Upcoming Dates
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7/4 - 7/11
Mission trip to Honduras.
7/9 - 7/11
Power in the Spirit.
7/19 - 22 @ 6:00pm
VBS.
8/8
Yard Sale.
8/9 @ 7:00pm
Wilkens book launch.
8/16
End of Summer BLAST at Lake Monacan.
9/13 @ 9:45am
Sunday school begins.
9/27
Peace's 25th Anniversary Celebration.
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Worship Schedule
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Saturday
5:00pm - contemporary worship
Sunday
9:30am - worship
Wednesday
noon - prayers
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Quick Link
God's work, our hands
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video contest
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Finding God
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We are still in our series about Finding God in Film and Literature. And we are still waiting for your comments at peacepods.blogspot.com about movies you've seen and books you've read where you've felt that God connection.
Need a little inspiration:
- Why not make your own movie? The ELCA is having a video contest for the new tagline "God's work. Our hands."
- Recently a bunch of theologians were asked what their favorite movie is.
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Summer BLAST!
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We invite you to have a BLAST with us this summer - we believe that we are Blessed to be Loving and Serving Together! This summer our mission focuses on fellowship and service, and we hope to provide you with opportunities to make new friends and be the arms of love, while we serve our local and global communities together.
Each week we'll highlight a few fellowship and service opportunities. This week we want to highlight our Children & Family Ministry.
Are you excited about the days and weeks ahead, and wondering how you are going to fill your children's days with meaningful activities? Many parents look forward to the days and weeks of summer, only to find that once it arrives, we are daunted by the task of creating lasting family memories, and trying to balance lazy days by the pool with a modicum of structure. This summer, the Children and Family Ministry Team encourages you to weave faith into your summer by joining us for a BLAST. Our summer mission focus is fellowship and service - because we are Blessed to be Loving and Serving Together (BLAST!)
This summer, through our worship services, fellowship events, and service opportunities, we want to point parents towards growing faith at home. Keep in mind that experts in family discipleship have narrowed down four keys for nurturing faith at home: caring conversations, family rituals and traditions, acts of service, and devotional practices.
Below are some examples of growing faith using the four keys:
Caring Conversations - Caring conversations are the floor under all of our close relationships and are the way we model and transmit Christian values and faith to the next generation. Listening deeply, respectfully, and with great care, and speaking with love and gentleness helps children experience the love of God. Share your highs and low's together each day - use your mealtime, car time, or bedtime to find out the high points and low points of your child's day - and share yours as well!
Family Devotions - or rather, Finding God In Everyday Life - Turn up the "God language" under our caring conversations and you have family devotions. Adults need to learn the Christian message and the biblical story, finding themselves in God's story and God in their story, in order to be able to pass on faith to their children and to other adults. Sometimes, devotions use Scripture, a devotional text, and prayer at a set time in a set place each day. Sometimes, it grows out of spontaneous conversation and wondering aloud how God might be present in the sunset or current events or a family celebration and what God might be calling us to do in response. Our Christian faith shapes the whole of our lives and involves a lifetime of study, reflection, and prayer.
Family Rituals and Traditions - We already have a multitude of rituals and traditions. How do we wake one another up, say goodbye for the day, welcome one another home, and say good night? How do we celebrate birthdays and holidays? What stories and recipes and activities and values shape our identity as a family? How might we pray for one another when leaving for the day, when facing a hard decision, when dealing with stress? Find God in the midst of these daily or seasonally repeated experiences, and we will suffuse family life with God's presence. This makes it very clear what our family values, believes, and promotes, and how faith shapes us individually and as a family.
Family Service - Why would we do service as a family? Isn't it enough to do it individually? Learning that "faith is caught as well as taught," we understand that we need to be together as a family, linking the generations, to serve as a loving response to what God has already done for us. Together, we have a chance to talk about what we have done, why we have done it, and what we have learned. This is the way to make service a joyous opportunity to love God back, to say "thank you," to be the light of Christ for others. Serving with children makes it a habit, a spiritual practice, a faithful way of life.
Don't forget our Read to Read mission this summer. This is an opportunity to show your children how they can make a different in their global and local communities. Children are encouraged to line up sponsors who will "pay" them for reading books over the summer months. They can pay per book, or sponsor them for an amount of time spent reading. The money will be collected at the end of the summer, and will go towards purchasing books for children in Honduras and Southwest Virginia. There's a sign up table in the Narthex for readers and sponsors!
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