Newsletter April 2

April will be a busy and exciting month at First Church! Mark your calendar for these special events:

Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me - Jesus

This is an excellent affordable opportunity for experiencing mission work right here at home - a way to connect with God and others in our capitol city through words and deeds!

The Missions Ministry team would like to thank the congregation for their generous Easter Offering. To date, over $700 was collected which will be given to the Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, MI. On Sunday, April 13^th, at 6 :00 p.m, Rev. Shari Prestemon, Executive Director of the Back Bay Mission will join us for a Pot Luck Supper and to update us on the work of the Mission and the challenges they have faced these past few years. Please bring the following based on your last name:

If you were in church for our Holy Week ��trip��?, then you may remember sitting at the table of the Lord��s Supper in our visit to Maundy Thursday. There were 13 seats around the table and as you guessed, they belonged to Jesus and the 12 disciples. We didn��t have much of an opportunity to talk about those friends and followers of Jesus. What kind of men were they - trustworthy, loyal, and fearless? They were not without their faults, as we will find out this Sunday when we meet two of the disciples. One of the visitors will be full of doubt and the other�well, I think that I will keep that a secret until it is time to meet him.

Come and hear their stories about being followers of Jesus. They might have been faced with some of the same problems we face today, when we are trying to be good Christians!

In the past couple weeks there have been two incidents where wallets were stolen from women��s pocketbooks. It is regrettable that this happened on church property. We hope this does not happen again, but felt that the congregation should be alerted to these occurrences so that cautionary measures can be taken.

There will be a special meeting of the congregation in the sanctuary immediately after the worship service on Sunday, April 6, 2008. The matter to be put forth is a recommendation from the Finance Committee and the Council that the church return to a calendar year fiscal year.

This coming Sunday we are going to be all about doubt as we meet again our friend ��Doubting Thomas��.?

It is a rare occasion in the three-year Revised Common Lectionary cycle when the same text is appointed for reading on the same Sunday in all three years. But this coming Sunday is one of those - on the First Sunday after Easter (liturgically, the Second Sunday of Easter) the gospel lesson is always the same; John 20: 19-31- the story of ��Doubting Thomas��.?

Perhaps this is because doubt is such a pervasive human response to the invitation of faith; and we all need to be reminded of the witness of Thomas; because it might even echo our own!

Thomas came through doubt to his final faith in the Risen Christ, his Living Lord. By temperament, like so many of us, Thomas was inclined to be skeptical; no easy answers would satisfy him. He was a compulsive questioner, but he seemed to have confidence that answers could eventually be found for his questions. In modern-day terms, he was neither an atheist nor an agnostic.

And Thomas, hopefully also like many of us, had an open mind: he kept in touch with his fellow disciples, and he was always ready for any new light that might come to him. Thomas�� story shows that certainty in faith; enough certainty, at least, for the living of faith, is most likely to come to a person who, despite doubts and misgivings, keeps close to an encouraging community of faith, an affirming fellowship of believers. And hopefully, his story is our story!

Come to church this coming Sunday to hear my rather ��radical��? suggestion that Thomas�� spiritual problem��? was not doubt at all, but rather something else common to us humans!

Several of us were trying to figure out what all the issues were when 120 First Church members petitioned to form their own church-South Congregational. Our initial determination was that since many of the local industrialists depended upon the continuation of ready and cheap labor in the South, they were the ones who formed the new congregation, that South Church was probably pro-slavery. Was that correct? An excerpt from the 1867 book about First Church by Alfred Andrews states: ��James Stanley�to church [joined] June 7^th,1857�is a jeweler by trade and manufacturer�He has been a prominent anti-slavery and temperance reformer, and been successful in business; and was active in building the Center church edifice.�� Center Church, erected in 1855, was the common name for the third building occupied by First Church. So, if James Stanley helped build our old church in 1855, became a member in 1857 and was anti-slavery, then First Church most likely WAS the anti-slavery church at that point in history. Now, lest any of you reading this are connected with South Church, let me end by saying that God changes minds , and it is clear that neither church is exactly where it was in the 19^th century!