November 2011
From the Pastor
November 27th is the first Sunday of Advent. The focus of the Advent season is on preparing the way for the coming of Christ Jesus. However, prior to the beginning of Advent, and weeks before Christmas, we celebrate, in this country, “Thanksgiving” a national holiday. According to the calendar, we give thanks even before the gift has been given or received. Even though we know our national “Thanksgiving” is in remembrance of the early settlers’ gratitude for surviving the hardships of winter in a new and challenging land, their response to what had already been provided – it is good for us to think about what it means to give thanks out of faith… for that which has not yet been given by God nor yet received. Believing, knowing and trusting that God’s nature is to be “giving”, we are then able to respond by giving thanks as we anticipate that God’s giving knows no ending.
For the church,
November is a time to remember -- to reflect
-- to give thanks for the abundant
ways God’s giving nature has been expressed. On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, Nov. 20th,
the “Fab 4” congregations (
On Sunday,
November 13th
Volume 9
our voices, spirits and financial resources during worship on Consecration Sunday in praise of God.
I look forward to giving thanks with you every Sunday and in special ways during November,
Rev. Roger
If you know or hear of a prayer need and would like to have
one started on the prayer chain, notify the Deacon on Call for the month to
initiate your request. If you cannot
reach that Deacon, call the Church Office and speak to Pam, or leave a message
on the answering machine to be retrieved by her or Roger.
The Deacon on call for November is
Deana Gillespie 262-971-0841.
Remember our members at home in our prayers and expressions of concern
Elizabeth Joye Todd
Jim Feldhusen
Bill Haynes
John Ellingen
Ginny Kring
Mary Delwiche
If you know of someone who should be added to this list,
please notify the church office.
The last Sunday of this
month, November 27, is the first Sunday in Advent. Some of us can remember hearing the same
readings in church every year. But with
the three year lectionary, the beginning of a new church year also means a move
to a new set of readings. For us, this
year, it is a move from the A lectionary to the B lectionary. The idea of the three-year lectionary is new,
but the whole tradition of having appointed readings for each Sunday and
festival in the church year has a long and venerable history. The practice of reading scripture in worship
goes back to the Old Testament church.
We see Jesus, for example, in the synagogue setting in Luke 4:16-21,
where he is given the scroll of Isaiah to read before his sermon. In synagogue worship, a reading from Moses
came first; in our tradition, the most important reading, the Gospel Reading,
comes last. In synagogue worship, the
readings were interspersed with the singing of psalms. It would appear that in the early church the
selection of readings was somewhat arbitrary, consisting of readings from the
Old Testament, the Epistles, and the Gospels, and interspersed with the singing
of psalms, just as was done in the synagogues.
By the fourth century, however, many of lessons for the festival
Sundays, Christmas, Epiphany and Ascension Day became fixed. Unlike our three-year cycle, most of these
were one-year lectionaries. Beginning
with the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church (1962-65),
liturgical Protestant churches began to work on their own three-year
lectionaries. With the three-year cycle,
a much larger amount of the Bible would get read in services. The Presbyterian work on a three-year
lectionary was reflected in Worshipbook (1970), and now we are likely to
hear the same readings in church, no matter what the denomination. After hearing gospel readings from Matthew
all summer, we now move on to Mark, and since Mark is a shorter book, the B
lectionary includes generous portions of the Gospel of John also. A change for Presbyterians will be the way
that Sundays after Pentecost will be noted.
Some of us may remember Sundays after Trinity, and more recently Sundays
after Pentecost. Our Sundays, starting
with this church year, will now also be counted as Sundays after
Pentecost. No more Sundays in Ordinary
Time, although those of us who plan worship will continue to reference Ordinary
Time, because with Easter coming at different times of the year, we will need
the Ordinary Time designations to know what the readings for each Sunday
are.
-Roger Meyer
It’s not
too early to mark your calendars…….
Advent
is just around the corner!
![MC900347489[1]](November_11_Messenger_files/image004.gif)
Hanging
of the Greens
and
Friendship
Friday Soup and Salad Supper
Friday,
December 2nd at
(further
info and sign up opportunities to follow)
The Play and Learn Preschool and Extended Care enrolment is
on-going. If you would like to find out more information or have a tour, please
call us at 262-786-5818. Or visit the
web site at www.playnlearnpreschool.org. Also, if you know of someone who may be
interested, please pass this information to them.
We also have our new extended care/child care opened to
all. If you haven’t already taken a
“peek” downstairs to see how we have transformed Fellowship Hall into a warm,
clean and inviting center for our children, please do
so. Denise Platzer is our child care
teacher who is a warm and caring person with many wonderful, creative
activities for your children. If it’s
for a daily schedule or just for scheduled drop-offs, we can be there for
you!! Please call 262-786-5818 for
more information.
Our theme next month during the month of November will be
MANNERS, NUTRITION and HEALTHY HABITS.
We will focus on having good manners here at school and at home along
with discussing nutritious foods that help keep our bodies healthy. We will then incorporate the Thanksgiving
holiday theme toward the end of the month.
Being that our theme will focus on nutrition, and with the
New Berlin Food Pantry in need of non-perishable food items, we thought this
would be a good time to help our community. We will have a box in the waiting
room (Classroom #1) for those of you who would like to donate a non-perishable
food item(s) through
A BIG thank you to all of you who ordered from the Butter
Braid fund raiser ~-it was a HUGE success!
With our combined efforts, we made over $700.00 in profit!
Kay Von Rueden, Play and Learn Director
FORUM FAMILY RESTAURANT
4711 S 108TH
The November meeting of the Daylight Drivers will be at the
Forum Family Restaurant. Their menu has
a large selection of sandwiches and salads and a fish fry on Fridays. So meet
with us on November 18th at
Boston
Store Community Day coupon books will be available on Sunday, November 6th
for $5. 00. The coupon books can then be used on November 12th.
They contain coupons for:
$10.00 off an item over $10.00
20% off shopping pass
One 30% off early bird coupon
11 bonus buys
And the
best part is that
EXPRESS YOURSELF
FOLLOW-UP REPORT:
Many thanks to
all who participated in our event! Each contribution contributed to our success
– big or small it all adds up. I am very
grateful to the following people for giving their extra time and support: Karen Frakes, Sara Grant, Howard Hasselkus,
Lynette Hauke, Donna Hoover, Sylvia Larsen, Sue Mihelich, Penny Pomeroy, Roger
Woehl and Karen Zobel with her great crew of bakers! To the Godsell Family and Scott Masset for
managing our delicious food and to the clean up crew: Cindy Barbieri, David Herman, Carol Krogmann,
Cindy Prom and Scott Simpson. Our
combined efforts raised $475.00 in booth sales, $672.50 in craft sales and
another $203 in food sales which brings our final total raised to $1350.00!!! But money was not all that was gained …..some
great connections were made:
- Our Play N Learn fundraiser benefited from one vendor
who purchased $85 worth of Butter Braids
- The veterans group will return in June with equipment
for children to sit and play on and the 4 gift baskets we donated to their
silent auction helped raise the highest amount ever collected to support
their hospitalized Veterans Christmas Party!
- We enjoyed music performed by the talented youth of
the MYSO Senior Symphony and in doing so helped support their upcoming
international travel experience,
- We extended our compassion to a grieving family and
supported their mission and the missions of Plowshare and Building
Cambodia.
- I even learned a fun fact – Karen Frakes and I grew
up in the same neighborhood and attended the same schools….I would have
never known that had we not had a 2 day bonding adventure putting gift
baskets together!!
Our next sale is scheduled for Saturday, June 2, 2012. I have lots of ideas, but I am sure you do
too! Please talk to me, share your ideas
or discover the many different ways you can easily participate. Let’s build stronger connections with each
other, the community and create our June event together! ~ Sheryl Dolan
MISSION COMMITTEE UPDATE
Thank you to everyone who
gave to the Peacemaking offering on World Communion Sunday, October 2nd.
We collected $134, 25% of which stays at the church for congregational
peacemaking ministries. Our next special offering is on December 18th
which is the Christmas Joy Offering. There will be more details on this
offering in the inserts in the December Sunday bulletins. Also upcoming
this Christmas season are our annual Angel Tree and Alternative Market
missions. Look for the Angels to be available to select from in church in
November. Any questions on Angel Tree please see Karen Zobel. Keep an eye
out for information coming soon on our Alternative Market program. There will
be a new twist to the Alternative Market this Christmas.
Thirty Forest Park members, youth and adult,
participated in the hayride, walking maze, feeding the animals, bonfire and
food on Friday, October 14 at the Godsell farm.
Thank you to Jodi and Mike Godsell for helping to
organize this event.
Also, thank you to Mike’s brother and
sister-in-law for sharing their farm with us.
THANKSGIVING SERVICE
A joint
Thanksgiving Service will be held at Heritage Presbyterian Church on Sunday,
November 20th at 6:30 p.m.
The combined choirs will be singing.
Heritage is located at S63 W13761 College Avenue in Muskego.
Memory
The pavers
for the Memory Walk are an on-going fund raiser to help retire the New Look
mortgage. The cost of the granite paver with engraving is $100 dollars out of
which we pay the company that provides the paver and engraving $19.80. This
continues to be a popular way to have a space of your own on the Memory Walk and
to help pay down the New Look mortgage. Applications are available in the
Office
NOVEMBER BIRTHDAYS
11/3 Griffin Simpson
11/4 Elizabeth Tan
11/4 Benjamin Tan
11/5 Kaitlin Soto
11/6 Ron Reuteler
11/7 Betty Peterson
11/7 Nick Dolan
11/14 Carol Krogmann
11/17 Erin Simpson
11/19 Pat Otte
11/19 Denine Dulde
11/22 Liz Dombeck
11/25 Lee Tan
11/27 Jeff Krogmann
