Pentecost Offering: May 19

Psalm 71 testifies that a foundation of faith established during childhood helps ensure lifelong faith and service. The patterns and lessons established during these formative years continue to bear fruit throughout a person’s life. By receiving the Pentecost Offering, you are nurturing the faith of those who are the church to come—children, youth, and young adults. A gift to the Pentecost Offering helps the church to encourage, develop, and support its young people, and also address the needs of at-risk children.

Forty percent of the Pentecost offering can be retained by individual congregations wanting to make an impact in the lives of young people within their own community. Our local contribution goes to Cru, the local representative of Campus Crusade for Christ International. The remaining 60% is used to support children-at-risk, youth, and young adults through ministries of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.

May’s Yellow Bag Recipient: Kansas Humane Society

May’s Yellow Bag collection is pet food/snacks to benefit the Kansas Humane Society (KHS). KHS helps over 15,000 pets in our community each year. Among the services the KHS provides are adoption services (between January 1 and April 19 of this year, 1,126 pets have been adopted), low-cost spay/neutering, pet fostering services, and end-of-life care.

KHS has a full range of veterinarian services, including a surgery suite. One of the premier events of KHS is Woofstock, a celebration of dogs and their owners. Animals are God’s creatures and deserve our help.

Please leave your donations by the yellow bag rack near the coffee bar.

A Word from Our Interim Pastor: The Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh

On Sunday, May 5, ninety-two of us spent two hours together over an amazing “Cinco de Mayo” themed lunch making observations, interpretations, asking questions, and creating playful interventions around the challenge of declining attendance at Grace.

The Session has identified five emerging ministry emphases: caring, connecting, learning, serving, and worshipping. This past Sunday’s Step 2 in Our Interim Pastor Journey Town Hall meetings further clarified the emerging ministry emphases and Grace’s identity profile as we move closer in acknowledging who we are as a church and what two or three ministry areas our next Pastor must be proficient and gifted in. If we are able to retain a Director position, that individual will focus on the two or three ministry emphases not being filled by the new Pastor. Both positions will need many equipped lay people working alongside the Pastor and Director to fulfill Grace’s calling.

Philippians 1:6 reads, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” And, yes, I see God’s ongoing completion of what God started in my life at thirteen years old and in Grace Presbyterian Church’s life beginning in 1909.

Grace and our individual lives are built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. The sovereignty, providence, and presence of God is always at work in order to complete God’s purpose for each one of us and Grace Presbyterian Church.

We will continue Our Interim Pastor Journey Town Hall Meetings with Step 3 on Sunday, August 11, immediately following the 10:30 am single worship service.

What are Grace’s strengths and challenges (already acknowledging declining attendance as one) as we move forward in evaluating worship services, ministry emphases, and staffing transitions?

On the journey of Christian discipleship and spiritual formation with you, I remain faithfully yours,

Steve

The Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh

Interim Pastor

Yellow Bags for May: Let’s Help Our Four Legged Friends

May’s Yellow Bag collection consists of pet food/snacks that benefit the Kansas Humane Society. KHS helps over 15,000 pets in our community each year. Among the services the KHS provides are adoption services (between January 1 and April 19 of this year, 1,126 pets have been adopted), low-cost spay/neutering, pet fostering services, and end-of-life care. KHS has a full range of veterinarian services, including a surgery suite. One of the premier events of KHS is Woofstock, a celebration of dogs and their owners. Animals are God’s creatures and deserve our help. Please leave your donations by the yellow bag rack to the side of the coffee bar.

A Word From Our Interim Pastor – The Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh

Philippians 1:6 reads, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” I’ll never forget responding to God’s love for me in Jesus Christ as an eighth grader in the Communicant’s class. I’ll never forget the Sunday School teachers in the front rows smiling with tears of joy when I shared my Statement of Faith in the worship service. I’ll never forget how Jesus walked with me and saved me countless times during the detours of my fifty-three years of life since that Communicant’s class experience. And, yes, I see God’s ongoing completion of what God started when I was thirteen years old.

Our Interim Pastor Journey focuses on adaptive change. Today, at our Interim Pastor Journey Town Hall Meeting Step 2, I’ll introduce principles associated with adaptive change. Those principles are observations, interpretations, asking questions, and making interventions in measured ways.

A challenge before us is declining church attendance.

The question today is: How would you describe Grace to someone you wanted to attend with you?

I’ll see you after worship in the Great Room for our Town Hall Meeting Step 2 and the “Cinco de Mayo” themed luncheon.

On the journey of Christian discipleship and spiritual formation with you, I remain faithfully yours,

Steve

The Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh

Interim Pastor