The Bellringer November 2018 Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church 600 Shepard Avenue Hamden, CT 06514

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1 The Bellringer November 2018 Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church 600 Shepard Avenue Hamden, CT Pastor s Message BY THE REV. JOHN J. MARSCHHAUSEN Let s Talk About Worship Dear Members and Friends of Christ Lutheran, What comes to mind for you when you hear the word worship? For most of us, the first thought we have is probably church or going to church or the church service. That s natural because you re reading the church s newsletter right now, so you re thinking churchy things. The word itself, however, developed in the wider context of human life. Worship came into modern English from the old English language and originally meant something of worth something worthy of our attention and care and even devotion particularly something of such worth such value that it is deserving of our best work. Yes, in the development of English, the words worth and work are related and share some common origin. Thus, in our human experience, where God is recognized as having the highest value the highest worth and deserving of our best work, the whole idea of worship came to encompass something, or obviously in the case of God, someone to whom we ascribe the supreme worth and value and to whom we give our finest devotion and work or, in the simplest way of saying it, the One to whom we give our worth-ship our worship. So, my friends, what does this information about the development of a word have to do with you and church? Well, I am asking you to take everything you think and feel about your relationship with our Lord and God our heavenly Father, our Lord and Savior Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God who gives us new birth in Jesus and then nurtures this saving faith within us throughout our lives I am asking you to take everything you are as a child of God and reflect for a moment on just how worthy is that just how much devotion and work for the sake of your God and your faith in God is central to your life? Just how important and valuable to you is a living, breathing faith in Christ Jesus? This is your worship! It is so much more than simply what we do together in church on Sunday mornings. It is fundamental to who you are as a person of faith. Let s Talk About Worship, Continued on Page 7 1

2 Church News... CHURCH COUNCIL The Church Council will conduct its next meeting on Sunday, Nov. 11, following the morning worship service. LUTHER S LUNCH: Hot dogs, hamburgers, brats, potato salad, pork roast, sauerkraut and other delicious sides and desserts were served up on Reformation Sunday, October 28 th, during Christ Lutheran s annual Luther s Lunch. Thirty-two CLC ers attended the potluck luncheon, which followed the morning worship service. Thanks to all who helped with setup, cleanup, or brought a dish to share. Special thanks to Dave Brown and Phil Napolitano for grilling and to Ursula Hunter for shopping for the supplies and menu items needed to make this event a success. FOOD DRIVE: To help local families in need this holiday season, we will be collecting non-perishable food items for the Hamden Food Bank. To ensure delivery prior to Thanksgiving, please bring food donations to church on Sunday, November 18, or drop them off throughout the month in the collection box at CLC. 2 FILL THOSE BOXES: The deadline is fast approaching, but there is still time to fill a shoebox to bring joy to a child across the globe through Operation Christmas Child, a project of Samaritan s Purse. OCC partners with churches around the world to reach boys and girls with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Shoeboxes should be labeled for a boy or girl and filled with a wow toy, such as a doll or stuffed animal. Please include other fun toys as well as hygiene items and school supplies and a $9 donation to help defray the cost of shipping. Jerry Barton and Gerlinde Kirbs will be delivering the shoeboxes to the drop-off location on Friday, Nov. 16. If you have any questions, please speak with Jerry or Gerlinde. WINTER WARMTH TREE: The leaves are turning, we ve had a slight frost, the church furnace has been turned on, definite chill in the air it s time to once again think about our Winter Warmth Tree. As usual, the tree will be set up the first week of December in the Narthex. Please help decorate it with warm items such as gloves, mittens, socks, scarves, ear muffs and hats for women and children. We will once again donate our items to New Reach Life Haven Shelter in New Haven. Last year we donated 92 items. It would be fantastic if we could reach 100 this year! Joann Mourt

3 Church News (Cont.) ANGEL TREE: This holiday season, members of Christ Lutheran Church are invited to join the LCW in supporting the Salvation Army s Angel Tree program. The Angel Tree program provides new clothing and toys for children of needy families at Christmas. The Women of the Church voted at their October 21 meeting to sponsor five angels. CLC will be provided with Angel Tags for each of these children, whose families have registered with the Salvation Army to receive holiday assistance. Each Angel Tag will include the first name, age, and gender of each child, along with the child s suggested gift wishes and clothes and shoe sizes. There is no limit to the number of gifts we may choose to provide whatever we are able to do is greatly appreciated but we will divide the gift requests so that each child will be represented by four Angel Tags (ie, 5 children x 4 individual gift requests = 20 tags). Anyone who wishes to participate may remove a tag from our Angel Tree and purchase an appropriate gift (or gifts) for the child described on the tag. The suggested value of each gift is $15-$30. Once a gift is purchased, the Angel Tag should be attached to the unwrapped gift and returned by Sunday, December 9, to Sharon Napolitano, who is coordinating the effort. If you have any questions about this project, please speak with Sharon. People News... OUTSTANDING COMMUNITY PARTNER: The Hamden Veterans Commission was selected this year by the Agency on Aging of South Central Connecticut to receive the Outstanding Community Partner award. The Hamden Veterans Commission, chaired by Abner Oakes, was chosen for its efforts in establishing the RSVP Veteran Pen Pal Project. Through this unique collaboration, 45 Veterans were engaged in writing to more than 100 middle school students. The Project was designed to create a dynamic learning relationship between veteran and student, with the goal of veterans sharing their stories with students, and for students to ask questions about the lives of veterans. I am very proud of all the Hamden Veterans Commission members: Chairman Abner Oakes III, Johnnie Best, Laura Goodwin, Reginald Jackson, David Lewis, Elissa Lupi, William MacMullen, Tyrone Mitchell, Wayne Roundtree, Calvin Shepard and Ronald Weil for their dedication and hard work, said Hamden Mayor Curt Balzano Leng. They deserve this accolade for their tireless efforts to honor the Hamden Veterans who served our country, our state, and our town with distinction and bravery in defense of our freedoms. The Outstanding Community Partner Award was formally presented to the Hamden Veterans Commission at the AOASCC Annual Breakfast Meeting on October 24 at Race Brook Country Club in Orange. 3

4 Upcoming Events... STEWARDSHIP MONTH AT CHRIST LUTHERAN In the context of our faith, Stewardship means the careful, wise, generous use of our gifts and resources. This means how we use the resources with which we have been blessed by God in our personal lives, in our family, in our community and, of course, in our lives as members of Jesus church. Stewardship, by Christian definition, not only includes our material blessings our possessions and our financial resources. Stewardship also means the gifts and abilities and talents with which each of us has been blessed by God, as well as our health, our time and our energy. How we care for all these blessings and use them in service both to God and our neighbor is what faithful Christians mean when we speak about Stewardship when we think of ourselves as good and faithful stewards of God. Well, my friends, in most Christian congregations November is Stewardship Month. November is our time to be especially thankful to God for all the abundant blessings God has showered upon us, our community, our nation and particularly our church. November is our special time to remind ourselves that Stewardship is a two-way street not only are we thankful for what we have received, but we also give we recognize our responsibility to God and to one another to care for our resources and use them generously in service to others. And finally, of course, during November we recognize our call from God to work together to plan our faithful and generous service in Jesus name for the coming year of This means we make our promises to God and to one another as a congregation we make our pledges concerning the way we will support the mission of Christ Lutheran Church during 2019, and then we ask our leaders to plan next year s work based on these promises. So, dear members and friends of Christ Lutheran, I ask you to do some intentional thinking and praying about Stewardship now. Think and pray about your personal and family stewardship of gifts and resources. Think and pray about Christ Lutheran s mission and how your stewardship supports Jesus work. And then respond as faithfully and generously as you are able when asked to pledge your support of Christ Lutheran for The Sundays of November 11 and 18 will be our Stewardship Sundays here at Christ Lutheran. Our worship and prayers will focus on the biblical message of stewardship on the 11th, and we ll make our pledges to God and one another on the 18th in worship and during a special fellowship time following the service. Then, of course, on the next Thursday we ll all celebrate our national Thanksgiving Day. Good timing, don t you think? Have a great Thanksgiving! Next year will be a critical year in the life of Christ Lutheran. Let s start it off well with our Stewardship commitments in Jesus name Grace & peace, Pastor John Marschhausen 4

5 Worship Traditions... A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF LUTHERAN WORSHIP IN AMERICA, CONTINUED In the October issue of The Bellringer I started this brief history of how we American Lutherans worship our Lord and God. I ended last month s article with the publication of Christ Lutheran s present worship resource, the Service Book and Hymnal (SBH), in It was published by the multiple Lutheran church bodies in our country at the time who were in the process of merging into what became the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) and the American Lutheran Church (ALC). Since these emerging Lutheran churches represented such a wide spectrum of heritage and tradition, the big challenge was how to produce a book for worship that fairly represented as many of the people as possible people originally from all over central and northern Europe; people whose ancestors had been Americans since the 17th Century to those who were first-generation Americans; people for whom orthodox Lutheran liturgy and hymnody was of paramount importance to those who felt very comfortable within the mainstream of American Protestantism and wanted a wide variety of ways to worship God. The task was daunting and, of course, perfection was impossible. The SBH was a remarkable publication. At its core, it represented the best of Lutheran worship traditions at that time. It is theologically solid Lutheran through and through. It offered, for that time, quite a variety within the liturgical section of the book. Christ Lutheran has not used the variety available, but it is there nonetheless. The hymn section reflects the decision to not wander too far afield from the traditional hymns Lutherans were singing in the 1950s mostly of German origin, some Scandinavian and Bohemian/Moravian, and a few protestant (primarily of Methodist and Presbyterian origins). The SBH is noticeably lacking in 20th Century American hymnody as well as hymns from ethnic traditions beyond northern-european. I have come to recognize that Christ Lutheran s hymn-singing traditions and experiences over the years have not encompassed the full variety of hymns either in the SBH or the hymns sung and enjoyed by most Lutheran congregations in this country. In no way is this meant to be a judgment statement. It simply represents a reality within the context of American Lutheran worship. When the SBH was published in 1958, a third of American Lutheranism was not involved. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LC-MS) had its own book of worship, The Lutheran Hymnal, which it first published in Since the LC-MS was overwhelmingly German in its heritage and wanted to maintain that heritage to a large degree, its worship traditions and expectations were much more homogeneous in the mid-20th Century than those of the Lutherans served by the SBH, and The Lutheran Hymnal reflected that reality. The 1960s and 1970s became a time of rapid and dramatic change in America, and those changes had a powerful impact on American Lutheranism. No longer were immigrants coming from northern Europe and enlarging our congregations with members who shared a relatively-common worship expectation. No longer were Americans routinely churchgoers who automatically sought out a Lutheran congregation when they moved to a new community most often a congregation from the same Lutheran church body from which they had come. The three large national Lutheran churches recognized this, and they recognized as well that for our mission in Jesus name as Lutheran Christians, we needed to at least start getting our act together. The Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church and The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod came together to form the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A. or LCUSA for short. This was not a merger of the three churches, but an organization designed to facilitate the ways the three churches could work together in specific areas while maintaining their independence in other areas. Military, hospital and college chaplaincy is one example of an area in which Lutherans worked together through LCUSA. A Very Brief History, continued on Page 6 5

6 Worship Traditions (Cont.)... A Very Brief History of Lutheran Worship in America, continued from Page 5 Theological discussion with other non-lutheran churches, nationally and internationally, is another example. And working together on how we Lutherans might work together to reach out to others through our worship experience was another area of LCUSA work. By the end of the 1960s, the three Lutheran churches had agreed that a new, common book of worship for all American Lutherans would not only draw all of us closer to one another, but it would also be a powerful and positive way to invite others to get to know us and become a part of us. In other words, our common worship could become a way of reaching out to others with the Gospel message. The result of this thinking led to the formation of a Worship Commission tasked with developing what was to become the Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW), or the green book as many of us came to call it. By the mid-1970s, many parts of the LBW were ready for trial use in Lutheran congregations around the country, and in 1978 the full LBW was published and began to be adopted by congregations. Unfortunately, during this time the LC-MS had its own internal struggles, which led not only to a split within that church but also to its withdrawal from LCUSA and all inter-lutheran cooperation, including the use of the LBW. The LC-MS chose to go its own way and produce its own worship resources and continues to do so today. The LCA, the ALC and the new Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC), continued to support and use the Lutheran Book of Worship as they moved closer and closer together until their full merger in 1988 as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or the ELCA, Christ Lutheran s church body today. The Lutheran Book of Worship was designed to not only bring Lutherans together in a common worship, but also to dramatically expand our worship experience and horizons. In this it was not entirely successful as our worship leaders and editors tried mightily to keep our more conservative and tradition-focused brothers and sisters happy, but it was a huge step, nonetheless, in the direction of opening up Lutheran worship. The LBW included three completely different musical settings of the holy communion service, two of which were considered relatively contemporary at the time, even as they maintained the traditional structure and theology of historical Lutheran liturgy. Brand new, contemporary musical settings were produced for the minor services of Matins and Vespers. The language was completely updated throughout the new book. The hymn section updated but retained roughly 60% of the hymns from the older SBH and TLH while introducing a great many new hymns from ethnic and ecumenical traditions unknown before in Lutheran worship resources. Some of our adjustments to the LBW were more challenging than others, but overwhelmingly it was received with joy and celebration, and it quickly became our Lutheran identity in terms of worship. Christ Lutheran, for a number of its own reasons, chose not to adopt the LBW but to remain with the SBH. Without judging the reasons for this decision, I must say that a major result has been that the people of Christ Lutheran have not experienced the growth and expansion of Lutheran worship traditions over the last 40 years. I personally believe this places the people of Christ Lutheran at a distinct disadvantage as the congregation moves into the future. Outside of Christ Lutheran, of course, Lutheran worship did not stop moving and developing with the publication of the LBW in Ours is a time of rapid change. The LBW was replaced in 2006 by the Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW), but enough for this issue. I ll bring us up to the present in the December issue of The Bellringer Pastor John Marschhausen 6

7 From the Pastor... Let s Talk About Worship, Continued from Page 1 Of course, what we do together on Sunday morning is central to all of this central to our faith. What we do together in church on Sunday morning is central to how the Holy Spirit builds and nurtures our faith through God s Word in Holy Scripture and through the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion. What we do together in church is also central to how we respond together to God s actions in our lives and in our world. This time together is of tremendous worth that s why we call it worship! While God is certainly at work in us through Word and Sacraments, so we also need to be faithfully at work in offering our very best to God in return as we sing as we pray as we listen as we present our offerings as we kneel at Jesus table as we interact with one another before, during and after the church service itself and most certainly, as we leave the church and go back out into God s world in Jesus name as Jesus servants. All this is our worship all this both defines and shapes who we are and how we live. Again, my friends, how have you thought of worship? Do the above paragraphs reflect how you value your time together with your Christian sisters and brothers of Christ Lutheran Church? Does this reflect how devoted you are in truly working at what God is doing in your life and the lives of the other worshippers while in the church service? Are you positively overjoyed at every opportunity to worship together? or, perhaps, is worship the wrong word? would chore be a better word for you? Just some things about which I hope you will reflect and give thanks for the privilege and maybe work on some attitude changes, too, if needed. Grace and peace in Jesus Pastor John Marschhausen Church Notes... TO REACH THE PASTOR: Call Pastor John Marschhausen at Christ Lutheran s new address is christlutheranshepard@frontier.com. COFFEE HOUR: Do you have something to celebrate this fall? Please consider hosting Coffee Hour! A sign-up sheet is posted. SUNDAY SCHOOL: Sunday School classes are held on Sundays at 9 a.m. for children ages 3 through 8th grade. VISIT OUR WEBSITE: To visit our website, log on to or go directly to Please send photos and other submissions to Chris Shine at webmaster@christlutheranhamden.org. SUBMISSION DEADLINE: The deadline for the December issue of The Bellringer is Sunday, Nov. 25. Please give your news items to Sharon Napolitano or her at snapolitano1@yahoo.com. 7

8 Sunday Servants... Please check the Sunday Servants listing on the bulletin board for the schedule. Usher and Acolyte Conflict? Please call Dave Shine at (203) Nov. 4 Holy Communion Service 10 a.m. Ushers: Earle Douglas (C), Caroline Douglas, Gerlinde Kirbs, Paul Snyder Lector: Paul Snyder Acolyte: Samantha Kovacs Coffee Hour: Please Volunteer Nov. 11 Sunday Worship Service 10 a.m. Ushers: Ursula Hunter (C), Peter Hawkins Lector: Peter Hawkins Acolyte: Mario Persiani Coffee Hour: Please Volunteer Nov. 18 Sunday Worship Service 10 a.m. Ushers: Sharon Napolitano (C), John Napolitano Lector: Sharon Napolitano Acolyte: Gracie O Brien Coffee Hour: Stewardship Luncheon Nov. 25 Sunday Worship Service 10 a.m. Ushers: Loraine Brown (C), Dave Brown Lector: Dave Brown Acolyte: Samantha Kovacs Coffee Hour: Please Volunteer Dec. 2 Holy Communion Service 10 a.m. Ushers: Durbin Hunter (C), Ursula Hunter, Ken Allen, Gerlinde Kirbs Lector: Durbin Hunter Acolyte: Samantha Kovacs Coffee Hour: Please Volunteer * Captain 8