We Did It! CPC Wins Souper Bowl Collection

Thanks to Rob's abundant efforts, CPC more than survived a last minute surge by Middle Island and won the SouperBowl 2012 food collection competition. We'll receive the trophy on April 12th at the Presbytery Meeting in Roosevelt.

Here's the final standings.


Here are some pictures from Shirley Yang as they delivered all the food to the Long Island Council of Churches Food Pantry in Freeport.

Bowery Mission Women's Center Gifts

As our Christmas service project, we collected gifts for the women at The Bowery Mission Women's Center at Heartsease Home. As usual everyone was generous - we almost completely filled the back of Milan's truck - and as you can see from these pictures the women at the Women's Center were thrilled. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Church Fair 2011

Many thanks to everyone who helped with this year's church fair and dinner - and a special thanks to those who came and spent money. The fair raised over $5,200 for the church.

Check out the slide show.

Children's Benefit Fair

Many thanks to Cadette Troop 2321 for organizing a Benefit Children's Fair to raise money for the Long Island Council of Churches Food Pantry and bring attention to Little Blessings Preschool. Check out the slide show for pictures.

Caroling 2010

We had a great time caroling last Saturday, sending out two groups. The afternoon group went to visit our friend Gertrude Lewis at Saint Albans NYS Veterans Home and then went on to visit our friend Gloria Pelluso at the Bristol in Lynbrook. The evening group went house to house, having a great time bringing joy to members and friends of the congregation.

Here are some video clips:

O Holy Night at Saint Albans


Jingle Bell Rock at Shirley Hsieh's house


Silent Night at the Bristol


We Wish You a Merry Christmas at Gladys Sutcamp's house

2010 Congregational Priorities

In his State of the Church address on Sunday, Pastor Fritz outlined the following priorities for the congregation in the coming year:

Continue Mission Outreach
To continue the work of the Mission Outreach Team and follow in their lead as they host the Sunday Afternoon Socials and find other ways to serve our neighbors living alone.

Invitation and Engagement
To intentionally invite our neighbors into worship and mission with us both one on one and by increasing our visibility in the community.

Presbyterian Mission Partnership
To identify specific Presbyterian ministries, one on Long Island and one international, where we can partner through prayer, through giving and through involvement.

Priority Teams have been set up to lead our congregation forward in these areas. To join a priority team, sign up in the back of church or talk with Pastor Fritz.

Read Pastor Fritz's State of the Church address

Why give stuff away

Community Presbyterian's decision to hold a swap day as opposed to a yard sale came out of discussions about our relationship with material possessions. Here are our two motivating factors:

1. A rich man came to Jesus and asked him: “What must I do to have a rich, full and amazing life?” And Jesus said to him: “Go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor.” We live in a community where some people build additions onto their houses or rent garages to store all their stuff and where others lack the bare necessities for comfort. We spend millions of dollars and destroy the environment getting rid of stuff we’ve deemed useless and then spend millions of dollars more and further destroy the environment to acquire new stuff. So we give away stuff to achieve some of the balance our God desires for our lives, our communities and our natural world.

2. Our lives are encumbered. “Cumber” is an ancient word for all the things that weigh us down and drag us out. We can be encumbered by stuff, encumbered by financial debt, encumbered by worries or fears, encumbered by hurtful relationships, etc. Jesus Christ promises a life without cumber where, instead of weighing ourselves down, we trust in God to provide what we need, year by year, month by month, week by week, day by day, hour by hour. Most of us are not at a place of faith where we can fully let ourselves, our lives, our possessions go and trust totally on God, but this swap is one small step towards realizing God’s promise.

Eat Local, Share Local

Earlier this year our Stewardship Team came up with a simple idea with profound implications. Once backyard gardens started producing we would put a table up in back of the church. Any gardener with extra produce could leave it on the table. Anyone who needed produce could help themselves. Because we live in a consumer culture, we did put a basket out for money. But we didn't put prices on things and the money would go to church mission projects (the Food Pantry and Heifer) instead of to the gardeners.

As I've watch the table pile with produce before services and empty at the end of services, it occurs to me that there are other areas of our lives in which we have abundance and others may have scarcity. I know of a church member who tends the lawns of his neighbors. He has an abundance of time and likes doing lawn work. They are unable to do lawn work. I know of parents with an abundance of love who end up welcoming all the children in the neighborhood into their house. I know of neighbor of mine with an extra bedroom, who lent it to a friend of a friend who needed a place to stay. I know of a man with an abundance of money who gives most of each pay check away.

Jesus tells of a man who had a harvest so big he could never sell it all, so he enlarged his barns and gloried in his abundance. Jesus calls this man a fool. When our lives overflow with abundance, we can bless others and gain blessing ourselves when we share that abundance with others.

Pine Brook Clean-up

Many thanks to the approximately 40 people who showed up this morning to help clean Pine Brook here in Malverne. We filled more garbage bags than we could count, removed about a quarter of a car from the woods and pulled about four shopping carts, a gas grill, an old type writer, a swing set and a desk chair from the brook. We found a deer path and fresh deer scat, learned to identify poison ivy and educated the youth of Malverne about almost every conceivable brand of beer.

Those with long memories reminded us of a time when locals fished for mackerel and went swimming in the brook's many lakes and pools. We all experienced the peace that comes from standing in the shade of dense woods as the world passes us by. "The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it," we are reminded by the Psalmist. Today we got a glimpse of that grandeur and accepted our God given responsibility to be stewards of all God has given us, including natural space. The result, a few acres left a little better than when we found them.

Scroll down for pictures.

Special thanks to:
Malverne United Free School District
Mayor Patti McDonald and the Village of Malverne
Toni Sussman
Paul Jessup and the Malverne DPW
Malverne Police Reserve
Long Island American Water
Boy Scout Troop 24
Girl Scout Troop 1209
CPC Malverne Stewardship Team

Ocean Avenue Before

Pine Brook Before

Scout Troop 24

A Morning's Work

Ocean Avenue After

The Welcoming Crew

Don dumps his boots

Why We Care About Feeding Our Neighbors

The partnership between Community Presbyterian Church and the Long Island Council of Churches Food Pantry stretches back many years. Currently we collect a food offering on the third Sunday of each month, send teams of volunteers each Thursday and hold the annual Community Food Drive at the beginning of each summer. The early summer collection helps the food pantry meet increased summer demand at a time when donations drop off.

The imperative to feed the hungry and care for our neighbors who are poor runs throughout the Christian and Jewish scriptures. It is a basic ethic, a core value of Christianity. For me, that imperative is most clearly expressed in the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000. The people are gathered, they are hungry, food is scarce and Jesus commands his disciples: "you give them something to eat." They were hungry, they had no food, they needed to be fed. There was no income check, no survey regarding who had eaten lunch or breakfast. Jesus just ordered the disciples to feed them. Their order is our order as well.

Hunger in our community is real. Just last week I received a call from a family in Lynbrook - the wife was disabled, the husband had just lost his job and they have four children. The Long Island Council of Churches has been seeing its client lists grow: elderly with high medical costs, those employed in low wage jobs, those squeezed by variable rate, sub prime mortgages, and lately those affected by high gas prices and increasing food costs. As a congregation most of us are blessed with food on our tables and enough income to buy extra groceries on occasion for our neighbors. We were honored to help the family in Lynbrook. We are honored to be one of the largest donors by congregation size to the food pantry.

So I hope you will join with us in following Jesus' mandate to "give them something to eat" by bringing some non-perishable food by the church (12 Nottingham Road, Malverne, NY) on Saturday, June 7 between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. And if you are reading this from afar, buy extra groceries and drop them off at your local food pantry or soup kitchen. And while you are there, find out about volunteering.

Get a map showing the church location

Tenacity

In her sermon on Sunday, Marilyn Johns called Community Presbyterian Church stubborn. The nerve! The gall! The.... Oh, yeah--she meant it as a good thing, at least in part. We cling to our church, determined to keep it going despite all the societal pressures that seem to be pushing us toward extinction.

She also, though, suggested that some stubbornness is not necessarily something to be proud of: the refusal to look at new ways of doing things, the deliberate blindness to those same societal pressures we're battling and possible new ministries they might require of us.

Being a small church is not a Bad Thing. If we had 300 people in worship every week, do you think we'd still be able to describe CPC as a family? I know that's something that a lot of members really value about our small church. Being a small church is not something to be fixed. It's something to be embraced--and that means recognizing that we have particular gifts (remember those spiritual gifts Pastor Fritz has been talking about?), and we have certain strengths. It's a matter of figuring out what those are and how to use them.

It's time to think about the true purpose of the church. Is it:

• To make money?
• To do God's will?
• To show up the Church of the Intercessor with our Sunday morning attendance?
• To spread the gospel?
• To be a static presence in a changing neighborhood?
• To serve our neighborhood, no matter how it's changing?

Everyone will have a different answer or combination of answers. Let us know what you see as the purpose of CPC and how we can fulfill it.

Crop Walk 2007

On October 21st members of Community Presbyterian Church joined in the annual South Nassau Crop Walk to help raise money for local, national and international hunger relief through the Long Island Council of Churches and Church World Service. Check out the pictures.

Tuesday Thoughts

Pastor Fritz talked about the gift of tongues and speaking in tongues in church this past Sunday. A lot of us in the more, shall we say, staid traditions of Christianity find the modern idea of speaking in tongues a little scary, a little strange, and a little dubious.

But at the same time, maybe we're a little curious, and perhaps even jealous. What would it be like to be so full of the Holy Spirit, to give ourselves over so completely to God's presence?

I remember one Pentecost Sunday at a church in Louisville, when the greeters handed out lengths of red crepe paper streamer to everyone as we all came in that morning. I don't recall if they had a specific purpose, or were just to symbolize the Holy Spirit and to make sure everyone had a bit of red. In any case, I put mine around my neck like a scarf. Have you ever worn crepe paper streamer? It itches! But it occurred to me that maybe being full of the Holy Spirit isn't--and shouldn't be--a particularly comfortable sensation, either. We are so used to being in control of everything about ourselves--how we act, what we say, who we say it to--that allowing God to use us so completely must chafe.

Until we give up our precious control and just go along for the ride.

Maybe you have the gift of speaking in tongues--that is, of reaching out to someone across language and cultural barriers, of interpreting the specialized language of the church for someone who didn't grow up using it, of hearing what's really being said by someone who is angry, hurting, or afraid--and you never knew, until you let God and the Holy Spirit take control.

Tuesday Thoughts

Wasn't it great to walk into church on Sunday morning and see all those groceries we collected during the food drive?

There's a tendency sometimes to be defeatist: oh, we're so small we can't do anything. People don't have time to help. No one will donate anything--no one really cares any more.

But guess what? With just a little bit of effort on our part, we accomplished a heck of a lot in the space of a week. We made contact with hundreds of neighbors through the door hangers, spoke with many more on the street while collecting the food, and touched the lives of everyone who will open one of those cans or boxes to feed their family.

Who'd a thunk it?

Well, Pete, for one, since the food drive was his brain child. Pastor Fritz, who encouraged and embraced that brain child, and everyone in the congregation who hung a hanger, prayed for the harvest, highlighted maps, stuck stickers, table sat, drove around collecting from door steps, and brought a bag of food themselves.

Seems to me that brain child has grown into a mature, generous, loving brain adult. We should be proud.

Door hangers!

Don't forget to wear your walking shoes to church tomorrow!

After church, as many of us as are able will spread out through the streets of Malverne distributing door hangers to our neighbors inviting them to join us in our annual food drive. If everyone pitches in, we'll be able to reach more homes than ever before.

We'll have goodies left over from the picnic this afternoon as motivation and energy boosters, plenty of hangers to go around, and good fellowship.

Let's make this a team effort and really get the word out.

Monday Musings

Yesterday was Heritage Sunday. Fritz reminded us of CPC's heritage, both the original disciples who had the courage to keep the faith after Jesus' ascension, and those more recent disciples who had the courage to build a new church in the new village of Malverne.

He also reminded us that one day, some Heritage Sunday fifty or a hundred years from now, others will be looking back at us.

Our church is at a crossroads, and it's time to decide which direction we're going to go. Will we still be Community Presbyterian Church, embracing the whole community, no matter how it might be changing or will change in years to come? Or will we become Lingering Presbyterian Church, clinging desperately to how things used to be?

We as individuals won't be around forever. But the Community of Faith and the work of God will be--it's up to us to make sure CPC continues to be a witness in and around Malverne.

CPC Relay for Life Participation

Relay for life information web site

Two ways to participate:
1. Be a walker
Join the Community Presbyterian team and walk in memory or honor of someone you know who had or who is fighting cancer. A $10 registration fee applies.

2. Be a sitter
Community Presbyterian is going to have a booth at the event with information about the church, free give-a-ways and an opportunity for people to write prayers for those fighting cancer. We need people to be a friendly face for Community Presbyterian – listen to stories, tell people about the church and give away water bottles, magnets and church brochures. We also need people willing to help set up and take down our booth and someone with a pick-up truck or a large van/SUV with no seats to help transport stuff. If you can sit, sign up in the back of the church or talk with Roxanne Weil.