Hope Happenings
There are always new adventures going on in the life of our congregation, so keep checking this page for updates on news items. Here's the latest from the January 2011 Newsletter:
August-September 2012
New at Hope: Prayer
Pulse
One of the most important ways we can change the world is through
prayer—bringing the needs and concerns of our hearts, our community,
and our world to God together as we pray.
Hope is launching a new intentional ministry to be
focused on praying for the needs of our congregation,
community, families, and the wider world. We invite
you
to come to be a part of this group, whose mission is to
gather
and to
pray
together, with our eyes wide open to the needs of others.
It’s sort of like having a pulse-check on the life of our
congregation and community.
And so, we are calling this new venture the
Prayer Pulse.
This will be a group that commits to regularly gathering in prayer,
but with no other “reports” or “committee business” or “tasks” to
worry about. Our first
time to gather in prayer will be
Tuesday, Aug. 7
at 7:00pm.
Join us in prayer!
Sunday Lesson Readers
Each week in worship, the living God keeps on speaking, using the
ancient words of prophets and poets and the modern voice of our
lesson readers to bring Good News and to bring light to the world.
Here are our Sunday lesson readers in the month of August:
August 5 Irv Kochel
August 12 Sheila Hilliard (Blue Spruce)
August 19 Ron Carnahan
August
26
Mary
Russell
If
you make any switches or substitutions, please call the church
office to let us know!
If you are interested in being a reader of our
Sunday Scripture lessons for worship, please see or call Shirley
Zundel (724/349-4696).
Acolyte Workshop on Aug. 18
We are training a new “class” of acolytes at Hope, and we invite
those junior and senior high youth who are learning the ropes to
come to Hope on Saturday, Aug. 18 at 9:00am for that workshop.
This is one of those rites of passage that helps lead our
young people into a commitment of lifelong serving in the church.
As acolytes, our youth not only serve in worship by lighting
candles and assisting at the offering, but are drawn more deeply
into an understanding of why we do what we do in our worship life.
Many thanks go to those who have served and will serve in
this way!
Envisioning Ministry Returns
Hope’s Envisioning Ministry Committee is a sort of resident “think
tank” for the congregation, dreaming and visioning where God might
be leading us, and working on new ideas to try. Small things like
our Hope decals, mugs, and new member handbook have come from
Envisioning, as well as our long-range planning sessions from
previous years and reorganized narthex.
Our next meeting will be
Tuesday,
Sept. 4th at 7:00pm.
If you have an idea to share, you can come and join us, or see
Pat Dietrich,
Randy Thomas, Jeremy McMasters,
or
Pastor Steve.
Help us to keep seeking and dreaming in faith!
WELCA News: Fall Meetings and Quilts
Our monthly gatherings of the Women of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America (WELCA) resume for the fall with our September
meeting at 10:00am on Tuesday, Sept. 11 and continuing monthly on
the second Tuesday of each month.
Our meetings begin with Bible Study at 10:00, led by Pastor
Steve. This year’s WELCA
Bible Study will be themed, “Gathered by God,” and will come from
materials written by Audrey West published in
Gather
magazine, (formerly
Lutheran Woman Today).
After Bible Study we have fellowship and business meetings, as we
plan activities and organize events.
All are welcome to join us as we get back into our fall
schedule!
WELCA also invites any and all willing hands in our congregation to
continue with our quilt-making project begun over the summer. We
will have times for tying quilts twice in August, on
Wednesday, Aug. 8
starting at
9:30am
and then on
Wednesday, Aug. 22,
again at
9:30am.
Supplies will be there at the church—we just need willing hands as
we continue to make quilts to be donated to Lutheran World Relief in
the spring.
Rally Day Coming September 9th!
Hard to believe, but a new Sunday School year is right around the
corner as we kick off a new year of Christian Education starting at
9:30am
on
Sunday, September 9th.
As with every year, we will have classes and learning for all ages,
from preschool through our Adult Forum, going in depth with our
Sunday Scripture lessons! Come!
Festival of Talents—Sep.
15
From songs and instruments to brownies, pies and gob cakes, and from
dance and drama to painting and sculpture, we have a
lot
of talent in our congregation.
And it is really a treat to get to see those talents shared
for the sake of the Kingdom.
We invite you—and your friends and neighbors and everybody
else!—to join us for our
sixth
annual “Festival of
Talents,” a night of shared performance and displays
featuring talents of our congregation’s members and friends, a bake
sale, and a fair-trade handicraft sale.
It all starts at 7:00pm on Saturday, September 15th.
You can sign up at the bulletin board in the narthex to share
a talent, too!
SonRise National Park
Vacation Bible School A Success!
Our week of VBS this past July was a great time, touching the lives
of 42 different children and youth over the course of our time at
“SonRise National Park” together with the Homer City Presbyterian
Church. We have many
Hope members to thank for their involvement:
Denise Shaw, Michaela Shaw, Irv and Carla Kochel, Denise
Liggett, Renee Busi, Rita Truitt, Betty Edwards, Vernon Edwards,
Megan and Mandy McElheny, Angie Davidson, Mary Rolf, Sheila
Hilliard, Cindy Zundel, Shirley Zundel, Donna Reed, Roberta Judeich,
Ben Sink, Bill and Judy Young, and Marge Folckemer—along with many
others who supplied snacks, brought their children and stayed with
them, and prayed for us all week long.
In a Hope VBS first, after having the first four nights at the
Presbyterian Church, our whole group took a closing night “field
trip” down the back alley to have our closing program at Hope, where
we could share songs with family and friends that night.
Even though it had been a stormy day, the clouds parted and
the rain held off just long enough for us to walk together to Hope
safely and without getting wet—sort of a re-enactment of the Exodus
story as a bonus!
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