Sunday, August 9, 2020: Children’s Book

At Children’s Time, Pastor Skitch will read aloud the children’s book “When God Made You” by Matthew Paul Turner and Illustrated by David Catrow. This book will make a good gift for children of all ages.  The story is inspiring and the illustrations are awesome.

The message from this book is that every child is uniquely made and God loves each one as they are, for they are all special to him. They must continue to learn and grow into the person they are created to be.

To follow the worship service and listen to Pastor Skitch read Click here

Written by Isabella Dougan

Children’s Time: The Marvelous Mustard Seed

Though books read at Children’s Time are – yes – for children, they also help to illuminate what adults will hear in the sermon that follows. On July 26, 2020, Pastor Jenny Smith Walz drew on parables from Matthew 13:31—33 & 44—52 to preach on “The Kingdom of Heaven is Like..” She read a story about a child who plants a mustard seed in an empty garden. “It is an itty-bitty seed. It isn’t anything very special—yet.”

The closing lines of this book, The Marvelous Mustard Seed.   say that the parable of the mustard seed “helps us to imagine what can be….but isn’t yet.” Here is this story, read by a church in Tuscaloosa.

 

Recommended Reading: How the Stars Fell into the Sky

To go along with the lectionary passage for June 19, 2020, the parable of weeds among the wheat in Matthew 13, Pastor Jenny Smith Walz read, for children’s time, How the Stars Fell into the Sky, by Jerri Oughten, the retelling of a Navajo folktale. In this clip, we learn how First Woman tried to write the laws of the land using stars in the sky, only to be thwarted by the trickster Coyote.

“What is there to do next that is half so important as writing the laws,” said First Woman. But Coyote lacked First Woman’s patience and shattered her careful patterns. “There was no undoing what Coyote had done.”

Says Jenny — “these stories help us know why it is so hard to know what is to be done. When you feel confused, maybe you look to the stars. Maybe you talk to God. I hope we can remember that God is patient, patient with us, with a confusing world, and that God will always help us and hold us.”

“Help us when we are confused and scared to remember the stories you teach us and that you are always there….”

Here is Matthew 13: 24-30

24 Another parable he put before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. 27 And the servants[a] of the householder came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then has it weeds?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants[b] said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he said, ‘No; lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

Tune in for ‘Story Time’ on Father’s Day with Evangeline Burgers

Hello, Beloved PUMC Families and Children!

This Sunday we celebrate Father’s Day and our first Summer Session Sunday School! I’ll be sending out information for Sunday School later this week, but here is a mid-week update!

I’ve recorded a read-aloud of one of my all-time favorite children’s books, The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson for our children: https://youtu.be/xc7GdToBYvs. Woodson’s message of empowering young people to resist injustices and break down barriers is such an important one!

Have a safe and healthy week! I hope all of our children are feeling blissful as the long-awaited summer break is finally upon us.

Love,

Evangeline Burgers

Director of Children’s Ministry

Princeton UMC

 

 

Sunday 17 May 2020

SPOTLIGHT

 

Youth Choir 

&

Director Tom Shelton

Sunday being Youth Music Sunday, our Youth Choir led all of the music and liturgist parts. Under Tom Shelton’s musical leadership, William Ponder, Leanne Griffiths, Kasey Angelo, Amy Angelo, Julia Potts, Ana Francisco-Cabus. Reanna Bartels- Quansah, Gillian Bartels- Quansah, Lena Hamilton, Elli Collins, Maggie Collins, Julia Potts, Sophia Penn, Robin Roth, Delaney McCarty, Andre Penn, Izzy Distase all took part in leading the service. We have such gifted and grace-filled young people who genuinely lead worship and not just perform. 

Tom does a brilliant job,” says Pastor Jenny Smith Walz, “teaching them about worship and worship leadership, about the liturgical year, scripture, and being a church community, as well as musical techniques and anthems.” The songs they performed included popular hymns, “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” “Amazing Grace,” “For the Beauty of the Earth,”  “Down to the River to Pray,” and Chopin’s Waltz in A minor.

They have just wrapped up another year of singing, playing, leading worship, offering their gifts, learning, and loving. Thank You Youth Choir and Director Tom Shelton!

If you weren’t able to worship with us this past Sunday, you’d want to go back to the archive on our website or Facebook Link to watch our amazing youth doing God’s work.

 

Written by Isabella Dougan. 

Just by Being Ourselves: Carl and the Meaning of Life

“We are enough because God is enough.” At PrincetonUMC we try to understand that. During Children’s Time on May 17, Pastor Jenny Smith Walz helped us to understand that by reading this book during Children’s Time:

Carl and the Meaning of Life

Here is how the publisher describes this story.

Carl is an earthworm. He spends his days happily tunneling in the soil until a field mouse asks him a simple question that stops him short: “Why?” Carl’s quest takes him on an adventure to meet all the animals of the forest, each of whom seems to know exactly what they were put on this earth to do, unlike the curious Carl. But it’s not until the world around him has changed that Carl begins to realize everyone, no matter how small, makes a big difference just by being themselves.

Want to hear it read aloud? Here.