With the limited time we have before and after worship on Sunday mornings, I only get to see and speak to a few people. I rarely have the opportunity to have a more extended conversation with anyone, so I am looking forward to the return of Wednesdays@First, which resumes on August 28! We’ll kick off our Wednesday night adult activities with an evening of music and fun; I look forward to going from table to table and catching up with you! Supper will be served from 5pm until 6pm, including special treats from Uptown Catering. Please make supper reservations on the church website or by calling the front desk. Brush up on your Top 40 Radio Hit knowledge for rounds of Music Bingo, featuring hits from the 1960s-1990s! Bingo winners will receive gift cards for local businesses.
This fall, we’re introducing a new block schedule for Wednesdays@First. We’ll meet for four consecutive weeks, then take a Wednesday off, meet for another four weeks, take another Wednesday off, etc… These breaks will help us maintain a manageable pace for our volunteers, teachers and families with children. We also recognize that balancing work and life can make it difficult to attend every week, so we’re organizing our programming into blocks focused on specific topics. If you want to attend every Wednesday block, that would be wonderful! If your schedule doesn’t allow you to be here every week, we invite you to attend the blocks that interest you the most. Think of it as signing up for a four-week class. We hope this new format makes it easier for you to join us.
During our first block, from September 4 through 25, I’ll teach a series entitled Exploring Heaven, Pondering Hell. In the conservative evangelical church in which I grew up, almost every sermon I heard was about heaven or hell! I don’t preach or teach about the afterlife that often because the core of our faith isn’t getting into heaven. The center is Jesus, and Jesus’ primary message was not about going to heaven. Instead, it was about bringing the kingdom of God to earth as it is in heaven. At the same time, a lack of discussion about the afterlife can create a void where popular culture—movies, books and films—shapes our perceptions of heaven and hell. In this series, we will explore the historical development of these concepts and delve into what Scripture reveals (or doesn’t reveal) about the afterlife. Since none of us have experienced the afterlife, and we can’t know for sure, we will approach the subject with humility and curiosity.
—Carol McEntyre