All Are Welcome
PUMC youth led our worship service, including prayers, music, hymns, and liturgy, on Youth Sunday, April 18, 2021. Ana Francisco-Cabus and Delaney McCarty shared their youth testimonies. The Scripture was from “Matthew 25:34-40.”
You, too, can experience God’s love and transformation. Come worship with us at Princeton United Methodist Church, and be a part of this beloved community. Click here to watch the PUMC worship service and listen to their testimonies.
Written by Isabella Dougan
To celebrate Youth Sunday on April 18, we will have special musical performances of hymns we love featuring the Youth Choir. Other performing musicians will include Leanne Griffiths (piano), Gillian and Reanna Bartels Quansah (vocals), Delaney McCarty (flute), and Andre Penn (piano). There will also be classical music from Bach, Faure, and Mendelssohn.
Our hymns include “When The Poor Ones” and “No Hands But Yours,” written by Tom Shelton, PUMC Director of Children’s and Youth Choirs. Shelton has written many hymns and served as guest conductor at many music festivals for children and youth. We will start the service with one of my favorite hymns, “In Christ, There is No East or West.”
William A. Dunkerley wrote the hymn “In Christ, There Is No East Or West” in 1908 under the pseudonym John Oxenham, and is sung to the tune ST. PETER (Reinagle). While it is appropriate for the Easter Season, some people criticized it for emphasizing masculine qualities.
VIDEO “In Christ, There Is No East Or West”
PUMC youth will lead our worship service, including prayers, music, and liturgy, with Ana Francisco-Cabus and Delaney McCarty sharing their youth testimonies. The Scripture is from “Matthew 25:34-40.”
Click here to join us in this worship service as we come before the Lord with joyful songs.
[Videos credit: YouTube] [Photo credit: PUMC Library]
Written by Isabella Dougan
The Youth Choir will present a series of skits, vignettes, solos, and anthems for Youth Sunday, April 30. Because of Communiversity there will be one service that day, at 9:30 a.m. Both choirs will reprise their musicals for Communiversity at 2 p.m.
The children’s musical follows the adventures of three trees — bringing to life the traditional story of some trees with a dream and God with a plan. The first tree dreams of holding great treasure; the second tree longs to beco
me a mighty ship, and the third tree just wants to stay in the forest and point people to God. Told through story and song, the congregation is reminded that even when we can’t see the forest for the trees, there is no prayer that is too small for God.
It’s a good story but trees can’t possibly have social relationships, right? We grownups would scoff at that idea and say merely that this musical is an imaginative way to present Christian truths.
Yet in “The Hidden Life of Trees,” an international bestseller, forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers.
As we learn more about our world, we learn that God has amazing plans. We look forward to April 23, when the children will teach us about God.
This is the Sunday for another yummy breakfast, prepared by the United Methodist Men. We’ll hear how polio has almost been stamped out around the world. Another treat: the children’s choir will sing, directed by Tom Shelton. (Yes, these pictures were taken in warmer weather! (Also mark your calendars for February 28, Youth Sunday, when the kids join the Youth Choir to sing at both services.)
Our sermon series for Lent: “I AM”. Each Sunday in Lent, we will examine who Jesus is (the Light of the World, the True Vine, the Good Shepherd, the Way the Truth the Life, and more). As we examine who Jesus is we will reflect on how that informs we who are as Christians.
On Youth Sunday, February 8 at 9:30, choirs from three churches will praise the Lord. Our PUMC youth choir rehearsed with singers from Trinity Episcopal and Nassau Presbyterian, and these combined choirs visited the other two churches on January 25. Now we get to hear them! They will sing Cherubini’s “Like as a Father,” a traditional Zambian song, “Bonse Aba,” and “One Voice.”
Thanks to PUMC’s Tom Shelton, Nassau’s Sue Ellen Page (shown here) , and Trinity’s Tom Whittemore for their leadership. 
Our young people will take leading roles in our church this weekend! On Saturday, March 29 at 6 p.m. they stage a fundraising dinner and auction for the Appalachia Service Project (ASP). Tickets for the March 29 dinner are $5, and all are welcome. Among the 
items on the auction block: condos in London, England and Key West, Florida. The ASP program welcomes all teens of all backgrounds, church members and non-church members alike, to participate in this life-changing experience.
On Sunday, March 30, at 9:30 and 11 a.m., three graduating seniors — Alexander Birkel, Daniel Prakash, and Anthony Teng — will deliver the sermon. Their topic in the Landscape of Lent series is “Mud.”
Sunday Schoolers from second grade on up will attend the 9:30 worship service. After all — soon it will be their turn to lead a Youth Sunday!
Then on the Thursday before Easter, April 17, at 7:30 p.m., the youth choir and a string quartet will present Faure’s Messe Basse for the service of Upper Room Communion.
Come and support our youth!