Happy Friday St. Peter's!
While we may be socially distanced we are bound together in the Holy Spirit! Even though things are closed we are busy as always with some new online events coming this week so let’s get right to it…
1. Online Worship: Yes, it is weird. Yes, we would all like to be gathered together at St. Peter’s on Sunday morning to celebrate the Risen Christ. No, we will not be gathering in person. We will be streaming our worship online once again on Facebook Live at 10am this Sunday and then placing a link to the service recording on the church website later in the day – we hope that you’ll join us for this new way to worship! The best way that we can love and serve our neighbors as Christ calls us to do is by maintaining social distancing and being safe, even if it means doing things in a new and different way this year – so join our livestream or watch the recording when we post it to the church website and join us – we may be separated by distance but we are gathered together by the Holy Spirit no matter where we are! The worship bulletin for Sunday can also be viewed by clicking RIGHT HERE and is also attached to the end of this email. Finally, if you have friends who are not “online” much please reach out to them and offer help so that they can join our worship services and don’t forget to invite all your friends!
2. SHARE! Don’t forget to share our worship services and upcoming events (and past events) with your friends! One of the most amazing things that has happened over the last few weeks is how we have reached people near and far – we have had local members unable to attend worship joining us for worship in this new way and we have had friends and family and people we don’t even know joining us for worship and other events from places like Connecticut, Missouri, Georgia, Oregon, California, and Indiana. This is the easiest Evangelism you will ever do – share the life, love, and joy of Jesus Christ – and what we are doing at St. Peter’s – with everyone you know! Can we get to 1,000 views of our services? Share with your friends, invite your friends, and let’s find out!!
3. Need help viewing our live events? Are you having trouble viewing our worship services in real time on FaceBook Live or having trouble joining our Facebook Live chats? Never fear, thanks to Chrissy Waldron we have a handy tutorial here to help you easily access both our live events and, if you need, get on Facebook. Thanks Chrissy! You can find the tutorial RIGHT HERE.
4. Celebrating Communion: We will be celebrating Communion during all of our worship services moving forward. All you will need is some bread, crackers, chips, anything of the like and a glass of wine, juice, water, or anything of the like. I spoke about celebrating Communion during the Maundy Thursday worship service (a recording is available in the STP News section of the website) and if you have any questions about celebrating Communion remotely please do not hesitate to contact me directly at revsuloff@gmail.com.
5. Women's Bible Study Group: Calling all ladies! We'd like to start an online women's bible study group. The group will meet on Monday's at 7:30pm through Zoom starting this coming Monday - April 20th. We will have information to join the Zoom meeting posted on the website soon. We are planning to start our study by focusing on women in the bible. We have a few books in mind already, but if you have a book or have a particular woman in the bible you are interested in, please come with that to our first meeting on Monday! For now, this will just be an online group, but we're hoping, once restrictions are lifted, this group will continue both online and every so often get together in person. If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Stephanie Freidly (stephanie.freidly@gmail.com). We hope to 'see' you Monday!
6. Tuesday Bible Study and Discussion: We will be starting a Bible Study this week on Zoom at 12:30pm and 7:30pm where we will explore and discuss the Scripture readings from the previous Sunday. Join us during this time to ask questions, share ideas, and explore your faith! If you have any questions about the Bible Study please contact Pastor Suloff. The Zoom meeting numbers will be posted on the church website by Monday afternoon.
7. Children’s Zoom Chats! SPY has been gathering on Zoom weekly to check in, talk, laugh, and mainly act goofy with one another and we would like to provide a time for our younger children to do this as well. We would like to schedule a time for Zoom chats for our 3rd through 6th graders and for 2nd grade and younger. With various school schedules, family schedules, work schedules, and the busy St. Peter’s online schedule we are trying to determine what times would work best for our families – if your child is interested in participating please email Pastor Suloff with your thoughts. We will host our first Zoom Children’s Chats this Sunday, April 19th with 3rd through 6th graders at 1pm and 2nd grade and younger at 2pm and then we will adjust times and dates accordingly based on family feedback. The Meeting ID for the Zoom chats will be posted on the church website by Saturday afternoon.
8. Confirmation Class will return! Due to the Coronavirus pandemic we obviously have not held our Confirmation Classes in quite some time but that is about to change! Confirmation classes will return next Sunday, April 26th at 12:30pm on Zoom. The meeting ID will be posted on the church website by Saturday, April 25th. If you have any questions about Confirmation please contact Pastor Suloff.
9. The St. Peter’s Nursery School Art Show! Each year, we raise money for families who are meeting the challenges that come with raising a child with autism. Yes, it’s true, every one of our children need support, guidance, instruction, and love. Children with autism need the same; and so much more. Yes, there are resources and help available BUT it costs money! Our Art for Autism show helps raise the money, every year, needed to pay for those services & resources! The pandemic has kept us from being in school! It has kept us from decorating the Gym! BUT we have decided to raise money anyway!!! We can still raise the money needed to help St. Peter’s families!! We have decided to go ahead with our Art for Autism show! We WILL raise money for autism!! We will also have an ART SHOW! Yes, it will be different. It will be smaller but filled with creativity. May 5th will be our Art Show date and our children will decorate but it will be OUTSIDE!!
FLAGS FOR AUTISM AWARENESS!!
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church will be decorated with FLAGS! We are going to decorate flags to post in front of the church to have an outdoor Art Show!! Drive by on May 5th and see the flags decorating the front of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church!! Go to our GoFundMe page and help us raise money for our families!!! 100% of all money raised will go directly to families from St. Peter’s!! Please consider making a donation!
10. Facebook Live Chat – Ask The Pastor Anything!: On Thursday I will once again be hosting a live chat on Facebook Live to “Ask the Pastor Anything!” at 7:30pm. During this time I will field as many questions as I can and if I don’t have the answer to your question I’ll work on finding it and sharing it the following week. I look forward to seeing you all again during this fun and weird way to have a chat!
11. Online Giving and Offering: During this time we know that many are struggling and we certainly understand that but if you are able to continue with your offering please either mail your offering envelopes to the church or consider using our ONLINE GIVING option on the website – it is a quick and easy way to share your gifts with the congregation.
12. SCRIP and Caring for the Community: As said, we know that many are struggling or will be struggling. SCRIP is a great way to support the church and help your neighbors at the same time – one of the best ways that we can help our community right now is by donating gift cards from Weis or Giant to the church so that we can distribute them to folks in needs either within our community or through the Colonial Neighborhood Council and other Social Ministry organizations. SCRIP is easy! You can increase what you give to the church by buying these cards for your daily expenses and help out your neighbors by donating cards. Groceries, gas, Home Depot, Target, Ace Hardware Stores, Amazon purchases, etc. To place orders for Scrip online go to www.ShopWithScrip.com and click “Join A Program.” Our Enrollment Code is: DDA6EF5815851. Our Organization is: St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. Our Coordinator is: Jane Stettler, jstettler@krautharris.com. If you order cards for either personal use or donate we will be in touch with you to coordinate a safe way for you to pick up your cards.
13. Elastic Needed: There are volunteers throughout the community who are working to make masks during this time for various places that need them but elastic is in short supply – if you have new elastic in your sewing box that you can donate to help this cause please contact Pastor Suloff directly at revsuloff@gmail.com.
14. Church Office: Our church office will continue to function but it will obviously look very different for the time being as we are all going to be working remotely whenever it is possible. We will be going to the church periodically to check the mail, take care of administrative tasks that must be handled in the building, and update records. If you have a need during this time please do not hesitate to contact me directly on my cell phone or by email.
15. Check-ins: We ask all the people of St. Peter’s to check in with one another during this time – if you have time please call or email your friends and neighbors, the person who always sits in front on you at church, or someone whose name just pops into your head. If you are aware of any needs within our community please let me know directly. During this difficult time it is of the utmost importance that we communicate with one another and take care of one another as best we can.
16. Ideas: This is a new and different time for all of us – our church, community, nation, and world all must learn to do things differently – if you have any ideas for how we might better share the life, love, and joy of Jesus Christ please let me know!
17. Prayer: Look, we all feel kind of helpless right now and it is difficult – we can, and should, be socially distant during this difficult time. We can also pray because, quite frankly, that is what we do. Our prayer list is attached to the end of this email and I would encourage you all to find a bit of time each day to pray – for our families, our communities, our doctors, our nurses, all those who serve the world during this time, and for our world. We may be separated by distance but we can be united in prayer.
18. Finally, a word of thanks…a huge word of thanks to our choir members who recorded audio tracks for last weeks service (and are doing it again this week!) and to Bob Dungay who put all the various tracks together for our worship service – it was great to hear the voices of our choir come together once again!
Well that covers everything for now St. Peter’s – as you can see we have a lot of stuff going on! We hope that you will join us online for worship this Sunday, consider joining us for some of our online activities, support our ministries if you are able, be sure to check out the Weekday Nursery School Art Show, check-in with people, share our services and events with your friends, pray without ceasing, and as always keep sharing the life, love, and joy of Jesus Christ with all!