Our Wednesday evening schedule with supper, worship, and small group instruction and interaction (Confirmation and adult) resumes on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. We eat at 5:30 pm and have an informal worship service from 6:30 to 7, with small group instruction following from 7 to 7:30. The hope is that folks will find it easier to come and eat supper together at church instead of staying home and wondering what to cook!
The worship services are 30 minutes long and are very interactive.
We think we are the most important
The disciples were arguing over who was the greatest. I think we can relate to that. We measure ourselves against each others. We compare and we compete. Mind you, Jesus had pretty much just changed the world order by suggesting that The Son of Man was destined to be betrayed and killed. Still the disciples were slow to turn that truth into something that really changed their way of being.
I think we often tend to think we know what God has in mind, only to be surprised that God’s plans are not the same as our own.
In 1831 William Miller, a Baptist preacher from Northeast New York, began to preach a message that Christ would return sometime between the spring of 1843 and the spring of 1844. He had come to that conclusion by reading the Bible and assembling a complicated calendar that led him to that conclusion.
We are in the midst of changing how we do Christian education at Grace.
Last year we attempted to encourage families to attend Sunday School together as an alternative worship service called Growing in Faith Together (GIFT). This was only marginally successful, but there were many good things about the program that we hope to incorporate in this year’s plans.
Beginning on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2019, Sunday School for children 3 years old through 6th grade will take place in the Grace Fellowship Hall.
About this time last year, Grace was in the midst of making the rather painful decision to dissolve the long standing Ministry Sharing Agreement that we had with a local congregation for 30 years. In its essence, that decision came from an acknowledgement that significant changes needed to be made in how ministry happened at Grace for it to thrive as a congregation.
In the past 35 years, worship attendance has declined from an average of more than 300,
