April is a quiet month for youth because of school vacation, but we have two important events:
Friday, April 13 – All youth help serve Agricultural Society Dinner as fundraiser
Sunday, April 29 – Giv2 Workday at Torrington Children’s Center and Celebration hosted by our church!!
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Maundy Thursday – April 5 with dinner at 6 pm & worship at 7 pm: A special communion service marking Jesus’ last supper with his disciples and the “coming of the shadows”.
Good Friday Vigils – April 6 from Noon- 3pm and 7-9 pm
Observe Good Friday and Jesus’ death on the cross with a time of contemplation. The sanctuary will be open with an ongoing presentation of music and art that explores the cross. There will be a guide for reflection available. Come any time for a few minutes or a few hours of prayer.
Easter Sunrise – April 8 at 6:22 am onMountMohawk
Celebrate the dawn of Easter on the top ofMountMohawk. We will “green the cross” and sing “Alleluia” to celebrate the resurrection. Dress warmly as the winds can be cold!
Easter Morning Celebration – April 8 at 10 am
Mark the end of our Lenten journeys with the celebration of Easter!
In the earliest days of the Christian church, the season of Lent was originally a special time of preparation and fasting for people preparing to be baptized on Easter morning and to become Christians. The preparation was rigorous! Over time, other Christians felt that a special season of preparation made Easter celebrations more joyous and meaningful. Overtime, Lent was observed church wide.
Lent is more of a journey than an event. It is a time to allow us to be guided to new insight and transformation. People choose all sorts of special ways to make the season meaningful. Some “give up something” for Lent – a form of fasting meant to help us understand more deeply Christ’s sacrifice. Other people “take on something” in Lent – a special devotional time each day, a new volunteer opportunity, reading or class.
At theChurch of Christ, we want to offer resources to make your Lent a time of spiritual deepening and growth. We will be offering a special weekly dinner program and special worship services. Watch for a Lenten brochure later this month.
The Season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday which this year falls on February 22. We will gather for Ash Wednesday Worship that evening at 7 pm for reflection about our Lenten journeys. Ashes will be available for those who would like to be anointed.
The Christian Education Committee will be offering a Lenten Luncheon after church on February 26 with activities for all ages. The event will be part Mardi Gras and part Lenten preparations with stations to help enrich the season of Lent and home and at church. All are welcome!
“Full-Contact Sports & Faith”
So I am usually oblivious to what is going on in the football world, but this time of year, it is pretty hard! Everyone is sneaking peaks at scores and talking about their favorite teams. Even with pads and helmets, football is rough and tumble – a full-contact sport. I was surprised to read a seminary professor I read regularly compare faith to such activities!
David Lose writes: “To know God, you have to go with God. Faith is a full contact, participation sport. You just can’t sit back and expect to really know God, you have to get up off the couch and get in the game, take a risk, try something marvelous, reach for something you thought unachievable, step out onto the winding road the end of which you can’t see from your doorstep.”
Lose’s reflection reminded me of something Annie Dillard wrote years ago about worship: “Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” [Teaching a Stone to Talk, 1982].
These are provocative thoughts about what faith is really all about! And yet, it is easy to feel that faith, church life and worship are ho-hum and boring. We have all been to services that fit that description! It is a challenge, then, to offer something different – a church life that is exciting, vital, provocative, and energizing.
This is in my mind as we work on our church vision at “Eat, Pray, Talk” on Feb 7, as our Budget gap task force begins working, and as we prepare for a visit from RevMichael Cibawith his workshop on Habits of Vital Churches (March 18). It is on my mind as I prepare worship and go to committee meetings and teach youth and adults.
When along your faith journey have you found opportunities for provocative faith? How do we increasingly transform our church’s ministries in this direction?
May God bless us with new insights in this Epiphany season!
Pastor Paige Besse-Rankin
Mission:1 was a great success both for our local church and also for the United Church of Christ as a whole. At the close of business on Nov. 28, the totals stood thus: 1,438,124 food items collected; 37,443 letters sent to Congress regarding hunger-related concerns; $119,584 raised for hunger-related ministries; and $113,271 raised for East Africafamine relief. The totals are expected to climb further as late-reporting congregations send in their efforts. “Mission:1 was hugely successful because it captured the new essence of denominationalism, which takes seriously local initiative and ingenuity, bridges charity and justice advocacy, and syncs the work of many congregations, schools and agencies in common purpose and direction for a specified period of time,” said the Rev. J. Bennett Guess, executive minister of the UCC’s Local Church Ministries. “We also can’t underestimate the power of succeeding in doing good, which is contagious and produces more momentum.
Our local congregation also did very well! We gathered more than our goal of 1,111 items of food for local food banks and soup kitchens. We also collected $531 in change for Neighbors in Need and the East African Famine alone with donations of over $250. Thanks to everyone who was part of the effort! We accomplished a lot!
Amy Grant has a song out on one of her Christmas albums: “I need a Silent Night.” It expresses well the struggles that many of us have in December:
I’ve made the same mistake before Too many malls, too many stores December traffic, Christmas rush It breaks me till I push and shove
Children are crying while mothers are trying To photograph Santa and sleigh The shopping and buying and standing forever in line What can I say?
Chorus: I need a silent night, a holy night To hear an angel voice through the chaos and the noise I need a midnight clear, a little peace right here To end this crazy day with a silent night
I find my spiritual practices in Advent can make a large difference in what kind of Christmas I have! When I make a little extra time for journaling or prayer, when I light Advent candles or do something special for the poor, when I make it a point to get to worship or to listen to Christmas music with spiritual themes, somehow Christmas is transformed so that the baby is born in my heart again. The love of God becomes flesh again in me so that all the other flurry of activity surrounding the holiday has a deeper meaning.
Our Advent Altar has been decorated in response to the prayer ofIsaiah 64: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” In the baby in the manger, we see how God did just that. God came into our midst then and God continues to do so today. So that is my advent prayer for you: that you would allow God to be born in you in new ways this advent.
You will find a good number of Advent Opportunities here in this newsletter. Let me know if I can help you find meaningful materials to help you in your spiritual nurture during Advent.
Peace!
Pastor Paige
James Russell Lowell, who lived in the 19th century, wrote: “All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”
As we have come passed Consecration Sunday, I continue to be moved by the generosity of so many friends and members of the church – even during these challenging economic times. These gifts will make it possible for us to live out our ministry together in the year to come.
Of course, even if the church had no need for the money, I think I would still be challenging you to give. Jesus tells us that we give for other reasons than just the practical ones of paying the bills. Jesus tells us that giving is a spiritual practice that deepens our relationship with God. In part, we are cultivating in ourselves a generosity that reflects God’s generous spirit. When we think of how God pours blessings in our lives, how God is generous in mercy and compassion, how God gave even Jesus to share the way of love with us, then we realize that growing in faith means the same sort of generosity. As I look through the pages of this month’s issue of the “Post”, it strikes me that as a church, we are offering so many opportunities for generosity! From the UCC’s Mission:1 program with our own local goals to address hunger to the Living Gift Market in December, from the volunteers at our recent Habitat for Humanity workday to those who will prepare and serve and sing for this year’s Christmas Feast and Song, we see so many examples of generosity in this church! It is inspiring! And we haven’t even gotten to the Christmas season, yet.
Albert Einstein once said: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Perhaps that is a good reminder for us all as we prepare for our budget meeting! Peace!
Pastor Paige
We had an interesting conversation at our last Deacon’s meeting. We were discussing the Stewardship theme: “Celebrating Blessings and Changing Lives”. “How has your life been changed by the church?” I asked. Many found this a difficult question to answer, not because their lives aren’t different, but because they have been part of the life of the church for so long that they don’t even notice the changes.
Some of us have dramatic stories of how getting involved in the church and how getting in relationship with God turned our lives around. It is meaningful to hear these folks talk about their journey. In the words of “Amazing Grace”: “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”
But for many, the changes have been slow and ongoing. Bit by bit, week by week, we are transformed by faith as we allow our hearts to grow with the Spirit as a guide. Bit by bit, we struggle to be compassionate to people we don’t know, to become prayerful in the midst of busyness, to reach out beyond our lives into a hurting world. It is hard to imagine what life might look like without the faith to build on, without the people in our lives that we have gotten to know through the church, without the peaceful feeling we get from worship, without the growing awareness of the Holy in other parts of our lives. There is a big theological word for this: “Sanctification” – the process by which God changes us to be more in the image of Christ. For most of us, this is a long slow journey, not a lightning bolt from the sky.
The Stewardship committee has invited us to think more deeply about this question – to try to name for ourselves and each other how our lives have been changed, to try to imagine our lives and community without the church and the void that would leave. This is about more than inspiring us to give, it seems to me. It is also about giving thanks to God for the work God is doing in us and it is about being clear on our mission for the days ahead.
May God guide us in our reflections and conversations through this month!
Pastor Paige
Pastor Paige’s Paige: “Summer Adventures”
July was a lively month as your Pastor! I have to opportunity to be part of 3 mission adventures that were filled with blessings and went amazingly well!
First, I want as part of the Mission Team to the Dominican Republic to help construct houses for poor families. The Village Mountain Mission in the DR is a particularly rugged work trip, but filled with the joy of getting to know families and communities. Humid heat, outhouses without doors, tarantulas under the hammock, and rough roads provided quite a stretch beyond my comfort zone. But the chance to get to know 3 poor families, to travel and reflect with an amazing group of youth and adults, and to glimpse the face of God in the interactions far outweighed the challenges we faced. We had the chance to work on 3 houses—completing the work begun by other groups on 2 of them and getting to help one family actually move in and make it home. You will hear more about our adventures in September and find some photos here. We have a videographer traveling with us who put together an amazing video you can see here:
My second adventure was a week at Silver Lake running a camp for fifth and sixth graders called “Creation Chorus.” It was kind of an “arts meets environment” theme with the slogan: “God creates and so do we!” Church camp changed my life for the better in my youth and probably was a big part of why I considered ministry, so I am thankful for the chance to give back by volunteering each year. Silver Lake touches the lives of 1100 campers each year, as well as volunteer deans and counselors and staff. It is a very exciting part of the work of the CT Conference UCC to which we belong.
My third adventure was taking some of our youth to Heifer Project’s “Overlook Farm” in Rutland MA. This learning center is an operational farm with lots of animals and gardens. It also has a “global village” with houses representing dwellings of poor people in 9 different countries. Part of our experience was pretending to be one of these poor families, bartering at the market for food, cooking over a fire, living without electricity and comforts, and dealing with hunger. We played families in Ghana and Kenya. We also learned a lot about the principals Heifer uses to help people around the world. We came back inspired and motivated. When asked something we each might try after this experience, our group named such things as starting a vegetable garden, shopping at farmer’s markets, spreading the word about Heifer, recycling more, composting, and donating money.
I know you will be hearing more about these things in the days to come. I am thankful to be home with indoor plumbing, my family, and a bed to sleep on. But I am also thankful for the blessings of these adventures, the reminder of the needs of so many hungry people, the need for living more simply, and the reminder of how much I take for granted.
I hope you are also having some wonderful summer adventures. I also pray that you have the chance in the days ahead to participate in these kind of mission programs, to know what it is to be stretched by God and to reach out to help others, and to be reminded of your blessings!
Peace!
Pastor Paige
