Grace News September 5, 2023

Announcements

Grocery Cards

Let Everyone Praise the Lord!

Grace Adult Choir rehearses on Thursdays in the balcony from 7:15-8:45 pm and performs and leads worship every Sunday at the 10:30 worship. Practice begins 9/7.

Grace Children’s Choir rehearses on Sunday mornings from 9 -9:20 am and performs in 10:30 worship once a month. Practice begins 9/10.

Gloria Adult Bell Choir rehearses on Monday evenings from 6:30-7:30 pm in the balcony and performs twice a month during 10:30 worship. Practice begins 9/11.

Sanctus Children’s Bell Choir rehearses on Wednesday evenings from 6:30-7:30 pm in the balcony and performs in 10:30 worship once a month. Practice begins 9/6/23

Kyrie Hybrid Bell Choir (High School and up) if there is enough interest rehearses every other Sunday morning from 9:30-10:00 am and would perform once a month at the 10:30 worship or maybe the 8 am worship. Let’s see! Practice begins 9/24.

Grace Folk Choir rehearses on Monday evenings from 5:30-6:30 pm in the balcony. We welcome people who want to praise the Lord with ukuleles, guitars and voices. We focus on Bluegrass and Folk music but love exploring all genres of music. Practice begins 9/11.

If you are interested in joining Children’s Choir, a bell choir, and/or Grace Folk choir please contact our director of Bells and Children’s Music, Kathryn Verkouw at verkouw@gmail.com

If you are interested in joining the Adult Choir please contact our Director of Music, Dr. David McConnell at herrdam@hotmail.com.
Any instrumentalists are welcome to share their gifts throughout the year as well! Please contact Dr. McConnell.

A Note From Our Secretary

I will be on vacation October 11-18^th. I would love to have an office volunteer in on the 12^th. Because of the dates we are gone for I will need October schedules by October 4^th from our worship participant schedulers and the Grace News will be going out on Thursday the 19^th instead of Tuesday the 17^th.  Thank you!

Christian Formation

Rally Day September 10^th!

Toddler Time Sunday School for ages 0-2 and a parent and led by parents. Meets after Music/Play time with Preschool until 10:15 am. Classroom located off the Nolt Auditorium.

Preschool Sunday School for ages 3-5 led by Susan Miller and Alana Koser. Meets 9am-10:15 am and will begin with music time or play. Class uses Spark Lectionary curriculum. Classroom located off the Nolt Auditorium.

Sunday School for grades K-2 led by Lisa Schneider and Kim Neumar. Meets after Chapel singing time, 9:20-10:15 am.  Class uses “Godly Play” story boxes. Classroom located off the Nolt Auditorium.

Sunday School for grades 3-5 led by Patti Hartman and Kaylah Miller. Meets after Chapel singing time, 9:20-10:15 am. Class uses the Whirl Lectionary curriculum. Classroom located off the Nolt
Auditorium.

Confirmation Class led by Meghan Kelly and Vicki Mumma: Meets 9-10:15 am Designed for grades 6-8 to explore the basics of Lutheran Christian Faith. Classroom located off the Nolt Auditorium.

High School Sunday School led by Phil Supeck: Meets every other Sunday from 9-10:15 in the Stafford Room beginning September 17th. High School and Confirmation Youth will join for snacks and sharing time at 9-9:15 in the Confirmation room. On the alternate Sunday mornings they can choose between: Kyrie bell rehearsal, participate as a helper for one of the other classes or attend the adult Sunday school. Class meets in the Stafford Room (basement of the church office).

From Pastor Verkouw

Greetings Grace Folks!

Community 
One of the obvious ways of understanding the church – from its largest expressions to its smallest – is as some form of community. Here is a short list of familiar metaphors: a body with many members (I Corinthians 12), a family or household (Galatians 6:10), a vine with many branches (John 15). The word for church in the original Greek of the New Testament is “ekklesia” which means “gathering,” and the deeper meanings of the root words of ekklesia are “called out.” We know that Jesus kept a close small community of disciples, and he also preached to, and strengthened a community of many other followers.  One of the first descriptions of the early church written by Luke (in Acts chapter 2) is of a group of people who care for one another and “hold their possessions in common.” And then Luke tells us, “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

The Paradox

That’s often the challenge for us – adding to community! For there is a paradox at the heart of community, which is, the better and stronger the community is for those who are a part of it, the harder it can be for new members of the community to break in, to feel welcome, to be “added.” For those who have been part of a community for a long time, belonging feels natural. It’s taken for granted. It feels, in some way, like home. When one is at home in a community, it’s sometimes hard to imagine what being new in the community might feel like. The strongest and healthiest communities realize this, and are very deliberate about designing a pathway into membership. I remember going through an initiation process for my college fraternity that had a number of quite ridiculous activities. The only possible point of them was to build community among the brothers, to create shared experiences and memories that were intense and challenging, that helped us understand that we were part of the group, and what made this group different from the other fraternities at Gettysburg College in the 1980’s. Anyone who has joined the military has been through “boot camp,” which not only gets you in physical shape, but “shapes” you as a member of these groups that are also “called out” to defend the nation. 

Inviting and Welcoming

No…I’m not proposing a Grace Church Boot Camp! The church doesn’t want to be an “elite” group like that, exclusive or limited by tests of skill or endurance. The church wants to be open and welcoming to all, hoping that all kinds of different people will feel and catch the Spirit that motivates us as people of faith in God, and feel able to live in community with God and one another as we worship and serve together.  One of the ways to visualize this is to understand two different ways of thinking about the community of the church. One might be called a bounded, or boundaried set: everyone WITHIN THE BOUNDARY is “in” the church, and anyone OUTSIDE THE BOUNDARY is not. The problem then becomes – where to put the wall? What are the minimum requirements? What’s the least I have to do to stay in? The church has elements of this kind of thinking: baptism is a requirement, some kind of public confession of faith when you’re old enough, expectations of participation to one degree or another, etc…

But imagine another way of describing the set of people who are part of the church community, not as the group that’s “within a boundary,” but instead as the group that is “around a center.” A set of people who are centered on Jesus can be close to the center or far away. They can be on the other side of the center from others in the group.  They can be clustered together with others, or somewhat apart and alone.  But they are ALL part of the set.  It may take some folks a lot of time to get comfortable moving closer to the center, while others may jump right in.  They are still part of the same community.  Some may be close to the center for a long time, and then for some reason, move farther away. They, too, are still part of the same community, the same “centered set” of people gathered around Jesus.

That means being aware and deliberate about inviting and welcoming, but also deliberate about not getting too “tight” or exclusive, staying loose and open and realizing that building this kind of community takes some work. The church’s ideal approach to welcoming, I think, is not so much “come in” or “cross the

boundary” but rather, “come closer to Jesus.” Wherever you are right now, you are already a part of the set of people for whom Jesus has lived, died and risen. Draw nearer. What”s making it hard? What makes it easier? What is changing as you come closer to God and community? What is not changing? I hope you find this idea interesting and motivating as you think about your own place in the church, the group of people for whom Jesus stands at the center as God’s revelation and presence to us.  And finally…

Name Tags

…realize that for new folks to draw closer to God by joining God’s gathering at Grace Church means learning names and allowing one’s name to be learned by others. It was good old Dale Carnegie who put it this way: “A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” I know it can feel weird to wear a name tag to church. You don’t have to do it every week…but you could! Because, lately, we have been blessed with a number of newer faces at worship and formation time, and it is an easy way to avoid the awkwardness of asking “what’s your name?” or having to say “sorry, I know you told me before, but I forgot your name.” It’s a way of being together more closely without trying too hard.  It’s one important way to build community here at Grace. The name tags will be in baskets in the Solarium entrance and down in Nolt Auditorium. We just got some new – reusable – name tags with magnet attachments that we are figuring out how best to use. Give it your best shot!

Tapestry of Pages

The first discussion of See No Stranger will be on 9/18 not on 9/11 as previously advertised. We will meet on Zoom at 3 p.m. If you would like to join our group please let Angie know as soon as
possible. Thanks!

Outreach

Lutheran World Relief In-gathering

September 1- October 1

Brenda Hayasaka and Donna Linton are in charge of School Kits and need your help. These are the items they need to fill the bags they have on hand.

●  Four 70-80 sheet SPIRAL 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

Thank you to Janet Neumar who received a Thrivent Visa card for $250 to buy items. We need more items from you to fill the bags.

We are also doing Personal Care Kits. We have purchased bulk items from a Thrivent card and also from your monetary donations. If you want to put your own kit together, here are the directions.

● One light-weight bath size towel (between 20” x 40” and 52” x 27”), 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 ordered in bulk.

Fold the towel in half widthwise. 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.

If you want to help with cash donations, please write on your check “LWR Kits.” Brenda and I will share the money as needed.

Boxes are in the Narthex and at the entrance as you come in the door to church. If possible, we would like donations by September 24 as some of us will be putting kits together and packed on the following Monday morning. We will add to it anything that comes on Ingathering weekend.

Barbara Slotter, 717-342-2654

Brenda Hayasaka, 410-236-1063

Donna Linton, 717-575-9388

Our Grace Family

Our Sympathy

We pray in thanksgiving for the life of Doris Altsmanshofer, who died Friday (9/1).She is survived by her three children, Bert, Jan and Kirk and their families. Funeral arrangements for Doris are still pending. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.