March 2006

The Messenger

Text Box: Church Staff

Rev. Dr. Stephanie Sault, Pastor

Dir. of Christian Ed. & Program

Bobby Cook,
Building Superintendent

Kathy Lewis,
Secretary

David Renner,
Director of Music

Sharon Santmyers, Children/Youth Choir Director

Jacquetta Owen,
Bell Choir Director

Sharon Cooley,
Children/Youth Choir Accompanist

Mary Levesque, Childcare

Cathy Javersak,
Preschool Director
869-1368

Sunday Worship
8:30a.m.
9:45a.m.
11:00a.m.

Sunday School
9:45a.m.
11:00a.m.

Text Box:              Lent is a season of “spring cleaning” in the spiritual life. As we get ready for Spring with such activities as cleaning out closets and washing windows, or other “setting right” activities, so in the spiritual life we seek to draw deeper to God through spiritual practices. The Ash Wednesday worship service invites us into an observance of Lenten discipline. We seek God’s help in cleaning out the cluttered closets of our inner lives; we ask God’s guidance as we seek to see things more clearly; we ask God’s forgiveness, so that we may be in deeper fellowship with God and others. Lent is a “setting right” time, so that we can prepare for the celebration of resurrection and new life.
             In the early church, persons who had been estranged from the church because of serious sins, could enter into a Lenten season of penitence, and be restored into the church fellowship on Pascha (passage from death to resurrection), or commonly, Easter. New Christians would receive final instruction in the faith during Lent, and be received into the church through Baptism and receive Communion for the first time on Pascha.
             “Easter” is actually an Anglo-Saxon term meaning Spring, which the church borrowed and re-interpreted as a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Christians, we are not preparing for a celebration of Spring, with baby chicks and bunny rabbits. We are preparing for new life in Christ, by dying to the old life through Lenten disciplines.
             Some of the classic disciplines are self-examination and repentance; prayer, fasting, and giving money to the poor; reading and meditating on the Word of God; acts of mercy undertaken in service to others. Self-denial during Lent means saying “no” to our desire to be in charge, in order to submit to God’s will, and includes doing

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