Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The Caller info update from Fairlawn West UCC
The Caller from Fairlawn West United Church of Christ, Akron, OH July 28, 2011
secretary@fairlawnwest.org http://www.fairlawnwest.org 330-864-2179
I am on vacation July 29-Aug 4. The Rev. Tom Gerstenlauer of Miller Ave UCC will be available for pastoral needs. The BASIC Band and lay readers from the congregation will be leading the worship service on Sunday.
I have started a new blog with favorite quotes that I have been writing down since 1971. I have already received some widespread appreciation via folks on Facebook and Twitter who have started reading it. You can find it at http://quotesnottoforget.blogspot.com/ . You can read my new weekly reflection letter to the congregation "Here and Now..." at http://discipledavid.wordpress.com as well as other reflections on the journey of a disciple.
David Loar, Pastor
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Family Promise hosting
We will be hosting families in our building the week of August 14 to 22. At this time there are three families in the network. Below are the tasks we will need folks to serve in:
Overnight Sun Aug 14 and Sat Aug 20
Supper Sun Aug 14 and Sat Aug 20
Early evening hosts Sun Aug 14 and Sat Aug 20
Drive families to/from Family Center in the van every day 7:30 am and 5:00 pm (we can use you one or more times)
Set up bedrooms in our bldg after the worship service on Sun Aug 14
Take down the bedrooms, put laundry/bedding in trash bags and load truck with beds Sun Aug 21 after the worship service
Take home a bag or more of laundry to wash
Help drive truck with beds and van to the next host congregation in Tallmadge
Indicate on the Connection Card which of these you can help with or email secretary@fairlawnwest.org
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Please keep Jane Davis and John Glass in your prayers. Jane is at home now.
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Habitat for Humanity House Blitz
Blitz Building Week starts Friday, August 19. The address of the house is 693 Corice Street, Akron. It is 2 blocks north of Lovers Lane and east of I-77. You can get off at the Lovers Lane exit, got east on Lovers Lane, turn left on Coventry and then right on Corice. We are asked to host one of the lunches that week for the workers. If you could help with that, indicate so on the Connection Card or email office@fairlawnwest.org. There will be a phone number to call each night to see what work will be done on the next day. Presently you could call the Habitat office for more info 330-745-7734. We will post the info number when it is available.
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Three Courses this Fall
We will offer three courses this starting in September, open to everyone and to folks beyond the life of our congregation. Once we know who will be in a course, we will set up a convenient time for all. We may also do a day time and night time double schedule to be more convenient for folks who could do one or the other.
A. The Y Course
Come and meet some elephant dung, a plastic windmill man, the world's least successful kite flyer, and more. All in a quest for answers to life's biggest questions, like:
-Can anyone know "for sure" about anything they can't see, hear, touch, smell, feel or taste!
-Why so many religions—and "so what" anyway?
-What about life after this one—and why does heaven sound so boring?
-Can there really be a God in a world with so much suffering?
If you think "God questions" are only ever dealt with by those with no sense of humor, be ready for your illusions to be shattered.
B. Apprenticeship with Jesus A 30-Day Experience, Learning to Live Like the Master
Ask a crowd of Christians whether they believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior, and all hands will go up. Ask the same crowd whether they live like Jesus, and most of those same hands will come down. Why is this? Why is it so hard to bridge the gap between belief and real life?
Our way of living the Christian life is often more about intellect than experience. In this winsome book Gary W. Moon offers a thirty-day apprenticeship with Jesus, a journey in which you can actively practice being with Jesus day in and day out. Each day's readings uses compelling stories and Scripture and suggests an apprenticeship activity to help you bring your faith into real life.
C. Scripture & Discernment: Decision Making in the Church
By Timothy Luke Johnson who is one of the best New Testament scholars of our day, writes this book to help the church to recover the foundational spiritual ways of deciding God's will for its life and its mission. Luke Timothy Johnson begins his study of the practical issue of how decisions are made in the church by admitting to a bias: that there ought to be a connection between what the church claims to be, and how it does things. Because the church claims to be a community of faith, it does not reach decisions simply on the basis of good management policy, or the analysis of market trends, or efficiency, or even ideological consistency, but in response to God's activity in the world that presses upon us and urges us to decision.
Faced with how to respond to God's leading, the church decides what to do on the basis of two realities: Scripture and discernment. Because it calls the church into being Scripture is the fundamental authority in the church's life. Yet it is not enough for a congregation simply to turn to the Bible when a decision must be reached, for Scripture does not directly address all issues which face the church today, and those it does often reflect greatly differing historical and social contexts than our own.
Thus, added to the authority of Scripture in the church's decision making is a process of discernment, in which the members of the community--under the guidance of the Holy Spirit--recall how God has worked in their lives as individuals and as a community and discern together God's direction for the future. Johnson argues that this very pattern of decision making can be found in Scripture itself, notably in one of the central events of the book of Acts. Beginning with the conversion of Cornelius and culminating in the Apostolic Council of Acts 15, we see how a string of smaller narratives combine to tell the story of God's movement within their midst, and how this narrative became the basis for the reinterpretation of Scripture and the inclusion of Gentiles into the fellowship of the church.
Looking at a number of thorny issues facing the contemporary church, Johnson demonstrates how the interaction of Scripture and discernment can and must become the basis for how we respond to the decisions with which the church wrestles today.
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Sunday worship service at 9:20 am
Rev. Loar will be gone from the evening of Sun Aug 14 to Sat Aug 20 to help his daughter Kate drive back from her internship in Santa Barbara, CA
