THIS WEEK AT ST. PAUL (Oct. 4-Oct. 11)

Tuesday 10/6 - Bible Study 10:00 AM
Bible Study 7:00 PM
Wednesday 10/7 - Choir Rehearsal 7:00 PM
Thursday 10/8 - Council Meeting 7:00 PM
Friday 10/9 - Piecemakers 10:00 AM
Sunday 10/11 - Sunday School 9:00 AM
Communion Service 10:00 AM

The FAITH 5 (Faith Acts In The Home)

I received this today from the synod's Director for Evangelical Mission, Helen Harms. Consider working the Faith 5 into your evening routine

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Care to have some fun, keep your family communicating every night, and grow in your understanding of yourself and God? Try this simple five-step process for the next six weeks and see if it doesn’t help!

Here’s how you do it: Whoever is going to bed first in your home calls “FAITH 5” or “Huddle Up!” Everyone must drop what they’re doing, turn off the television, put down the newspaper or their homework, set the cell phone on silence and gather in a room of the convener’s choice. Then take turns going through these five simple steps:

1. SHARE highs & lows of the day

2. READ and highlight a verse of Scripture in your Bible

3. TALK about how the verse relates to your highs & lows

4. PRAY for your highs & lows, for your family, and for the world

5. BLESS one another

You want a great relationship with your kids? You want openness, honesty, caring and sharing in your family? You want to raise a child to be a strong, thoughtful, empathetic, positive, healthy adult out in the world some day? You can’t buy that. You have to invest in it. And the investment is the most expensive currency you own – your TIME – aimed at that most precious young person in your life.

Kids spell love TIME. Be intentional. Be consistent. Be caring. Be the parent. Every night. Every home.

No one else can do that for you.

Four Questions

1. For Parents of Young Children: What would it be worth to you to have a teenager some day who won’t go to sleep without talking to you about their day? Praying with you? Blessing you? Would it be worth five minutes? Tonight? Every night?

2. For Parents of Pre-Teens: What would happen to your family over time if you were able to keep this open, caring communication going every night throughout adolescence?

3. For Parents of Teenagers: Once the teen years begin and drivers’ licences come into play, communication between parents and teens can become a challenge. How might this type of five-minute conversation change a family if they were intentional and consistent about it? Would the benefits outweigh the hassle of trying to invest this time of care, listening, and prayer each night in your home? Why or why not?

4. For Church Leaders: What would happen to a family over time if they made an intentional point of doing the Faith 5 most every night? What would happen to your church five years from today if the majority of your households were doing active listening, scripture, faith talk, prayer, and blessings every night?

Painting the sanctuary

The painting has moved along amazingly quickly. On second day of painting, the walls are nearly done.

Farmington Mine Disaster

St. Paul Lutheran Church goes to the theater:

The Fairmont State University Theater Department is holding a student-created production of Remembering #9: Stories from the Farmington Mine Disaster on Sunday, September 27 at 2:00pm, in Wallman Hall Auditorium.  Tickets may be purchased at the door or in advance at the Fairmont State University Box Office, 304-367-4240. 

Armed with information and digital recorders, the student researchers talked with wives, children and friends of the victims and survivors of the Farmington explosion. Seventy-eight people died in the explosion at the Consol No. 9 mine in Marion County on Nov. 20, 1968. Among the interviewees was Rev. Richard Bowyer, the long-time director of the Wesley Foundation House at Fairmont State, spent seven days comforting families and during those dark days in 1968. The transcripts of his and others interviews will be used to create the projection.

Please contact Pastor Brian if you would like to carpool to the event.

3rd Annual Buckwheat Cake and Sausage Dinner for Rock Forge!

From Rock Forge Neighborhood House:

Please join Rock Forge Neighborhood House as we celebrate the Preston County Buckwheat Festival again with our 3rd Annual Buckwheat Cake and Sausage Dinner from 4-9pm on Friday, Sept. 25 and on Saturday, Sept 26 from 9am-9pm at the Sabraton Community Center. The dinner is RFNH's biggest fundraising activity of the year and helps us raise much-needed dollars to support the childcare and outreach programs we offer to Monongalia and Preston County Residents. Price is $8 for Adults, $5 for children, and free for children under 5 years old. Please come out to support RFNH and spread the word! To volunteer or for more information, contact Alexis McMillen at 304-292-3286 or alexis@rfnh.org.

Sweet Sweet Bernard...

I have returned to the devotional For All The Saints as my daily devotions, and am reading it now when I enter my office as the first thing I do. Trying to read right when I go to bed is a problem since I have many many times fallen asleep while I read, only to have my set my book on the nightstand and turn out the light for me. Moving this practice to when I enter my office is very helpful... I am able to give the texts my undivided (mostly) attention and then I often tweet a verse or two or three from the readings, both scriptural as well as others. Today I had in my readings, a passage from Bernard of Clairvaux. In a culture which demands the individual response to the gospel, these words of Bernard are such a clear and distinct speaking of the gospel that they soothe and relieve my irritated nerves, worn away by the constant demand that I must choose, that I must believe. He writes:

I said before that God is the cause of loving God. I spoke the truth, for he is both the efficient and final cause. He himself provides the occasion. He himself creates the longing. He himself fulfills the desire. He himself causes himself to be (or rather, to be made) such that he should be loved. He hopes to be so happily loved that no one will love him in vain. His love both prepares and rewards ours (cf. 1Jn 4:19). Kindly, he leads the way. He repays us justly. He is our sweet hope. He is riches to all who call upon him (Rm 10:12). There is nothing better that himself. He gave himself in merit. He keeps himself to be our reward. He gives himself as food for holy souls (Wis. 3:13). He sold himself to redeem the captives.
Lord, you are good to the soul which seeks you. What are you then to the soul which finds? But this is the most wonderful thing, that no one can seek to be found so that you may be sought for, sought so that you may be found. You can be sought, and found, but not forestalled. For even if we say, "In the morning my prayer will forestall you" (Ps 87:14), it is certain that every prayer which is not inspired is half-hearted. Now let us see where our love begins, for we have seen where it finds its end.

The promise of the gospel is not that we can find God, but that God allows himself to be found. Even if we have a world-shaking conversion experience, or make a decision to follow Jesus, or sit quietly in the pew trusting in full confidence that God has called us through the waters of baptism, we must give thanks that God has made this all possible, that he has granted us faith to believe and the power to become children of God.

(reposted from my other blog In The Parish )

THIS WEEK AT ST. PAUL (Sept. 6-Sept. 13)

Tuesday 9/8 - Bible Study 10:00 AM
Wednesday 9/9 - WELCA 2:00 PM
Choir Rehearsal 7:00 PM
Thursday 9/10 - Council Meeting 7:00 PM
Sunday 9/13 - Sunday School 9:00 AM
Communion Service 10:00 AM
Rally Day
Youth Group Meeting 5:00 PM

Be Careful What You Wish For... Aidan of Lindisfarne

Checked out a website that lists commemorations of saints, James Kiefer's Hagiographies, to find a man listed today that I had never heard of, Aidan of Lindisfarne. Aidan was a missionary, abbot, and bishop in the seventh century in northern England. He died this day (August 31) in 651.

I was surprised to read an account from Kiefer about Aidan. Kiefer wrote:

During his exile, Oswald [King of Northumbria] had lived at Columba's monastery of Iona (see 9 June), where he had been converted and baptized. Hence he sent to Iona (56:19 N 6:25 W), rather than to Canterbury, for missionaries. The first monk to preach was a man named Corman, who had no success, and returned to Iona to complain that the Northumbrians were a savage and unteachable race. A young monk named Aidan responded, "Perhaps you were too harsh with them, and they might have responded better to a gentler approach." At this, Aidan found himself appointed to lead a second expedition to Northumbria.

Evidently God has a good sense of humor. We give thanks for this servant who answered God's call and provided a holy example for us.

ELCA Churchwide Assembly -- Big News

When I turned on Headline News this morning, the very first thing I saw was a short clip about the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Churchwide Assembly being held in Minneapolis this week had approved the resolution that opens the door to the rostering of gays and lesbians in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous relationships.

Following the vote, Bishop Hanson gave a response. You can view his response here at the online archive.

ELCA Churchwide Assembly begins Aug. 17, 2009

Starting today, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) begins its biannual churchwide gathering. All of its plenary sessions will be broadcast live over the internet. You can watch them by going here. You can also watch missed sessions at a later time. The Churchwide Assembly is the highest legislative authority in the ELCA.

While all of the attention seems to be focused on the sexuality statement and the following resolutions regarding non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy in committed relationships, there are other important issues to be decided.

• Full Communion with the United Methodist Church will be voted on-- full communion is the highest level ecumenical agreement denominations can share. Full Communion means that our fundamental beliefs are in alignment with each other. In addition, clergy become fully interchangeable. If a Lutheran pastor were not available, a congregation could call a pastor from the United Methodist Church to serve.
  

• The Lutheran Malaria Initiative -- from the ELCA website: "In 2007 the United Nations Foundation (UNF) approached Lutheran World Relief (LWR), Baltimore, and asked it to mobilize Lutheran constituents in the United States against malaria. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, provided substantial funds to UNF for this purpose, and UNF plans to provide a grant to assist in fundraising for the initiative. The ELCA and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod have been working with UNF and LWR to develop the initiative."

• HIV and AIDS funding strategy--the ELCA Church Council adopted strategy for the ELCA regarding HIV and AIDS. The Church Council is asking the Assembly to appropriate $10million over three years for the funding of this strategy, and in addition to endorse the strategy.

• Possible social statement on justice for women-- if approved, this would start the process for writing a social statement about justice for women. The social statement would be voted on at the 2015 Churchwide Assembly.

Pray, please, for the voting members and all involved. Pray that God's will is done. Pray that debate and deliberation is sincere, that all the difficult issues are discussed and that people's ears are open to hearing. Pray that the actions taken are a testimony to God's Kingdom breaking in around us, and that God is glorified.