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Welcome Back Sunday, September 12Worship at 10:00 a.m.
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Informal Summer Worship Services
Sundays,
July 4 – September 5, 2010
Breakfast: 9:00 a.m.
Worship: 9:30 a.m.
Please join us for breakfast and fellowship at 9:00 a.m. in your casual attire. Services begin at 9:30 in the living room. Childcare is available in the Nursery, Room 109. We look forward to another rewarding opportunity to listen to many of our lay members lead the services and provide the musical accompaniment.
August 29 – Youth Group
September 5 – TBA
The Senior High Youth Group has returned from Washington DC!
As you all know, the Senior High Youth Group traveled to Washington DC from August 15-21 to serve with the Youth Service Opportunities Project for five days. We had an absolutely amazing time! Thanks to your generosity and support, we prepared meals for terminally ill, poor, and/or homeless individuals, assisted families transitioning out of homelessness, helped elderly individuals avoid eviction, and even prepared (and shared) a meal for homeless guests in the church where we were staying. Our group discussion topics ranged from the meaning of service, to prioritizing expenses with a limited budget, to the lived experience of homeless people, to prayer and the treatment of others. Please join the Senior High Youth Group for our forum on September 19 at 11:30 a.m. in Room 111 to hear all about this life-changing experience and our plans to use what we’ve learned to make a real difference here at home. Tracy Summerer
From Christian Education
Sunday School: Through the Bible in a Year
This year in Sunday school we will be spending the school year going through the Bible - from the Creation story in Genesis right through to Revelation next June. The students will become acquainted in our worship-based model, through interactive stories, drama skits, crafts, and music, with most of the major figures and stories. This will raise their biblical literacy as well as help them understand chronologically where those figures are in relation to each other. Examples of questions we will seek to answer are: Does Moses come before or after Abraham? What is a covenant? Did Jesus have relatives in the Old Testament? What was Paul’s relationship to the 12 disciples? How much time passed between the Hebrew Bible and what we read about Jesus in the Gospels? We will work from a timeline which will be on the Bulletin Board in Fellowship Hall - consider asking one of the students to tell you what they’ve learned. Lori L’Italien will again be blessing us with her gift of music each week. We do, however, need teachers for the three classrooms (pre-K through grade 2, grades 3-5, and grades 6-8) - please see Laura or a member of the CE Board to sign up. It should be a great journey through the Bible - one we can all learn from!
Youth Groups
Laura and Howard Cassidy-Moffatt will lead the Junior High group
every other Sunday from 12:15-2:15 pm in Room 111. Students in
grades 6-8 are welcome. Our first meeting will be Sept 26th.
Come join the fun and fellowship!
Tracy Summerer will lead the Senior High group every Sunday from 4-6 pm in the Youth Room. Students in grades 9-12 are encouraged to be a part of this wonderful group.
Confirmation
Students in grades 8 and 9: as a reminder, we met last spring and
your assignment was to get yourself a mentor. Our first meeting
with parents and mentors will be on Welcome Back Sunday (Sept 12) at
11:30 am in the Living Room - looking forward to seeing you there!
Adult Education
On September 19th following worship, the Senior High
Youth Group will present a slide show and discussion about their
Mission Trip to Washington DC this summer - please plan to be there
to hear about how they saw God this summer among the urban poor and
homeless individuals in DC that they encountered. You will be
blessed by hearing about their experiences!
Message from the Stewardship Committee: Building the Path on Which We’re Walking
Stewardship, much like worship at a U.C.C. church, is a repeating process of finding our way and making our way. In our spiritual journey we reflect, learn, adjust our course, look how we’re doing, and then begin again. In our stewardship we consider what we and our fellow worshipers need, see how best to provide it, make adjustments to what we do for each other, then watch and re-consider. This isn’t just something Second Church does for you, it’s something Second Church members do for each other.
Stewardship means asking each other to support our future so that we can
Visit our
elders and infirm
Teach our children our values
Create beautiful music for our services
Provide outings, mission trips, and fun activities for our youth
Inform, challenge and support our spiritual journeys
The Stewardship Committee, representing you, asks you to help us build the path on which we’re walking.
From the
Parish Visitor
Not Alone
As we once again come together as a fully fleshed out community, gathering in the sanctuary with the choir, children and young people, I trust you will return having enjoyed the summer months. They were hot, and often humid – but then, it was summer! I had a week away traveling with friends, which is always fun. Many of my other summer weeks were spent managing household repairs – and in that, being reminded of an important truth.
On the Fourth of July weekend I made an unhappy discovery at home. It was one that added to an already full handyman “to do” list, ratcheting that up to an “I need hard core carpentry skills” list. I discovered rotting wood at the back of my house spread across a wide area, complete with evidence of woodpecker foraging (multiple foragings!). Uncertain where to turn, I made a call to a Reading businessman who had helped me find contracting help in the spring when I had to replace my roof.
I left a phone message asking for names I might call upon. When I got home later in the day, I found a phone message from him saying he’d swing by the next morning and take a look. That message – that I was not alone in this – lifted the weight of the world from my shoulders. And I was struck by how easy the lifting had been – it came with knowing only that I was not alone: there was no proposed solution, only (only!) companionship in the midst of the problem.
Peter Gomes in his book The Bible and the Good Life writes:
When we realize that the Bible is about the formation of a fellowship, a community of men and women who are reminded over and over again that they are not alone, not on their own but part of a communion, a company of both the living and the dead in which is to be found the living presence of a loving God, we find the Bible’s unambiguous answer to the question “Am I on my own?” is a resounding “No!” In the creation story in Genesis, it is God…who says “It is not good for man to be alone,” and in the New Testament it is Jesus who says to his despairing disciples, “I will not leave you comfortless.” [pg. 197]
I hope you will be a part of our home-coming as a faith community. Here we will learn more of the Bible which assures us that we are not alone. Here we will experience caring fellowship which demonstrates in practical and prayerful ways that we are not alone. Here we will ask and answer the question, “Am I on my own?” and hear God’s loving and clear response, “You are not alone; I am with you.”
With blessings, Gay Williams
From the Music Desk
Summer is ending and it is time to start back into our usual church rhythm. The Adult Choir will resume rehearsals on Thursday September 9th at 7:30 pm. The Children’s Choir will resume rehearsals Sunday, September 19th from 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. I am sad to announce that after years and years of serving our choir and congregation, Junko Watanabe has moved on. We will all miss her and will treasure memories of her singing. She is being replaced by the gifted soprano, Julia Steinbok. Julia grew up in Needham, and returns to New England after having studied at Oberlin in Ohio, and the Peabody conservatory in Baltimore. Andrus Madsen
News from Nursery School
The Second Church Nursery School will be back in session on Monday, September 13 and starting its 76th year. The school offers an introduction to our church community for families in search of a church home.
October is the month for application to the Second Church Nursery School for the following September 2011. Church members receive priority and a reduction in tuition. Please contact the director, Elinor Dare, at 617-527-4770 for further information.
Loaves and Fishes
The new Second Church cookbook “Loaves and Fishes” is beautiful, chock-full of great recipes, and almost sold out. If there is sufficient demand we will look into ordering more. In the meantime, there are a few copies left. If you’d like one, please call Barbara at the church office. We will arrange to give it to you at church or will send it to you for an extra $5. They cost $10 each.
Shop at Shaws and Earn Contributions to Help the Hungry
No more saving receipts! There's now a new way to earn contributions towards Second Church's gift cards for the hungry with Shaw's Community Rewards program.
How it works:
Use this Shaw's website to link your Shaw's Rewards Card to Second Church's Community Rewards number. When you shop, you can earn contributions on purchases made on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Certain items including prescriptions, alcohol, tobacco, stamps, money orders, gift cards, electronic gift cards, lottery tickets, photo processing, milk and other items prohibited by law are excluded. Contributions apply to total order purchases after discounts, coupons and sales tax. Shaw’s will contribute a percentage of each registered supporter’s eligible monthly purchases, which will be paid on a quarterly basis.
Signing up:
To sign up your Shaw's card, go to the Shaw's Community Rewards website at http://www.shaws.com/communityrewards, and follow the instructions to link the number on your Shaw’s Rewards Card to the Second Church's Community Rewards 11-digit ID number: 49001018878. Then, just go shopping!
We will have a sign-up sheet in Fellowship Hall for those who don’t have access to a computer. We will need your name, Shaw’s Rewards Card number, and telephone number. A volunteer will enter your information at a later date.
YOU Are the Link!
We need you to let us know. If you know of someone who is ill or hospitalized, please be sure to let Richard or Gay know so that the person can be visited and supported. In the old days we were able to “find” people in the hospital. This is no longer true because of The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The Privacy Rule which is a part of HIPAA requires hospitals to ensure the confidentiality of individuals. The result is that there is no longer a “list” to look at to see if any of the church family is at the hospital. So please let us know – we would rather receive the same message seven times (or seventy-seven times!) than miss an opportunity to care for one of our members and friends.
Guideline Available
A brochure of general information for funeral and memorial services here at Second Church is now available on the racks in the lobby. Members and friends may find this document useful to share with family members. This information also might be valuable to someone you know – a friend or neighbor – who is unchurched and in need of such services.
At the time of the loss of a loved one, you may find having the information about various options on a single sheet of paper to be very helpful. The brochure encourages those who might wish, to make choices now about readings and/or hymns you wish to be included at your service, and pass those selections onto the church office for retention.
ALTERNATIVE DONATIONS
Do you have things that you do not need and that others might use? Click here to see a list of organizations who might like to have your donations.
*** DID YOU KNOW? ***
Celebrating 225 Years, a bound collection of articles and factoids which were written during our anniversary year about Second Church’s history, is now available in the Church Office. To obtain a copy, call or email (office@2ndchurch.org) the Church Office.