1. religion and spirituality
2. christianity

APRIL 2015
Administrative Council
Andy Cheezum
Steering Team
Patty Muller
Trustees
Henry Covington, Jr.
the MESSENGER
Finance
Jerry Thomas
Treasurer
Chad Cronshaw
Recording Secretary
Sandy Fratzke
Staff Pastor Parish Relations
Amy Taylor
Our Mission Is To Make Disciples For Jesus Christ! April 2015
What if Easter Never Happened?
What’s the big deal about Easter? From the beginning there have been
those who have doubted the meaning of Easter. On the first Easter the chief
priests offered money to the men who were guarding the tomb to keep the
Methodist Men
secret about it being empty, (Matthew 28: 11-15). Thousands of years later
Rodger Vorhauer
the resurrection and the empty tomb are still under scrutiny.
Methodist Women
In contrast, Good Friday doesn’t pose a threat because the world underPhyllis Hoffman
stands death. Jesus’ death isn’t the problem for most people; the problem is
with Easter because they don’t understand the resurrection. Well, let’s supMemorial Fund Treasurer
pose Easter never happened. Would the world be different if Jesus was
Lynda Palmatary
dead? What if the world was not talking about Jesus’ shroud; rather, the
Lay Members to Confer- world was talking about Jesus’ bones? Paul asked this question: “Now if
Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say
ence
there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead,
Tom and Mary Scull
then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our
Evangelism
proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain”, I CorinthiScarlett Milliken
ans 15: 12-14.
If Easter never happened then the Church is in vain. A mega Church
Volunteers In Mission
could be built with the greatest programs where thousands attend; but, if
Larisa Thomas
Easter never happened then that Church is in vain. Our faith would be futile;
it would be without forgiveness. If Easter never happened then the sins of
Worship
the world would not be forgiven. Death would be the end result. The world
Pastor Mark
would not be delivered from its last enemy. This life would be all there is,
death wins and there is no hope for the future.
Library Coordinator
Paul, in verse twenty, gives the world a clear and concise hope for the
Harriet Caporin
future; “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits
Photographer
of those who have fallen asleep”, 1 Corinthians 15:20. The world may scruBob Clark
tinize the resurrection but let Christians everywhere declare that Easter
means Jesus rose from the grave; Jesus is alive!. Therefore, the Church is
not in vain, our sins are forgiven, and death has been swallowed in sweet
victory.
Happy Easter!!
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PRAYER THOUGHTS….
“This is the kind of life you’ve been invited into, the kind of life Christ lived. He suffered everything that came his way so you would know that it could be done, and
also know how to do it, step-by-step” (1 Peter 2:21 MSG).
The great crisis for the Christian is that commitment to Christ means an earnest
desire to serve others—meeting real needs, and seeing the kingdom advance. Without careful
attention to our vertical call in Christ, we can find ourselves consumed by the horizontal. The
horizontal focus on even kingdom-centered work can lead to burnout and an unhealthy emphasis on our own efforts and work. Desiring to advance Christ’s kingdom, we instead can find ourselves building our own little kingdoms.
Jesus is the model of what it means to live a vertical life. Consider spending time to look at
events in the life of Jesus in which He chose the vertical before the horizontal. He obviously did
not ignore the physical and emotional needs of those around Him. It could be argued that no
one ever met human needs as well as Jesus. But He maximized His horizontal impact by starting and staying vertical with His eyes firmly focused on His Father. Even though it meant significant suffering and rejection, He transformed the world around Him…and He calls us to follow in
His steps.
Holy One, You have invited me to step into a difficult life…one that sometimes seems impossible to do well. Yet, I trust Your heart and know that You have plans to give me a wonderful
hope and future as I walk out this journey by following the example You have set before me.
Strengthen my desire for more of You, so that You are able to transform me by the renewing of
my mind. Then, my horizontal activity will be well-informed by my deepened relationship with
You and done in the power of the Holy Spirit. Teach me how to keep my eyes fixed upon the
Father.
–Adapted from Vertical with Jesus: A 30-Day Journey to Impact Kingdom Living by David and
Kim Butts.
Prayer Points
Praise Jesus, who welcomes the weary. Thank him for lifted burdens (Mt. 11:25-30). Confess
that the way you fill your days often ignores Jesus’ offer of rest. Commit to enjoying this rest
yourself and sharing it with others. Ask God for a specific way you can eliminate something
from your schedule in order to create time for resting in the Lord.
Pray that Christians will multiply God’s infinite mercy by befriending people with disabilities,
helping released prisoners find work, and sheltering refugees.
Prayer Pointer
“No time is so well spent in every day as that which we spend upon our knees.” J. C. Ryle
–Prayer Points taken from Patterns for Prayer by Alvin VanderGriend.
APRIL 2015
Page 3
Ed Parry Scholarship Awards
The Centreville United Methodist Men are requesting CUMC seniors interested in applying
for The Ed Parry Scholarship to get copies of the paperwork from the church office for fall
2015 - spring 2016. The scholarships worth $1000 are given to assist deserving CUMC youth
graduates planning on furthering their education at an institution of higher learning. Selection of
the recipients is based on criteria such as:
 know what one has to do to become a Christian and be able to explain what being a Christian means to the applicant
 be active in our Centreville Youth Ministries or other Centreville
Church functions
 be pursuing a degree in higher education or trade
 have the desire and ability to finish their chosen goal
 have good grades
 participate in extra curricular activities
 submit an essay addressing education and career goals, why they are pursuing those
goals, how they intend to grow their spiritual walk while attending college
 In addition to the above criteria, the applicants have a one-on-one interview with the Scholarship Committee to discuss the above criteria and their personal walk of faith.
The forms are to be returned to the church office by May 10, 2015.
Memorial Garden Bricks
It’s the time of year when we will be taking orders for bricks for our beautiful memorial garden.
If you are interested in ordering a brick in memory of a loved one, please fill out an order form
which is on page 6 of this newsletter. Each brick costs $100. Checks may be made payable to
CUMC with “Memorial Garden” in the subject line. Please either mail your order into the church
office or drop it by the office during normal business hours. Brick orders will be taken up until
Easter Sunday, April 5th. We anticipate the bricks will arrive and be placed in the garden at
some point during the month of June. Thank you.
Easter Egg Hunt
Thank you to everyone who donated plastic eggs and candy for the Easter
egg hunt. We were very grateful for your donations! Sincerely, The Sunday
School children
Page 4
SOUPer Sunday News
The 2015 Appalachian Service Project (ASP)
Youth Team thanks everyone who made soup
and bread for SOUPer Sunday. Twenty-four
delicious soups were made. We thank all who
Church Cleanup Day
made donations and voted for the top three
On April 11th, we will have an outdoor cleanup soups.
day. Everyone is welcome to lend a hand
Donations totaled $827.00. The winning soups
mulching, raking, sweeping, etc., around the
church property. Please bring rakes, shovels, were 1st Place Jay Carr – Potato Soup, 2nd
Place Scott Latham – Zesty Chicken Vegetawheelbarrows, brooms and April sunshine! Also we could use a few chainsaws to ble, 3rd Place Laura Phillips – Chicken Chile.
help clean up dead wood along our property
line closest to town. Any questions, call Henry Ushers Needed
Covington, Jr. at 410-310-2745. Hope to see
you all there!
Being an usher is a fun way to serve the Lord
while playing an important part in helping PasNational Day of Prayer
tor Mark and Pastor Robyn during worship services. We are putting together a year-long UshThe 64th National Day of Prayer is Thursday, er Schedule for the Sunday 11 a.m. Traditional
May 7th. All are encouraged to attend to pray Service and need volunteers. Men, women and
for revival, for our national and local leaders,
families are all welcome to serve, but we ask
citizens of our county and great nation. Now,
that children be high school age to help usher.
more than ever we need to cry out for God's
help! We will be gathering Thursday, May 7th, Sign-up sheets are posted on the hallway bulleat the Queen Anne's Co. Circuit Courthouse
tin boards between the Narthex and fellowship
Courtyard in Centreville at 12 noon, rain or
hall. You can also contact Head Usher, Bryon
shine! There will be more info to follow as the Johnston by email at [email protected]
Day of Prayer approaches. If you are unable to or phone at 410-924-2850.
join us, please pick up a Prayer Guide at
Church and pray with us "in spiritual presence"
New Members Luncheon
May 7th, 12 o'clock, noon.
Vacation Bible School is Coming!
Save the date! April 12th we have new members joining our church! Please come out to
meet them and make them feel welcome after
"Are you ready to start thinking warm
thoughts? Well, VBS is right around the corner! our 11:00 service. If your last name starts with
letters A-M, please bring a main dish/
Come out June 22 - June 26 and watch as
Centreville United Methodist Church turns into sandwiches. If your last name starts with N-Z,
Camp Discovery, where children will be learn- please bring side dishes. The evangelism
committee will be providing desserts. We
ing about God's plan for all of us through fun
would love to see you there!!
games and activities. More information to
come! If you or someone you know would like
Altar Flowers
to volunteer, please have them call Allison
Harper 410-634-1138 or email
Altar flowers are needed for 4/19 and 4/26.
[email protected].
Please call Ruth Ann Walls - 410-490-3259.
APRIL 2015
Page 5
Page 6
MEMORIAL GARDEN ENGRAVED BRICK PURCHASE
Please read the below directions before completing your order form:
1. Bricks may be purchased for any deceased individual, regardless of whether that individual attended or was a member of CUMC. (No pets please)
2. You may purchase as many bricks as you would like.
3. Each brick costs $100.00.
4. All bricks will be 4x8 inches.
5. Your brick can contain up to three lines, including the individual’s name/names and
the years of birth and death. Please do not include “in memory of” on your brick as
all bricks are in memory of someone in the Memorial Garden.
6. Bricks will be placed randomly throughout the garden. There is no guarantee that
bricks purchased by the same person will be placed together.
7. Please fill out the below order form, detach it, and drop it by the church office. You
can also mail them to Centreville United Methodist Church, 608 Church Hill Rd.,
Centreville, MD 21617. All order forms must be received no later than April 5th for
the order of engraved bricks.
8. Please make sure your writing is legible and all spelling is accurate.
9. Fill out completely and detach the below order form. Please copy this form and submit a separate order form for each brick you wish to order.
—————————————————————————————————————————-
ENGRAVED BRICK ORDER FORM
Please make checks payable to: Centreville United Methodist Church ($100.00 per brick)
Your name:__________________________________________________________________
Phone #:________________________Email address:________________________________
Information on brick: Please fill out below the information to be included on the brick. You may
include up to 15 characters on each line including letters, spaces, or punctuation.
Please submit this order form along with your payment to the church office.
APRIL 2015
Page 7
Volunteers In Mission :
Helping to Provide Outreach Opportunities for the Congregation
By Larisa Thomas
We are a small committee to help our church fill the big wants of a world in need. We meet
once a month now on the 2nd Tuesday of the month at 7:45 PM in the Purple Room. This
month we will be meeting instead April 21st at 7:45 PM. Come join us to help make a difference!
Opportunity: Rebuilding Together - April 26th
Home by Home, Block by Block, Rebuilding Together is rebuilding homes and communities nationwide. Rebuilding Together believes that everyone deserves to live in a safe and healthy
home. It brings volunteers and communities together to improve the homes and lives of lowincome homeowners. Its focus provides critical repairs, accessibility modifications and energy
efficient upgrades at no cost to service recipients.
For 11 years CUMC has been involved with this home renovation project in Queen Anne’s
county. It is a wonderful opportunity to make a difference in our community in one day. Our project this year is in Queenstown. Our church is again under the excellent leadership of Bill Hood,
who has patience and knowledge galore. Our projects will be replacing a door and frame, replacing a floor, and replacing the tread on a deck. Please register if interested on the VIM
Board across from the church office!
Opportunity: Working in Crisfield – June 21st-June 25th
Most of us will remember Hurricane Sandy by the photos and news images we saw from the
devastation that was left behind. Our own Maryland town of Crisfield was hit hard by Hurricane
Sandy, and is still struggling to be rebuilt. If you are interested in joining a work party to help our
fellow Marylanders recover from the tragedy, please contact Larisa (info below).
Our Missionary Update: We are going to the Congo!
This year CUMC will be supporting missionaries in the Congo! How did we come upon the Congo? The Central Congo Partnership is a United Methodist mission initially began in 2001 between the Central Congo Conference in Congo, DRC (Africa), and Peninsula-Delaware United
Methodist Conference (that is our Conference!). Today (2014) the partnership also includes
both Eastern Pennsylvania (another District of Bishop Johnson’s) and Western North Carolina
UM conferences.
Some of the projects that are being run in the Congo by the Partnership are agricultural projects, MPASA Clinic and Nutrition Center Project, well digging, the cataract project, new partnership projects, Mbundi Technical School, updating communication abilities, and establishing
a conference resource center.
So for 2015, a new year, a new foot forward internationally! Stay tuned for information about
our new missionaries next month. You will also be receiving the missionary donation envelopes
during the next month at the church services, as they did not make it into the envelope boxes
this year. Send in your $5/person. For $5 you can personally be responsible for spreading the
love of Christ to those whose lives are definitely harder than ours!
Cont. on next page
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Cont. from previous page
Thank You: For Supporting our Pancake Breakfast
VIM held its annual Valentine Pancake Breakfast on February 14th. We were able to raise $354
to go toward our VIM fund. These funds support the Our Haven Homeless Shelter, the Backpack Program, the Missionary Fund, and many other mission-minded projects. Thank you for
coming out and supporting us!
You can contact me at [email protected] or 410-758-2144 to RSVP for any
activity or come suggest other service projects.
The Centreville United Methodist Men will be having their Spring Chicken BBQ on Wednesday
April 22. Cost for the dinner will remain at $7. Come and volunteer if you are not busy on the
22rd. Noon to 3P.M. Call Rodger at 410-739-5397
The Methodist Men return all money raised to fund CUMC programs/projects such as our cabin
at Camp Pecometh, three $1,000 scholarships for 2014 and several smaller budgeted donations to various church activities. We thank you for your past support and hope you will order
our dinners for April 22rd.
APRIL 2015
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Meet the Middleton Family!
Janese grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania where she was active in
sports and band. After high school graduation, she decided she wanted
to get out on her own and attended Western Maryland College (now
McDaniel College) in Westminster, Maryland. During her senior year at
WMC, she worked in a group home for people with developmental disabilities and took American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate with a
few of her clients. She fell in love twice that semester, both with ASL and
with her future husband, Jason.
After graduating in 2004, Janese decided to make Maryland her permanent home and moved
into an apartment in downtown Baltimore. She began volunteering at The Maryland School for
the Deaf in Columbia, Maryland, and enrolled in the Interpreter Preparation Program at the
Community College of Baltimore County, graduating in 2010.
Janese and Jason married on Wye Island in 2006 and briefly moved to Easton when she began working for Deaf Independent Living Association (DILA) before accepting a position as a
full-time staff interpreter for the Baltimore County Public Schools in 2007. They returned to Baltimore and Janese continued working for the county until their first son, Jonas, was born in
2011. She then began working for an interpreting agency located in Baltimore, where she currently provides community interpreting for the surrounding areas. She also worked for the
Community College of Baltimore County as an interpreter beginning in 2012, and currently
teaches ASL at Chesapeake College.
Janese and Jason, who is originally from Cordova, moved back to the Eastern Shore in August
2013, and welcomed their second son, Miles, that December. After a long search, they are
happy to call CUMC their home.
Good Friday Prayer Vigil
Please write your prayer concerns here, and bring them to the church on or before Good Friday. A box will be provided outside each service. These concerns will be lifted up during our
Good Friday prayer vigil and offered at the Cross during the service that evening.
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Month In Pictures
APRIL 2015
Page 11
THE SAMARITAN FUND
For those of you who may not be aware, CUMC has a
Samaritan Fund which is a very important part of our
ministry at the church. The purpose of this fund is to provide assistance to anyone in need who might contact us
for help paying bills or obtaining temporary shelter. (In
other churches you may have heard this called the
“pastor’s discretionary fund,” which is essentially the
same thing.) In order to maintain this fund we rely on the
generous gifts of everyone at the church. Below is the current balance in our Samaritan Fund. If you see the fund running low please consider contributing even
a small amount to help us reach out to those who are most in need. Thank you
and God bless you!
CURRENT BALANCE IN SAMARITAN FUND: $800.00.
Meet Our Team
Rev. Mark Farnell, Pastor
Robyn Brown, Associate Pastor
Tammi Clark, Office Manager
Ken Laing, Youth Director
Renee’ Carroll, Sunday School Superintendent
Nancy Cook, Chancel Choir/Handbells
Avis Wheatley, Organist
Kelly Nelson, Nursery Director
Barbara Meeks, Cherub Choir
Jennifer Gragg, Newsletter
Charlene S. Brown, Membership Secretary
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
“And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well” James 5:15
in
our
prayers
Billy Foster
Centreville United Methodist Church
608 Church Hill Road
Centreville, MD 21617
www.centreville-umc.com
NON‐PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT NO. 48 Chestertown, MD RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED
Centreville United
Methodist Church
SUNDAY WORSHIP
Contemporary—8:40 a.m.
Traditional—11:00 a.m.
Nursery Services Available
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Adults - 9:50 a.m.
Children - 9:50 a.m.
Contact Information
(410) 758-0868
Fax (410) 758-1248
www.centreville-umc.com
APRIL AT A GLANCE
March 30th - April 3st - Labrynth
April 2nd - Maundy Thursday 7:00 p.m.
April 3rd - Office Closed for Good Friday
Good Friday Service 7:00 p.m.
Prayer Vigil 8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
April 5th - Sunrise Service at Millstream Park 6:30 a.m.
April 6th - Church Office Closed
Trustees Meeting 6:30 p.m.
April 9th - Steering Team 6:30 p.m.
April 11th - Church Clean-up Day
April 12th - New Member Luncheon
April 14th - UMW Meeting 1:30 p.m.
UMM Meeting 6:00 p.m.
April 15th - Lay Leadership 7:00 p.m.
April 19th - New Worship Service Begins at 7:00 p.m.
April 20th - Finance Meeting 7:00 p.m.
April 21st - VIM Meeting 7:45 p.m.
April 22nd - UMM Chicken BBQ
April 26th - Rebuilding Together
April 27th - Worship Meeting 7:00 p.m.
ASP Meeting 7:00 p.m.
April 28th - Administrative Council Meeting 6:30 p.m.
Scan for Online Giving
All dates are subject to change. Please confirm with the Calendar, Church Office or Ministry Chair.
Making disciples for Jesus Christ for the transforma on of the world.