Announcements
Memorial Flowers and Candles for Sunday Mornings
Now that we have resumed Sunday services, the opportunity to place memorial flowers and candles is now available. The cost is $20.00 for flowers and $5.00 for candles.
If you are interested in placing flowers, candles, or both in honor or in memory of someone, please contact Donna Weidman at we4buds@aol.com or call her at 717-201-6180
Tower Bell Chiming at Grace
Our tower bells, or chime, are regularly played following the 10:30 Sunday services and on Sunday evenings at 6:00, for special times/services, such as Christmas Eve, patriotic holidays, etc., and more recently at noon each weekday during the pandemic.
You are invited to join us! Take a look at the chiming console (up one long flight of stairs just before the south side balcony entrance) when the bells are being played. You need to be able to read a single line of music, treble clef only, and have some keyboard experience. Ringing the bells is physically fun and musically satisfying.
If you’d like to give it a try, contact Murray Foreman,
murrayforeman@gracelutheranchurch.com or 717-847-7556. I invite teen-agers, in particular, to consider chiming.
God’s Work Our Hands
“God’s work. Our hands” – Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021
Please Join Us For Our Seventh Annual Neighborhood Cookout in our parking lot, beginning at 12 noon.
This day is an opportunity to celebrate who we are as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – one church, freed in Christ to serve and love our neighbor.
Service activities offer an opportunity for us to explore one of our most basic convictions as Lutherans: that all of life in Jesus Christ – every act of service, in every daily calling, in every corner of life – flows freely from a living, daring confidence in God’s grace. We work every day to make your community a better place. Let us continue doing this work together in 2021!
We need everybody to pitch in and share God’s love with our neighbors and each other! How can you help? In next week’s Grace News Carol Main will offer the many ways you can participate. God calls us to action and this is one way we can respond. To volunteer – call the church office at 717-397-2748.
Lutheran World Relief Ingathering October 2-3
Special thanks to our outgoing school kit coordinator, Linda Fackler, who for many years has lovingly guided this project. We offer our thanks and gratitude to her for a job well done! Thanks also to Brenda Hayasaka and Donna Linton who have agreed to take over this worthwhile ministry, but they need your help. These are the items they need to fill the bags they ordered:
· Four 70-80 sheet notebooks (280-300 sheets total) of wide or college-ruled paper approximately 8” x 10 ½ ”, no loose leaf paper
· One 30-centimeter ruler, or a ruler with centimeters on one side and inches on the other
· One pencil sharpener
· One pair of blunt scissors (safety scissors with embedded steel blades work well)
· Five unsharpened #2 pencils with erasers; secure together with a rubber band
· Five black or blue ballpoint pens (no gel ink); secure together with a rubber band
· One box of 16 or 24 crayons
· One 2 ½” eraser
If anyone is a Thrivent member and is willing to help Brenda and Donna to make kits, you can apply for a Visa card for $250 under the Thrivent Action Teams program.
We are also doing Personal Care Kits. I have asked for a $250 Visa Card from Thrivent Financial to buy the supplies in bulk. If you want to put your own kit together here are the directions.
· One light-weight bath size towel (between 20” x 40” and 27” x 52”), dark color
· Two or three bath-size bars of soap equaling 8 to 9 oz, any brand, in original wrapping
· One adult-size toothbrush in its original wrapping
· One metal nail clippers (attached file optional), remove packaging
· We will add a comb to your kit, as we have some left from last year.
Fold the towel in half width-wise. Place the rest of the items in the towel, fold and roll so nothing falls out, and secure with yarn, ribbon, string or rubber bands. A box will be provided in the Narthex for your items.
LWR is no longer accepting soap in bulk, so we can only use soap in kits.
If you want to help with cash donations, checks can be made out to Grace Lutheran. The memo line should read “LWR Kits.”
Brenda and I will share the money as needed.
Barbara Slotter, 717-342-2654
Christian Formation
“Listen, O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father, that by the toil of obedience thou mayest return to Him from whom by the sloth of disobedience thou hast gone away.”
(Prologue to The Rule of St. Benedict, Trans. Rev. Boniface Verheyen OSB, 1949)
This week’s reading is John 6:52-59
Fall Small Groups: Racial Justice + Faith
Do you love reading and discussing books? Are you passionate about social justice? If you answered yes to either one of those questions you might enjoy our two book offerings for small groups.
The first book is Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi and Four Hundred Souls edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain.
As our denomination and nation struggle with racial justice, these two books will help us continue the discussion of racial justice and our Christian faith. There are discussion questions in the back of Stamped and I can provide discussion questions for Four Hundred Souls. If you would like a shorter book that is still focused on racial justice there is a high school edition of Stamped.
Groups can meet in person, via Zoom, or in a hybrid form. All groups will begin after Rally Day/ God’s Work Our Hands Sunday (9/12). Our Tapestry of Pages group meets Tuesdays at 3PM and I will be leading an in-person (possibly hybrid) group on Wednesdays (time TBD). If Covid numbers soar this will not be an in-person meeting.
If you are interested in leading or participating in a small group discussion on one or both of these texts please email me (graceelcaapd@gmail.com). -Angie Rabbe
Creation Care at Grace
We are still collecting caps for the Earth Savers Club at Central York High School.
If you would like to help—drop off your clean/label free caps to the church office! Thanks!
Green Tips!
Recycle Your Water Where You Can
Collect the cold water you run before it’s hot enough to shower and use it to water plants or flush the toilet (known as a bucket flush). Rinse water from dishes and food preparation can be collected and used to soak other dishes. Learn more here
Garden Help Needed
Our creation care team is looking for folks to help with weeding, watering, and general
maintenance of our new native plantings around the church campus. If you are interested—please contact the church office to volunteer. Any amount of time you can give would be greatly appreciated!
Aug. 15, 2021 (12th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B)
Ephesians 5:15,16 – Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.
God gives all of us the same abundance of time – 24 hours in every day, and it’s so easy to waste! Steward disciples pray for wisdom to live each day to its fullest, and to turn away from the world’s evils.
Our Grace Family
On behalf of my husband and family I would like to express my deepest thanks and blessings for the many cards, visits and words of encouragement from my church family. I am so blessed to have wonderful friends in our congregation who reached out to me, it meant a lot. Thanks again to our wonderful Pastor Steve and his visits in the hospital and his prayers for my healing. I am gaining my strength back slowly and am looking forward to rehab starting later this month. Bless all of you for your caring.
Peace be with you all-Lorraine Long
Dear Members of Grace,
We give thanks for the life and witness of Sara Sedlak. We extend our heartfelt sympathy to her aunt and uncle Pat and Scott Oberholtzer and Sara’s family. Please keep Sara’s family in your prayers.
gracelutheranchurch.com 