your calendars!
- Pastor Brenda's year of ministry at CCUMC will come to a close at the end of June. She and her husband, Pastor Jim, will be returning to Pennsylvania in July. The next two months will be busy working on our Summer AIF program and transitioning to having Pastor Emily return from her maternity leave! We will be having a Parallel Worship on June 14th with a special luncheon to thank Pastor Brenda.
Radical Hospitality
Congregations that practice Radical Hospitality demonstrate an active desire to invite, welcome, receive, and care for those who are strangers so that they find a spiritual home and discover for themselves the unending richness of life in Christ. Radical describes that which is drastically different from ordinary practices, outside the normal, that which exceeds expectations and goes the second mile. From The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations by Robert Schnase.
Radicals Needed!
CCUMC has invited children who attend the Homework Club and their families to an evening of food and fellowship. On Friday, April 24 the church will host a "Family Spaghetti Dinner Night." The evening will include Bingo games, dinner, more games and a craft, and ice cream. We anticipate that the evening will be a great opportunity to build relationships with the families who walk through our doors every week. Members of CM and EM congregations have done the planning and organizing. Now we need YOU to help us make this a great event! We need volunteers from both congregations to set up, cook, help with games, clean up, and just be present to talk with parents. You may come for as much of the evening as your schedule permits. We are also asking for cash donations to help offset the costs. Please see Peggy Woon, Becky Wong, or one of the pastors if you would like to volunteer. Let's show some radical hospitality!
Pastor Brenda
Monday, April 13, 2015
Sunday, April 12, 2015
English Ministry News and Notes 2015-4-12
- Mildred Wong, who mentored many of us in our Methodist Youth Group days, passed away on April 7th. She will be sorely missed by the CCUMC alumni and those whose lives she touched.
- AIF Family Night. A dinner and FUN night is being planned for Friday, April 24th. Please save the date!
- 2015 Bridges District Conference~ Saturday, May 16th. Join in for information and resources for clergy and laity in preparation for the Annual Conference! Items that will be covered include: SPRC Training, Strengthening our Connection, Annual Conference Briefing, Trustee Training, and Creating a Ministry Plan. It will be at First United Methodist Church in Vallejo. Register on line at https://calnev-reg.brtapp.com/2015BridgesDistrictConference
Fifty Days of Easter! What Would We Do? by Mark D. Roberts
(Eastertide is the fifty-day season of the Christian year beginning the day after Easter and ending on Pentecost Sunday. It is traditionally a season set apart to celebrate the resurrection of Christ and its implications. )
I’m sure some of my readers are wondering: "Fifty days of Easter? What would we do?" Surely I’m not suggesting fifty consecutive Easter egg hunts, or fifty new Easter dresses, or fifty ham dinners in a row. Celebrating Easter for fifty days is not duplicating Easter Sunday fifty times over, either. Rather, it’s taking time to reflect upon and delight in the truth of Easter and its implications for our lives.
The basic truth of Easter is simple. In the classic litany of the church, it’s this: Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! On Easter Sunday, we celebrate this good news, rediscovering for ourselves what the earliest followers of Jesus realized on that first Easter Sunday. Yet the implications of the resurrection are more than we can adequately ponder on one day. The season of Easter gives us a chance to reflect more broadly and deeply on the multifaceted meaning of the resurrection of Jesus. What might this involve? Let me suggest a few ideas:
• You could meditate upon what the resurrection says about the character of Jesus Christ as the Righteous One of God (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:25-28).
• You might ponder the fact that death has been swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54-56).
• You could reflect upon the fact that the very power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to you today (Ephesians 1:15-23).
• You might think of how the resurrection of Jesus is a precursor to your own resurrection (1 Corinthians 15).
• You could consider how the resurrection gives us "new birth into a living hope" (1 Peter 1:3).
Eastertide gives us a chance to take the truths of Scripture and to allow them to percolate in our hearts. I don’t know about you, but I need this sort of percolation.
What would happen in our lives if we went through each day with a sixth-sense awareness of the resurrection? What would we attempt if we truly believed that the power that raised Jesus from the dead was available to us? What difference would it make if we knew for sure that death has been defeated through Christ?
Even if you aren’t ready to view Easter as a fifty-day experience, perhaps you can take some time today to think and pray about some aspect of Easter truth that, to this point, you’ve neglected. If you do, you’ll begin to taste the richness of Eastertide.
I’m sure some of my readers are wondering: "Fifty days of Easter? What would we do?" Surely I’m not suggesting fifty consecutive Easter egg hunts, or fifty new Easter dresses, or fifty ham dinners in a row. Celebrating Easter for fifty days is not duplicating Easter Sunday fifty times over, either. Rather, it’s taking time to reflect upon and delight in the truth of Easter and its implications for our lives.
The basic truth of Easter is simple. In the classic litany of the church, it’s this: Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! On Easter Sunday, we celebrate this good news, rediscovering for ourselves what the earliest followers of Jesus realized on that first Easter Sunday. Yet the implications of the resurrection are more than we can adequately ponder on one day. The season of Easter gives us a chance to reflect more broadly and deeply on the multifaceted meaning of the resurrection of Jesus. What might this involve? Let me suggest a few ideas:
• You could meditate upon what the resurrection says about the character of Jesus Christ as the Righteous One of God (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:25-28).
• You might ponder the fact that death has been swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54-56).
• You could reflect upon the fact that the very power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to you today (Ephesians 1:15-23).
• You might think of how the resurrection of Jesus is a precursor to your own resurrection (1 Corinthians 15).
• You could consider how the resurrection gives us "new birth into a living hope" (1 Peter 1:3).
Eastertide gives us a chance to take the truths of Scripture and to allow them to percolate in our hearts. I don’t know about you, but I need this sort of percolation.
What would happen in our lives if we went through each day with a sixth-sense awareness of the resurrection? What would we attempt if we truly believed that the power that raised Jesus from the dead was available to us? What difference would it make if we knew for sure that death has been defeated through Christ?
Even if you aren’t ready to view Easter as a fifty-day experience, perhaps you can take some time today to think and pray about some aspect of Easter truth that, to this point, you’ve neglected. If you do, you’ll begin to taste the richness of Eastertide.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
English Ministry News and Notes 2015-4-5
- AIF Family Night. A dinner and FUN night is being planned for Friday, April 24th. Please save the date, and come to our planning meeting on Sunday, March 29th, after SOUP Sunday at church, so we can put forth the best ideas to make this a welcoming event.
- 2015 Bridges District Conference~ Saturday, May 16th. Join in for information and resources for clergy and laity in preparation for the Annual Conference! Items that will be covered include :SPRC Training, Strengthening our Connection, Annual Conference Briefing, Trustee Training, and Creating a Ministry Plan. It will be at First United Methodist Church in Vallejo. Register on line at https://calnevreg.brtapp.com/2015BridgesDistrictConference
You May Not Recognize Jesus This Easter by Courtney T Ball
Mary Magdalene thought he was a gardener. Cleopas and his friend on the
road to Emmaus mistook Jesus for a fellow traveler until he broke bread
with them. When Jesus stood on the shoreline and called out to his fishing
disciples, Peter and the others could not recognize him. John writes that
when the eleven first saw the risen Jesus, they believed they had seen a ghost.
And then there is that passage from Matthew 25:31-46 where Jesus promises his followers that when he reappears it will be as the beggar, the stranger, the sick person or the prisoner. In these cases, it will not be the church that brings the risen Christ to the world. Instead, it will be the world in all its broken messiness that teaches the church how to recognize Christ.
Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again, and again, and again, and again. But you probably won’t recognize him when he does. Instead you might see a person who feels like nothing more than a distraction, an obstacle or a burden. An outsider you don’t have time to let in.
This is the repeated message of the Easter story. Jesus is already out there in the world, waiting for his followers to catch up and recognize him. The Holy Spirit and God’s love are bound by no human structure, no conventional limitation.
How appropriate it is that this Holy Week, one of the biggest current news stories is one of Christians claiming and celebrating their right to exclude those with whom they disagree. We still don’t get it. We still think we’re Peter, holding the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
Luckily for us, even though Jesus supposedly handed over those keys, he also has no problem ignoring all our locked doors. He comes and goes as he pleases, takes whatever form he sees fit, and consistently reminds us, “Do not fear.” I love that about Jesus. I marvel at his complete disregard for human convention and limitations. I am grateful that every Easter we hear once again how untamed God’s love really is. As limited human beings, we try to bind, beat and destroy God’s unsettling presence in our world. We look upon others who are different, knowing the Bible tells us they are made in the image of God, and still we fail to see Christ in them. But God can’t be bound, beaten or destroyed. And Christ will always show up in those faces we look upon with fear or disgust.
Easter reminds Christians to be humble. It retells that story of how we human beings tried our hardest to kill off the ultimate example of God’s love on earth. It shows us that even our best attempts at denial and destruction end up looking feeble in the light of God’s ever-present, life-renewing love for this world. Easter stories also recall how much trouble even the faithful had with understanding God’s redeeming work. We seem bent on underestimating God. Thankfully, God is just as intent on defying our expectations.
And then there is that passage from Matthew 25:31-46 where Jesus promises his followers that when he reappears it will be as the beggar, the stranger, the sick person or the prisoner. In these cases, it will not be the church that brings the risen Christ to the world. Instead, it will be the world in all its broken messiness that teaches the church how to recognize Christ.
Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again, and again, and again, and again. But you probably won’t recognize him when he does. Instead you might see a person who feels like nothing more than a distraction, an obstacle or a burden. An outsider you don’t have time to let in.
This is the repeated message of the Easter story. Jesus is already out there in the world, waiting for his followers to catch up and recognize him. The Holy Spirit and God’s love are bound by no human structure, no conventional limitation.
How appropriate it is that this Holy Week, one of the biggest current news stories is one of Christians claiming and celebrating their right to exclude those with whom they disagree. We still don’t get it. We still think we’re Peter, holding the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
Luckily for us, even though Jesus supposedly handed over those keys, he also has no problem ignoring all our locked doors. He comes and goes as he pleases, takes whatever form he sees fit, and consistently reminds us, “Do not fear.” I love that about Jesus. I marvel at his complete disregard for human convention and limitations. I am grateful that every Easter we hear once again how untamed God’s love really is. As limited human beings, we try to bind, beat and destroy God’s unsettling presence in our world. We look upon others who are different, knowing the Bible tells us they are made in the image of God, and still we fail to see Christ in them. But God can’t be bound, beaten or destroyed. And Christ will always show up in those faces we look upon with fear or disgust.
Easter reminds Christians to be humble. It retells that story of how we human beings tried our hardest to kill off the ultimate example of God’s love on earth. It shows us that even our best attempts at denial and destruction end up looking feeble in the light of God’s ever-present, life-renewing love for this world. Easter stories also recall how much trouble even the faithful had with understanding God’s redeeming work. We seem bent on underestimating God. Thankfully, God is just as intent on defying our expectations.
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