Announcements
Annual Meetings Highlights
An attentive group of Grace members and friends gathered in the Nolt Auditorium this past Sunday for our 2023 Annual Meeting…thanks to all who took part no matter which of our three worship services you attended! The official business of the meeting was, as usual, to approve minutes of our meeting last May, to approve the Treasurer’s Report for 2022, and to elect our Congregation Council members for the coming year. I’m thankful that the following Grace members were nominated and agreed to serve, and were elected by the congregation:
President—John Grove
Board of Worship—Keith Miller
Board of Congregational Care—Molly Rowen
At-Large Members:
Lisa Bisignani, Cindy Garcia, Mindi Graver, Pat Oberholtzer, and Rosalyn Ward
We offer our thanks again to Jane Sheckard, who as our Treasurer for over 25 years served on our Council all of those years, preparing reports for and attending the great majority of those monthly meetings! Jane and Phil Supeck are currently our co-Treasurers, since Jane continues to assist Phil in learning the considerable background, policies, procedures and the software program involved with stewarding our finances at Grace, but Phil is well on the way and will be serving, as Jane did, as a member of council ex-officio in the coming Council term. Thank you, Jane and Phil!
And we offer our thanks to Brenda Hayasaka, who has served since 2018 as the Chair of our Board of Ministries, working closely with Kathryn and Angie, our Director and Assistant Dir. of Program and other board and volunteers. Brenda extended her term as long as possible through the COVID years and beyond and continues to be active in many ministries…thank you, Brenda!
Pastor Steve prepared a PowerPoint Presentation for the Annual Meeting…it is available on our website as part of this week’s Grace News post.
Bless God for all the ways in which we have been able to share in the ministries of Worship and Serving over this past year. Thanks to all for your prayers and support!
Grocery Cards
Grocery cards are available at both services on Sunday mornings. You may order cards by calling Duane and Kitty Weiss. Remember all purchases of cards realizes 5% in cash back to Grace. These funds are used to support our many ministries.
Save the Date For Confirmation
Join us in celebrating the rite of Confirmation on June 4th (Trinity Sunday) at the 10:30 service. Our confirmands will present their projects that morning during Sunday School in the Nolt Auditorium.
AGO Summer Recital
The annual summer organ recital by members of the local American Guild of Organists chapter will occur this year on Thursday, June 8, at First United Methodist Church, Lancaster. A program of wide variety of music will feature some of the better organists in Lancaster on the three-manual pipe organ there, one of the larger instruments in Lancaster, with “something for everyone.”
Grace Church member Dr. Karl E. Moyer will be joined by his daughter Dr. Cindy Moyer in a work seldom played in Lancaster, Adagio and Fugue in G minor by Liechtenstein native Josef Rheinberger. One of the standard, advanced works for organ and violin, it will vary the evening fare in a beautiful manner.
An offering will be received to benefit the chapter’s scholarship fund for organ students.
Parking is available in the church’s lot on the south side of the first block of East Lemon Street, near Duke.
Christian Formation
Adult Summer Sunday School
- June 4th: Presentation of Confirmation Projects and celebration
- June 11: Tom Santosusso — Personal Reflection on Praying the Psalms
- June 18: Tom Santosusso — Praying the Psalms
- June 25: Dr. David McConnell —topic TBD
- July 2: Dr. David McConnell— topic TBD
- July 9: TBD
- July 16: Dr. Karl Moyer — Faith and Order in Grace Church’s History
- July 23: Joseph and Erin Longenecker — Our Mission in Burkhina Faso
- July 30: Sandy Morris, Greg Gable: —Views from our Palestinian Pilgrimage*
- August 6: Sandy Morris, Greg Gable: Views from our Palestinian Pilgrimage
- August 13: Bradden Weaver —Christian Nationalism: Driving Forces and Leading Personalities
- August 20: Bradden Weaver— Christian Nationalism: Driving Forces and Leading Personalities
- August 27: Bradden Weaver—Christian Nationalism: Driving Forces and Leading Personalities
- September 3:Bradden Weaver — Christian Nationalism
For these sessions it would be good to read Blood Brother’s by Elias Chacour and Faith in the Face of Empire by Mitri Raheb
Blurb from Bradden Weaver on his 4-week series
Christian Nationalism is a term that constantly appears in the news and public conversation. For some brands of churches, Christian Nationalism’s tenets have become deeply woven into their faith convictions, religious identity, and understanding of how America’s renewal must proceed. For other types of churches, Christian Nationalism is a dangerous political ideology based on a false Gospel and a warped understanding of Jesus, leading America to an authoritarian theocracy. While much has been reported on the ideas of Christian Nationalism and its potential outcomes, far less is understood about the persons and forces driving this movement. This 4-week series will investigate one of the major religious movements promoting Christian Nationalism: the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The NAR’s loose network of churches and its leaders exert incredible influence in fostering Christian Nationalism in the hearts and minds of millions of evangelical and charismatic Christians. It’s time to take a look at the NAR’s theological concepts, identity formation, and church governance practices that are behind this radically polarizing worldview that seeks to remake the culture and politics of our
constitutional republic.
If you have any questions please contact Kathryn Verkouw at verkouw@gmail.com
Weekly Reflection
This week’s reflection is from Martin Luther’s Trinity Sunday sermon that he preached in 1552.
“We can, therefore, have no surer foundation for our belief in the divinity of Christ than that we enwrap and enclose our hearts in the declarations of the Scriptures. The Scriptures gradually and beautifully lead us to Christ; first revealing him to us as a man, then as the lord of all creatures. and finally as God. Thus we are successfully led to the true knowledge of God. But the philosophers and the wise men of this world would begin at the top and so they have become fools. We must begin at the bottom and gradually advance in knowledge, so that the words of Proverbs 25, 27 may not apply to us: ‘It is not good to eat much honey; so for men to search out their own glory is grievous.’ … Therefore, we cling to the Scriptures, those passages which testify of the Trinity of God, and we say: I know very well that in God there are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; but how they can be one I do not know, neither should I know it.”
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