Christ's Lutheran Church, Oreland PA

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"Let us build a house where love can dwell and all can safely live, a place where saints and children tell how hearts learn to forgive. Built of hopes and dreams and visions, rock of faith and vault of grace; here the love of Christ shall end divisions: All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place" (ELW 641).

Community and Outreach will be holding a School Supplies Drive for the Willow Grove Baptist Food Pantry, now through Sunday, August 18th. The supplies will be dropped off that week. Supplies needed are as follows:

-Dry Erase Markers
-Composition Books
-Folders
-Binders - 1" and 2"
-1,3, and 5 Subject Notebooks
-Backpacks
-Lunch Boxes
-Crayola Markers
-Colored Pencils

All items must be new. Any questions, please email Jen at [email protected]. Let's help these students start off the school year with all their needed school supplies! Thank you for your support!

Please join us on the last Thursday of every month as we gather for Pub Theology at 7:00 pm.

Our next gathering takes place tomorrow, Thursday, July 25 at Tannery Run Brew Works, 131 E Butler Avenue, Ambler. Our topic this week is "Faith in Film".

RSVP to Pastor Kaegler at
[email protected].

Tannery Run Brew Works - Ambler, Ambler, PA Our home was constructed among the rocks and waters of the creek. The team that drafts and serves our chosen elixirs is a family, connected and devoted to our roots. The tastes we present ar...

We are currently following our summer schedule with worship at 9:30 am on Sundays.

Stay tuned for information regarding exciting happenings throughout the summer!

This Sunday, July 28 join us for worship as we sing some of our
favorite hymns!

Then our summer sermon series continues!

For the end of the summer, we’re starting a sermon series on Faith and Disney Films! Use these as a chance to see how to complement modern movies through with scripture, see them with eyes of faith, and to open up conversations about the faith with your family!

August 4th: Encanto and Spiritual Gifts
August 11th: Moana, Ecclesiology, and Tradition
August 18th: Frozen 2, Forgiveness and Reconciliation between
People and Nations
August 25th: Inside Out and the Wholeness of the Self
September 1: Pooh’s Heffalump Movie and Moving Beyond Fear

Please hold the camper's family, and the whole Bear Creek Camp community in your prayers.

We are heartbroken to have to share this news.

THIS Saturday! All are welcome to come and eat and play! Just let me know if you're coming, so I have enough pizza for everyone! (email [email protected] or message me here!)

CLC’s Saints and Sinners came in 6th of 18 at Tannery Run Brew Works tonight!

June 30, 2024 - Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
We welcome into the CLC faith community through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism Alice Elizabeth Nussbaum, daughter of Elizabeth and Brian Nussbaum.
Sponsors are Darren and Michelle Bruce. 

Thursday June 27, 2024

The Compassion Challenge Meditation
by Susan Ross

Philippians 2:4 “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

I felt motivated to write about compassion this month as the topic came up at the Welcome Church service on the Parkway a few weeks ago and it got me thinking. One of the men attending the service noted that the world was hurting due to a lack of compassion. I appreciated his thoughtful insights.

I hear this word a lot but got to thinking…what exactly IS compassion? The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives this explanation: Compassion and empathy both refer to a caring response to someone else’s distress. While empathy refers to an active sharing in the emotional experience of the other person, compassion adds to that emotional experience a desire to alleviate the person’s distress.

So this was a bit different than my thoughts on compassion. I equated it more with caring, not just when someone was in distress. I think of compassion as an understanding of the need each of us has to be seen, heard and accepted just as we are and showing that in my words and actions. Listening to the news and sometimes the conversations around me, I hear judgment from those whose thoughts and lifestyles differ from others and a focus on making their opinions heard with an overriding theme that those thoughts are the only true way of thinking. Reconsidering it now, I guess I wasn’t far off. When our need to be seen, heard and accepted is not met, we do experience personal distress. As the man at the Welcome Church emphasized, we are living in a world with a great need for more compassion.

I found this in a daily devotional by Craig Dennison that really got to the heart of the meaning of compassion for me.

“One of the most impactful ways we can share God’s heart with others is by living compassionately. To show compassion is to step outside of yourself and love another in times of weakness. And to live compassionately is to posture your heart continually toward giving grace and love to those who need it most.

Very little stirs my heart to God more than compassion. When someone sees me in my imperfection and chooses to love me rather than cast me aside, my affection for them and God is automatically stirred. Oftentimes the world is too busy or self-focused to show compassion. We get too caught up in our plans, our needs, and our image to see the hurting and share God’s heart.

But God is calling us to a life lived humbly and sacrificially. The world is in desperate need of compassion. People need mercy and grace when they fail, show weakness, or are experiencing hard times. God’s heart is to use us so that we might show mercy and grace as a reflection of his unconditional love. He’s calling us to be light in the darkness that the world might see in us the compassionate heart of our heavenly Father.”

For me, THAT is a living definition of compassion and a challenge I will consciously try to take on in my daily life.

Prayer: Dear God, Help us to live today in response to Your love by showing compassion to others that they might see and know Your love and grace.

Music: Compassion by Jet Jurgensmeyer

Christ's Lutheran Church
700 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Oreland, PA 19075
(215) 886-4612
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Today's Livestream Service
If you will be joining us for today's 9:30 am livestream service, please follow the below instructions:

Log on to CLC's website at
www.christs-oreland.org

Access to the livestreamed service can be gained either through the "Livestream" tab in the upper left or by clicking "Here" in the center of the
Welcome to CLC page.

Log in anytime to see the countdown to today's service!

The CLC 60 Plus Senior group welcomed the Brittany Boys to their June meeting. The performance was enjoyed by all.
Off for the summer, 60 Plus returns in September.

Do you have a question you’d like Pastor Kaegler to address in a sermon? Write your question down on one of the slips of paper found at the back of church and drop it in the collection basket. A question will be drawn each week and Pastor will answer it in the following week’s sermon.

Our summer schedule will begin on Sunday, June 16 with worship at 9:30 am.

Stay tuned for information regarding exciting happenings throughout the summer!

Father's Day Collection for WGB Food Pantry
Now until June 16

The Willow Grove Baptist Food Pantry was incredibly thankful for the baby wipes and diapers we collected for our Mother's Day collection. When asked what we could collect for Father's Day, the pantry asked if we could collect bar soap and toothpaste again.

They appreciated our bar soap and toothpaste collection so much earlier this year. Each week a family receives either a bar of soap or toothpaste. The pantry blows through them so quickly and they are not items that are donated frequently.

The pantry also asked if we could collect shampoo and body wash as well. So in honor of Father's Day, lets collect as much toothpaste, bar soap, body wash and shampoo as possible to help our friends at the WGB Food Pantry.

As always, we will continue to collect all non-perishables, diapers, baby wipes, etc. The pantry appreciates our support so much.

Any questions, please email Jen at [email protected].

Thank you for your continued support - this church community is amazing!

We had a great night celebrating Lutheran Night at the Phillies!!! 30 members of CLC brought the good luck for the Phillies to win!

Worship at 10:30 am continues through June 9.

Our summer schedule will begin on Sunday, June 16 with worship at 9:30 am.

Stay tuned for information regarding exciting happenings throughout the summer!

Thank you to everyone who donated to our Diaper and Baby Wipes Collection for the Willow Grove Baptist Food Pantry! We estimated that we collected close to 1,000 diapers! What a way to celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost!

Today is Pentecost! Let us celebrate that God sent the Holy Spirit to be among us.

Don’t forget this Sunday is our last day for our Baby Wipes and Diapers Collection! Thank you to everyone who has already donated!

Baby Wipes and Diapers Collection

In honor of Mother's Day on Sunday, May 12th, we will be collecting diapers and baby wipes for the Willow Grove Baptist Food Pantry now through Sunday, May 19th.

WGB Food Pantry is especially in need of
Size 4, 5 and 6 diapers. Together we can help make some mother's day better by giving them the gift of items for their babies!

Any questions, please contact Jen Melnick at
[email protected].

As always, thank you for all of your generous donations!

We are delighted to be celebrating the Rite of Confirmation ✝️ with Shane Morrissy and George Stein this morning! God Bless our Confirmands!

Sharing:

Meditation by Deb Quaco

2 Corinthians 9:6-7 English Standard Version
The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Several weeks ago, I was reminded of how proud our congregation should be of its tradition of giving to others in need. Within a week of being told that there was a need for cereal at the Willow Grove Food Pantry, our members had brought over a hundred boxes of cereal to the church to help meet that need. Having been a member of Christ Lutheran since I was in grade school, I have seen many such efforts from our congregation and so I grew up with that model of giving to others in my makeup. My parents were always generous givers, and they taught my sister and I that if you see someone in need of something that you can give, you must do it. I was well into my middle age before I realized that there are unfortunately many people who did not feel the same need to give to others that I did, and in fact, that there are many who actively find reasons not to give. They are not bad people. I discovered the hard way that many of them are friends of mine.

Several years ago, I had a young student who was one of five children living with a drug-addicted mother who was homeless. The children were sleeping on the floor of a small apartment owned by the mother’s also drug-addicted boyfriend. The children came to school in the same clothes day after day and they were never clean. Several teachers had complained to our principal about the situation, and she repeatedly told us that it wasn’t our problem. I couldn’t accept that. I went to our Christ’s Lutheran members and within a week I had donations of new clothes, socks, pajamas and underwear, along with hygiene items such as shampoo, body wash and deodorant. As I knew they would, and as they had done and continue to do, our members were generous with their own money and they showed their caring through donations.

I was so excited and proud on the morning that I carried bags and bags of these items into the conference room of our school. It was early and there was no one around but the janitor who helped me carry everything in. As I was leaving the conference room, our principal came in and looked around with a scowl on her face. “You better watch yourself, Deb” she said to me. “You know, this won’t cure the problem. The mom will probably sell it to buy drugs or they’ll take off in the night and never thank anyone”. I must have looked stunned (I was) and when I didn’t respond, she continued to tell me that it wasn’t my responsibility to take care “this family” and that I would be sorry when I needed the money I was giving away.

I would love to say that she was the only person I heard this from on that day, but she wasn’t. Ours was a small neighborhood school in a well-to-do school district that prided itself on having caring staff members. I heard a similar message from some of my teaching colleagues, telling me that I should let someone else take care of this problem (they didn’t say who that would be) and that “we teachers don’t get paid enough to give money away”. Many of these people were friends of mine.

Sadly, over the years since then I have discovered that the notion of giving from the blessings you have received from God is not all that common. It saddens me to know that. I recently saw a movie called “Ordinary Angels”. The woman in the movie meets a family where the mother has died of cancer and the dad is unable to pay the medical bills for his young daughter with a rare disease. When she begins to raise funds to help them, her very good friend questions why she feels that she is responsible to help them. Her response has stayed in my head: “Because I can. Because I’m here”. That simple, and that poignant. (By the way, if you go, take tissues, it’s a five hanky movie).

I am very proud to espouse “because I can, because I’m here”, as are the members of Christ’s Lutheran. I don’t intend to let anyone else’s opinion dim that light for me, and I hope you will not either. God calls us to “be a cheerful giver” and I interpret that to mean I’m going to bring boxes of cereal (and other food) to church whenever I can! Amen!
P.S. For those of you who remember giving to those children, I have to tell you a little story. For the 9 year old boy in the family, the most exciting thing he received was his pair of pajamas. He came to me and said “When we have pajama day at school, now I can be like everyone else and wear mine. I never had any before.”

Music: God Loves A Cheerful Giver (Sunday School song)

Summer Theatre at CLC!

All children aged 7 - 14 are invited to join the cast or crew as we present a summer theater production of Godspell, Jr!

The original Godspell was the first major musical theatre offering from three-time Grammy and Academy Award-winner, Stephen Schwartz, and it took the world by storm. Boasting a score with chart topping songs, Godspell, Jr. is a sensation that continues to touch audiences.

Do you like to sing and dance? We have a place for you! Do you want to be part of the production team and learn about stage management, production design, or stage crew? We have a place for you!

Rehearsals take place at CLC on Tues. & Thurs. in the evenings May - July.
Performances are July 26, 27, and 28.

Scan the QR Code in the flyer below for more information.

Questions can be directed to [email protected]

Congratulations, Bishop-Elect Penman!

Exciting News: Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod has elected a Bishop: Pr. Bryan Penman. Congratulations Bishop-elect Penman! 🥳

Our two confirmands were hard at work this afternoon getting their posters ready for their upcoming Confirmation in just two weeks! Make sure you take time to read all about their chosen Bible verse, personal creed, and service project while their posters are on display on Sunday, May 12th.

Baby Wipes and Diapers Collection

In honor of Mother's Day on Sunday, May 12th, we will be collecting diapers and baby wipes for the Willow Grove Baptist Food Pantry now through Sunday, May 19th.

WGB Food Pantry is especially in need of
Size 4, 5 and 6 diapers. Together we can help make some mother's day better by giving them the gift of items for their babies!

Any questions, please contact Jen Melnick at
[email protected].

As always, thank you for all of your generous donations!