Through ELCA Disaster Response, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is responding in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. In the Caribbean, through our global church partnerships, we are providing basic needs such as food, water and shelter. Throughout the United States we are working hand-in-hand with synods and ministry organizations, who are experts at outreach in their communities.
Your donation will be used entirely (100 percent) to help those whose lives and livelihoods have been impacted by this disaster. Click here to donate.
Lutheran World Relief Fair Trade coffee, tea and olive oil is sold every 3rd Sunday of the month in the Lobby at Gethsemane.
Gethsemane serves Fair Trade Coffee every Sunday during fellowship time in the Gathering Space. Fair Trade ensures that more of the money spent on coffee reaches the farmers who actually grow it. Visit www.lutheranworldrelief.org to learn more.
It's always a great time to think about how you can engage in new opportunities at Gethsemane. A tool that can help you match your interests with opportunities is the Serving Attributes Survey. Use your gifts and strengths to make a difference in our church and in our world! Log in to Access Gethsemane and complete the survey on your profile page.
By Brian Furan, Facilities Supervisor
These days, you can’t turn on the news, go online or open a newspaper without seeing more and more about the environment and being "green" (environmentally friendly.) By doing what we can to conserve energy here at Gethsemane and at home, we are contributing to a much larger effort that can produce massive results!
What can we do here at Gethsemane? We can ALL make an immediate difference by just doing a few simple things when we are at church.
- Simply wiping your shoes well on the way in can make a difference in the energy and resources needed to keep the carpets clean.
- Turn off lights, fans and air conditioners when you are finished using a room.
- Recycle instead of just tossing in the nearest garbage can. We have aluminum can recycling containers around the building, and containers for paper, glass and plastic are located next to the walk-in cooler in the kitchen, as well as a large red barrel for paper in the work room.
- Ink cartridges, cell phones and cell phone batteries can be recycled in a container located next to the front desk.
- Cardboard can be recycled in the paper dumpster located behind the garage, or left next to the maintenance office downstairs.
Other steps being taken include using paper products such as towels and tissues from recycled materials and certified "green" industries, and researching bio-degradeable cleaning products and methods to reduce cleaning waste.
Together, we can all take little steps towards making a big difference at Gethsemane, and hopefully be an inspiration for others in our community to work toward a cleaner, better environment for our future generations to enjoy!
Gethsemane is one of eleven congregations chosen from across the United States and Canada to participate in a research project led by Luther Seminary and funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. The project wants to try to discover ways to make preaching more engaging and relevant to daily life.
We need to hear from you. Please follow the link below to participate in a short survey.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GethsemaneLutheran
The results from this survey will help strengthen and deepen preaching in our congregation, inspire other congregations to follow along, and allow seminaries to more effectively train future leaders.
Please respond candidly, and know that your answers will be anonymous. The survey will take about 15 minutes to complete. If you have questions about the survey, please contact Jason Misselt at jmisselt@luthersem.edu or 651-641-3532.
We appreciate everyone who spent time filling out a survey or participating in an interview. The seminary is collecting the data from Gethsemane and each of the other 10 congregations participating in the program. Early in the new year leaders from our team will learn about what new insights were gleaned from our research. Recommendations will be made to each congregation on ways to increase and maintain vibrant preaching in our dynamic world.
Prayer Shawls have been used throughout generations. Our ancient Israeli ancestors used special shawls during prayer as a reminder of God's constant presence.
Any time you want to send the perfect gift, remember the Prayer Shawl Ministry at Gethsemane. Give one as a celebration of the birth of a baby, a wedding, an anniversary, a new job, a new home. The shawls are a wonderful way to show someone you care when words don’t seem enough; in the case of the death of a friend or family member, divorce, depression, illness and treatments, or loss of a job or home.
Faithful members of this group enjoy sharing their God-given gift of knitting with others, and each shawl is handmade with prayers.
Prayer Shawls are on display and available on the first Sunday of each month. Requests can also be submitted to the church office.
We request that a donation be made to the Prayer Shawl Ministry for each shawl requested. Donations cover the cost of the yarn and ensure this outreach can continue.
Since it began over 20 years ago, the ELCA has been committed to being a welcoming, diverse denomination, and its goal is for at least 10% of its membership to be persons of color or whose language is other than English. Each year, along with statistics about attendance and finance and educational programs, the ELCA asks congregations to report their racial/ethnic make-up in order to measure progress toward that goal.
In the past the GLC staff has estimated this information. But Gethsemane’s ethnic make-up has been changing and we believe that gathering this information in a more accurate, meaningful way will help us understand who we are as a congregation and be respectful of our diversity.
We now have a place in our membership database to record members’ race/ethnicity. We need each member to let us know how they identify themselves. You can do that by going to your Personal Profile in Access Gethsemane and choosing the Race/Ethnicity category that best describes you. Parents, please enter this information for your children as well. You can also check the rest of your information for accuracy, change the Newsletter Options to choose to get your newsletter by email , and complete the Attributes section of the Serving tab to tell us more about your interests and abilities. If you don’t have access to a computer you can contact Karen Eckenrode in the church office and she can record your information.
We are making a concerted effort to help all Thrivent Financial members at Gethsemane complete their paperwork to direct their Thrivent Choice dollars to a ministry of their choosing. In 2011 Gethsemane was a recipient from several members and our congregation was blessed with an additional $5,000 for ministry. It’s no cost to you, but a huge blessing for the church.
If you are a Thrivent member and have not yet filled out these forms, please look for the information tables at church on Sundays and Wednesday nights.
You can also sign up at Thrivent.com or by calling 1-800-847-4836. You can select one ministry, like Gethsemane, or several. Select "recurring" designation and you won’t have to call again.
GLC members Jean Lundgren and Fran Lahre, along with our Parish Nurse, Susan Radde, were recently featured in a segment about our Health and Wellness Ministry.
Watch it online.
As people of God, we are given the task of being stewards of the earth and all that He has created. You don’t have to go too far in the Bible to find this message. “And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves over the earth.” Genesis 1:28
This is a powerful statement, and in truth a huge responsibility – we are in charge of taking care of the entire world! As stewards of God’s creation, it is our responsibility to do all that we can to follow His message. It is in this spirit that we at Gethsemane have decided to no longer use or advocate the use of Styrofoam products here at the church. As an alternative, we ask that you strongly consider using the ceramic and glass dishes and cups, and to factor in the washing of dishes when organizing an event and cleanup. (If you are interested in volunteering to help with dishwashing, please let us know.)
Styrofoam is cheap, convenient and easy to use, but is also one of the worst products that can be introduced into our environment. Some facts about Styrofoam:
- By volume, Styrofoam products take up 25 – 30 percent of our entire landfill space.
- One Styrofoam cup takes 500 years to dissolve – not decompose, but dissolve into the earth where its effect on the ecosystem is unknown.
- Every year, America alone uses 25 billion Styrofoam cups – enough to circle the globe 436 times.
- A 1986 report from the EPA named the Styrofoam manufacturing process as the 5th largest creator of hazardous waste on the planet.
Styrene, the basic component of Styrofoam, has been classified as a possible human carcinogen by the EPA
In addition to the environmental impact, Styrofoam has been linked to health concerns such as skin, eye and respiratory irritation, gastrointestinal problems, depression, kidney function, fatigue and even links to cancer Styrofoam has been completely outlawed in Taiwan, Portland, and Orange County, California due to its harmful nature.
By not using Styrofoam, we are taking a small but important step toward providing a better environment for our future generations, and are setting a good example for our children and grandchildren to follow. Any questions or concerns you may have regarding the use of Styrofoam can be directed to the Pastors, Gethsemane staff, or Brian Furan at Bfuran@glconline.org
