Sunday Worship Times
8:00 a.m Morning Chapel
10:00 a.m Worship in the Sanctuary
With Holy Communion on the 1st Sunday of the month. As United Methodists, we practice Open Communion. All who are seeking God are welcome at Christ’s table.
Sermon Series: Wesley-isms
Sunday, May 5
Third Sunday of Easter
Theme: "In essentials, Unity; in non-essentials, Liberty; and in all things, Charity.”
Text: Matthew 23
Sunday, May 19
Fifth Sunday of Easter
Theme: “Earn all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can.”
Texts: Luke 16
Sunday, May 26
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Theme: t.b.a.
Texts: t.b.a.
Starting in June
In an exciting development this spring, Betsy Duginski got all fired up – really! It’s been awesome to watch – about organizing a children’s Summer Sunday School! She found a book (see below) that is sure to bring kids – and their families – to church on summer Sundays!
With that in mind, Betsy and I (Jayneann) will be talking this week about coordinating Summer Sunday School with our Worship through the summer. I’m not sure yet how this will unfold but my hope is to unpack the same story each week in worship that the Sunday School will be looking at that morning. I once did The Lorax in April as part of the Festival of God’s Creation (Earth Day) so this doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch. Maybe we’ll have the youngsters do the sharing during the Young Disciples Time about what they learned in Sunday School.
As part of MCCI, our church is called to prepare what’s called “Triads” that open up a series of opportunities (not necessarily 3) to people who are not usually church participants with the idea that as they come to a few of them, we work on cultivating one-on-one personal relationships with them, such that in the end they want to be a part of First Church.
Maybe we could pop masses of popcorn and host a cartoon Dr Seuss movie on the back wall of our building and invite the neighborhood. We’d show whatever we’d be talking about on Sunday. Then, we could invite them to come back Sunday for the Sunday school and the 10 am service – to find out what this story teaches us about God and how God wants us to live. (Betsy is part of a new ministry team called
Growing Generous Givers. It’s another part of the MCCI resourcing initiative. What we do is look at First Church’s ways and talk about how we do things that encourage (or discourage) people from being active and involved in church, and about ways we can teach people to practice the kind of generosity that we are called to model in our lives as Christ-followers.)
Beginning this year, we are holding “Family Worship” times during the 10 a.m. worship service on 5th Sundays (which generally happen quarterly).
Wait, you say, we already have family worship! What makes this different? Yes, we have families - oldsters, youngsters and in-betweeners in worship.
On 5th Sundays, we will have some of each of these participate in the service leadership (and not only in ushering and greeting). We will have more family friendly songs, scriptures and sermon (shorter, too). And we will encourage families to worship with their youngsters who usually play in the nursery. Afterward everyone’s invited to gather for juice (okay, coffee, too), snacks and conversation in the Parlor, as usual.
