Holy Week Schedule

The following is the schedule for Holy Week at CPC

Maundy Thursday - 4:00 pm
A contemplative service featuring foot washing and communion

Good Friday - 7:30 pm
A reading of the Passion Narrative from John's Gospel combined with a Tenebrae (dying of the light) service.

Day of Gladness - Saturday, April 7
A special day where the entire congregation is being challenged to intentionally make the gladness of Christ's resurrection known in ways large and small.

EASTER
Sunrise Service - 6:30 am at Jones Beach #6
This is the annual Nassau County Sunrise Service sponsored by the Long Island Council of Churches. Adrian Pratt, the Pastor of Baldwin Presbyterian Church is preaching this year.

Resurrection Celebration - 9:45 am
We bring the Alleluia back into the sanctuary and raise it to the rafters. Includes the telling of the Easter Story in ways appropriate for children and adults alike. We'll also be reporting on our Day of Gladness activities.

Easter Egg Hunt - 11:15

Palm Sunday 2012

We had a great Palm Sunday service, filled with processions, singing and communion. Many thank you to our worship leaders, the choir and Pam Jusino for helping develop the liturgy and the movement. Also thanks to Karen Record for shooting this video.

Untitled from Fritz Nelson on Vimeo.

Bill Lee's 9-11 Fountain

Bill Lee built an incredible pool and fountain on the church lawn for our outdoor service on 9-11. Check out the pictures below.

Special 9-11 Service

All are welcome to attend this special service of remembrance for those who died on 9-11 and of prayer for ourselves and our world. The service will include both corporate prayer and time for individual reflection. Communion will be served and one-on-one healing prayer will be offered.

Lent 2011 Series

This lent we will be focusing on prayer. Here is a tentative schedule of topics.

Lent 1 - March 13: Introduction, Lord's Prayer, Service of Healing Prayer
Lent 2 - March 20: Prayer in community. Special guest: Jason Storbakken, founder of Radical Living, an intentional Christian community in Brooklyn.
Lent 3 - March 27: Prayer through movement. Special guest: Roslyn Coors. Labyrinth walk after church.
Lent 4 - April 3: Table Prayer - the spirituality of food and family
Lent 5 - April 10: Prayer in the ordinary and mundane
Palm Sunday - March 17: Prayer in the Valley - a focus on Jesus' prayer life in the week before the cross.

In pastor's coffee house we will be focused on the Psalms.

Bowery Mission Trip - Nassau Joint Youth

Youth and adults from Malverne joined with five other churches in a mission trip to The Bowery Mission in New York City on February 24. Some of the kids helped cook lunch and sort through that day's food offerings. Others took sandwiches out to a local park and invited people into The Bowery Mission for lunch. A third group planned and led The Mission's noon chapel service. Then we went bowling at 300 Lanes in Chelsea Piers.

View a slide show:


View a video of the opening of the worship service. Warning: horrible singing from the one holding the camera.

Nassau Joint Youth Bowery Mission Worship from Fritz Nelson on Vimeo.

Christmas Eve Services

Family Service - 4:00 pm
Featuring hand bells, youth band, special activities for children, communion and more.

Lessons and Carols - 11:00 pm
A quiet service of music and scripture. Featuring special music by Elina Akselrud and Joe Sortino.

Community Worship this Saturday

Offering will support The Bowery MIssion and Family Promise of Nassau County.

Music includes: Songwriter John Guardino, Men from the Bowery & Grace Lutheran's Becky Elfman

Speakers include: Father Frank Parsi of Our Lady of Lourdes, Pastor Fritz Nelson of Community Presbyterian, Darcel Whitten-Wilowski, Diocese of Rockville Centre and Evangelist Mary Bell

Bring your own chair.

More on Pentecost

I just learned this about Pentecost - and its really cool.

Pentecost is the Greek for the Jewish holiday Shavuot, which both celebrated the Spring grain harvest and celebrated the giving of the law to Moses by God.

Some parallels which suggests to me that God knows his Jewish holidays pretty well:

Bush that burned but was not consumed -> tongues of fire that didn't burn anything.

God gives Moses the law -> the Holy Spirit enables interpretation and understanding of scripture.

The law created and guided the Jewish people -> the Holy Spirit creates and guides the church.

The law was given on Mount Sinai, the holiest of ground -> the Holy Spirit infuses sacredness to whatever it touches.

Why Pentecost

A long time member of our church confessed the other day that she didn't really understand Pentecost. As Pentecost is not celebrated outside of the church - we don't give Pentecost cards, or get days off from work or school - this is not surprising. Here is a primer for her and others who might be wondering.

Pentecost literally means "fiftieth" and one of the three major feast days in ancient Judaism marking the fiftieth day following Passover. In Acts chapter 2, we learn that the disciples were all gathered together on that day when a "sound like the rush of a violent wind" filled the house and "tongues as of fire rested on each of them. All were filled with the Holy Spirit." The Holy Spirit empowers the disciples, who until then had been passive to say the least, to rush out into the crowded city and talk about Jesus. Miraculously, when they talk, everyone can understand regardless of their native language. Peter preaches what is perhaps the greatest sermon ever and over 1,000 people are converted.

Christians consider Pentecost to be the birthday of the church and along with Easter and Christmas is one of the most important liturgical holidays.

In some Christian traditions, churches are decorated in red for Pentecost. Somebody back in the Middle Ages decided that the color red symbolized the Holy Spirit, and that tradition has been passed down through the churches ever since.

Christmas Eve 2009

Sunday's Sermon - Creation, Evolution & Scripture

All summer we've been working down a list of congregational sermon requests.

Last week's request: Creation, Evolution & Scripture

Read the sermon
Read past sermons from this summer
View the schedule

Sunday's Sermon - Discerning God's Plan

Last week's request: How do I discern God's plan for my life?

Read the sermon
Read past sermons from this summer
View the schedule

Sunday's Sermon - Apostles' Creed I

To help everyone follow along in the All Request Summer Sermon Series, I'm going to try to post all the sermons online using a new document sharing site set up by Google. Not sure how this will work, but we'll give it a try.

View last Sunday's Sermon - Apostles' Creed I

All Request Summer Sermon Series

Many thanks to everyone who contributed topics for the summer sermon series. Here's the schedule. The schedule is very loose and rather arbitrary, so if you requested a topic and you're not going to be here when its scheduled, let Pastor Fritz know.

Click to read a previously delivered sermon.

July 5..........Apostle’s Creed I: History and background
July 12 ........Apostle’s Creed II: Theological Meaning
July 19 ........Discernment & Vocation: Figuring out God’s plan for your life
July 26 ........Pursuing a dream: Scriptures of Hope and Perseverance
August 2 .......Evolution, Creation & Scripture
August 9 .......Celebrating The End: Thoughts and Theology around funerals, burials, cremations, etc.
August 16 ......Bible Study: A Gospel Who’s Who – Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, and others
August 23/30....Bible Study: The Prodigal Son
September 6.....Hymn Sing
September 13 ...Homosexuality, Marriage & The Church

Good Friday 2009

This year's Good Friday service centered around a series of meditative drawings done by the CPC Confirmation Class - Terry Gagstetter, Erik Riker & Michael Yang. Their drawings are playing in the slide show below. Click on the slide show to get a closer look.

Sprung from the Trap - Lent Series III

During Lent this year, Pastor Fritz is preaching a sermon series entitled "God's Bail out Plan." Below are excerpts from the third sermon in the series, which draws lessons from the Israelites' enslavement in Egypt and God's rescue.

Read about how the Israelites became enslaved
Read about God's decision to rescue them

In Egypt the Israelites became victims of a paranoid, xenophobic ruler who needed slaves to complete his numerous building projects. By working them to death, the king – possibly Ramses II – would prevent them from siding with Egypt’s enemies during times of conflict.

When I think of this world, I often think of a giant pinball machine with billions of tiny balls representing all of us humans. Ideally the balls should dance in intricately beautiful choreographed patterns. But inevitably somebody misses a step or drops out of line. Chaos ensues.

Sins big and little pervade our lives and pervade our world. We live among corrupt and broken systems operated by corrupt and broken people. We, our neighbors, our world suffer as a result. The Apostle Paul talks about the entire world, all of creation, groaning under the weight of sins large and small, innocent and diabolical. It is this sin that causes a cashier at Target or an engineer on the Long Island Rail Road to loose her job because a person who wanted a little more house than they could afford was seduced by a broker seeking a larger commission from a mortgage company seeking bigger profits, who was invested in by a bank trying to get in on the action which in turn was insured by AIG. Pinballs out of step, out of line. Broken choreography bringing pain, suffering and hurt into our lives and into our world.

Over and over again Scripture affirms that God hears our groaning, the groaning of the world and responds. God responds to the Israelites by sending Moses. God responds to our groaning by sending Jesus Christ. God responds to the groaning of the world through his church, whom he has charged to continue Jesus’ legacy of love, justice and healing in a broken world.

Translating Babel - Lent Series II

During Lent this year, Pastor Fritz is preaching a sermon series entitled God's Bailout Plan. Below are excerpts from the second sermon in the series.

Read the story of the Tower of Babel
View what the Tower of Babel might have looked like
Check out the archeology from the British Museum

We still build great towers as a testimony to human ingenuity, power, wealth and might. Al Qaeda targeted the World Trade Center on multiple occasions because the twin towers were, in many ways, a temple to the capitalist west and the wealth of the United States. When they fell, we felt emasculated. And the politicians rushed to promise that we would rebuild, bigger, better, higher, more secure. We would demonstrate our power and the supremacy of our economic belief system.

As bad as 9-11 was, imagine how bad it would have been if we had lost perspective on who our God really is. What if we had given superiority to the human made systems and philosophies, governments and multi-national corporations represented by those towers? Many years ago, our ancient ancestors made that mistake. They saw earthly power and confused it with divine power. They saw earthly wealth and confused it with divine blessing. They too built a tower to move the human into the realm of the divine. Luckily, in Abraham, God had a bail out plan.

Paradise's Promise - Lent Series I

During Lent this year, Pastor Fritz is preaching a sermon series entitled God's Bailout Plan. Below are excerpts from the first sermon in the series.

God had reached out from heaven in love and crafted the earth, filling it with beauty and goodness. Everything about the world gave life. Nothing gave death. Everything about the world gave joy. Nothing gave pain. God’s love infused everything. There was no hate. The second of two creation stories calls this world the Garden of Eden. Dante called it Paradise. When we glimpse this world in the course of our very ordinary, non paradise filled lives, we call it God sightings.

Our sin blocks our participation in paradise as effectively as a painted window blocks the sun. As God expelled Adam and Eve from Eden, our sin expels us from intimate relationship with the divine.

Their fall is a metaphor of our personal falls. Instead of bearing the fruit God desires of us, from the first moment from the womb we are like the pear tree, wanting to grow quickly and bask in the sun. God built these yearnings, doubts and desires into us. Not so that we can experience suffering, but so that we can freely and wholly commit ourselves to him.

Most people spend most of their lives in the litter and bombed out factories along the tracks. That’s not what God wants – it has never been what God wants – and time and time again God seeks to rescue his people from the mess of a world filled with sin.

Reflections from Mission Sunday

Last Sunday, October 5th, was Mission Sunday. When I was a kid, Mission Sunday usually involved having a guest speaker who was a missionary and taking a special offering. Thanks to our Hands On Mission Team, we decided to put our faith into action by exchanging sitting in the sanctuary listening to Pastor Fritz for going out and practicing our faith through mission projects in the community.

I went with a group of people to take church to one of our members who has found it increasingly difficult to come to church. What a joy it was to see him singing along to This is the Day, and joining us in prayer. Elina came with us and gave voice to a piano which, while a fixture in his living room, had not been played since his wife died. We then played several games of bingo, with the only prize being the pleasure of bring joy, prayers and company to one person's life.

A second team went and helped a neighbor with odd jobs around her house. The crew washed windows and removed an air conditioner for winter and helped us all remember a time when neighborliness was not confused with charity.

A third group stayed at the church and turned large swaths of Polartek into blankets. When finished we will take the blankets to a battered womens' shelter or somewhere else where they are needed.

As we reconvened over pizza afterwards, spirits were high. It was good to be outside of the building, working among our neighbors and sharing our faith through our hands, our footsteps and our smiles. Unfortunately, nobody took any pictures - so you'll just have to imagine.