serving others in Christ making disciples growing in faith together A newsletter for members, visitors, and friends of Northminster Presbyterian Church www.northminstermacon.org VOLUME 21 NUMBER 5 MAY 2017 Our church family celebrates a Risen Savior! Northminster s Newest Members - 2017 Confirmation We are so excited to congratulate our newest confirmands. Our church family is very proud to call you our own members. We are very fortunate to have such caring, compassionate, hard-working youth as part of our congregation. Keep up the good work. We can t wait to see what your future has in store for your lives, your church, and your community! Inside this Issue April 16, 2017, Easter Sunday Confirmands (listed from left to right) Jackson Gleaton Annie Putzke Kendall Emener Josh Denny Emma Brown Ella Cole Alderman Ella Smith Page 2 Northminster Kids; One Great Hour of Sharing; Missionaries to Bangladesh; Habitat for Humanity Page 3 Music Notes; Session Highlights Page 4 Letter from the Pastor, Stewardship & Finance; Special offerings; Congratulations; Page 5 Nominating Committee; Property update; Lunch Bunch; Yoga; Good Sam; Little Laughs Page 6 May Calendar
Northminster Kids, Community, & Compassion April 9th, we celebrated the coming resurrection of our Savior with the children and youth of Northminster as they led the Easter dinner theater. With great food and fellowship, we tallied our final weight of donations given by our congregation to Loaves & Fishes and our Backpack Ministry. Your generosity brought 164 pounds of supplies to these worthy causes! Thank you so much for helping us surpass our goal and continuing to support our local mission efforts in Middle Georgia. HABITAT NEWS Habitat not only builds houses in Lynmore Estates. A neighborhood plan for Lynmore Estates was developed last year. The work was led by homeowners in collaboration with Habitat Community Relations Manager, Dr. Sundra Woodford and was funded by the Community Foundation of Central After working hard on their Easter program, the Northminster children got to wind down in Sunday School by making homemade slime! Our April Special offering for One Great Hour of Sharing yielded $1139 from our generous congregation! The money received from this offering goes to help with disaster relief and fighting hunger. God s Work in the World God has called each of us to use our gifts and talents to minister to others. Les and Cindy Morgan, our missionaries to Bangladesh, are called to further God s kingdom amongst people hungry for His word and hungry for basic needs food, medical care, shelter, education. Too often we take all of these blessings for granted. Our congregation has ministered to the Morgans since 1990, assisting their mission through our physical, emotional, and monetary support. What a blessing to have Les and Cindy with us on April 23. Their visit offered us the opportunity to show our love and emotional support. Your generous monetary gifts, totaling $3561, will help them to provide extra care and meaningful outreach as they share God s word, lead others to Christ, and witness by example. 2
Easter Sunday is behind us, and although we still celebrate the Risen Lord every Sunday, we MUSIC want to give a big Thank You! To all who participated in our Easter Sunday celebration service. Choir members, Youth, Brass ensemble, Handbell ringers and Pat McCall on violin. The music was glorious, worshipful, spectacular..i could go on and on. I know everyone in NOTES attendance was richly blessed by the music. It takes many hours of rehearsal for these services, and each one who participated is most appreciated! It is so hard to believe it s already May, and summer is just around the corner. With regular Chancel choir singers taking well-deserved vacation time, this is your opportunity to help fill the choir loft. During the month of June, we invite all members of the congregation who cannot rehearse with us regularly throughout the year, to come to the choir room at 9:30 am to learn a simple anthem to sing for that day s service. Please come when you are in town, and lift your voice in praise and worship with us. Youth Music Connection is for All Youth. Parents, please encourage your teen to participate. We would love to have them sing for us on Mother s Day, and since there are only 2 weeks of rehearsals remaining until May 14, we ask that you would please make every effort to have your child here to learn the special anthem. They can grab a bite of breakfast and bring it with them to the Sr High room. We need all voices to make this special for our Moms, Grandmoms and all the special ladies in our lives. After May 14, Youth Music Connection will end for the summer break, so we ask that parents would try especially hard to have your student here to learn this lovely anthem. Any youth who plays an instrument is invited to play a short piece for the prelude on Mothers' Day Sunday, May 14. Please let Music Director, Sandy Smith, know by May 10 if your child would like to participate so their name can be included in the bulletin. February Session Meeting Highlights Approved March stated meeting minutes Approved April called meeting minutes (met with Confirmands) Set Sunday May 14 to recognize our high school graduate - Class of 2017 Heard a report on the mission offering for the Morgans ($3,561) Heard a report on giving for One Great Hour of Sharing ($1,139) Heard a report from Stewardship and Finance on their conversation about the Generosity Team concept introduced during the session retreat Heard a report from Stewardship and Finance re: enabling our website to process contributions and pledge payments Heard a report from Property on the HVAC system replacement in the kitchen area (anticipated completion week of April 24-28) Heard reports from Ann Weaver on the Vital Church Workshop held at Northminster (3 members of our church attended Heard reports from Lynn Denny and Lynn Southerland on the Christian Education Workshop held at Northminster Heard a very preliminary report from the Nominating Committee that many names are under considera tion, and there have been some volunteers. Reviewed the responses Pastor Sparks received from his Sunday school class members on April 23 on the Positive Qualities and Characteristics of Northminster and Qualities of Effective Pastors 3
In the mid 20th century a popular book titled Whatever Happened to Sin? by Karl Menninger was quoted often in many Sunday sermons. Finally we have the answer... Sin is now a museum exhibit.from the New York Times May 10, 2015 Mother s Day "In an unusual collaborative endeavor, seven cultural institutions in New York State and Connecticut are planning coordinated shows, each addressing one of the seven deadly sins. Visitors can explore the transgressions in works ranging from Old Master paintings and prints to contemporary site-specific installations.for now, only one of the sin shows is open. 7 Deadly Sins: Lust is upstairs at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, its overt contents foreshadowed by a warning that no one under 18 is permitted inside." But a new question, if sin is now a museum exhibit, is it an outdated concept. Often I ve been asked why we say a prayer of confession every Sunday. Aren t we just going in circles, we sin God forgives, as someone once said, what a wonderful arrangement! I like to think of our Christian life as a spiral that keeps moving up, yes it seems we come back to the same place each Sunday but hopefully a better, more faithful person, acknowledging the ways we fall short. Then we claim the good news that He himself bore our sins in his body that we might be dead to sin and alive to all that is good! Our path is not to dwell on our sin but to be about all that is good for the sake of Jesus Christ. Our songbird, horn player, Dr. Edward Clark, has recently been promoted from associate to full Professor of Pediatrics at the Mercer University School of Medicine. Congratulations, Professor. Congratulations to David and Abby Aiello on the birth of their daughter, Sophia Emmy, born Saturday, April 22. FINANCIAL SNAPSHOT MARCH OUR MARCH TITHES & OFFERINGS Monthly Need $30,791.17 Given in March $34,098.35 Year-to-Date Need Given Year-to-Date YTD Net Variance $113,996.87 $111,143.89 -$2,852.98 FROM STEWARDSHIP & FINANCE -YOU MAKE IT POSSIBLEWhat greater way to celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior than by the various programs and activities we experienced during the month of April. Your contributions make this possible along with the other ministries and missions of Northminster. Ricky Smith 478-718-1019 rcsjr327@gmail.com JUNE SPECIAL OFFERINGS Our second special offering of the year will be on Sunday, June 4th for Pentecoast. The donations received from this offering helps congregational ministries with children at risk, ministries for youth and young adults and child advocacy/children at risk. 4
UPDATE FROM NOMINATING COMMITTEE The Nominating Committee met twice this month. The committee will continue to meet regularly until it is able to provide the congregation with a slate of nominees to serve on the Pulpit Nominating Committee, as well as a slate for the next class of elders. A special thanks to all of you who contacted a committee member to provide names for consideration. Look for another update soon! GOOD SAM OFFERING UPDATE FROM PROPERTY The scripture tells us to love your neighbor as yourself. What better way could you love your neighbor than helping them in times of need. The Good Samaritan Offering does this for the needs in our community and for the needs of our congregation. Your contributions to this fund made it possible for us to help an individual with a bus ticket; two families with their rent and one family with a gas card. Thank you for your generous support of the needy people in our community! It s probably going to be a hot summer, but hopefully we will have a cool kitchen. A new HVAC unit has been installed above the kitchen to replace the old, failing unit. A big thanks to Beau Kitchens for spearheading this big project! APRIL LUNCH BUNCH YOGA The Lunch Bunch is a Dutch treat group that gets together on the first Tuesday of the month. The group is open to anyone who likes to eat out and have fellowship time with members and friends of the church. The Lunch Bunch will dine Tuesday, May 2nd at Margaritas Mexican Grill on Zebulon Rd. at 12:00 PM. The Yoga group will meet May 7th, 14th, and 28th in the Community Room at 4:00 Sunday Mornings 9:00 Connections 10:00 Worship Church Bulletin Bloopers A Joyful Heart is Good Medicine... -Proverbs 17:22a At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be What is Hell? Come early and listen to our choir practice. This afternoon there will be a meeting in the South and North ends of the church. Children will be baptized at both ends. The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare s Hamlet in the church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy. A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow For those of you who have children and don t know it, we have a nursery downstairs Thursday night Potluck supper. Prayer and medication to follow 5
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 7) Communion Sunday 10:00 Worship 4:00 Yoga 14) Mother s Day 10:00 Worship Graduation Sunday 4:00 Yoga 21) 10:00 Worship 28) 10:00 Worship 4:00 Yoga 1) 2) 8) 9) 15) 16) 22) 1:00 Community Service Guild 6:30 Session Meeting 29) Memorial Day Office Closed 12:00 Lunch Bunch at Margarita s on Zebulon 10:00 Circle Bible Study 7:00 Fore (In) Sight 23) 3) 10) 17) 24) 30) 31) 4) National Day of Prayer 7:30 Camera Club 11) 12) 18) 10:00 Prayer Group 1:30 Communion at Carlyle Place 5) Office Closed 19) 25) 26) 6) 13) 20) 27) May Birthdays 5) Boyd Ellison, 10) Betty Barlow, Carlyle Glance, Harvey Roddenberry 14) Ella Smith 15) Jack Bowers, Virginia Cowsert, Martin Dalton 16) Jonathan Glance 19) Amanda Smith 23) Rex Tidwell 24) Jacob Lawson 26) Sarah Morrow, Kari Alderman, Happy Birthday! 6