Catch up with news from the Heart of Texas Association!
See the June 2022 HoT newsletter embedded below or view it directly by following this link.
Author: Faith UCC (Page 6 of 28)
Per request during the congregational meeting, attached is a letter from the South Central Conference—UCC attorney verifying the correctness and legality of the pastor’s compensation package approved with our annual budget. For further questions, please see a member of Council.
Please click the following link or copy and paste it into your browser to open the attorney document: https://www.faithuccnb.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/2022-04.28-Housing-Allowance-Question.pdf
Faith Church has entered into a rental agreement with Weight Watchers beginning in June. They will be using our Fellowship Hall three times a week for one hour meetings. Weight Watchers had been a previous tenant of ours several years ago and we are happy to have them back.
We also are leasing the Fellowship Hall to the Comal County Crisis Center to provide a day camp to a few children each week. The Crisis Center is so happy to have the use of our building just a few blocks away from their facility that experienced a fire a few months ago.
Our May Balance Sheet and Income vs. Expense reports are filed in the church office if you would like to view them. May offerings are reported below:
| General Fund Offerings May 2022 | $6688.29 |
| Our Church’s Wider Mission Contribution (2.5%) | $167.21 |
| SFC Contribution (1.5%) | $100.32 |
| Eden Hill Contribution (.75%) | $50.16 |
| Back Bay Contribution (.75%) | $50.16 |
| CUE Contribution (.5%) | $33.44 |
| Designated Offerings May 2022 | |
| Strengthen the Church | $50.00 |
| Riverside Pride | $522.92 |
| One Great Hour of Sharing (UCC) | $100.00 |
| Misc. (Crisis Center and Interfaith Service) | $430.00 |
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Michelle Perry
Treasurer
Greetings and Salutations my fellow Heart of Texas Association Pastors!
For those of you who may not know, not only am I a fellow pastor, but I am also the Heart of Texas Camp Council Liaison! During this summer, I am also volunteering in the office at camp, helping out wherever I can!
I have been asked to send out an SOS for Volunteer Counselors! We are in desperate need of counselors 18 years and older! If you or any of your church members would be interested in spending a week here on the beautiful Guadalupe River, I promise that you will not be disappointed! Your cup will be filled with the Spirit and the joy of camp! And even better yet, you won’t have to worry about leaving camp with a sore back from camp bunks….because we have tempurpedic mattresses in every cabin! 🙂
We should be good on staff for our new Color Splash camp starting Thursday and for Springs Alive next week.
Here is where we do need help:
June 25th-July 2nd: Roaring Rapids/Sports Camp (Roaring needs more counselors at this time!)
July 3rd-9th: Streams of Faith 1/ Geek Week
July 10th-16th: Living Waters/ Eco Camp
July 17th-23rd: Streams of Faith 2
Now, if you live in a nearby radius of New Braunfels and Slumber Falls and you would like to help, but can’t necessarily spend the night every night for a week, WE CAN STILL USE YOUR HELP!
Our Day Camps are back for Sports Camp, Geek Week, and Eco Camp. Day campers arrive at 9am and are picked up by 5pm each day. If you can only help a few hours here and there, we can always have the help around lunch and an hour after lunch during FOB (flat on back) time! Our day campers don’t go to the cabins to rest, so we need helpers to hang with them in the Bizer Lodge!
Any help that you or any of your church members can provide will be greatly appreciated and welcomed with wide open arms!
If you are interested, feel free to email me at [email protected]. My cell phone is 830-660-1440. And when I am out at camp and in the office, the number is 830-625-2212.
I hope you are all having a wonderful summer so far! Hope to see you all soon! You can find me here at SFC for the next month!
Blessings, Jacqueline Lamensky
Faith Church will be partnering with Friedens UCC to host up to four families at Slumber Falls Camp the week of September 11 – 18, 2022.
Volunteers are needed to be present at the camp overnight (7pm-7am). We also need donations of breakfast and lunch items as well as someone willing to make a special breakfast for the families on Saturday morning.
Families in the program are always so glad to spend the week at Slumber Falls where they get to have their own cabins and get to experience a little of the great outdoors.
New volunteers will need to complete a background check through Family Promise and watch the two training videos. More information about signing up and completing the training will be coming soon.
Join us at Faith Church on Wednesday, June 29th 6:30pm as we host a screening of “On the Divide”, a film about some of the realities of and struggles for reproductive justice. A discussion for healing and hope will be provided afterward.
Watch the trailer from “On the Divide” https://www.pbs.org/video/trailer-on-the-divide/
On the Divide
Feature Film
90 minutes
McAllen, TX is home to the last reproductive health clinic on the Texas/Mexico border. It is the center of the tension between religious protesters who try to stop patients coming inside and the security staff of the clinic who fight to protect it. On The Divide follows three different Latinx members of this community and the unforeseen choices they face for their daily survival.
A Fishbowl Films production in association with Giving Voice Films, Willa Productions and Latino Public Broadcasting, and is a co-production of POV. Official Selection, Tribeca Film Festival.
Pastor Carla and Yesenia will be serving on the team for this event and invite you all to join us.
Please see the flyer here or continue reading below for more information.
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North Texas Journey #17
A Three-Day Spiritual Renewal Retreat
Thursday, September 29 – Sunday, October 2, 2022
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Leadership Team
Spiritual Leader – Rev. Nikki Stahl
Lay Leader – Cathy Hansen
North Texas Journey Administrator – Stephanie Hudson
North Texas Spiritual Leader – Rev. Dr. Jo Hudson
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Location – Camp Crucis, Granbury, TX
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A ministry of New Church, UCC & The Brazos Valley & North Texas Journey Communities.
Is it Time to Take a Journey?
Perhaps you’ve been hearing about The Journey. The program is being finalized and the Journey Team is anxiously awaiting the opportunity to share this incredible weekend experience with you.
What is The Journey?
The Journey is a spiritual renewal program intended to strengthen the local church through the development of Christian disciples and leaders. The Journey experience is a 72-hour short course in Christianity, comprised of talks and activities led by clergy and lay persons. Themes of God’s grace, disciplines of faith, Christian discipleship, and what it means to be the church will be explored. The weekend is wrapped in prayer, meditation, special times of worship and daily celebration of Holy Communion.
The “Journey Community” is made up of those who have attended a Journey weekend or a similar weekend offered by many other denominations. The Journey Community supports the weekend experience through prayer and other acts of love and self-giving. The Journey will begin on Thursday evening and conclude mid-afternoon on Sunday. The weekend is open to adults over 18 years of age and offers the experience to open and affirming groups throughout Texas.
The three-day Journey experience and the follow-up groups strengthen and renew Christian people as disciples of Jesus Christ and as active members of the body of Christ in mission to the world.
For more information, or to request a Reservation Form, contact: www.thenewchurch.com/journey
FAQs
What: The aim of the Journey is to inspire, challenge, and equip local church members for Christian action and leadership.
Who: The Journey is for church persons and is designed for active church members and leaders who want to rekindle their faith or renew their vision.
Where: Camp Crucis is a ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth and is located in Granbury, Texas.
How Many: North Texas Journey #17 is limited to 30 attendees. Your reservation provides you a spot for the weekend as space permits.
How to Participate: You can find an application here: Journey (thenewchurch.com). If you have any questions, contact Stephanie Hudson, the North Texas Journey Administrator ([email protected]) or the Lay Leader for Journey 17, Cathy Hansen ([email protected]).
Cost: If your application is submitted by August 15th, 2022, the cost for The Journey is $225. After August 15, the fee is $250. The cost covers your room for the retreat, daily meals, snacks, project supplies, and much, much more. There are scholarships available. Please contact the Journey Administrator ([email protected]) or the Lay Leader for Journey 17, Cathy Hansen ([email protected]) for more information.
The deadline for submitting applications is September 15, 2022.
Catch up with news from around the South Central Conference! Please see the most recent eNews weekly update below!
There is a glitch. If the newsletter is not displaying correctly below, please view the newsletter at: https://conta.cc/3Mz18G5 until it can be resolved.
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Faithful Friends,
I’ve never met anyone who wants abortion to be a necessary reality. Of the 1 in 4 women who have had abortions, I’ve never met or counseled with any for whom it was about selfishness or convenience and I’ve certainly never heard anyone involved in such a difficult decision who’ve approached it lightly.
Steeped in emotion, this is a challenging issue. Certainly, faithful people can prayerfully disagree on a variety of topics. When it comes to issues of justice, safety, equity, and health, it is important that we wrestle together with our feelings, consider all the facts, move past the hype, and ask ourselves what God asks of us, individually and collectively.
Then, we seek to follow God in standing with the rights of all people to access healthcare in the way that best meets their individual circumstance and needs.
To help support rational dialogue and promote justice around Reproductive Health, Faith Church will be hosting a community screening of a documentary film Wednesday, June 29th, at 6:30pm called On the Divide.
Organizers promoting this film are from Peace is Loud, a nonprofit that uses storytelling to advance social justice. According to their conversations with us, the film “follows the stories of three Latinx Catholics living in McAllen, TX, who are connected by the most unexpected of places: the last abortion clinic on the U.S./Mexico border. The film explores how each person balances faith and the right to reproductive services, and sparks important conversations about how people can be Christian AND pro-choice.
The film is a powerful tool to start conversations about how we can provide comfort and compassion for those in the midst of their reproductive story.”
I hope you will join us for the screening and dialogue session afterward as we share our honest concerns, questions, and thoughts together while considering how to best support all women (and men) in a just and compassionate way, especially in light of news of SCOTUS’s pending ruling to overturn Roe v Wade.
In the meantime, I refer you to the UCCs statement on Reproductive Health and Justice linked here and included below) as an idea of how many persons of faith see this issue.
Our spiritual history as God’s people is full of stories of those who have wrestled with God, including Jesus, and were willing to hang on until they had found God’s direction and blessing.
May we follow that tradition, together.
Peace,
Pastor Carla
Reproductive Health and Justice: Why the UCC is a leader in this area
God has given us life, and life is sacred and good. God has also given us the responsibility to make decisions which reflect a reverence for life in circumstances when conflicting realities are present. Jesus affirmed women as full partners in the faith, capable of making decisions that affect their lives.
There are many justice issues related to reproductive health, including access to pre- and post- natal care for all women, equal access to the full range of legal reproductive health services including abortion, the right of women to determine when, if and how many children she should have, access to emergency contraception and other family planning services and information, the right not to be sterilized against one’s wishes, and the ability of women to negotiate safe sexual practices and non-coercive sexual experiences.
The United Church of Christ has affirmed and re-affirmed since 1971 that access to safe and legal abortion is consistent with a woman’s right to follow the dictates of her own faith and beliefs in determining when and if she should have children, and it has supported comprehensive sexuality education as one measure to prevent unwanted or unplanned pregnancies, and to create healthy and responsible sexual persons and relationships. (General Synods VIII, IX, XI, XII, XIII, XVI, XVII, and XVIII)
We have also supported that women with limited financial means should be able to receive public funding in order to exercise her legal right to the full range of reproductive health services. What is legally available to women must be accessible to all women.
The United Church of Christ is one of the founding faith groups of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, formed in 1973 as the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. Over the years, RCRC has continued to bring a strong voice of faith on the moral and religious issues that swirl around public debate over abortion, contraception and pregnancy prevention.
Because there are many religious and theological perspectives on when life and personhood begin, the UCC joins others in advocating that public policy must honor this rich religious diversity. Our position is not a pro-abortion position but a pro-faith, pro-family and pro-woman position.
RCRC has resources to train clergy and others in a counseling position in All Options Counseling which is centered on what is best for the individual woman and supports her decision-making. It also has a pro-choice religious leadership network, specific resources for African American and Latina/o church communities, a Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom network active on college and university campuses, many state affiliates, resources for post-abortion counseling, a Theologies of Choice course for seminaries, and a Seminarians for Choice network. For more information, visit www.rcrc.org.
Dates to Remember (details below):
Pastor Carla on Vacation May 11th-19th
Deadline to Register for SCC Annual Meeting May 13th
Slumber Falls—Register NOW!!!!
Recognition of Graduates May 22nd
City Council Meeting—Chance to Speak to Support Homeless Services May 23rd
SCC Annual Meeting May 27th-29th
Interfaith Pride Service June 9th
Riverside Pride June 11th
General News and Announcements:
Pastor Carla Vacation Days Pastor Carla will be working remotely May 9th and 10th, then completely unplugged the 11th through 19th. She will begin returning messages and calls at that time. Please plan to be present in worship and prayerfully support Faith Church member, Rev. Rohn Armstrong, who will be preaching that day along with Philip Graves and others who will be assisting with worship May 15th. For emergency needs during this time, please contact a member of Council.
Youth Group Thanks Thanks to those who helped our youth have an amazing time
bowling last week! Ten of our young ones and mom, Melissa, enjoyed the outing. Stay tuned for details of the Cookout and Pool Party June 5th after worship or contact one of our Youth Leaders—Lauren Pearce, Carol Sisco-Martinez, and Sue Ashinhurst.
UCC/Faith Church 101 Thanks Thanks to Rev. Bill and Florence Burns, Revs. Ralph and Sandy Ludwig, Tim Marlow, and others for their help with last week’s UCC/Faith Church 101 session. We had 24 in attendance! Our next class will be the first Sunday in August. Until then, Tim Marlow and others will be presenting special Moments of Our History during worship services and in Glimpses of Faith newsletter articles specifically about the history of Faith Church to help our growing congregation understand our strong and vibrant beginnings and heritage of inclusion, service, and social justice.
Serve Spot Prayer for Unity Gathering Thanks A special thank you to Rev. Jim and Mary Pohl and Rev. Bill and Florence Burns for their presence and help at last Monday’s gathering hosted by Faith Church. Nine of us gathered with Kim Francis of Serve Spot to pray for and with one another as we seek to be closer as faith siblings so we can work together more effectively to care for our community. We left refreshed and encouraged by this beautiful time together and cannot wait for the next gathering to pray and grow and build, to be scheduled every other month.
Deadline to Register for SCC Annual Meeting May 13th Please consider attending our first gathering in-person since the pandemic for a time of worship, fellowship, workshops, and discussing the business of the Conference at gorgeous Camp Allen. Worship will be streamed to churches from the Conference so all leaders may attend. Go to https://sccucc.org/ to register and for more information.
Slumber Falls Registration Filling Up Fast, and Counselors Needed!!!! Rev. Jeremy Albers says more campers than ever from outside the denomination are registering for camp so that long-time attendees may wind up not having a slot available, so register ASAP. Also, Jeremy says the issue is not number of beds, but number of Counselors. Prayerfully consider volunteering for a camp this summer to help make this memorable experience more available to more kids and youth. Go to https://slumberfalls.org/ to register and learn more.
Recognition of Graduates May 22nd If you have a young one set to graduate from high school, please contact Administrative Assistant, Janet Sherman, so we may honor your child and pray for this momentous occasion in their lives on Sunday, May 22nd.
More Pews Available to Members At least one, perhaps two more of the short pews in the fellowship hall have become available to members of the church. To claim one of these for your home or office, please contact Janet Sherman.
Adult Sunday School 9:00am In-Person and By Zoom Rev. Bill and Florence Burns are leading a discussion of Dr. Beverly Brown Tatum’s book, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations Around Race.” Books are available from the Burns. Contact the Burns for more information and join them in the Fellowship Hall or by Zoom. Please let Pastor Carla know if you can help run Zoom for this class.
Building and Grounds Committee Our worship space and surrounding property is in need of some repairs and sprucing up to be good stewards of our buildings and to provide an appealing space for members and visitors. A meeting will soon be planned to walk the property, create a list of items that need attention, make plans for what needs to be done first, and discuss ideas for colors and plants and other updates. To participate in these discussions, let your thoughts be heard, and participate in this revitalized committee, please contact Molly Dixon.
New Members Committee As we grow, it is important that more of us engage in
welcoming visitors and helping new members build relationships and find ways to get involved with our activities and ministry. To participate in this newly-forming committee, please connect with Rev. Bill and Florence Burns and Revs. Ralph and Sandy Ludwig.
https://onrealm.org/FaithUnitedChur/give/now!