The online event will be held on Re-Creation’s YouTube channel on Friday, December 18 at 7:00pm. See the flyer below for all the details!
Click here to join the concert on the 18th at 7:00PM!
Hello, Friends –
This morning in worship, we began our Advent sermon series “Incarnation: Rediscovering the Significance of Christmas.” Each week we will be looking at the names given to Jesus in the birth stories about him.
Today, we looked at the names Messiah, Christ, and Anointed One all references to a King. I shared a portion of a message by S. M. Lockridge titled, “That’s My King.” I promised to share the video in its entirety. So, here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwQqQkdn_5Q
(You will want to skip the advertisement at the beginning of the clip.)
Blessings!
Pastor Sherry
Dear Friends –
Due to the Covid restrictions, we will not have the typical “Hanging of the Greens” this year. Therefore, we are looking for family groups to come in at different times during the week of November 22 to help with decorating the Sanctuary and Family Life Center in preparation for Advent and Christmas Eve. The goal is to have the decorations in place for the first Sunday of Advent, which is Sunday, November 29. (Even if the current Covid increase causes us to pause having people in worship services, we most likely will continue to live-stream from the Sanctuary and FLC – including Christmas Eve services.)
Each family grouping could choose one or more of the items listed below. Please contact Susan in the church office this week to coordinate times (so that different families are present at different times) and to indicate which of the below ‘labor(s) of love’ your family would be willing to complete as we prepare for Advent and Christmas.
Thank you!
a. Sanctuary
i. Put up Tree
ii. String lights
iii. Hang Chrismons and star
iv. Hurricane candles in window sills
v. Set up Advent Wreath
b. Family Life Center
i. Put up Trees
ii. String lights
iii. Hang ornaments
iv. Set up Advent Wreath
v. Put out Poinsettias across front of stage
With the pandemic why shop for Christmas gifts when you can give gift cards to your family and friends?
Below is a list of gift cards available and an order form.
You can fill out the order form and return it with your check to church by Sunday, December 6th. Or you can email your order to Sandy Eckert (call the church office for Sandy’s phone number or email address).
Make sure you get a check to the church by December 6th. If you have any questions, please contact Sandy Eckert via the church office.
Thank you.
Sandy Eckert
Gift-card-list-11.9.20Click here to download the list of gift cards available (PDF file).
Click here to download the order form (Excel spreadsheet).
October 22, 2020 – by: Annette Spence
A retired pastor and former district superintendent in Abingdon and Chattanooga, Brenda Carroll now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. Several readers named her as a peacemaker. She wrote a short mediation for us in response.
“In John’s Gospel account of post-resurrection appearances,” she said, “Jesus’ greeting was ‘Peace be with you.’ Into the room where hearts and minds were grieving, confused, disoriented, numbed by circumstances, afraid of threats out there in the world, Jesus spoke Peace. He breathed Peace.”
Carroll said she believes the Risen Christ still enters our spaces the same way. “As I understand the Christ, what I have received, I now give away. ‘The Peace of Christ be with you.’ If I breathe that blessing for each person, each group, each space I enter, I become a peacemaker,” she said. “Conversations change. Behaviors change. Hearts change.”
See Carroll’s complete meditation.
“This is a very stressful time with the election, and all the hatred and division and the COVID, uncertainty in the church, and we’re holed up as well,” said Bishop Richard Looney.
He’s a retired bishop and a native of Holston Conference, living in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He is bishop in residence at First-Centenary United Methodist Church.
While he’s trying to stay safe by isolating during the pandemic, Looney said YouTube allows him a way to travel the world, to see the “beauty of creation” in places he’s never been. He enjoys concerts from orchestras as far away as Moscow and Vienna. He also worships through YouTube.
“It’s so peaceful to worship where I’ve served and see how wonderfully they’re doing it with virtual choirs and solos and ensembles,” he said.
Looney prepares a sermon each week for the community where he lives. “Just trying to find something comforting and helpful to say to people has been very fulfilling,” he said. This Sunday, he’ll preach from the first chapter in Revelation.
“So I remember the goodness of God in the past, and the presence of God in the present, and the promise of God for the future,” he said. “I’ve even had fun imagining what the next life will be, since I’m old and have a little time to think. It’s kind of exciting. Sort of like YouTube for me.”
A mentor once asked Kara Finger: “What makes you angry? What burns you up? Because that’s where your passion lies.”
With that in mind, Finger says she understands why United Methodists may struggle with nailing down what it means to exemplify peace. “The United Methodist Church is such a leader for social justice. That’s where their passion lies. But we are also called to be peaceful and loving.”
As executive director of Wesley House Community Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, Finger says she and her staff have had to go extra miles in their daily call to share peace with children and senior citizens in their ministry. For example, Wesley House has expanded and adapted its after-school program to a temporary emergency child care and online learning center, keeping the doors open as much as 50 hours a week compared to 20 before the pandemic.
Through it all, Wesley House has leaned on John 15:12: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
“This time has been a year of exceptional understanding and flexibility,” Finger said. “We have all at times needed understanding and had to give understanding and care.”
One of the toughest times happened when Finger learned a worker tested positive for COVID-19 at 9:30 p.m. one evening. Early the next morning, Wesley House staff had to greet incoming parents and children by “turning them away and begging for their forgiveness.”
The families showed nothing but compassion and love in return, she said.
“Right now, the world I live in is offering trouble and fear in big cups,” said the Rev. Terryl James. “Fear grips the heart of any parent with children who are targeted for no apparent reason other than the color of their skin.”
James is pastor of Washington Hills United Methodist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a person named as a peaceful presence by a reader of The Call.
“Prayer and the Word of God give me the peace I need to go about my daily activities,” James said. “I cannot live with a spirit of bitterness, a chip on my shoulder or aggressive meanness toward people who do not look like me.”
In a meditation she wrote for us, James cites several Bible verses that give her strength and comfort. She also shares the centering and go-to words of Saint Francis of Assisi’s Peace Prayer: “Lord make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me bring love.”
Read James’ complete meditation.
“Peace (Shalom) is not the absence of conflict but a confidence in God that imbues us with wholeness, completeness. Shalom is the sleep of a baby in her mother’s arms,” said the Rev. Charles Maynard.
He is well known as a storyteller, author, and hiker. He currently serves as pastor of generosity and traditional worship at Cokesbury United Methodist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Maynard sometimes leads people on mountain walks to help them experience God’s peace. “I try to help them hear the sounds of an autumn breeze rustling through colorful leaves. To listen to the two distinct sounds a waterfall makes. To enjoy the flute-like song of a veery.”
Maynard wrote a meditation that briefly walks us through the peace he’s gleaned from experience and scripture.
Read Maynard’s complete meditation.
The Rev. Susan Arnold grew up in a home that was “tumultuous,” yet her mother always modeled peace and hope for the child who would grow up to be pastor at Blountville United Methodist Church in Blountville, Tennessee.
“She was never negative even when there was plenty of reason to be negative,” says Arnold. “My mom focused on hope even when it was hard. ‘How can we get to a better place today, even if we can’t change the situation?’”
Arnold said she wasn’t always the peace-filled person that several readers said they see. Her relationship with God, deepened through prayer, “has watered and nurtured and helped it to grow.”
When she feels that “unease in my gut,” when a situation such as the pandemic seems out of control, Arnold said she steps back and prays, for example, “God, we don’t know how to be the church right now. Would you show us?”
Answers and actions have often come to Arnold when she says to God, “I don’t know,” asks hard questions, then listens. She was recently led to offer a prayer service to a community in turmoil, for instance, when an abused child was missing for weeks.
“God’s presence speaks peace and hope to me,” she said. “What people see is that aroma of being with God and asking those questions.”
Before Abel Carrico was director of Christian life at Holston Home for Children, he was a student at Hiwassee College from Brazil. He also served as an Iris Global missionary in Mozambique.
Today, he works with troubled children and leads a growing church built by Holston Home. When people come to him for help, he says, “99 percent of the time I am going to give them an answer they don’t want to hear.”
Carrico believes peace is hard to come by these days because people do not honor and respect each other. “I want people to know I honor and respect them, even though I stand very strong where I believe.” In fact, the first thing Carrico says before sharing his beliefs or disagreement is to say, “First, I want you to know I am for you.”
“How you do it and say it makes all the difference,” Carrico says. “There has to be a belief that even when I’m not agreeing with you, I’m not trying to win.”
Carrico says he learned about steps toward living in peace while in Mozambique, when he and his colleagues arrived in new villages. The first thing they did was sit down with the village chief and say, “Teach us something about your beautiful people.”
Carrico says he took that experience back to Hiwassee and asked himself, “How can I translate that to America and where I am called to be?”
She’s a member of First United Methodist Church of Pennington Gap, Virginia, and a former member of the Conference Council on Youth Ministries. Tatum Harvel shared her thoughts after temporarily being sent home by Emory & Henry College, where she’s a freshman and where several students recently tested positive for COVID-19.
Harvel said she has focused on John 14:27 since it was part of a recent Bible study: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
“Jesus says that before he goes to the cross,” Harvel said. “That’s the type of reassurance we have to lean on.”
Accepting God’s peace and sharing it with others is a daily decision, she said. “We have to live into that calling.” We wake each day to pray and trust in his plan, to make “little decisions” that follow through on what God calls us to do, whether that’s reaching out to a lonely person or forgiving someone who interrupts our own peace.
During these days, may we each find ways to be the hands and feet and voice of the one who is called Prince of Peace.
Peace be with you!
Pastor Sherry
Per the message from Pastor Sherry, the Administrative Council and the Re-Opening Team, in-person worship services will resume at Cedarville UMC on May 2, 2021.
Those who wish to attend a service will need to sign up for their family unit, or individually, via Sign-up Genius, see the links below.
Sign-ups open on Monday at 10am for the following Sunday. The Signup Genius will open each Monday at 10:00 a.m. for the coming Sunday’s worship services and remain open until midnight Saturday night or until we reach our capacity. NOTE: You MUST sign up weekly.
Click on the link below to sign-up and register your attendance at this coming Sunday’s worship service:
Those without internet access will call the church office to register to attend. Both services will continue to be live-streamed for those who cannot come to the services in person.
As we excitedly prepare to once again open for in-person worship services in the Sanctuary (Traditional 8:00 &11:00) and in the Family Life Center (Contemporary 9:30), here are a few notes to assist you in signing up and in preparing for some differences from what you were used to.
First, here is the link to the Re-opening video, which guides you through the changes.
Re-Opening Video link: https://youtu.be/AMXi5w8_uMc
Please note from the video that there will be specific entrance and exit paths.
For the Contemporary Service (9:30), you will enter through the Main Entrance at the back of the building. This is the entrance next to the swing sets (the swings are to the left of the walkway). Please use the hand sanitizer stations upon entering the lobby or FLC. When leaving the facility, you will be dismissed by ushersand will exit through the doors next to the kitchen.
Only those unable to do the steps may use the lower classroom entrance to reach the elevator, which will take you to the FLC lobby. Please use the hand sanitizer stations upon entering the FLC or lobby.
For the Traditional Service (8:00 & 11:00), you will enter through the Main Sanctuary entrance with the pillars. The ushers will guide you to your pew, and will dismiss you from your pew at the close of the worship service. You will exit through the doorway to the upper right of the sanctuary space, which leads to a walkway to the parking lot.
A ramp to the left of the sanctuary main entrance is available for those who have difficulty with steps.
Offering plates or baskets will not be passed. Instead, if you bring your offering with you, you will be able to place it in the plate or basket as you exit the Sanctuary of Family Life Center.
If you are part of the worship team and will not be seated in the chairs or pews in the main seating areas (ushers, musicians, 8 & 11 scripture readers/worship leaders, etc), you do not need to register for the Sunday you are participating. If you are attending with friends or family, they do need to register.
We are very excited that we are able to gather to celebrate and worship God together! In order to keep everyone safe, there are some important rules that must be followed according to the CDC and county guidelines and our Cedarville Trustees and Re-Opening Team.
· Be Exposure/Symptom Free
· Use Hand Sanitizer on Entry or Re-entry
· Practice Social Distancing
· Mask Over Nose AND Mouth
· Cover Coughs & Sneezes
· No Person-Person Contact
· No Congregational Singing
(However, you may hum or mouth the words under your mask)
Additionally, ushers will take your family group to your seats and you are required to sit together. Masks are to be worn at all times while in the facility.
By attending the service and by reading the above, you acknowledge that there may be an inherit risk to exposure to the coronavirus (Covid 19) and will not hold the church, the pastors or any other congregant responsible.
Our goal is to gather as a family of faith to worship in the most safe and comfortable way possible. We thank you for abiding by the established plans to help ensure that we can continue to gather in person and to praise God together.
We look forward to once again worshipping in-person in God’s house!
Blessings to all!
Pastor Sherry, Trustees and Re-Opening Team
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
On Tuesday October 06, 2020, the Administrative Council and the Reopening Team of Cedarville voted to restart in person worship on Sunday November 1st.
We will use the guidelines of the State and the CDC which include hand sanitizer stations, masks that cover the nose and mouth, social distancing, and accountability for contact tracing.
We will hold attendance to both the 9:30am Contemporary and 11am Traditional services to 50% capacity in the Family Life Center and Sanctuary, respectively. At this time, there will be no in-person children’s worship, nursery, or Cedar Kidz. However, KidzWorship will continue each Sunday morning following the 9:30am Contemporary worship service.
The Reopening Team has put together a video that is viewable below, as well as the live streamed services prior to reopening. This video shows the changes that the congregation will encounter at the reopening. Those who wish to attend a service will need to sign up for their family unit, or individually, on Sign-up Genius, which will be available prior to each service as a link on our website. Those without internet access will call the church office to register to attend. Additional in person guidance will be provided by the ushers at each service. Both services will continue to be live-streamed for those who cannot come to the services in person.
We will continue these in person services as long as they are within the guidelines of Chester County and the CDC. Please look for additional information in up coming live-stream of the services and the Cedarville website.
Grace and peace,
Frank Cebular, Administrative Council Chair
· Be Exposure/Symptom Free
· Use Hand Sanitizer on Entry or Re-entry
· Practice Social Distancing
· Mask Over Nose & Mouth
· Cover Coughs & Sneezes
· No Person-Person Contact
· No Congregational Singing
The shopping event will be held at Boscov’s on October 14 & 15. See the flyer below for all the details!
You can download the flyer here.
Dear Friends –
When have you found yourself going forward in the journey when there seemed to be no way to go? When have you persevered when giving up made more sense?
The Book of Exodus tells us there was a wall of water beside the people who walked across the dry seabed. How harrowing must that have been, but still they walked—one foot in front of another, as they made their way across.
Are you making your way across, trying not to stare at the wall of water and all that could go wrong, but instead keeping your eyes on the hope that lies before you?
I am looking for some of your stories about how God has made a way when there seemed to be no way; of how you have persevered when it made more sense to give up. These may be stories from within this pandemic time. Or, it could be some other time or issue when you have persevered.
If you are willing to share your story of perseverance, please contact me at sherry@cedarvilleumc.org.
Blessings as we journey!
Pastor Sherry
Dear Friends –
A friend created a quilted design following a time of upheaval and confusion in her life. It is a powerful reminder that God will take all things and work for good, in God’s time.
In the first frame, there is a symmetry. There is a beautiful pattern and each peace of the pattern falls into perfect place, right next to the others.
In the second frame, you can see and sense the confusion and disarray that the creator is seeking to express.
In the final frame, another pattern emerges – quite different from the original, but equally beautiful!!
The first frame makes me think of our church and our lives the way they were. In the second frame, I see us where we are right now. We are a bit scattered, yet still connected. I look forward to seeing what new and breathtaking pattern God is shaping us to be as we move into God’s amazing, and yet to be seen, future.
Be blessed, dear friends.
Be blessed!!
Pastor Sherry