Mid-Week Visitor

Presbyterian Visitor

March 7, 2024

During the Super Bowl of Caring, which was held on Sunday, February 11th, we collected 189 non-perishable food items, that totaled 215lbs, and collected $115 in monetary donations. All donations were donated to the Bloomfield Food Pantry at the Baptist Church. They would like to send us a big THANK YOU for the donation.

However we didn’t do too well in predicting the winner of the Super Bowl. The San Francisco 49ers received the most items with 101 items and $60 while the Kansas City Chiefs only received 88 items and $55.

 

It’s that time of year again to be on the lookout for new recipes. The first of the Women’s Association’s Pre-Tasting Dinners will be held on Thursday, March 14th at 6:00 p.m. in Fellowship Hall. This dinner will feature Main Dishes and Salads. Please remember to bring your recipe, along with your dish. Hostesses will be Deb Cullison and Susan Isenogle with devotions given by Rose Floyd.

 

Pastor Hana will be attending the Wabash Pastoral Leadership Program from March 11th till the 13th. She will then be doing Continuing Education from March 14th till the 18th Mr. Daniel Frye will be our guest speaker on Sunay, March 17th.

 

Our church will be hosting Soup on Saturday on March 23rd. This is a wonderful program that helps us to share God’s love with others in our community while providing them with a hot meal. Volunteers are needed to provide soups, sandwiches, drinks, and desserts. Please see the sign-up sheet on the narthex podium.

 

Spread the word our next Red Cross blood drive will take place on Monday, March 25th starting at 1:00 p.m. and will end at 6:00 p.m. During our last blood drive we collected 17 units of blood, which could save up to 51 lives.

 

Our church will be hosting a Community Good Friday Service on March 29th starting at 6:30 p.m.

  

We invite our everyone to bring in Tulips on Easter Sunday as memorials to our loved ones. Please place your loved one’s name(s) on the sign-up sheet on the narthex table.

 

There will be an Easter Egg Hunt for children of all ages on Easter Sunday during Sunday School. Donations of wrapped candies is greatly appreciated and may be left in the library or the church office.

 

The Rotary has once again started meeting for their meetings in the Fellowship Hall on Tuesdays. The Women’s Association will be serving luncheons to the Rotarians on the 4th Tuesdays of the month. The Women will be serving this month’s luncheon on March 26th.

 

The Trustees will be meeting on Monday, March 11th at 6:00 p.m. in the Seekers Room.

 

The Session will be meeting on Tuesday, March 19th at 5:30 p.m. in the Seekers Room.

 

The Life Skills Class at Bloomfield School will be having their Spring Party on Thursday, April 4th. Donations of treats and drink is greatly appreciated. Please see Deb Cullison if you have any questions. All treats need to be at the church by Tuesday, April 2nd.

 

Please remember to let the church office know if you use the copier to make copies. Recently we have been having a larger than normal number of copies made. Our contract allows for a certain number of copies a month, after that we have to pay a fee for each copy over that. If you wish to make personal copies the cost is $0.10 for per page.

 

Congratulation to Alicia Holt who has been elected as moderator of the presbytery’s personnel committee.

 

DON’T BE LATE FOR CHURCH! Daylight Savings Time starts this Sunday, March 10th. Don’t forget to set your clocks AHEAD one hour before going to bed on Saturday night.

 


Pastor’s Message

 

In April of 2021, we began a project to count how many hours of service we completed as a congregation. Our goal was to complete 2,023 hours of service by the time we celebrated our bicentennial in August 2023. The task force that originated and promoted this idea (composed of Cheri Stone, Grant Burcham, Alicia Holt, Melinda Hendrix, and myself) embraced the history of service in our congregation, and believed that tracking our hours would be a regular reminder that we each have more than money to offer to the church and to God.

You likely know that our project was a great success! We completed more than 3 times the number of hours in our original goal. We confirmed just how active and generous this congregation is. Executive Presbyter Susan McGhee even lifted this up at our last presbytery meeting as an example of the vitality of smaller congregations. When I’ve shared about this project with other pastors, they have universally loved the idea, and several have talked about implementing something similar in their own congregations.

We originally included the offering of our mission hours as a part of worship because our service is, in fact, one of the ways that we worship God. Recognizing that the initial enthusiasm for including the offering of our hours during worship has waned, the session discussed how to respond. We focused on:

·         Service and mission continue to be an important aspect of our individual and communal life, and are vital to a Christian life;

·         Counting our mission hours is a measure of our congregational vitality as much as (if not more than) counting our money;

·         All ages, abilities, and levels of wealth can contribute to mission and service;

·         There is a teaching moment for our children (and adults) that offering ourselves to God happens in a variety of ways, all of which are important.

While removing this portion from the liturgy, the session decided to keep counting our mission hours, not so that any individual can boast, or so that we as a congregation can puff ourselves up−we do all things, not of our own accord, but through Christ, who strengthens us. Rather, the tangible offering of our mission hours serves to emphasize the many ways we can contribute, and celebrates the wide variety of ways that God works in and through us.

The session hopes that all will continue to make note of our hours of service, and take the opportunity to tangibly offer them by placing a record of what you have done (with or without your name) in the glass jar at the back of the sanctuary each Sunday before or after worship. As we do so, We remember that all we give−in word and in deed−is for the glory of God.

 

 

In gratitude and hope,

Pastor Hana