Newsletter: Church group info

Session
The session met in August and had a deep heart to heart conversation about our ministry together since Rev. Lindsay joined us almost seven years ago. We celebrated achieving many goals, and recognized that we need to start discerning the next calling for our congregation together. We will be finding ways to meet with as many of the members as possible to hear about your dreams, passions, and vision for Gethsemane. We want to hear how God is calling each of you, so that we can answer that calling together.

Buildings and Grounds
From George Rodrigues:
We are happy to report that the new flooring for the entry way and the front offices has been completed and looks very nice. The hand towel dispensers in the restrooms all have been installed. The rest of the new tables for the fellowship hall have been purchased and new chairs have also been donated. And we are acquiring bids on electrical work for the lighting in the womens shower and video projector and screen in the Fellowship Hall .

Christian Ed
Rev. Lindsay’s Sunday School class will be led by a variety of folks as we start using the “Engage” online training available at pcusa.org/engage . After we finish the online training we will begin the Engage curriculum itself which the session and evening service have been starting this year. The focus is how to engage the world around us so that we can become effective evangelists.

Thanks to Astrid and Estela the kids’ Sunday school class continues along well. Recently the kids have marked their heights on the door to celebrate how different they are, and then measured their “wingspan” to see how our relative sizes are similar. God makes us similar and yet different... but we are all God’s children.

Evangelism and Mission
We are starting to meet this month to discern how and whether we are called to reach out to the Spanish-speaking community with some sort of mission. All are welcome to attend. We will be using the resource “Starting New Churches 3.0” from the General Assembly.

Thanks to all who have helped with the garden. We will be mulching soon and planning for fall planting probably next month.

Academia has started up and we have two desperate needs:
1 - At least two volunteers to work with the children in the children’s room.
2 - A teacher for the citizenship questions in Spanish.

A group is meeting at Andy Wong’s home and is also using the “Starting New Churches 3.0” book discerning about a mission/outreach initiative to reach predominantly English-speakers.

Anything we can do to spread the Gospel and bring others to Christ is faithful work for God... please join us.

Fellowship and Care
We give thanks for a wonderful party in August to celebrate our last Sunday with our foster kids and celebrate that they were being reunited with family. We also celebrated an amazing 35 years of ministry for Rev. Lew Holmes.

This month, we are looking forward as a congregation to focusing on “Caring” about our neighbor. We will be attending the Allied Communities of Tarrant Delegates Assembly where we will meet with other churches, hear stories, and commit to strengthening our congregations and our connections with other churches and the community so that we can learn to truly be neighbors again. We will be having a potluck Sunday, September 23rd, to celebrate the Delegates assembly as well as some special birthdays in our congregation. Please plan on attending.

We also look forward to the Fall Festival which will be taking place at the end of October.

SAP
SAP has prepared and sent a budget proposal to session. Starting in September we will be focusing on stewardship in worship, sharing videos that the youth helped prepare to focus us on what we all believe about giving, offerings, etc.

Too often we live with an attitude that “God needs to give me a little more, THEN I will give.” Instead we are called to recognize that God has blessed us abundantly, and God always cares for us, thus our giving is a demonstration that we celebrate that God has blessed us and we trust that God will care for us especially as we grow more faithful in our offerings.

We challenge each member to move towards or even beyond tithing, which is giving 10% of your income. We give because we trust God. We give because we are deeply thankful. And we give because we are excited to see what God can and will do through our generosity.

Worship
We give thanks for Daniel Martinez and his piano playing these past Sundays. His music ministry is a blessing to us all. We also continue to keep Phyllis and Jim in prayers as they struggle with health concerns.

Women’s Group
Don’t forget to lift up in prayer our women’s group as many travel to MoRanch for the Hispanic Women’s Bible Conference the last weekend of this month. This is a renewing time in the faith of our women, and we hope that they return to us impassioned and excited about their faith.