Bible Study

Ankeny UCC March 2017 Newsletter

Our monthly newsletter and calendar available here!

March 1, 2017
Dear Church-
Welcome to Lent! This period of 40 days before Easter (excluding Sundays) commemorates Jesus’s time in the wilderness dealing with the weight of understanding who he was and where he was going. Who was he? God’s Son, but fully human and equally the son of Mary and Joesph? A healer? A scholar? A carpenter? A Fisherman? Where did he fit in in the world of ancient Jerusalem? He was a Jew among Jews, but he also had a different understanding of where the world was going. So he was an outsider even as he was an insider.

Throughout Lent, we’ll explore this theme in Jesus’s life. Our scriptures for worship in this Lent contain some of the most famous insider-outsider dynamics of the New Testament: The Good Samaritan, The Lost Sheep, Zaccheus, and even the city of Jerusalem. We’ll complement that with our Wednesday night studies!

This year, we’ll kick off our Lenten potlucks at 6pm on Wednesdays, with the program to start at 6:30. We’ll have speakers March 15, March 22, and March 29, with in-depth studies and activities around Bible stories on March 8 and April 5. March 15, Beth Yale will share some of her work from her, Martha, and Teddy’s fall in Germany. March 22, we’re talking with Dhoal Larjin, a US citizen, ISU grad, and Ankeny resident, who has twice been made a refugee from conflicts in South Sudan. And March 29, we’ll host John and Karen Campbell Nelson, missionaries in Indonesia with UCC/DOC Global Ministries.

Along with our adult programming, Sarah has been working on youth CE opportunities and projects, so bring your whole family as we explore Insiders and Outsiders in the Bible and our world today.

Come, explore with us.
Nathan

Telling Our Stories (again)

The reviews are in of our experiment in sharing the “story of me” with one other person in worship!

“Not as bad as I expected”

“This was really good”

“I learned a lot about what was behind the image that I had of my person”

“I’m not coming to church for the next two weeks”

As part of our sermon series “Telling Our Stories,” we are looking at how different prophets inspired God’s people to action in different places and different times. They frequently started with their own biographies, then moved on to what bound the congregation together. In Exodus, God provides the model, reminding the people who God was, what God did for God’s people, and then what that meant they should do in the future. Sharing of ourselves, and thinking about who we are and want to be is the foundation for understanding where God is calling us to go. This week, we’ll share with another person who the “us” is we think of when we think of Ankeny UCC.

AAAAAANDDDDD, we’ll have a litany of blessing for backpacks and lesson plans! It’s back to school week in Ankeny, and we’re going to celebrate in worship and with hot dogs, sloppy joes, and any sides or desserts you want to bring! Bring your backpacks, your lesson plans, your signs of school. And as we do bring backpacks, let’s not forget the supplemental food backpacks that go home with kids on the weekends as we look forward to our 3rd annual Hog Roast September 9!

Blessings,
Nathan

VBS!

We’ve been having a great time at Vacation Bible School. Last night, we learned about the fulfilment of God’s promises, whether to Sarah and Abraham or to Pinocchio! Tonight, we’re thinking about what happens when the lion lays down with the lamb.
We’ve had some great big helpers all week, including Elle and Joey Street, Annette Hong, Joan Moore, Misty DeReus, Kayleen Conter, Ellie Fulton, Tami Fulton, Jen Street, Peter Hong, Jenn Howieson, Beth Yale, and our kitchen gang, Clarice Beckwith, Laura Beckwith, Laura Rinehart, Peggy Colton, Rich Pleva, and Judy Hines. Thanks, too, to all the people who brought food (and to Peter and Annette, for handling the cooking on Monday). It’s been busy, it’s been chaotic, but it’s been fun and rewarding.

If you want to learn a little bit about what we did, join us in worship on Sunday morning, when all our participants will be invited to join us in worship to sing a song and share a lesson!

Sunday School starts September 11, just after the 3rd Annual Ankeny UCC Hog Roast on September 9!

Blessings,
Nathan

Mark 15 (all of it)

Join us on our Lenten journey through Mark!

Mark 15

Have you ever been tempted to kick someone when they are down? Why? What would it be like to act as Joseph of Arimathea does in today’s world?

Mark 14:43-45

Join us on our Lenten journey through Mark!

Mark 14:43-45

Have you ever felt a betrayal that make reconciliation impossible? Have you been able to come back around to a place of peace?

Mark 14:6-9

Join us on our Lenten journey through Mark!
<a href=”https://lumina.bible.org/bible/Mark+14:6″>Mark 14:6-9</a>
What does the woman seem to understand that the disciples don’t? Do we get lulled into a sense that things can’t be very different than they are?

Mark 14:3-5

Join us on our Lenten journey through Mark!
Mark 14:3-5
Do you ever struggle with this question? How do you think about extravagances in your life? Is this an extravagance? (Nard is used in burial preparations)

Mark 14:26-31

Join us on our Lenten journey through Mark!

Mark 14:26-31

Have you ever done something you knew you were incapable of doing? What was it? What did you think about afterwards?

https://lumina.bible.org/bible/Mark+14:26