F A I T H L U T H E R A N C H U R C H O C T O B E R, 2 0 1 7 For More Discover the many things God is doing at FLC on our website at: www.faithsd.net Subscribe to our free weekly E-pistle Ezine, and be a part of our PrayerNet by sending your email address to flc@faithsd.ne. Get details from our FLC This Week printed announcements at worship services. W E S T E R N D A Y S O C T. 8 T H Come and celebrate San Dimas Western Days on Sunday, October 8th at FLC! FESTIVE WORSHIP We ll have special music by Bill McClellen and his Fair Market country/ bluegrass Band. Pastor Berkedal will arrive What is a Lutheran? We will soon have one year to tell our story. We ll start by celebrating the day in 1517 when Martin Luther, nailed a list of 95 statements for debate to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany. Come and worship on October 29th at 8:30 a.m. or 10:00 a.m. A brass choir will accompafor worship at both our 8:30 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. services dressed as a frontier preacher and wearing his "Bible-belt". (We are still looking for a horse!) Western outfits are welcome at worship, but optional. LUNCH! We ll enjoy a Mexican Food Potluck lunch at 11:15 a.m. ish. Sign-up at the announcement wall to bring your homemade Mexican Food, as well as side-dishes, salads or desserts to share. We ll be showing old Westerns in the Parish Hall. Contact Nancy Brewster at 626 484-5894 for lunch information. Yee-haa! S P E C I A L P O I N T S O F I N T E R E S T : Faith Lutheran Church has a median age in the low 40 s. We encourage the presence of children at worship. We also provide free professional child care. Our worship and ministry building is designed in a California Craftsman style. R E F O R M A T I O N 5 0 0 O C T. 2 9 T H ny our hymns and our FLC Pre-school Butterfly Class will sing. Afterward, we will enjoy a cake decorated with Luther s Seal, a symbol of a basic Lutheran belief: it is Christ in my heart, that is, faith in Christ alone that saves me. We ll offer our 7th annual Family Harvest Festival in the afternoon. (see next page) Bratwurst will be served. Invite your friends and family to share this great day with you!
Page 2 B R I N G Y O U R F A I T H I N T O F O C U S FLC RING BINDERS FLC Ring Binders like the ones given to students at the beginning of the school year are available at the church for $5.00. Pick some up and share them with friends and family. LUTHER ON WEDNESDAYS Come and worship at our evening service on Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. We are including a study of Martin Luther, leading up to our celebration of the 500th Anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation on October 29th! SUNDAY SCHOOL Pre-school 6th Grade Sunday School students go with their teachers to the Parish Hall for class at our 10:00 a.m. worship service today. Build your child a foundation in faith that will endure for eternity. F A M I L Y H A R V E S T F E S T I V A L O C T. 2 9 T H Our 7th Annual Family Harvest Festival takes place on Sunday, October 29th from 3:00-6:00 p.m. as a gift to the children of our community. We will have a petting zoo, pony rides, 6 games with prizes, a bounce house, two costume parades with candy stations, face painting, food, crafts, and more! Sign-up at the announcement wall at church to help. We need 36 volunteers to make it happen. Come and help us reach families with a positive, Halloweenalternative message for Jesus this fall. We are receiving a special offering for this event. Please mark your check Harvest Festival for this community ministry. Contact the church office at 909 599-3978 with questions and to help. W O M E N O F F A I T H The Women of Faith group will gather on October 7th at 10:00 a.m. for Bible Study and to finish planning Western Days the following day. Contact Nancy Brewster at 626 484-5894 for more info on the activities of the Women of Faith. M E N O F F A I T H The Men of Faith normally gather the second Saturday of each month at 8:00 a.m. in the church parking lot. They go out for breakfast together and return to do work projects. This month, they will gather on October 7th to prepare for Western Days the following day. Come and share the fellowship and the work. Contact Jerry Bain at 626 810-2733 for info about the Men of Faith.
I N T R O D U C I N G P E O P L E T O N E W L I F E I N J E S U S C H R I S T... Page 3 LIFT is a group for post-confirmation through high school youth. L I F T They are currently working on new outreach initiatives. They will be helping lead the games at the Family Harvest Festival October 29th.. Contact Candace Martinez at martinez. candace000@gmail.com or at 909 234-1555 for other activities. Find them on Facebook at LIFT (Living in Faith Together). C I A Our Christians in Action (C.I.A.) group is for young adults (from approximately 18 35 years of age). All young adults are welcome. They gather for Bible Study, brunch, community service projects, beach trips and more. They also will be helping lead the Family Harvest Festival October 29th.. They are planning a book drive for the Prison Library Project. Contact James Berkedal (jberkedal@ gmail.com) with questions. Check the group s Facebook page, Christians in Action, for more info. U R T H E C H U R C H M I N I S T R Y O P P O R T U N I T I E S BRING JOY TO WORSHIP IN OUR ADULT CHOIR Come on Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. in the worship space and sing a new song to the Lord! Contact Dan Ambrosini at ambrosini.daniel @gmail.com or at (909) 392-8400 to participate in our Adult Liturgical Choir! ALTAR GUILD BAKE SALE Our FLC Altar Guild will hold a bake sale on Sunday, November 12th between worship services, Please support their provision for the physical needs of our worship services by providing and/ buying baked goods. FLC WIFI FLC has its own WiFi, with a church office module as well as a membership module, password welivebyfaith1 (the last element is the number 1). We have also provided a module for our local sheriff s dept. as a gift to our community. H U R R I C A N E S O F F E R I N G We are receiving a special offering for victims of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and Maria. It will all go to Lutheran Disaster Relief, at work from the beginning and continuing after the cameras have gone. Mail your gift to Faith Lutheran Church, 505 East Bonita Avenue, San Dimas, California 91773, or use a pew envelope at FLC and mark it Hurricane for this purpose. We have given $3,115 so far. P R E - S C H O O L B U G S S I NG Come and hear the children of our Faith Pre -school and Day Care sing and meet their parents in October. The Ladybug and Honey Bee classes and their families will be with us on October 15th. The Butterfly class and their families will be with us on October 29th.
Page 4 C H U R C H I N T A N Z A N I A B I B L E S F O R 3 R D G R A D E R S We are receiving a special offering to help our brothers and sisters in Christ of Dakawa, Tanzania in East Africa build a structure for worship, learning and missions. It is now nearly complete, but worship services for students and locals are being held, and the church is growing. We recently received a gift of mugs with a photo of the church under construction and a message of thanks from Tanzania and placed them in the Conference Room. Please mark a white pew envelope Tanzania to contribute, or mail your gift to the church. We are providing 3 classes for parents & children in 3rd grade or above who will receive their first Bible from the church on October 29th, the 500 Anniversary of the Reformation! The classes take place Oct. 4th, 11th, and 25th in our Conference Room. Contact Pastor Berkedal at 909 599-3978 or dberkedal@faithsd.net for more information. T H R E E M O R E T H I N G S 1.) CHILD CARE PROVIDED Free professional child care is provided at our worship services on Sundays at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. We also provide a glassfronted Cry Room in the worship space, a Children s sermon, and activity sheets for busy hands. B Y T H E N U M B E R S People received as members in 2017: 8 Worship attendance at this point in 2017 compared to 2016: -7% Giving to our General Ministry Fund at this point in 2017 compared to 2016: +19% 2.) SHARE YOUR FAITH STORY What s your story? Share your spiritual biography or just one story from your life of faith this summer. Share it live during worship, or film it for showing during worship. Contact Pastor Berkedal at 909 599-3978 to get started. Giving to our Mortgage Fund in 2017: $65,832.00 (75.10% of need at 75.00% of year) Emergency Food Pantry giving in 2017: 2,383 lbs. (41% of our 5,750 lbs. goal at 75% of the year.) Students enrolled in our pre-school: 64 (+8,) 3.) MORTGAGE FUND GIVING As you see from the numbers below, our giving to the fund from which we pay our $7,305.00 monthly mortgage is very close to going out of balance. We do not want our mortgage to become our ministry. Please consider this need in your giving plans. Faith Lutheran Church Fan Page likes on Facebook: 959 (+5) Average daily faithsd.net web site visits in past 30 days: 22 FLC Pens left or seen in 441 locations in 68 cities in California in 19 other states in 24 other countries.
... T H A T G R O W S I N T O E N T H U S I A T I C C H R I S T I A N L I V I N G. Page 5 S O C I A L M E D I A C O N N E C T I O N S You can connect to all our social media on the Media tab at www.faithsd.net. Check out our page at Faith Lutheran Church San Dimas on Facebook. Click on like to become a fan. And, you can friend Pastor Berkedal on Facebook by doing a search for David Berkedal. Follow us on Twitter by going to twitter.com, from our Media tab and signing-in, Pastor Berkedal s Blog posts short articles periodically. Check it out through our web site Media tab. Check out our YouTube channel at www.youtube/flc505 and get your free subscription to FLC videos. Find pictures of our events on our Faith Lutheran Church Fan Page on Facebook. Skype Pastor Berkedal at david.berkedal. Username on Instagram: flcsd. #FLCpens Review us on Yelp.com on your phone Find special opportunities for giving at www.faithsd.net. Come in and get connected. R A L L Y D A Y T H A N K S We had a great time last month at Rally Day, the beginning of a new program year at FLC. Our celebrations included a picnic, with games, piňatas (including one for smaller children), and a bounce house for children. The Men of Faith cooked hamburgers, hot dogs and brats, Doug Halvorsen of Church and Community Relations and the Women of Faith organized, and the LIFT and CIA groups lead the games. The Gem City Jazz Cats big band, featuring our own Dwain Dobbe and Dan Amabrosini on trumpet, played at the picnic. And, the congregation brought lots of wonderful food to share.! Members of our 2017-18 Confirmation Class were commissioned, and our liturgical choir sang beautifully at both worship services. Our Ministry Fair offered new opportunities to be a part of what God is doing at FLC! A N O T E F R O M T H E P A S T OR The children Israel were led through the desert by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. When they were stopped, the cloud covered the tent, i.e. the tabernacle, in which God was present and worshipped. Whenever the cloud lifted from over the tent, then the Israelites would set out Numbers 7:17a The cloud lift is a design element in the east-meets-west California Craftsman style in which our worship space was built. We see it all over that space. It reminds us that we are there to worship and then we depart to ac- complish the mission God has given us: to introduce people to new life in Jesus Christ that grows into enthusiastic Christian living. Where is God present now?...you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. Ephesians 2:22. We accomplish our mission wherever God leads us. Find an expanded version of this story and comment on it at http://pastorberkedalsblog.blogspot.com/
F A I T H L U T H E R A N C H U R C H THE VISION CORNER www.faithsd.net F A I T H L U T H E R A N C H U R C H 505 East Bonita Avenue San Dimas, California 91773 P 909 599-3978 F 909 599-3324 E flc@faithsd.net W www.faithsd.net David Berkedal, Pastor E dberkedal@faithsd.net October Connect to WiFi at FLC. Password: welivebyfaith1 (all lower case, ending with the # 1. Discover more news, photos and info at our web site: faithsd.net. What if we provided the funds to pay our mortgage, support all our existing ministries, and call an associate pastor and a minister of music? What gifts and strengths would we want those persons to have? What new ministries is God calling us to do? Who could we reach toward realizing our mission to introduce people to new life in Jesus Christ that grows into enthusiastic living? Send your thoughts to flc@faithsd.net or call them in to the church at 909 599-3978, or speak with Pastor Berkedal or a member of our Church Council about them. Pray about how you can help realize our mission. I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E : F A M I L Y H A R - V E S T F E S T. 2 I N T R O D U C I N G P E O P L E T O N E W L I F E I N J E S U S C H R I S T T H A T G R O W S I N T O E N T H U S I A S T I C C H R I S T I A N L I V I N G. P H O T O O F T H E M O N T H H U R R I C A N E R E L I E F 2 T A N Z A N I A 4 B I B L E S F O R 3 R D G R A D E R S + 4 R A L L Y D A Y T H A N K S C A L E N D A R A N D F Y I 5 I N- SE RT Beneath the Cross, we gathered in tents for our annual Rally Day Picnic at the beginning of a new FLC program year. We worshiped the living God, were fed, and then moved in mission. (see page 5)