SAYING GOODBYE TO SAS... CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE TO HEAR THE FINAL SONG.

Transcription

1 Adventist Heritage Center From: SLIGO CHURCH E-WEEKEND Sent: Thursday, June 8, :01 PM To: Adventist Heritage Center Subject: SAYING GOODBYE TO SAS...- eweekend for June 8th, 2017 Having trouble viewing this ? Click here June 8th, 2017 The enewsletter of Sligo Church SAYING GOODBYE TO SAS... CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE TO HEAR THE FINAL SONG. Greetings Lexie, Over the span of 100 years its hard to fathom the knowledge shared and the lives that have been affected by a school dedicated to educating children while sharing the love of Jesus. The fact that this is Sligo School's final year as Sligo School can be sad to many. Thousands of individuals can say they've attended and gained much from their time at 1

2 Sligo School. It would be interesting to know how many will know by heart the song the kids sing for the final time in the video above. We share the burden of saying goodbye to an identity and institution with Takoma Park Church and John Nevins Andrews Adventist School. A process that has taken decades, presses the need to make changes. These changes, although rough to those who have loved and devoted themselves to their respective schools, are being intentionally orchestrated to allow what comes next to make a lasting positive effect on our community of believers and the wider community. Takoma Academy Preparatory School, or TAPrep, will be the combining of personnel, ideals, love of children and a love of Jesus Christ. It is a partnership of two legacy churches dedicated to making sure there is a place of quality education for its children and the children of our region. Walls are coming down and walls are being put up. Old cabinets and lockers are being removed and new design and technology are taking their place. A new media center, fresh paint and a fresh gym floor design are all exciting aspects on the horizon. The funding that will come from the combining of both schools should give the new school a greater leg to stand on than many educational institutions across the Adventist spectrum. It becomes a mandate and a grand challenge for all of us in this family of believers, to support this new institution. It is the embodiment of the work done by our founders. This is not the death of institutions but the product of the hard work that has gone into keeping them alive. TAPrep will be a leader in Christian Education and more ready to deliver it for the 21 century. Each child brought closer to an understanding of who Jesus Christ is in their lives and at the same time learning what is needed to make an impact on this world is a testament to the faith we carry in Adventist Education. God Bless TAPrep and every heart yearning for it's success! News and Blogs Nowhere to Run By Stephen Chavez The phrase, taking your life into your hands, has taken on new meaning over the last few weeks and months. We used to have to be reminded to stay away from certain parts of town because of the unsavory characters we might find there. Adventist Cookbook Named Best in the World By: Nathan Brown A book authored by a Seventh-day Adventist nutritionist and published by Signs Publishing has been named "Best in the World." Food as Medicine: Cooking for Your Best Health was awarded the Best 2

3 No more. Now the unsavory characters follow us down the... "Health and Nutrition" Cookbook in the world for 2016 at the prestigious read more... READ THIS STORY Events and Info 3

4 An exciting series is coming to Sligo Church starting June 16th, click the image above for more info. 4

5 This summer is going to be unmissable! Click here to register or volunteer! AUG 5th - With featured speaker, Dr. Terry Johnsson Don't miss our International Luncheon 5

6 and a special emphasis on Celebrating 20 years of Sligo Youth Department Leadership (SYD) and so much more!!! SLIGO MEN'S CHORALE The Sligo music ministry is inviting all men with a passion for singing and a heart for worship to take part in our new Men's Chorale, which meets at 7pm on Monday evenings. For more information, contact our Choral Conductor, Paul Byssainthe, Jr. at pbyssainthe@sligochurch.org, or at , ext we do! GREAT KIDS CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER We're now enrolling Ages year olds. There is very limited space available, so get your child enrolled now! Please call and make an appointment, Monday - Friday between 9am and 5pm, to see and hear the what Great Kids has to offer. We offer a STEM/STEAM based Christian Preschool Program. Growing great kids is what MISSION TRIP TO SAVANNAH GEORGIA!!! Join us this summer for the Sligo Youth Mission Trip from July At the Savannah, GA Workcamp, Sligo Youth (+14) will demonstrate Jesus' love and compassion in tangible ways, serving real people in need while working on projects like... * Building wheelchair ramps and handrails * Weatherizing homes and trailers * Reconstructing sagging porches * Significant painting projects * Interior and exterior carpentry * Other home repair projects that the homeowner cannot otherwise complete This Sabbath Our Speaker: 6

7 FIRST AND SECOND SERVICE "The Keys to the Kingdom, Part V: Dragnet" Pastor Charles A. Tapp CLICK HERE FOR OUR BULLETIN FRIDAY SUNSET: 8:33PM SATURDAY SUNSET: 8:33PM GIVE to expand God's Kingdom SLIGOCHURCH.ORG 7700 CARROLL AVE. TAKOMA PARK, MD Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church, 7700 Carroll Avenue, Takoma park, MD SafeUnsubscribe Forward this Update Profile About our service provider Sent by in collaboration with Try it free today 7

8 Search Subscribe Menu is editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide. His next book, Baptizing the Devil: Evolution and the Seduction of Christianity is set to be released this fall by Pacific Press. JUNE 1, 2017 espite my ignorance of the demonic forces behind it, my first foray into the occult showed me how narrow and inadequate philosophical materialism, as a depiction of reality, really is. Just as one black swan nullified the belief that all swans were white, one supernatural experience nullified my disbelief in the supernatural. To pilfer a metaphor from Plato, a materialistic only world-view is like having spent your life chained, face-first, to the back wall of a cave, which makes you believe that reality consists only of the shadows cast on the wall before your eyes. In contrast, from In the beginning (Gen. 1:1) to Even so, come, Lord Jesus! (Rev. 22:20), Scripture portrays reality as fantastically deeper, richer, and more multi-faceted than someone locked in materialism could ever approach. Imagine being visited, in person, by the angel Gabriel (Luke 1:26-29), only to write off the experience as the onset of schizophrenia. The concept of prayer alone, for example, defies everything we know about the natural world. How could a prayer uttered here (silently or out loud) possibly be heard in heaven, when, according to the Special Theory of Relativity, the fastest information can travel is 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light in a vacuum? At that rate your petition would take 4.6 hours to reach Pluto, much less the throne of grace. If spoken prayer is anything more than protoplasm vibrating molecules of air, reality must be layered in ways that, for now, our imaginations aren t broad enough to grasp. And the act of creation itself? By having spoken (spoken!) matter, especially living matter, into existence, the Lord has revealed to us a reality so deep that probably no configuration of human neurons in any conceivable bath of neurotransmitters could translate that into something our consciousness could now comprehend. And yes, mathematics might be the language of nature, but what numbers, even eight digits to the right of the decimal point, are going to describe, And God said, Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky (Gen. 1:20)? However effective numbers might be in depicting creation, they re surely too crude, e integer of grace is 3 first ; then y lived. A local church unde its mission

9 sloppy, and ethereal to mathematize the act of creation itself. Meanwhile, one would be hard-pressed working from atheistic materialistic presuppositions to explain how someone in a dream 500 years before Christ could so accurately depict the 1,260 years of Papal hegemony depicted in Daniel 7: Then, too, a cosmos in which the One through whom all things were made (John 1:3) became a fetus in the womb of Mary is way too grand and multi-layered to fit into scientific literature. And of all the exabytes of stored human knowledge, which bits or bytes can begin to explain how Jesus healed the paralytic (Mark 2), or gave sight to the boy blind from birth (John 9), or raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11)? Accounts like these, and others in Scripture, reveal how paltry is our grasp of the world. It s as if we float on the sheen above a deep ocean but never penetrate the depths below because we ve been programmed to believe that the sheen is all there is. Though we exist in a material world, Scripture reveals to us a reality much greater and deeper than the materials that electromagnetic waves impinging upon our eyes can show us. Answered prayer, miracles, providence, the intervention of angels, fulfilled prophecies all burst through the narrow parameters of materialism and point to realms of existence beyond subatomic particles and quantum fields. But this greater reality shouldn t be just metaphysical speculation (Do angels cast shadows?). Dust we are now and dust we will ever be if our world is only what science books tell us. Scripture doesn t just reveal this grander reality, it tells us that our only hope arises from it. Yet we don t need to wait until the Second Coming to avail ourselves of what God offers now. How often, looking only at the seen, only at the natural, we forget the unseen, the supernatural, and that God and the reality He has created isn t limited by matter and the laws that govern it. True, it was through the occult, the dark side of this grander reality, that I was first exposed, at least consciously, to this grander reality, one far beyond what physics and biology could ever reveal. But now, thanks to the Scriptures and my own experiences, I know that behind the cold materialist forces that seem to engulf everything, the grace and smile and power of the God who spoke our world into existence and, then, later hung on the cross, overshadows it all, intervening in this world and in our personal lives, manifesting a love that pervades physical reality but remains unconstrained by it. Clifford Goldstein is editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide. His next book, set to be released in the fall by Pacific Press, is Baptizing the Devil: Evolution and the Seduction of Christianity. Current Adventist News Download The Adventist World Week of Prayer Edition Online Exclusives Gracenotes Events What Concerns You about the Church? Issue Archives Our Roots and Mission Staff Writer's Guidelines Advertising Kit Adventist World Reader Response Photo Galleries Prayer Requests Partners Contact Free Newsletter Photo Submissions Downloads Sunset Calendar Church Locator RSS Feed Advertising Questions Copyright 2017, Adventist Review. All rights reserved worldwide.

10 (/) About (/about_us) Advertise (/advertising-information-request) Contact (/contact) Subscriber Login (/user/login) Search Forum ( Chapters ( Membership (/store/membership) Journal (/spectrum) Current Issue (/journal/current) Archive ( Free Issue (/request_complimentary_subscription) Spectrum ( Author Index (/authors) Recent Posts (/recent_posts) Support (/support_spectrum) Store ( Merchandise ( Subscribe ( News (/news) Voices (/voices) Sabbath School (/sabbath-school) Spirituality (/spirituality) GC 2015 (/gc2015) Education (/education) Columns (/columns) Interviews (/interviews) Health care (/healthcare) Home (/) Columns (/columns) Living Family Life Living Family Life 1 June 2017 Courtney Ray (/authors/courtney-ray) Print ( FB ShareThis Select Language Powered by Translate ( Tweet When I was a kid way back in the 1900s there were a ton of sitcoms that capitalized on unconventional families. Who's the Boss?, Full House, My Two Dads, Punky Brewster, Different Strokes, One Day at a Time: the lineup was full of storylines that didn't revolve around the typical nuclear setup with a mom, dad, and 2.5 kids. It's been a long time since the rest of the world actively acknowledged that families come in all shapes and sizes and the importance of telling those stories. But it's a rarity to see places in our Church landscape where the concept of Family Life has grown beyond the narrow traditional model.

11 A pastoral colleague told me about his experience preaching for Family Life Day at a sister congregation. During his sermon, he alluded to the benefits of having a Divorce Ministry in the church. There were more than a few who didn't receive his suggestion well! Are you advocating divorce? We should be upholding the ideal of God s standards! I've heard similar arguments over the years railing against showing love and support to single mothers. If the church gives her a shower, we re encouraging others to do the same! Extending kindness to sisters and brothers when they need us is what we're supposed to do. Being a source of strength for divorcees or helping hand to a single parent won't dilute the holiness of God quite the opposite: it's displaying the character of God! I ve previously written about the exclusion of singles in church fellowship as well as the ever-present pressure to push them toward marriage. Why not have singles ministries focused on things other than how to get a mate? Singles aren't all never married 20- and 30-year-olds looking for spouses. Singles consist of widows and widowers, those who've never married, those who never want to be married, and people of all age ranges. Let's not view them as fractions of families. Although it left MUCH to be desired and quite a few areas that were rightfully criticized, the organizational statement on homosexuality did get a few things right, one of which was explicitly stating that everyone is welcome to fellowship, regardless of sexual orientation. But do we really understand what fellowship means? Have we cultivated churches where LGBT brothers and sisters will feel they are even able to be a part of our church Family Life? We need to be intentional about integrating these families, too. We spend thousands of dollars in research trying to discover why people leave our churches; meanwhile folks tell us why all the time. Though there are a variety of reasons, one very common refrain is the feeling of separation built between local congregations and those who don't fit into the quintessential model family. Since my divorce, I ve felt like an outcast. After becoming pregnant out of wedlock, I was disfellowshipped and shunned. Being one of the only singles in church, I felt out of place among all the families. Hearing these stories isn't a new revelation.this isn't earth-shattering news. So if we say we want to retain members and win back those who've left, what have we done to address these real felt needs? How are we making our churches into inclusive spaces? Think about your own church. Do those in families with nontraditional configurations feel embraced? Would you? If not, what needs to change? What can you do to change it? The attrition in weekly attendance will continue to grow unless we work to embrace people in whatever life circumstance they may find themselves. With the advent of web-streamed services, those who want to participate in weekly congregational worship don't have to endure the feeling of ostracism that they sense when they physically attend. When people feel judged for not being part of the church s ideal, they will stay away. There are so many other iterations of families too: foster parents, extended families, co-parenting families, childless couples, blended familie. Are they ever considered when we develop our Church ministries? If not, we need to begin retooling our paradigm and catch up to at least the 20th century. Courtney Ray is an ordained pastor in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Image Credit: FreeImages.com / B S K If you respond to this article, please: Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed. 5 replies gideonjrn 1 Jun spectrumbot: We spend thousands of dollars in research trying to discover why people leave our churches; meanwhile folks tell us all the time. This data is relevant yet it helps to shed the institutional Adventitis mindset and find out why people COME. The typical answer is usually---"to worship God". That response is shallow & superficial, if not a downright evasion of the truth. People come to become better persons and that response even has different reasons for it. People have needs of affection, acceptance, appreciation & achievement. If church attendance does not serve those needs, people will spend time elsewhere attempting to meet them. A main challenge is that there are about 7000 waking minutes each week for individuals of which a small minority is spent with church or spiritual nurture (200 minutes??) The worldly/secular competing interests nullifies and/or corrupts the influence of those 200 minutes and if that time is filled with irrelevant, ritual, shallow soteriology, minimal contemporary coping skills and non fat dry milk typical, topical, low exposure bible sermons...what can one expect but churchgoers being victims of the surrounding depraved, cynical, exclusive, anti-social culture? Competent upper & middle management business personnel know that the attitude/morale of the employees is heavily influenced by their behavior & actions/programs. The SDA denomination has promoted & perpetuated some very limited & shallow approaches (wineskins). Since fear & paranoia is so prevalent in most churches, change is not likely until a crisis drives it. At higher conference levels, only lack of tithe $$$$$$ = a crisis. Continue Discussion 4 more replies

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