Thursday Notes

Dear Good Shepherd

Happy Thursday...there's a lot going on this weekend at Good Shepherd so read carefully...

Saying Good-bye: Four of our BU students will be graduating and/or moving from BU after this semester. And many other students who are not staying through the summer will worship at Good Shepherd for the last time until next Fall this coming Sunday. The four graduating/moving/transferring students are: Christina Lam, Florence Luong, Jason Han and Keren Wong. We will miss them greatly and send them out this Sunday with prayers and our blessing. Please be there to say good bye.

Men's Breakfast and Bible Study: Joe Barham is cooking tomorrow for the Men's Breakfast and Bible Study at 6:30am. Here, also, is the enti

Sermon Podcast: Here is the sermon from last week. It was part four in our current series on the Resurrection appearances. This week we'll be looking at the first meeting between Jesus and his disciples after the resurrection and his appearance to Thomas. If you want to study in advance...take a look at Luke 24 and John 20

Summer: It's time to start gearing up for mission and ministry this Summer. God has set us down in a neighborhood for which we are the ONLY church. That is both a huge opportunity and a huge responsibility. The time to start making inroads, meeting friends, establishing relationships is now. The first big event scheduled for that purpose is the Neighborhood Festival on June 13th. We'll be passing out flyers door to door the Saturday before June 13th which is June 6th. There will be more details about this but keep those dates in mind.

Who plans and how to plan events and outreach programs: Someone asked last week how to go about planning events or programs. There are certainly organizations within the congregation, like the Anglican Church Women, that plan and coordinate events and fundraisers, but there is no bar or limitation to your creativity. If you sense God's calling in a certain direction and are willing and able to put together the plan, the resources and the people, please do not hesitate to call me up and let me know your idea and how you think it could work and I can probably help you connect with people and get started.

Open Office Hours: Before we moved I used to have open office hours between 9am and 1pm Tuesday thru Thursday. During those times everyone was invited to come by for any reason without an appointment. Of course, if you wanted to come by at another time that was fine too, but it was best to call first in case I had something else scheduled. I tried to clear my schedule for open office hours.

Now that things have (kind of) settled down, I'm going to begin open office again hours next week...this will hopefully make it easier for people taking the Systematic Theology Course to come by and discuss any questions that are raised in class or in the readings.

Systematic Theology begins this Saturday at 3:30pm. I hated setting the time because I knew that some would be unable to take the course in the afternoon...but I would have lost more if I made it in the morning. I will be podcasting for those who want to make the classes but just can't.

There are three texts we'll be using. The first I've already pointed out to you: Alistair McGrath's Introduction to Theology. The second is Wayne Grudem's "Systematic Theology" and the third is from H.C. Theissen's "Lectures in Systematic Theology". You do not need to buy any of these because I'll be providing handouts. But if you choose to purchase any of them, I would purchase one of the first two (McGrath and/or Grudem) because we'll be using them most.

Website: The main website is down and has been for a day because the server went down. It should be up today or tomorrow.

Women's Bible Study: The Women's Bible Study will be in chapter 8 of Isaiah this week.

Thursday Night Bible Study: We'll be meeting this evening at 6:30pm as usual. We're in the last chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.

Weekly Article: In case you missed it, I wrote an article on the role of the Church with regard to secular marriage laws.

BBQ: There will be a chicken BBQ on Saturday May 23rd at the church. We don't have many details yet but keep checking this page for more.

Neighborhood Festival: On Saturday June 13th Good Shepherd will host a party for the entire community. There will be ice cream, pony rides (hopefully), face painting, food, music, demonstrations and free health screening and much more. Please mark your calendars and tell your friends...

Well, that's all I can think of for now

In Christ,
Matt