We hope you will join us this morning at 10:30 AM for fellowship and 11 AM over zoom,for worship service with Reverend Dr. Sherrie Connelly giving our service. The subject she has chosen is extravagant love.
Our Lord God is everything to us, offering an extravagant love, generous, all giving, comforting and protecting.
This extravagant love extends into a deep forgiveness, even in the knowledge of human beings’ great imperfections, as we become repentant. Still, Our Lord God is loving us fully, just the same.
Join us this Sunday, 3/20/22, over Zoom—10:30 am Fellowship, 11:00 am Worship. We welcome Guest Minister, Rev. Dr. Jim Lawrence. He will present a sermon examining “Psalm 23: The Regeneration Psalm”. Church members and their contacts will receive the zoom link via email.
“The 23rd Psalm is the most fully memorized section of the Bible, yet interestingly Swedenborg provides less commentary on this iconic Psalm than he does for most of the other psalms. From a constructive Swedenborgian perspective, however, he wrote a lot about it. Join us at church for the deep story.”
Please join us tomorrow for zoom church with Rev. Dr. Sherrie Connelly as she presents the theme “Temptation in the Wilderness.” Intrigued? We begin at 10:30 am, with fellowship and 11:00 am for worship. Zoom link provided to church members and their contacts.
The title of this Sunday’s zoom church service is “A Learning Curve: The Road to ‘As If.’” We are pleased to welcome Guest Minister, Rev. Dr. George F. Dole who will lead us in worship, contemplation and reflection. “We often focus on the message contained in Swedenborg’s published theological works. But he wrote a lot that he didn’t publish, which unlike his published works contains paragraphs in which he actually talks about himself. It shows his childhood faith being challenged by his formidable intellect and eventually coming to a surprising resolution. Join us Sunday as Rev. Dr. George Dole demonstrates that over the course of his revelatory writing, Swedenborg learned a great deal and actually changed his strategy radically. The path that he followed led him from a parochial focus to a global focus, and has particular relevance for our own times and also for our individual lives.”
Photo of Rev. Dr. George F. Dole, Guest Minister. “The Road to As If,” sermon title.
Sunday School: 9:45 am, Fellowship: 10:30 am, Worship Service 11:00 am
Church members and their contacts will be provided a zoom link.
The start of in-person services have been postponed. Sunday, May 30th’s Service will be available over zoom. Please join us for an enjoyable and thought-provoking discussion.
“Maybe it is no mistake that Christians press ash, and dust, and dirt, into our foreheads as we enter into Lent. We long for this symbol of death, and mortality, endings and crumblings… because we know that within it, there is something so deep and comforting. As we acknowledge that the endings are the stuff of which the new beginnings are made, we see that our dust is what makes soil for growth. The God that created us is the same God that is blowing into our dust, like that God did of primordial Adam, creating us anew. That God is the same God that is holding the breadth of the cycles and assuring us that even what is crumbling is being cared for, and that love is being infused at every stage. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, dirt to dirt, remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.
From @annawoof
Seeing those ashes on each other’s foreheads reminds us how we’re all in it together, in this messy, dirty, beautiful, interconnected web of life. And it’s as if in that moment, the dust dissolves that which separates us, as if the ash burns through the illusion that we are anything but fellow humanity, and part of creation. In that moment, we’re all in it together, mortal and human; creation, created, creator; lover and beloved; dust, dirt, heart, and spirit; all mixed together on this sacred evening.” –Rev. Anna Woofenden
Blessing the Dust For Ash Wednesday All those days you felt like dust, like dirt, as if all you had to do was turn your face toward the wind and be scattered to the four corners or swept away by the smallest breath as insubstantial— did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust? This is the day we freely say we are scorched.
This is the hour we are marked by what has made it through the burning. This is the moment we ask for the blessing that lives within the ancient ashes, that makes its home inside the soil of this sacred earth. So let us be marked not for sorrow. And let us be marked not for shame. Let us be marked not for false humility or for thinking we are less than we are but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff of which the world is made and the stars that blaze in our bones and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear.
—Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons
As we explored last Sunday, Swedenborgians in Southwestern Ohio were interested in utopian ideals and were associated with the Owenite community which attempted to form in Yellow, Springs, OH. As you will see in the documents below, the Owenite society was involved in human rights and women’s rights. Thanks to Mary Ann Fischer and Scott Sanders from Antioch College.
Please join us this Sunday, February 7, 2021, for Sunday School – 9:30 am, Fellowship – 10:30 am, or our Lay-Led Worship – 11:00 am.
Maggie Panyko will lead our service entitled, “All God’s Critters,” which will touch on our duties as stewards of the earth and the history of vegetarianism in the Swedenborgian church.
New Church of Montgomery, in Glendale 