Sunday School will begin 15 minutes early, at 9:30. The Cherub Choir will not rehearse. The A.C. Adams Sunday School class will not meet this Sunday but will meet at the usual time on March 15.

Daylight Saving Time slips in before dawn this Sunday. Remember to set your clocks ahead one hour before you doze off Saturday night. We'll see you in church!

First, the committee wants to thank everyone who participated in completing the survey. Your responses were extremely valuable in bringing into focus the experiences of the congregation of First Presbyterian Church.

A lot of time has already been devoted to this process, but there are several steps left to complete. The Strategic Planning Committee is reviewing the data from the survey and will then consider how it aligns with data the team has collected previously. Next, we look forward to providing opportunities for further dialogue with the congregation about our hopes and dreams.

Finally, we will draft our recommendations and share these with the Session, Board of Deacons, staff, and committee chairs for their consideration. We will also share a summary of the survey results with you and make available all survey results at the appropriate time.

Thank you for your patience in this process. While the committee would like to have the remaining steps completed as soon as possible, it is more important that we honor the congregation's input and God's leading by taking the time necessary to do it well!

Please contact any member of the committee at any time with any questions you have. Its members are Aaron Brooks, Peggy Hill, Jennifer Kennedy, Shannan Miller, Lensey Richardson, Gordon Turnbull, John Vann, Paul Warhurst, and Charles Webb. 

There will be  a called Session meeting to receive new members next Sunday, March 15, at 10:20 a.m. in the chapel. All who desire to join First Presbyterian Church are welcome.

There will be a called meeting of the congregation on Sunday, March 22, at 10:25 a.m. in the Fellowship Hall.  The purpose of this meeting is to consider changes in the terms of call for the Pastor/Head of Staff. All members of First Presbyterian Church are urged to attend.

The next story in our churchwide study series, EPIC: Through the Bible with Jesus, is "The Forgiving Prince," based on Genesis 37-46 and retold in The Jesus Storybook Bible. Please join us this Sunday, March 8, for the story of Joseph, his brothers, and (spoiler alert!) the power of forgiveness. Sermon texts throughout this series are taken from the same source.

ACTS of Prayer: Supplication

On Wednesday, March 11, Dave Welch will take up the final part in his series of adult learning programs on prayer. He is leading us in a review of Biblical models of the prayer forms adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication (ACTS), while we reflect on our own prayer pilgrimages. Wednesday's focus will be on prayers of supplication and intercession.

Please join us at 5:30 for dinner in the Fellowship Hall and stay for the adult learning program at 6:20. Student Small Groups and Wednesday Night Kids will meet as usual at 6:00.

Parents: Please keep your children with you or within sight until they are called to their groups at 6:00. We want to keep our children safe and adults unworried!

Easter comes on April 5 this year, and as part of our Lenten preparation, we are ordering lilies to brighten our worship spaces on that glad morning. To order lilies in honor or memory of someone, fill out a form and return it to the church office with payment by Monday, March 23. Lilies are $15 per plant, and order forms can be found in the Sunday bulletin, on the kiosk, and in the office. To aid correct acknowledgment, please print names exactly as you wish to see them in the Easter bulletin. Lilies will be placed in the sanctuary and Fellowship Hall after the Good Friday worship service.

If you can take a meal to someone just home from the hospital, send a card or make a phone call to someone in a special care facility, or comfort someone in distress, FPC wants you for Care Shepherds, our congregational care ministry. The goal of this ministry is to show Christian love to members of our church family who are in need.

We begin a new Care Shepherds schedule in April and will hold a training event sometime that month. Come with your talents and build confidence as you serve! There are as many ways to do so as there are opportunities. Volunteers serve one month at a time on a team that coordinates the needs of the congregation for that month.

For more information or to volunteer, please contact Lorri Looney at jeffandlorri@msn.com or 423-573-1676 or Sue Faucette at suerforeo@hotmail.com or 423-652-1947.

PW Put Stamp(s) on Mission Work 

Presbyterian Women are making it easy for you to provide Sunday School materials for Latin American churches: just bring your canceled stamps to FPC! Presbyterian Women are working with the Alliance Stamp Ministry in Fort Myers, Florida, to turn used stamps into money for mission work. This group accepts all stamps, and by so doing were able to raise $36,000 last year, enough to equip students in nearly 40 denominations in 19 countries.

All you need to do is to trim your canceled stamps from their envelopes, keeping all corner fringe and borders. Buyers will not purchase a stamp that has been removed from its envelope, so please cut around it, leaving a border of at least a quarter of an inch of paper; a third of an inch is even better. A stamp with less "handling material" cannot be used. Then simply bring your stamps to church with you and put them in the clear plastic container on the table in the Fellowship Hallway. Presbyterian Women will do the rest! 

More than 40 women attended our annual Heart to Heart women's retreat at Blowing Rock Conference Center last weekend. We worshiped, talked, heard an excellent speaker, and hung out. The photos below give a glimpse of a wonderful weekend.

Lorri Looney's Heart to Heart DVD Bible Study group will take up a spring study, Discerning the Voice of God by Priscilla Shirer, on March 25. This course will run until May 6. Workbooks will be available at the first session. They meet at 9:30 on Wednesday mornings in the church parlor. All women of the church are welcome to come and bring a friend!

To make it easier to sign up for our newsletter and other announcements sent by email for us by Constant Contact, we have added a mailing list sign-up button to the Contact page of our website, here. If you have unsubscribed and want to resubscribe, this is the button for you!

To reach it manually, go to our homepage at www.fpcbristol.org, scroll to the bottom, click on Gathering, then click on the Contact tab. You will see it in the lefthand column of the FPC Contact page.

Please let Kathy Acuff (kacuff@fpcbristol.org) know if you have any problems using it.

Bear in mind that when you opt out of one of our Constant Contact emails, whether it is a one-time announcement or the weekly newsletter, you opt out of all future emails that Constant Contact will send on our behalf. There are many emails but only one FPC mailing list.

Thanks for reading!

Our mowing days are generally Wednesdays through Saturdays. Mowing takes three or four hours, and each turn comes up every five or six weeks, depending on the number of volunteers we have.

We also need folks who can pick up tree branches early in the week and stack them on the curb on the Spruce Street side of the front yard. This is a good service activity for families with young children.

The mowing season begins April 1 and runs through the end of October. Even if you can help only once or twice during the season, we can use you! To volunteer to mow or to clear, please call Randy Cook at 423-956-1541 or email him at npolecook@aol.com. He will give individual lessons on safe operation of the Scag mower to anyone who needs them.

Snacks for Fairmount Students 

We are collecting cookies for our young friends at Fairmount Elementary School. The Neighborhood Initiatives Steering Committee is asking us to fill the Little Red House in the Fellowship Hallway with boxes of vanilla wafers. The committee will take them to Fairmount, where teachers will divide them into portions for the youngsters whose parents cannot afford to send snacks to school with them. Let's make sure all students get a midafternoon energy boost!

When "Spiritual But Not Religious" Is Not Enough

Recently I read a magazine article reporting that an increasing number of Americans are identifying themselves as SBNR. Now in case you don't know what those letters signify, it's an acronym meaning "spiritual but not religious." You've probably seen that term used, not infrequently by individuals in the public eye. And of course that raises the question, what does SBNR suggest about an individual's understanding of God, issues of eternity, and the human condition?

One who is very clear on these matters is Lillian Daniel, pastor of the First Congregational Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a contributor to several magazines, and the host of a Chicago-based television program on religious topics. The title of her recent book makes the point succinctly: When "Spiritual But Not Religious" Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church. Let the book jacket summarize her thesis forcefully: "More and more people are searching for God-so long as it's not in church. They find God in nature, in exercise, in the sweet insights of their children, in trees and sunsets.... But there's the thing about this original, self-styled spirituality; it's not very original at all. In our self-centered consumer culture, it's easy to find God amid the comfortable and convenient things that appeal to ... us. It's a lot harder to see God in the face of suffering and death, poverty and injustice, worldwide disaster and, most of all, fallible human beings."

The book jacket concludes, "With poignant reflections and sly wit, Daniel invites all of us to step out of ourselves, dare to become a community, and encounter a God greater than we could invent." If this appeals to you, you'll find her book on our table of recent additions.

Eat with Joy: Redeeming God's Gift of Food

And now for a different taste. Rachel Marie Stone's Eat with Joy: Redeeming God's Gift of Food is a Christian approach to something we all enjoy, eating. God intends for us to delight in our food, she writes, but in today's world it so often become complicated with concerns about obesity, eating disorders, nutritional aspects, even the safety of what we put in our mouths.

"This book is a manna in the wilderness to any Christian who has ever had a conflicted relationship with food, thereby missing the unadulterated joy of eating," writes one reviewer. And the author does it without throwing aside all those legitimate concerns we have about what and how we eat. She contends that our meals can become expressions of generosity, community, and neighborly love. What she terms redemptive love can bring healing of eating disorders and enable us to see eating as a sacramental act of culture by which we gratefully feast in the kingdom of God.

Of course, any book of this type must have recipes, and she's got them: strawberry rhubarb pie, curried red lentil soup, cinnamon rolls, and others. But remember: prayers before eating come with the recipes. You will not have seen a book like this before; it has the potential to make your mealtime, whether singly or with family or even a large group, a festive opportunity to worship God through good food and with warm and thankful hearts. It's in our library!

Sunday's music participants: Sanctuary Choir; soloists Shannan Miller and Liz Dollar; Cherub Choir; Praise Team members Abbey Kitts, Shannan Miller, Mark Mervis, Daniel Osborne, and Paul Warhurst.

Sunday's music: Among the musical selections for our combined service, the Sanctuary

Jack Noble White

Choir will lead the congregation in singing "The First Song of Isaiah" by Jack Noble White. This anthem/hymn sets Isaiah 12:2-6 with a refrain that begins "Surely it is God who saves me." Our EPIC story of the rescue of the sons of Jacob reminds us that God works in amazing and unlikely ways to save us, which this scriptural passage from Isaiah reinforces. White wrote this setting in 1976 for a youth conference held in Mobile, Alabama; he later in his career spent 17 years as director of the Texas Boys Choir and continues to work as a composer.

The Cherub Choir will sing "For Things that I Do Wrong, O Lord" with text and music by Michael Bedford. This song tells us that God is with us through each day to show us how to live. Bedford is a native of Sherman, Texas, where one of his first teachers was the late Mary Landrum. He was educated at several Texas schools and now lives and works as a church musician in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

For the offertory, the Praise Team will share "Stronger" by Ben Fielding and Reuben Morgan. Echoing the conclusion of this week's story, it reminds us that our sins are forgiven through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. Fielding and Morgan are affiliated with Hillsong, a church based in Australia with congregations throughout the world.

Milligan College Choir and Orchestra: The Milligan College Concert Choir and Orchestra will participate in our 11:00 worship service Sunday, March 22. At 3:00 p.m., the Concert Choir will perform a separate concert at the church. The Milligan College Orchestra was founded in 1999 as an expansion of the string program at Milligan. Besides providing an excellent ensemble experience for Milligan students, the orchestra has broadened to include students from East Tennessee State University and area high schools, as well as Milligan alumni and members of the community. The Milligan College Orchestra performs throughout East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia and collaborates frequently with area ensembles, including the Johnson City Civic Chorale, the Johnson City Symphony Orchestra, and the East Tennessee Children's Choir. The orchestra also champions new works and has performed the world premieres of three pieces, including "Three Genres" by John Grubb and "Genesis" by Kenton Coe.

Director Dr. Kellie Brown has been a member of the Milligan College music faculty since 1998 and serves as chair of the music department, director of the strings program, and conductor of the Milligan College Orchestra. Dr. Brown is a frequent clinician and performer throughout the country and serves as the assistant conductor and assistant concertmaster of the Johnson City Symphony Orchestra. As a soloist, Dr. Brown has performed several world premieres including "An Encounter for Violin and Piano" by Jane Perry. In addition, she has written many compositions, arrangements, and articles and is a recognized authority on music in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Dr. Brown studied at Furman University, East Tennessee State University, and Appalachian State University and holds a bachelor's degree in music education, a master's degree in violin performance, and a doctoral degree in higher education administration, with an emphasis in music administration. Next week we will share information on the choir and their conductor.

Lenten Organ Meditations: Central Presbyterian Church in Bristol, Virginia, presents its 2015 Lenten Organ Meditations at noon each Wednesday from February 25 to April 1. Organist for March 11 is Dr. David Hendricksen, Director of Music and organist at First Presbyterian Church in Greeneville, as well as Director of the Civic Chorale.

In Our Prayers

Becky Busler

Jane Crewey

Dorothy Dollar

Fred Frazier

Ann Galliher

DeeDee Galliher

Dorothy Giesler

Juanita Goforth

Ron Grubbs

Will Hankins

Mary Nell Harris

Sharon Hatcher

Hawley Heglar

Carolyn King

Nancy King

Sue Olsen

Nancy Preston

Mary Rice

Brenda Rogers

Virginia Rutherford

Katy Sikorski

Faye VanNostrand

An extensive list of prayer concerns, "Pray for One Another," is available for pickup at the church each week.

Birthday Prayer Fellowship

March 8        Tony Adams, Dawn Eubanks, Nathan Heacock

March 9        Abi Davis, Katie Davis

March 10      Amy Buck

March 11      Cindy Heglar, Marynan Smith

March 12      David Hyde, Candy Phelps

March 13      Adam Borsch, Will Hankins

We recently received gifts in memory of the following individuals:

Evelyn Barr Goad (sister of Graham Barr): by Al & Loretta Thomas, to the Minister's Discretionary Fund

Sunday, March 8

9:30 a.m.     Sunday School, Education Wing

10:30 a.m.   Combined Worship, Sanctuary

Monday, March 9

5:30 p.m.     Sanctuary Handbells, Handbell Room

7:00 p.m.     Building & Grounds Committee, Room 117

7:00 p.m.     Christian Education Committee, Room 125

7:00 p.m.     Worship Committee, Room 123

Tuesday, March 10

9:00 a.m.     Staff Meeting, Room 123

10:00 a.m.   Morning Prayer Group, Conference Room

1:00 p.m.     Jackie Burt's Bible Study, Burt Home

6:00 p.m.     Venture Crew 3, Cub Scout Room

7:00 p.m.     Boy Scout Troop 3, Scout Wing

Wednesday, March 11

10:00 a.m.   Elizabeth Patrick's Women's Bible Study, New Mothers' Room

4:15 p.m.     Children's Handbells, Room 212

4:45 p.m.     Youth Handbells, Room 212

4:45 p.m.     Savior's Singers Children's Choir, Room 209

5:15 p.m.     Baby & Toddler Care, Rooms 34-37

5:30 p.m.     Fellowship Dinner, Fellowship Hall

6:00 p.m.     Wednesday Night Kids, Rooms 11 &31

6:00 p.m.     Student Small Groups, Youth Wing

6:20 p.m.     Adult Learning, Fellowship Hall

7:15 p.m.     Sanctuary Choir, Room 202

7:30 p.m.     Praise Team, Fellowship Hall

Thursday, March 12

7:00 a.m.      Men's Bible Study, Parlor

8:30 a.m.      Meals on Wheels, Fellowship Hall

12:00 p.m.   Noon Bible Study, Room 117

Saturday, March 14

8:00 a.m.      Men's Breakfast & Men's Committee, Fellowship Hall