June 2021
Meals & Miracles
This summer we will spend Sunday sermon time looking at Jesus’ miracles and the meals shared with and by him. Eating with Jesus was always a transformation for someone in scripture, so we will look at the lessons Jesus shared during his meals with Pharisees, tax collectors, and significant community leaders. Meals were not Jesus’ only transformational moments, so were his miracles. They were individual encounters as well teaching moments for his disciples and community.
Meals & Miracles sermon series
May 30 - Celebrations & Expectations- Acts 2:37-47 – Agape feasts and the blessing of eating together.
June 6 – Well Water John 2 & 4 Simple well water and Living Water & simple water becomes the best of wines.
June 13 – Freedom Parties - Passover and Pesach: this is who we are, who we were, who we will be.
June 20 – Lunch with Zaccheaus – Spontaneous surprises caused by our Lord and his new disciple Luke 19:1-10.
June 27 – Washed Anew - Bartimaeus meets Jesus Mark 10:46-52.
July 4 – Fireworks – Eating with Pharisees & healing on the Sabbath caused fireworks, Mk 3, Mt 12, Lk 6.
July 11 – Touched by Jesus – Woman who touched Jesus’ garment Mt 9:20-22, Mk 5:25-34, Lk 8:42-48.
July 18 – Great Banquet Lk 14:1ff Revelations about today with God and our tomorrow with God.
July 25 – Sons and Daughter – Jesus heals Jairus’ daughter Luke 8 and a widow’s son Luke 7:11-17.
Summer Club Wednesdays
Calling all explorers, creators, and cultivators!
Join us this summer as we explore the great outdoors together. Each week we will spend time outside playing and learning as we work collectively to grow a garden. Through STEAM projects, kids will have the chance to delve into what plants need to grow and thrive, then apply their new knowledge to our growing plants.
In addition to time in the garden, we’ll spend time in fellowship playing outside, creating art, serving others, hearing Bible stories, and pondering what it means to share compassion with the world around us.
Dates & Time: Summer Club will meet weekly on Wednesdays from 9am-4pm throughout the summer. Our first gathering will be June 9, we’ll take June 16 off for Plum’s Kennywood Picnic Day, and continue June 23 through August 4.
Ages: Summer Club is for students who have completed grades K-6 at the end of the 2020-2021 school year.
Cost: The cost is $10 per child per week with a weekly family cap of $25 per family. (ex: 1 child = $10, 2 children = $20, 3 or more children = $25) Fees can be paid in cash or by check made payable to Plum Creek Presbyterian Church and must be paid at morning drop off each week.
Lunch: Please bring a bagged lunch to Summer Club. We ask that all lunches be nut free for the safety of our children and volunteers with allergies. Lunches will be kept in the refrigerator. Children are also encouraged to bring a reusable water bottle to keep with them throughout the day. Afternoon snack will be provided by PCPC.
Registration: To register, please visit our website and fill out our Family Registration Form. You only need to complete one Family Registration Form per family. After completing your Family Registration Form, you will be directed to a second form to complete the Summer Club Sign Ups. This short form will allow you to register for individual dates for each child and can be edited to add or remove dates as your schedule changes. Save your confirmation email to easily access the link to edit your forms. Weekly registration will close on Mondays.
COVID-19 Precautions: For the safety of our young children and others who cannot yet be vaccinated, all Summer Club staff, participants, and volunteers will be required to wear face masks 1) indoors and 2) outdoors when 6ft of physical distancing is not possible. Mask breaks will be given throughout the day as needed.
For more information, please contact Faith Kemmler, Director of Christian Formation, at faith.plumcreek@gmail.com. We can’t wait to see you!
Update on social distancing and facemasks in church
Your Session has updated our guidelines based on new CDC and county recommendations. We need to be very respectful of those who cannot be vaccinated or may not yet be vaccinated, like our children, and please wear facemasks when moving around the sanctuary and building. While seated in the sanctuary please make the judgement call about wearing your facemask. Session has increased the occupancy of the sanctuary to 100 but asks that only the marked pews be used. Bulletins will be available for you to pick up as you enter on a Sunday. We will continue to share the Peace of Christ with one another by waving, smiling, and saying ‘hello’ to those present and those online.
Update on the sanctuary sound system
Session has agreed to a Worship and Music proposal to upgrade our sanctuary sound system. Thanks to very generous donations from the church family WAM has accepted the services of Edward Simons Sound Products, Pittsburgh, to repair and replace some equipment to give us better and reliable sound in the sanctuary. Our Sunday service livestreaming and recording will continue for the foreseeable future. Services may be watched on our website Sermon Blog.
Bibles for 3rd graders
Faith presented new Bibles to each 3rd grader in our Sunday school class. Their Bibles included personalized names on the covers. Faith shared her Bible and the notes she has collected inside her special Bible, then prayed over the children.
Confirmation Class 2021
Congratulations to newest church members: Braden Bloomquist, AJ McKnight, Ben Mueller, William Peifer, Reed Spenik, and Allie Stegner. The confirpeople met each Sunday morning to study trusting in God, trusting scripture, turning away from sin, Jesus as Lord, Jesus as Savior, being a disciple of Jesus, God’s covenant relationship, and creative ways to show our faith in words, art, and deeds. They submitted their unique statements of faith to Session at the May meeting and Session whole heartedly applauded the vulnerability and wisdom expressed and approved each confirmand.
On Confirmation Sunday the congregation promised to guide and nurture the confirmands by word and deed, with love and prayer, encouraging them to know and follow Christ and to be faithful members of Jesus’ church.
It as a wonderful celebration!
Evangelism and Fellowship News
The third bonfire fellowship is Friday June 11th
starting at 6:00 PM. Dinner will be hot dogs
and barbecues with chips. Dessert will be
strawberry shortcake or strawberry sundaes.
For this year, we are not calling this a
Strawberry Festival as it is just for our church
Family. A sign-up sheet will be in the narthex
starting Sunday, May 30. Come join the fun!
RUMMAGE SALE - AUGUST 20 & 21
Our Rummage Sale is coming up in August. It will be August 20 and 21. Set up starts August 15. Volunteers are needed – please contact Ed and Joy Smith or the church office if you would like to help.
The narrative submission this month is from ‘Anonymous’, which is a great name. Your thoughts on our thoughts are always thoughtful and thought provoking. Thank you! For our next Caller you are invited to consider submitting a narrative sparked by the word SPARK.
An Ode to
Flat Places
(Anonymous)
I grew up in the large Flat Place between the two big rivers. Here is where the term ‘gully washer’ has real meaning. In this Flat Place, the question, ‘See you at Church on Sunday?” is often answered by “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise!”
The early morning sunrise at the very edge of the earth’s curvature through an eastern facing bay window in this Flat Place is comforting, giving me the peace and confidence that this is another fine day. As the arc of the sun brings the full view of the orb, the relaxing peace is gradually replaced by the knowledge, understanding and desires that there are things to be done and daylight is wasting away.
It was in this Flat Place that I was born and grew up. At the age of about 8, I Iearned to ride a bike. At that time, there were no small youth bikes, all were large adult bikes, so I had to learn to ride on my Mom’s step-through bike since I was to short to jump on a pedal and throw my other leg over the seat and horizontal bar. This placed my shoulders just slightly above the handlebars and my legs were too short to reach the seat. A few skinned knees, elbows and hands later, I began moving around the neighborhood in a precarious sort of way, but the freedom was exhilarating! As I learned, my folks were willing to let me roam the neighborhood on my own. In this Flat Place, I could go anywhere! The only restriction that I had was that I could not go anywhere in which I was out of ear shot of three sharp blasts blown on a police whistle to which, I needed to make a lusty ‘C-O-M-M-M-I-N-G!’ reply. By implication, this also meant that I could not go indoors.
Another Flat Place is where the beach sand intersects a quiet ocean on a clear unclouded day and the sun is on its way down. Under such circumstances, I am always amazed and bewildered as the last ray of the sun bursts into a bright flash after which the orb is gone. What is left are the ‘Red Skies at Night, Sailors’ Delight’ glow of twilight.
Flat Places are where humans satisfy ‘their need for speed’. From the quarter-mile drag strip where acceleration is the name of the game to the Booneville Salt Flats where the World’s Land Speed Record has inched up almost continuously since the invention of automobile (and, later, the jet engine). It also includes the various types of racing circuits from quarter-mile dirt tracks to multi-miled paved tracks; Flat Places are basically their haven.
Railroads live and die with the availability of Flat Places. From Sea to Shining Sea, they try as hard as possible to be no higher above sea level than they absolutely have to be in their route choices. People talk about not building in the flood plain of the “100 year” flood. More effective advice is “Don’t build below the Railroad”. As much as the railroads hate to climb hills, they hate washouts even more. Their routes are basically Flat Places, but with enough elevation to avoid the worst floods, all based on their own experience.
In the late nineteenth century, the New York Central Railroad established its preeminence by choosing what became known as the Water Route out of New York City; north, up the Hudson River, left at the Erie Canal to Albany, then continuing west on that Flat Place between the northern tips of the Finger Lakes and the southern edge of the eastern Great Lakes, arriving at Buffalo, then Cleveland, Toledo, onto Gary and finally into Chicago. This nearly flat route, while the Pennsylvania Railroad tried to meet the time into Chicago, but having to labor up through the Great Allegheny Passage. No contest!
Things have an amazing attraction to Flat Places. Our two-step kitchen stool has to have each step unloaded and then, after use, reloaded. The basement workbench has attracted so many articles that the top is no longer visible since, after 40 years, it now supports a mound of things. It’s hard to keep Flat Places free of things.
Flat Places enable our sustenance and our comfort. Consider a placid pond in a pasture or wooded glen, only a frog or occasional fish jumping or an insect disturbs the surface. Hum-m-m, maybe I’m only a pole and a line away from dinner! Or a grill or griddle from which we retrieve any number of edible delights, including that fish that I just caught. A kitchen table or counter is a requirement for rolling out pastry dough or assembling that Beef Wellington. Consider, too that flat, well made bed that accepts and supports a tired body. A Flat Place is also a prerequisite for contentedly operating a rocking chair, as long as no cats are around.
Social things work well on flat places; consider dancing and roller-skating. So, too, an outside deck with friends and a gas grill (where’s that fish that I just caught?) with fresh asparagus and potatoes ready for grilling and fresh red Raspberries and ice cream for desert. Flat Places don’t come much better than this!
Flat Places also enable much of our recreation from checkers, and mahjong to chess; from Old Maid to Hearts and Canasta to Poker and Bridge; to Candyland, Monopoly and Cribbage. So, too, the outdoor recreations; from Croquet, Badminton and Volleyball to swimming, basketball, football and track and field and more. Swings work best as does a Merry-Go-Round on Flat Places.
Flat Places are what Caterpillar does best; for homes, roads, and railroads, also, for runways and launch pads for rockets that will take us to those galaxies far, far away and will accept our return.
I’m hoping that heaven will have lots of Flat Places and, maybe, some bikes, too, for exploration. And, if St. Peter wants me, three sharp blasts on a police whistle will get my lusty C-O-M-M-M-I-N-G reply.
What would or could we do without Flat Places?!