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April 2005
April
3 Ice Cream Social
Join
the deacons for ice cream in the Fellowship Hall after the service on
April 3. The cost is only $2.50 for adults,
$1.00 for those under the age of 12. All proceeds benefit the
Deacons’ Fund.
Hymn-Sing
Sunday April 3
Our
customary all-music service with the congregation’s favorite hymns
Jazz
Vespers Featured in March 6 Chronicle
“They
come for the jazz and get the message,” Ed Klitsch told reporter Jerry
Karp; “it’s a magical thing.” Jerry
passed along the good word about Old First’s Jazz Vespers in the Chronicle’s Pink Section on Sunday, March 6.
The
article cited the first Jazz Vespers programs at St Peter’s Lutheran in
New York
and Old Pine Presbyterian in
Philadelphia
and detailed The Klitsch Connection to Old First’s series, which began
in 1998.
You
can check it out for yourself on April 3, when vibraphonist Gerry Grosz
is featured.
You
can read the whole article at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cig?file=/c/a/2005/03/06/PKGM0BGRCA1.DTL
Adult
Education Classes
9:30
Sunday mornings in the Munro Room
April
3, 10 and 17 - Genesis
It’s
spring; let’s talk about creation! Think the Bible is fun?
Try reading it in Hebrew! Alexis Myers, our intern and resident
Hebrew scholar, will lead a discussion of Genesis, spiced with a few
special Hebrew lessons.
April
24 - Eco-Justice
In
honor of Earth Day (April 22), Pat Devine will show a videotape and lead
a discussion on
• the connection between ecology and justice
• what the creation story tells us about our relationship
with nature
• how God's creation is interconnected and interdependent
• how we are presently being affected by ecological
degradation
May
1, 8 and 15 - The
Public
Church
and Values
Dr.
Larry Golemon will lead an examination of the question: What social good
can the public church/synagogue offer our divided nation?
Spring
Cleaning? Let Us Help You!
If
you have any items you’d like to donate, bring them to the church on
Tuesday, April 5, from noon to 2 pm, or on Saturday, April 9, from 9 am to
noon.
These
donations will be taken to the Community Thrift Store in the name of the
Welcome Ministry, which will receive funds in return.
Bring
clothing, books, small appliances, small items of furniture,
collectibles. Sorry, no linens
or computers.
Spring
Retreat Will Be April 23
This
year’s Annual Retreat, "Re-tooling for the Christian Journey,"
will be held at the
Markkula
Center
for Applied Ethics at
Santa Clara
University
on Saturday, April 23, 2005, from 9:00 am to 8:00 pm. There will be a
morning session, lunch, an afternoon session, and supper.
The cost per person is $30.
Our
leader will be Steve Johnson, Director of Character Education at the
Markkula
Center
. Steve is a friend of our congregation who led many adult education
programs over the past two years.
Sign
up at Coffee Hour.
Watch
for more information about the sale of craft items from our
Senior
Center
on Sunday, May 8.
Presbytery
Comes to Old First: We Want You!
Old
First will host San Francisco Presbytery on Tuesday, May 10, and we will
need lots of volunteers to show our famous hospitality.
This
is your chance to meet
Presbyterians from many or most of the 80 (!) other Presbyterian churches
in our four-county presbytery, learn a bit about them if you are
interested, and help them appreciate Old First’s special qualities.
You can also, depending on schedule, observe some of the presbytery
meeting, in the most convenient opportunity you are likely to have!
Business will very likely include hearing about major mission
projects, reviewing an important personnel report, examining some
seminarians for ordination, discussing a proposed new method for electing
commissioners to General Assembly, and no doubt much more.
Jeff
has recruited
Ocean Avenue
and Christ United to help us; and
Mission
Bay
will provide the worship leadership (so, choir, we are off the hook).
But we will need to provide several dozen volunteers to help with
registration, guide folks around, help serve and clear from dinner, or to
help with advance set-up and signage.
The
meeting runs from 3 to 9 p.m., with a pre-presbytery meeting starting at 1
p.m. While of course we’ll
be very grateful for people who can help the whole time, we can also use
people for three-hour shifts.
If
you can help, please speak with Pastor Jeff or contact Pam Byers at pambyers@
covenantnetwork.org.
156th
Anniversary to Feature a Homecoming Celebration
Plans
are now underway to make our 156th Anniversary observance an even more
special event by declaring Sunday, May 22, “Homecoming Sunday” and
inviting former members to come back for a reunion of old friends.
We’ll
have our usual excellent buffet lunch and a program of “Yes! Even More
Presbyterian Tales of the City.”
Tickets
will go on sale April 17, with a one-day early bird rate of $6 to adults,
$3 ages 6-12. After that, an adult ticket will be $7.
On the day of the event, tickets will be $8 to adults, $4 to young
folks.
Note from your friendly
local transitional pastor
The
year quickly marches on: now we move through the season of Easter toward
Pentecost's celebration of the birth of the universal Church, and then our
marking of the birthday of this particular 156 year old congregation on
May 22. Along with a few smaller local congregations that have offered to
assist us, we will host San Francisco Presbytery's May 10 meeting, as we
affirm the essential linkage between Old First and the larger Church in
our area.
The
truth is that we do not live in isolation. Not only are we part of the
2,000 year history of Christ's Church around the world, but we are also
connected to our almost 80 sister congregations in this Presbytery in San
Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa, and Alameda counties. If we were to
inquire of them, we would find that their own histories, struggles, and
successes, hopes, dreams, and disappointments sound a lot like our own. We
are really not all that different from one another, though our common life
and ministry occurs in different cultural, linguistic, and social
contexts, and we would find much to dialogue about in terms of theology
and practice.
The
Christian life is ultimately a shared experience, for all of us orient our
spiritual compass toward the north star of Jesus the Christ, the great
shepherd of the sheep. We may disagree about many things, both large and
small, but we are glued together by our common love for and devotion to
Christ and Christ's Church. Our attention must be upon how we faithfully
attend to the ministry that is given to us to do, and the stewardship of
our time, talents, and resources must be oriented to the fulfillment of
that ministry. We do not exist for ourselves alone, but for the good of
the larger community, and ultimately for the benefit of the whole world.
Just as Jesus himself came not for his own isolated and personal
self-interest, but rather to incarnate or enflesh the love of God for all
people through his own life, so this congregation is to demonstrate
through attitude, word, and action the light of God's love within and
outside of the walls of the building we call Old First. We know that this
church is ultimately not the building, but rather the people, the
community of faith, that gathers together in various times and places for
nurture, worship, study, service, and outreach.
This
year brings us many opportunities to keep moving forward in this
transitional time. We can all help undergird our shared ministry with our
contributions of money, time, prayer, thoughtfulness, and skill. The
greatest gifts, those which lie behind everything else are, of course, our
faith, hope, and love. Our faith may seem weak and uncertain; yet, if
Jesus measured the faith necessary to make a difference by the size of a
mustard seed, one of the smallest seeds in nature, then each of us, and
all of us together, have more than enough. There is always more to learn
and grow into, but we can and must start where we are with what we have;
and that will be enough, because our God is enough. Our hope lies not in
mere institutional survival at the minimum, or a renewed institutional
glory compared with the past, or with other churches, at the other
extreme. Our hope lies ultimately in the power of God's Spirit moving as
God desires, within, among, and beyond us. We are vessels of the Spirit,
channels of grace, for the good of the other, led and empowered by a
greater force than we are capable of generating on our own.
Finally,
our love for God and neighbor is the most important motivating force for
the follower of Jesus, and it is the greatest gift of the Spirit, as the
Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13. Why? Because faith by itself can
be ungrounded, and even oppressive to others. By itself, hope can mislead
us, and be rooted in illusion and selfishness. But love in the Christian
understanding is grounded in the eternal love of God for us and for the
whole world: a love that is directive and unlimited, self-sacrificing and
life-giving, patient and powerful, enduring and unflinching, unselfish and
constructive.
As
we continue to live one day at a time as ministers of the good news of
God's love through Jesus the Christ, may we value our connections with the
historic and universal Church, our sister congregations, and one another
in this particular church, this local community of faith, hope, and love.
Peace
be with you and yours,
Jeffrey
Cheifetz
Mission
Vision Conversations with Elders and Deacons
The
Mission Vision Team is closing in on a completed draft of a new Mission
Vision for Old First. The next step is to conduct a dialogue with our
elders and deacons about the direction and future of the church.
The
Team (Cindy Burt, Barry Clagett, John Sebastian and Jeanne Choy Tate)
plans to meet with both boards for a portion of the March, April and May
Session meetings.
Columbarium
Now under Construction
The
Old First columbarium, which has been in the planning stage for several
years, is now under construction in the former hallway and stair space
just off the narthex. Completion
is expected around the end of April.
A
columbarium is a space designed for the interment of cremated human
remains and provides a final resting place for members and friends of Old
First. Remembering that
in life and in death we belong to Jesus Christ, the columbarium is
tangible evidence of our membership in Christ's church and our faith in
the resurrection to come.
The
columbarium, which is proposed to be called the “Chapel of the
Resurrection,” will have two levels, the upper level entered from the
narthex and the lower level entered from the Van Ness Avenue entry
vestibule. The lower level
where niches and memorial plaques will be located, will have a dome, a
stained glass light fixture, and a mosaic stone floor.
Above the niches is a terra cotta tympanum from the old
Children’s Hospital on
California Street
. Care is being taken to make
the columbarium a very special place for contemplation, while also
blending in seamlessly with the architecture of Old First.
The
columbarium will contain 110 niches and 60 memorial plaques.
Many have already been reserved, but there are still many
available. Niches cost $1600
and memorial plaques (which will have the same face plates as the niches
but are intended to memorialize people interred elsewhere) are $500.
Anyone is interested in reserving a niche or memorial plaque should
contact Steve Taber at stephen@sstaber.com.
He’ll be happy to answer any other questions regarding the columbarium.
Flowers
and Coffee
If
you wonder why there are no flowers in the Sanctuary at worship service
some Sundays, it will be because nobody has signed up to sponsor them.
There
will be coffee and donuts at Coffee Hour, sponsored or not -- but without
a sponsor the cost has to come out of our General Fund.
Signup
calendars for flowers and coffee hour are posted on the bulletin board
outside the Munro Room.
Lectionary
Apr
3 - Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Ps. 16;
1 Pet. 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
Apr
10 - Acts 2:14a, 36-41;
Ps. 116:1-4, 12-19; 1 Pet. 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35
Apr
17 - Acts 2:42-47; Ps. 23;
1 Pet. 2:19-25; John 10:1-10
Apr
24 - Acts :55-60; Ps.
31:1-1-5, 15-16; 1 Pet.
2:2-10; John 14:1-14
May
1 - Acts 1:22-31; Ps. 66:8-20;
1 Pet. 3:13-22; John
14:15-21
By
the Grace of God
•
11 years ago I went looking for a church choir that didn't require
auditions, and found Old First.
•
After temping for more than two years, I landed a permanent
position in Radiation Oncology, UCSF, after temping in this position a bit
more than two months. The person I replaced had been hired after five
months of temping.
•
Benefits for permanent employees start the day of employment.
For me, that was Jan 10, 2005.
•
Feeling fine, I saw my same internist I'd had before, and we decided I
should get caught up on my medical care.
•
On Feb 7, after multiple mammograms and three tedious (the kindest term I
can think of) biopsies, I received a call telling me I had breast cancer.
•
I was able to get from my senior Breast Cancer specialist in Radiation
Therapy the name of the best surgeon she knew of at Kaiser.
I got him!
•
Because of my contacts I was able to find out that a lumpectomy was
not an option in my situation.
•
I was able to have my mastectomy on Feb 24, a short wait time.
•
I found out that my cancer could not have been discovered sooner than it
was, so I had nothing to self-flagellate about.
•
Having received identical opinions from physicians whose specialties are
not Oncology, I expect to hear from my Oncologist tomorrow what I've been
told already - that I am now completely free from cancer.
“Hallelujah” comes to mind, and my “Thank-you-God”s will never
end!
By
the Grace of God it is now time for me once again to thank my family,
known to many as Old First Church, for the monumental amount of support
that surrounded me from the first minute this experience began until now -
the phone calls, the fabulous cards, the prayers, the hugs, the support
that was always there, even when vanity raised its ugly head.
I simply could not have done this without every one of you, and I
continue on, well (though healing) because of you.
I
also need to say there is nothing like arriving home (a thousand thanks,
Clagetts!) and going to choir practice the following Thursday.
There just isn't anything like it!!!!
There
aren't any words big enough to express my gratitude to everyone for making
this the amazing family it is.
Carol
Carter
The
Fair Trade Project
by
Pat Devine
The
Fair Trade Project sponsored by the Peace and Justice Committee recently
marked its first anniversary. It
has been quite a year! The
Committee is most thankful for the response that this project has
received, and it is delighted by the enthusiasm shown by its loyal
patrons. We look forward to
the project becoming better each year.
At
first our product line consisted entirely of coffees.
When we realized that not everyone is a coffee drinker, we expanded
our inventory to include hot chocolate, teas, candy bars and olive oil.
There is something there for everyone!
Not
everyone at Old First has fully understood or appreciated the concept of
Fair Trade. A couple of you
have expressed your feelings to me that you don’t think church is the
place to conduct a business. “Didn't
Jesus throw the money lenders out of the temple for conducting business
there on a Sunday?” you ask. Yes,
Jesus did throw the money lenders out of the temple — not because they
were conducting business on Sunday but because they were charging
exorbitant prices and exploiting the people in the process.
The
Fair Trade Project is not exploiting anyone.
It is in fact helping to alleviate world poverty, one of the major
threats of the twenty-first century. Support
of Fair Trade also can help make the world more secure, since it is poor,
disenfranchised populations with little hope for the future who turn to
fundamentalism and other ideologies counter to promoting peace.
Let
us not forget what power we have as consumers.
We can make ethical choices of what companies we support.
The term "buying Green" means not only buying products
that are ecologically friendly, but purchasing products from companies
that are supportive of workers. Equal Exchange is the company through
which we purchase most of our Fair Trade products.
It buys the coffee directly from cooperatives formed by small
farmers. This method of supply
guarantees a minimum price by cutting out a number of middlemen, and it
also insulates against falling markets.
Fair Trade is one way we can commit to being a "Green
Consumer."
It
has been a great Fair Trade year, and we're looking forward to each year
becoming better and better. Look
for the Fair Trade Table the first Sunday of each month.
Hope to see you there!
Remembering
Polly Day
At
the February meeting of Presbyterian Women, Sara Barrios and Shirley Buono
offered this tribute to Polly Day, to celebrate a life well lived.
Polly
had so many interests, and pursued them all when she retired from the
school system as a physical therapist.
She
took up the piano seriously, and for many years gave us all much pleasure
when she had a concert each year to benefit Old First Concerts.
She
was active in her PEO chapter; they always gave the reception after her
concerts.
She
was a member of the Board of Directors of Old First Concerts, and she
supported Concerts from its beginning.
She
loved to cook and have parties. She published a cookbook called
“Polly’s Potpourri.”
She
served Old First both as an Elder and a Deacon. She was a faithful member
of Presbyterian Women and of the Congregational Care Committee.
She
was a faithful piano player for the Nursing Home Ministry at
Central
Gardens
and for the
Senior
Center
at Old First
She
was a wonderful friend and a caring mother and proud grandmother.
She was well loved, and will be greatly missed.
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