CHURCH ANNOUNCEMENTS/EVENTS
Please email all announcements to
Carol Merante at the church office.
OFFICE HOURS :
Mon & Tues 4:30pm - 6:30pm,
Sat 9am -12noon 845-657-2326
Sunday, June 29:
• 10:00 AM - Worship, followed by Bon Voyage party for
Pastor Lucy, who begins her 3-month study leave July 1
• 4:00 PM - Confirmation
Monday, June 30:
• 7:00 PM - A.A.
Tuesday, July 1:
• Pastor Lucy’s renewal leave begins
Wednesday, July 2:
• 8:00 AM - Bible Study – Stephens’ home
• 7:00 PM A.A.
Thursday, July 3:
• 8:15 AM - Women’s Sharing Group
• 7:00 PM - A.A.
Saturday, July 5:
• 7:00 PM - A.A.
Sunday, July 6:
•10:00 AM Worship – Lee Stowe, guest preacher
COMING EVENTS:
July 10:
• Lay Speaking Committee meets (6:30 PM)
July 11:
• Benefit concert for Killian Mansfield –
14-year-old OCS High School student with cancer of the jaw
July 11-13:
• Church camping at Epworth (please contact Sue Ulrich for details)
July 22:
• Migrant Chicken Dinner (7 PM)
July 21-25:
• Vacation Bible School
NEWS IN BRIEF - JUNE 28, 2008
Brief items for use in local church newsletters
prepared by United Methodist News Service
Juliana Abe, a native of Côte d'Ivoire, is exploring a different culture and country while she works for the rights of Africans and African-American people around the world. She is also enjoying getting to know her new "family" - The United Methodist Church. Abe is one of 12 young people participating in the United Methodist Board of Church and Society's Ethnic Young Adults Summer Internship in the nation's capital. Young adults passionate about social justice and active in the denomination are selected annually from the church's five ethnic caucuses to participate in the summer intern program. Included in this year's slate of interns are young adults from Gambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Philippines. "This is the most international group we have had," said the Rev. Neal Christie, executive at the board.
An analysis of what makes an effective pastor will enhance training provided this summer to United Methodist annual (regional) conferences. The Rev. Sharon Rubey, director of candidacy and conference relations at the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry, said the study would provide useful information for those who work with candidates for ministry, assign pastors to churches and do clergy supervision. The next step, according to Rubey, is to develop and distribute a survey about the underlying behaviors associated with effective ministry.
Both the United Nations and ecumenical Christian groups are calling upon the government of Zimbabwe to end the violence there and postpone the June 27 presidential runoff election. And, as United Methodists and other Christians participated in a worldwide day of prayer for Zimbabwe on June 22, the leader of the opposition party candidate for president withdrew from that election. Morgan Tsvangirai said he was concerned that the lives of voters would be at risk if he participated "in this violent, illegitimate sham of an election process," the New York Times reported. The prayers for Zimbabwe will continue, according to Bishop Felton E. May, currently serving as interim top executive of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. The United Methodist Committee on Relief is providing some humanitarian assistance in Zimbabwe.
The United Methodist Church must focus on small and rural churches and not simply go where the wealthy are to build new churches, says a small-membership church leader. Today, 76 percent of the denomination's congregations are small churches, which are defined as those having 200 or fewer members and fewer than 120 in worship. More than 40 people working with small churches across the country participated in three June 2 telephone-conference conversations to learn about revitalizing small churches and ministries from the Rev. Terence Corkin, a small-church expert and top executive of the Uniting Church in Australia. The pastors, district superintendents, directors of connectional ministries, lay ministers and community developers also discussed emerging issues and challenges facing small churches.
United Methodist churches around the globe will use grants from the denomination's social action agency to promote peace, restore communities and work for economic justice. Eleven projects from Los Angeles to Liberia will receive Peace with Justice grants totaling $51,000 from the United Methodist Board of Church and Society. Funding for the grants comes from a churchwide offering taken by local churches on Peace with Justice Sunday, celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost. It is one of six churchwide Special Sundays of The United Methodist Church. Annual (regional) conferences keep 50 percent of the offerings, and the remaining funds are used for Peace with Justice grants administered by the agency.
After encouraging inmates to write their personal testimonies, the Rev. Yong Hui McDonald, chaplain of the Adams County Detention Facility in Brighton, Colo., saw the prospect of a devotional book to be shared within the prison community as well as beyond its walls. With the help of local United Methodist churches, the chaplain formed the Transformation Project: Prison Ministry and raised enough funds in 2005 to publish the first book of prisoners' spiritual reflections, Maximum Saints Make No Little Plans. Three years later, there are three volumes of Maximum Saints devotional books. "When I say 'maximum saints,' that means they are using their gifts to the maximum to serve the Lord and help others," McDonald explains.
Based in Wheeling, W.Va., the House of the Carpenter was created in 1964 to help poor and disadvantaged people as a ministry related to the West Virginia Annual (regional) Conference of The United Methodist Church. The impact was immediate. Families with small children, the newly homeless and the elderly flocked to the two-room storefront on Wheeling Island. On the second floor of its current and much larger location, the Rev. Jack Lipphardt, associate minister of the House of the Carpenter, looks away from his computer screen to gaze at the street below. "I see a city and a region of people that are in distress," he says. West Virginia has a higher-than-average rate of poverty.
Flood survivors with multiple losses are not uncommon in hard-hit Cedar Rapids and are a special concern of Bishop Gregory Palmer. Palmer, of the church's Iowa Area, surveyed flood damage June 23 in Charles City. In Cedar Rapids, which has suffered the highest concentration of Midwest flooding in recent weeks, some 4,000 homes were submerged. Palmer expressed gratitude "for the ways in which we have felt the support and love, tangibly and spiritually, of United Methodists all over the world." For information about how to help, visit www.iaumc.org/storms2008. To donate to the United Methodist Committee on Relief's work in the Midwest, drop checks in church offering plates or mail them directly to UMCOR, P.O. Box 9068, New York, NY 10087. Write Advance #901670 Midwest Flooding Relief on the memo line. Credit- card donations can be made by calling (800) 554-8583 or online at www.givetomission.org.
Singing the Sacred: Musical Gifts from Native American Communities is a new release from the Global Praise program of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. The songs are from 15 Native American communities in the United States, and about half are from the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference. The songs can be also heard on a companion CD that includes all 21 songs recorded by people from the indigenous communities. For more information about the book, to listen to music clips or learn more about the Global Praise program, go to http://new.gbgm-umc.org/resources/globalpraise/.
The United Methodist Association of Communicators is seeking applicants for the 2008 Helping Hand Scholarships from the United States and from the central conferences. This is the third year for this program, which aligns a United Methodist communicator with churchwide agencies, conferences, districts and local church communicators. One scholarship will be awarded to a representative from a central conference, and the second award will go to a local church communicator and/or a young adult serving in communications in the United States. The deadline for central conference applicants is July 31, and the U.S. applicant deadline is Aug. 15. Applications may be downloaded from www.GBOD.org/UMAC-HelpingHandScholarship, and questions may be directed to Carolyn Dandridge at cdandridge@gbod.org.
Church World Service reported that it has provided temporary shelter and fresh water supplies sufficient for nearly 1 million Myanmar (Burma) cyclone survivors. As of June 19, the CWS team based in Bangkok reported that its local partner in Myanmar had reached a total of 572 villages in the disaster-affected region, provided supplies sufficient to serve more than 980,000 beneficiaries and delivered 3,944 "water baskets." Each plastic water container holds the equivalent of a day's clean drinking water for 250 people. CWS said its local partner has also provided temporary shelter plastic tarpaulins for 41,374 households. The United Methodist Committee on Relief has been working on cyclone relief through CWS and other partners.
UMCOR Sager Brown Depot has nearly depleted its supply of flood buckets after shipping thousands in response to recent floods in the Midwest. Since June 17, the depot has shipped more than 5,000 flood cleanup kits, compared with approximately 4,000 buckets distributed in all of 2007. "We are down to only 200 flood buckets in stock, and we are only two weeks into the hurricane season," said Kathy Kraiza, executive of the depot. The five-gallon buckets are filled with cleaning supplies and cost approximately $45 to put together. UMCOR officials are urging congregations and individuals to send completed buckets, bulk materials or money. For a list of supplies, visit http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umcor/getconnected/supplies/flood-bucket/. Financial gifts can be sent to UMCOR Material Resources Advance #901440.
United Methodist News Service Photos and stories also available at: www.umns.umc.org