Announcements for Sunday, February 23, 2014
HELPFUL CHURCH INFORMATION
A NURSERY AND TODDLER ROOM are available downstairs for babies and toddlers during the church service. Grace Kneil will be there to greet you and your children. A multiage SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASS meets in the lower level following “A Time for all Children”. Anna Duxler and Megan Lovely teach the class.
BABY MONITORS are available for those of you who leave your children in the nursery or toddler room during the church service. To check one out, please see Grace in the nursery.
BE SURE TO CHECK OUR WEB SITE ww.ucchurch.org each week for updates and new pictures! A preview of the Order of Service, Sunday announcements and Sermon Titles are posted each week! An archive of sermons, newsletters, and up-to-date calendar are all readily available on the website too.
HEARING ASSISTED RECEIVERS are available for your use during the church service. Please see an usher if you need one.
WANT A CD of a worship service? Please sign up on the CD Form on the information board in Fellowship Hall. You may pick-up your CD in the library. $2 per CD may be put in “Deposit Box” in the office.
WOMENS’ GUILD BOOK EXCHANGE New books come in every week for this Women’s Guild outreach project. Please bring books you have read and think others would enjoy to add to our bookshelves. We like to keep our inventory interesting and inviting!
CHECK OUT THE BULLETIN BOARDS IN FELLOWSHIP HALL. The minutes of all the UCC Boards are posted on the bulletin boards as is the roster for the Church Council.
UCC HAS A FACEBOOK PAGE! You can link to our Facebook page by clicking on “Facebook” on any page of our church website, www.ucchurch.org
Good Morning! Welcome to University
Congregational Church!
WE INVITE OUR VISITORS TODAY to join us in Fellowship Hall after the service for coffee, refreshments and conversation. Just follow the crowd down the hallway (west).
PLEASE SIGN THE FELLOWSHIP PAD when it comes down the pew. Members please sign and update any changes in your contact information. If you are a guest, please sign the pad so that we may thank you for worshipping with us.
TODAY
THE FLOWERS ON THE COMMUNION TABLE are given in appreciation for the eighty years Anita Jones has graced our green earth.
THIS WEEK
THE CHURCH COUNCIL will meet Monday, 6:30, in the conference room.
YOGA CLASSES meet on Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. ($5.00) and Friday at 10:00 a.m.in Fellowship Hall.
FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT Starting Friday, February 28, 6:00 p.m. there will be a movie night in Fellowship Hall with popcorn and snacks!
NEXT SUNDAY
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN of the annual meeting of the Endowment Foundation of University Congregational Church. The meeting will be held on Sunday, March 2, 2014 provided for in the Foundation by-laws. All members of the congregation are also members of the Foundation and welcome to participate in this meeting. The meeting will be held in the sanctuary immediately following the worship service for the following purposes:
- Presentation of the Annual Endowment Financial Report.
- Any other business as may properly come before the meeting.
MUNCH AND MUSE LENTEN SERIES
Beginning Wednesday, March 5, 6:00 in Fellowship Hall
Each Wednesday a chapter from the book “The Last Week” written by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in which a day by day account of Jesus’s final week of life beginning on Palm Sunday will be presented and discussed. Reading the book before the class is preferred but not required.
There are 10 copies of “The Last Week” in the church library. You may check out one of these books or they are $10.00 on Amazon if you want to purchase one.
The final chapter ending the series will be on
Thursday, April 17, Maundy Thursday.
A light dinner will be served.
*Please use the email column of the Fellowship Pad to mark if you plan to come and the number coming. We don’t need your email just make a note that you are coming and how many.
292014 COMMUNION TABLE FLOWER SCHEDULE is on the PIC board in Fellowship Hall. May 1, June 29, and a few dates in Aug. and Sept. are available plus Nov. 16. Sign up early to get the date you want!
NEW ADDRESS FOR BILL PARK good until May.
Bill Park
c/o Christina White
11301 W 125th Terrace
Kansas City, Kansas 66213
Keep the cards and notes coming he loves to hear from you!
ROBIN IS MAKING BANNERS FOR EASTER this coming Thursday, February 27 at 9:00 in Fellowship Hall. She has the design and just needs your help mostly cutting material.
FEBRUARY FINAL FRIDAY ART CRAWL at Inter-Faith Ministries will feature faith leaders. Our own Robin McGonigle was photographed and asked questions about her personal and professional goals. These photos and responses are being made into artwork by Newman students and will be for sale at Interfaith. The Art Crawl is this Friday, February 28 6:00- 9:00 pm located at Inter-Faith Ministries, 829 N. Market.
PARTNERS FOR WICHITA—FILL-THE-GAP PROGRAM
this Spring will be March 17 through March 21 from 11:30 to 1:30 at the Urban League site at 9th and Grove. Lunches will be distributed during these Spring Break dates and we are looking for volunteers to help pass out these lunches. We also will be collecting the following items at the church to supplement the meals that are served to the children each day: Kid- size boxes of raisins or dried fruit, Goldfish cheese snacks, and wrapped healthy snack bars. There is a signup sheet in Fellowship Hall if you would like to volunteer to help.
WG COOK’S NIGHT OUT IS THURSDAY MARCH 20. Our own Wayne Roberts will be the speaker along with Pat Gallagher who are both members of the Friends of McConnell Executive Committee and will present a video history of McConnell Air Force Base, explain the role Friends of McConnell plays in supporting airman, and discuss the basing of the new tanker. The ladies of the Guild will be preparing the meal. Mark your calendars, note the day change (from Wed. to Thurs.), and sign up in Fellowship Hall. Adults $15.00 p.p. Children (Ages 4-10) $5.00. Let us know if you need childcare.
Traditional Word: Genesis 17:1-10 from The Message
1-2 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, God showed up and said to him, “I am The Strong God, live entirely before me, live to the hilt! I’ll make a covenant between us and I’ll give you a huge family.”
3-8 Overwhelmed, Abram fell flat on his face.
Then God said to him, “This is my covenant with you: You’ll be the father of many nations. Your name will no longer be Abram, but Abraham, meaning that ‘I’m making you the father of many nations.’ I’ll make you a father of fathers—I’ll make nations from you, kings will issue from you. I’m establishing my covenant between me and you, a covenant that includes your descendants, a covenant that goes on and on and on, a covenant that commits me to be your God and the God of your descendants. And I’m giving you and your descendants this land where you’re now just camping, this whole country of Canaan, to own forever. And I’ll be their God.”
Genesis 17:15-19 from The Message
15-16 God continued speaking to Abraham, “And Sarai your wife: Don’t call her Sarai any longer; call her Sarah. I’ll bless her—yes! I’ll give you a son by her! Oh, how I’ll bless her! Nations will come from her; kings of nations will come from her.”
17 Abraham fell flat on his face. And then he laughed, thinking, “Can a hundred-year-old man father a son? And can Sarah, at ninety years, have a baby?”
18 Recovering, Abraham said to God, “Oh, keep Ishmael alive and well before you!”
19 But God said, “That’s not what I mean. Your wife, Sarah, will have a baby, a son. Name him Isaac (Laughter). I’ll establish my covenant with him and his descendants, a covenant that lasts forever.
(over)
Romans 4:16-25 from The Message
16 This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backward. He is our faith father.
17-18 We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!”
19-25 Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.
First Anthem “He Watching Over Israel”
He watching over Israel, slumbers not nor sleeps.
shouldst thou ,walking in grief languish, He will quicken thee,
He slumbers not, nor sleeps.
Second Anthem “In Remembrance”
In remembrance of me, eat this bread. In remembrance of me, drink this wine,
In remembrance of me pray for the time when God’s own will is done.
In remembrance of me heal the sick, In remembrance of me, feed the poor,
In remembrance of me, open the door and let your brothers in,
take eat and be comforted, drink and remember , too,
that this is my body and precious blood, shed for you, shed for you.
In remembrance of me, search for truth, In remembrance of me, always love,
In remembrance of me, don’t look above , but in your heart for love.
Do this in remembrance of me.
Contemporary Word: “Puzzlement” from “The King and I” written Rogers and Hammerstein
When I was a boy, world was better spot
What was so was so, what was not was not
Now, I am a man, world have changed a lot
Some things nearly so, others nearly not
There are times I almost think
I am not sure of what I absolutely know
Very often find confusion
In conclusion, I concluded long ago
In my head are many facts
That, as a student, I have studied to procure
In my head are many facts
Of which I wish I was more certain, I was sure
Is a puzzlement
When my father was a king
He was a king who knew exactly what he knew
And his brain was not a thing
Forever swinging to and fro and fro and to
Shall I, then be like my father
And be willfully unmovable and strong?
Or is it better to be right?
Or am I right when I believe I may be wrong?
Is a danger to be trusting one another
One will seldom want to do what other wishes
But unless someday somebody trust somebody
There’ll be nothing left on earth excepting fishes
There are times I almost think
Nobody sure of what he absolutely know
Everybody find confusion
In conclusion, he concluded long ago
And it puzzle me to learn
That tho’ a man may be in doubt of what he know
Very quickly he will fight
He’ll fight to prove that what he does not know is so
Oh, sometimes I think that people going mad
Ah, sometimes I think that people not so bad
But no matter what I think, I must go on living life
As leader of my kingdom, I must go forth
Be father to my children and husband to each wife
Etcetera, etcetera and so forth
If my Lord in Heaven Buddha, show the way
Everyday I try to live another day
If my Lord in Heaven Buddha, show the way
Everyday I do my best for one more day
But is a puzzlement
