Dear Clergy and Congregational Leaders of the Capital District,
This week, we have another destructive virus that has painfully reminded us that, for way too many years, it had inflicted undue pain and death on our Black siblings and other siblings of color. Racism requires our attention! Our hearts are breaking for the growing number of Black men and women killed by police, most recently, George Floyd, and, for the inequities against people of color that plague our nation.
As Christ’s followers, and United Methodists, we believe that racism is a distorted value system that assumes that one race is innately superior to the others that translates into wrong mindsets, behaviors, policies, and systems.
SILENCE IS NOT AN OPTION; IT’S TIME FOR ACTION
I invite all Capital clergy and laity to join our resident Bishop, Rev. Dr. John Schol, and I, this coming Sunday, June 7, 2020, at 4:00 PM for a special peaceful public witness of our faith and prayer vigil in solidarity with the African American community and other people of color. This public witness will be a statement of presence, prayer, and reflection in the community. We will practice responsible physical distancing measures and will model the highest standards of Christian love.
Our special guest and speaker will be Rev. Gil Caldwell, a United Methodist, and renowned Civil Rights Activist. Other guest speakers include Bishop John R. Schol, Willingboro Mayor Hon. Tiffany Worthy, Charlene Walker from Faith in NJ, Rev. Geralda Aldajuste, Rev. Vanessa Wilson, Rev. Rupert Hall & Rev. Laura Steele.
JOIN US.
If you feel comfortable, bring a poster that expresses the Christian values of Peace with Justice, and invite a friend. We welcome children and youth. The new generations need more than ever, positive spaces to express their hopes and aspiration for a better society and world.
In consideration for others – we request that all persons participating from United Methodist congregations wear a face mask.
We’re together on the journey.
Paz, Héctor
Rev. Héctor A. Burgos | Capital District Superintendent
Chancel Choir Director, Hyosang Park, Accompanist, Yang-Hee Park, and Sound & Video Producer, Stephen Offer
Hyosang and Yang-Hee have continued to rehearse virtually every week via Zoom. Stephen communicates with the team each step of the way. Great musicianship!
If you weren’t able to worship with us on Sunday, 24 May 2020, you’d want to go back to the archive on our website or Facebook to do so. Here’s the link.
Our Chancel Choir’s Music Ministry was a beautiful tribute to Bill and Donna Suits. It was such a joy to hear their voices and see their faces! Here’s what Pastor Jenny Smith Walz says of them:
“Hyosang does a masterful job of choosing the perfect music and bringing in a superb mix of vocals and instruments every week.”
“Yang-Hee consistently brings us such beautiful music – before, during, after each service. It’s a gift to be able to listen.”
“Stephen Offer painlessly puts the virtual choir video together.”
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl explains in his memoir, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” that it is neither the pursuit of happiness nor the attainment of success that makes life worth living. Instead, we should “find meaning in whatever we do and always have something left to accomplish.” He uses his experience in Nazi death camps to teach us how to cope with suffering and pursue what we find meaningful.
We hope everyone would find time to also read the book, especially in these uncertain times of the COVID crisis.
Grace and Peace in the name of our risen Savior, Jesus Christ!
In Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 we read the beautiful words about the nature of life. Attributed to King Solomon and written in his older years, they are a summary of the ups and downs and the joys and challenges of the human experience. This reminder of what Solomon learned as King begins this way:
“To everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose under Heaven.”
I hope you are comforted by the reminder of the truth in this verse and those that follow it. And I hope that you will read them today if you haven’t before. They are a treasure house of the wisdom Solomon came to be known for and every time they spring to my mind, I find myself comforted by them. I see within them the contours of God’s plans for our time on earth. Solomon rightly predicts that we will all know these things in our lives: birth and death; seed sowing and reaping; killing and healing; weeping and laughing; mourning and dancing; casting stones and gathering stones; embracing and distancing; gaining and losing; silence and speaking; loving and hating, and war and peace.
The verse I have quoted above (verse 1) came to mind today as I began to write this Pastor’s Note. As you may remember, it is soon time for me to finish my sojourn among you at PUMC since I will be retiring at the end of June. Leaving all of you will be very difficult for me to do. I knew it would be difficult, whenever that day would come, within a very few months of my arrival at PUMC now three years ago! PUMC is a truly remarkable church in my life-long experience of churches.
I firmly believe that God is the One who brought me to PUMC and I have given God thanks countless times over the past 3 years for doing so. You are a remarkable part of the Body of Christ! You are very dedicated to the practice and application of your faith. You are courageous in facing whatever the future has held for you including the present circumstances we are in now. You are intentional about reaching out to the world beyond the church and caring for each other within the church. And you are joyful Christians as you do all of this.
In this season that we have been together, which is now two years longer than I originally thought it would be, I have grown. I have learned to love life again after a long season of debilitating grief; I have delighted in working with you on all sorts of things including the ever-present social justice issues that plague the world, and I have been enriched by our worship of the God who loves us with an everlasting love each and every Sunday. In all ways, I have been blessed to be at PUMC. And I have received 10-fold what I have given to you. This is no surprise to me as in God’s economy nothing is wasted and there is always a two-way benefit in any exchange bathed in the love of Christ.
To everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose under Heaven. Solomon is right and it is now time for Norm and me to fully retire and to downsize our home. These things will occupy me for the summer and, perhaps, fall. Whenever our house is sold, we plan to move to Bethlehem, PA just across the NJ border. We have loved this little town ever since our son Russ was a student at Moravian.Pastor
Beyond that move we both see ourselves volunteering with Habitat for Humanity which is quite active in the Lehigh Valley. No doubt we will spend some time over the winter months in Florida which has long been a dream of Norm’s. Wherever we go, we will take the love we have absorbed from all of you with us. We are strengthened in our faith by your faith. We are encouraged to continue to reach out and work for social justice by your example. And we are more in love with God because of the public ways you live out your own love of God, our Beloved Friend.
In the few weeks remaining, I hope to be able to talk with many of you to convey my sincerest gratitude for your acceptance of Norm and of me for these precious three years. Meanwhile, I pray for God’s richest blessing to continue to be yours. And I pray that all who know you, know God better and love God more.
In Christ’s Name,
Pastor Ginny
Pastors Ginny and Jenny got together recently to recall how Pastor Ginny came to serve at PrincetonUMC. For the Video Conversation between both Pastors, Click Here
(This was published in Happenings, the weekly newsletter, on May 22, 2020)
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 Linkto watch our amazing youth doing God’s work.
Alex Martinez, Ashley Willingham, Clare Cook, Emma Pannullo, Meredith Hooper, Sarah Betancourt, Chamari White-Mink, Annie Xie, Trina Swanson, Ariel Chen – Bachelor’s Degree from Princeton University and engaged with our PUMC Congregation and/or the Wesley Foundation led by Pastor Skitch, which also met at PUMC.
Colin Michael Kane from Ithaca College and Brendan Joseph Kane from College of New Jersey.
Pearl Quick – Master’s Degree from Princeton Theological Seminary
Malisa Langdon –Master’s Degree from Rowan University
Robert Scheffler – Ph.D. from Princeton University
Evangeline Burgers recommends this book, written for children but with wisdom for all ages. It has stories of real-life faith heroes, many who are still doing important work among us. You can hear the author read chapters on this YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2vGRRW0G6WzjJMwa6nivyWKWIkj9QgUD
Spiritual Practices to Calm Your Anxious Brain, Charles Stone
The birds are singing, the sun is shining, it is a glorious time! I hope you are all well and having a wonderful week together at home.
I’ve recorded another read aloud video for our children: What Mary Jo Shared, by Janice May Udry. It is the story of a girl who has a hard time finding a story to share, but when she does it brings her new life! This is a great one for those of us (young or old!) who always feel like, “I don’t know what to share!” I hope you can check it out with your family on our PUMC Flipgrid: https://flipgrid.com/45caa357 and respond with your own stories.
I was inspired by Pastor Jenny’s inclusion in her sermon last Sunday of the importance of changemakers telling their story to make a difference for our world. I picked up this book earlier this year called, Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, by Daneen Akers. It is a book full of stories of real-life faith heroes, many who are still doing important work among us. The price tag is, unfortunately, a bit high, but the author is reading aloud a new story each week on her YouTube channel. I highly recommend this resource for you and your kids!
Take turns sharing your favorite stories from books, movies, and TV shows. Briefly explain how the story actually ends and then take turns offering your own ending – one that’s happier, stranger, or more interesting. Your ending may turn a minor character into a heroine or turn a tragic death into nothing more than a close call. The aim is to inspire creativity. Then, talk about some real-life alternate endings you’ve experienced – that is, when you thought a situation would turn out one way but were surprised when it turned out another way. Try to keep the stories positive, with endings that turned out better than expected. Your goal is to help kids understand that dread, fear, and worry are sometimes misplaced emotions. If we can’t see how something good ultimately can come from something that seems bad, we’re not looking at it from the right perspective. We’re not taking into account how
God can change the ending.
To honor this National Day of Prayer, here are some great resources:
For our younger ones (and young at heart!), ‘Friends With God: Discover How to Pray by Jeff White and David Harrington, contains prayer activities and stories from friends in the Bible. Consider taking a walk around the house with your child, looking at photos of family and friends. Use these photos as an opportunity for prayer. You might say, “God bless Grandpa.” or “I pray for peace for my friends from school.”
1. For this practice, one family member will act as the leader, and others will be participants. Rotate who serves as the leader, to give everyone a chance to participate in the prayer.
2. The leader will call everyone together and explain ‘Smartphone Prayer.’ Say, “This prayer moves through five different activities on our smartphones. Each is one minute long. I will tell you what to do for each activity and then start my timer. When the timer rings, look up at me and listen for the next mission.”
3. Go through the five missions as follows, making sure the leader sets his/her timer after each instruction and calls everyone back together before presenting the next mission:
– Minute One: Go to your text messages and take a look at the last five people in the recent messages, whether they are people you text regularly or people you don’t know at all. Take this minute to pray for each of the five people listed there.
– Minute Two: Go to a news app or website and take a minute to scroll through the headlines. Pray for what jumps out at you as a prayer need this day.
– Minute Three: Go to the notepad and spend this minute typing out whatever comes to mind: praise, gratitude, confession, or requests to God.
– Minute Four: Go to your favorite social media site and spend this minute praying for the people who come up on your feed during this minute.
– Minute Five: Go to your photos. Take this moment to scroll through the most recent twenty or so photos. What prayers come to mind? Lift them up to God now.
4. Follow up: After the five-minute prayer is over, take a couple of minutes to talk about the activity together using one or more of the following questions:
Was there anything surprising or unusual that you heard from God when you were using your cell phone to pray today? What was the most important prayer that came through today? How can we incorporate this attitude of prayer as we use our smartphones throughout the week? In your opinion, does technology draw us closer to God or farther away? Talk a little about your opinion.
1st scripture – 1Peter 2: 9-10 – Peter saluting God’s chosen people
2nd scripture – Acts 1:1-11 – The promise of the Holy Spirit and the Ascension of Jesus
Pastor Jenny
In her sermon on Sunday, April 26, 2020, Rev. Jenny Smith Walz reminded us that the question, ‘Who are you,’ has been asked in many stories, in such classics as ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.’ When Alice met Caterpillar, the first thing he said to her was, “Who are you?” Alice did not know how to answer Caterpillar so she left. In our “Talking the Walk” worship series, we are putting words to our faith, telling stories of God, life, resurrection, healing, etc. This can be very hard to do, sometimes vulnerable to share. We may even think we don’t have a story to tell.
Hearing stories helps us tell our stories and strengthens our faith. Every story has a hero, not necessarily a superhero, but the main character, a protagonist. In Bible scriptures, it is easy to see that God is the hero. We read stories of Moses, Joseph, Samson,Esther. What then is our story? The stories we like best to tell are the ones where we are at the center – we are the heroes. However, we must never forget that God is the hero of our stories – a different sort of hero. He creates, calls, proclaims us into being. God gives us each a co-hero role in the story, thus bringing us into the spotlight. He calls us out of darkness into marvelous light, out of obscurity, out of chaos, out of nothingness.
In the first scripture for today, Peter is reminding the Exiles of the Dispersion who they were – troubled, persecuted, un-gathered. Yet, he brings them grace and peace. With the Covid_19 crisis, God is also reminding us how fragile our identities are. We should, therefore, embrace the truth of what Peter is telling those exiles. “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
In worship, we hear a different word – ‘Enough.’ We are enough for God. not because of our greatness, not because of our accomplishments. We are God’s people because it is God who is summoning us into being, gathering us together, shaping us as his people and, telling us who we are – God’s beloved. We don’t have to become the amazing hero of the story. We only have to believe that we are called and chosen and should joyfully respond to God’s love. All we have to do now is to remember who we are and then tell our story of how God has created us, how God has chosen us, how God has called us, how God is shaping us, connecting us, equipping us, and strengthening us to love others and bring justice to this world. Because God claims us, no stereotype can define us, and no ridicule can undo us.
Pastor Jenny explained that we are constantly bombarded by questions that make us question who we are, what our identity is, how much money we have – all the things that tempt us to think that they matter in terms of our identity. God is reminding us again and again that the things that tempt us do not define our identity in Christ. The most important part of our story is not what we do or what we have but in merely being a beloved child of God. And here we are in this covid_19 crisis in a way that may make it even trickier. Even as we find ourselves in isolation, we are trying to understand what is most important and what activities are essential for our well-being.
She referred to the story of Howard Thurman, author, philosopher, theologian, educator, civil rights leader, dean of the chapel at Boston University and the first African American professor at Boston University, several decades ago. He stated that part of his identity as God’s beloved was that which his grandmother, a former slave, gave him when she kept saying over and over again to him, “you are someone.”
Thurman told the story of his family traveling in the South in the 50s when they came upon a playground. The girls wanted to play on the swings, but there was a sign that read “For Whites Only By State Law.” In explaining why they were not allowed on the playground, he said to them: “You are somebody, you are so important to God, so powerful in fact that it takes all of the state legislature, the courts, the sheriffs and policemen… it takes all these to keep two little black girls from swinging in those swings. That is how important you are! Never forget that the estimate of your importance and self-worth can be judged by how much power people are willing to use to control you and keep you in the place they have assigned you. You are two important little girls.” What a way to reinterpret that sign and to keep proclaiming their lovingness, enoughness, somebodyness amid such a terrible injustice!
As we continue our “Talking the Walk” worship series about telling our stories, “I would love to hear the stories of your beginnings and how God was a part of that beginning. So tell me a story of who you are,” announced Pastor Jenny. “Tell me a story of how you know you are God’s beloved child. Tell me a story about your belovedness, your enoughness, your somebodyness, your chosenness. Tell me a story of who you are in God.
Following Pastor Jenny’s sermon, Heather Hadley told her amazing story about how she came to be a member of Princeton United Methodist Church.
To hear the sermon live, go to the Princeton United Methodist Church Facebook page
For the complete video of the April 26 service, found on Princeton United Methodist Church Facebook page, click here
Dear Friends,
Youth Choir
The aim is to inspire creativity. Then, talk about some real-life alternate endings you’ve experienced – that is, when you thought a situation would turn out one way but were surprised when it turned out another way. Try to keep the stories positive, with endings that turned out better than expected. Your goal is to help kids understand that dread, fear, and worry are sometimes misplaced emotions. If we can’t see how something good ultimately can come from something that seems bad, we’re not looking at it from the right perspective. We’re not taking into account how
