A lenten soup and sandwich supper will be served before each Wednesday service beginning March 8. We will serve a variety of soups, sandwiches, breads/crackers and cookies. This year, the confirmation and choir children will also be included.
 
Serving will begin at 6:15 p.m., with children joining at 6:30 p.m. Clean- up will be completed before the 7:00 service time.
 
Sign-up sheets will be posted in the Welcome Center. Please sign up !

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We have moved our sanctuary and worship around in a few ways. Pastors and lay ministers  have a seat up front – I (Paula) can lead you better — and love you better — if I can see you.  Most of our congregation chairs are in a v-shape, so you can see each other in your peripheral vision and enjoy being in community. Families have an optional area to the right with long rows of chairs for large families and optional space around the kid table, or in front (where the kids can really see) or in back (if you prefer). Folks using equipment (wheelchairs, walkers) have open areas right in the center. Our bells are still up front because they are both musical and visual, but our choir is nearer to the congregation to support congregational singing. The baptismal font, as you may notice, is near the altar and near the people. Both near the entrance (we enter the church through baptism) and the front (our baptism empowers our ministry as Christians) are good places. It won’t be perfect; we may need to tweak it, but please give it a try and let’s debrief after we see how it works together.
 
Along with moving around the sanctuary, I’m moving around the service a little. Every pastor does things a bit differently. The first change: We are now placing announcements at the end of the service. I’m not convinced that announcements are the best way to enter into worship. They really invite us into the life of the community here, so we’ll try them after worship for a while. 
This means that our prayer concerns — the people we have on our hearts — will be heard in our prayer time (in the middle of the service). Although I pray for you all regularly and carry home the prayer list for my daily prayers, one pastor can’t carry all of our prayer concerns. The whole community can. “Sharing one another’s burdens” is the way the Bible puts it.  So we will model this by sharing our names in prayer and having the lay minister lead us.

In general, the Lutheran Book of Worship allows the assisting minister to share a lot more of the worship leadership than we currently practice. So you’ll also find one pastor focusing on preaching, another pastor focusing on presiding, and the lay assisting minister helping her lead a lot more prayers.

And finally, I believe it’s important to focus on the gifts Jesus gave us in communion. So I’m asking the altar guild to put the bread and wine on the altar in the center. If you miss the small altar cross, I’d invite you to look up at the very large, lovely, stained glass which towers over our sanctuary. (Whenever possible, we’ll move the screens during communion so they don’t distract us from the bread, the wine, and Christ’s presence.) Jesus himself invited us to focus on the bread and wine, so I invite you to practice this. They’re kind of ordinary things, but somehow, God transforms them in Holy Communion, in the midst of a faith community.

I know that this community is willing to be flexible and try new things.  I’ve experienced that already.  I hope you’ll try this for a while and come tell me how it affects you.
Pastor Paula

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