Worship at 9am and 11am; all ages palm crosses art project at 10am
Worship at noon and 7pm
Traditional worship at 9am, contemporary worship at 11am; Easter breakfast/fundraiser in the Fellowship Hall at 10am. Freewill offering. All proceeds will support Beth and Mike’s medical costs.
Please know that the leaders and people of Faith Lutheran Church hold you in God's Light during yet another season of disturbance and sorrow.
Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday (March 2), Faith will be open for prayer and worship.
Noon to 1pm: The church will be open during the noon hour for quiet prayer and we will offer the imposition of ashes and Holy Communion at that time.
Evening Activities:
6pm, Youth games
6:30pm, Soup Supper
7:15pm, Ash Wednesday Worship, "Beneath the Cross of Jesus." This will be an interactive service of song and prayer that gives opportunity to share our sorrow and prayers for peace, for health, for wholeness and life in a time of continuing struggle and dis-ease. Livestreamed at FLC's Facebook Page: HERE
Be blessed and encouraged, friends. You are Beloved of God. No matter what. Welcome Home.
Pastor Brenda
Some folks have been asking about places to contribute to relief efforts in Ukraine. Just want to put out a warning that fake charities have been popping up online that look like they will benefit Ukraine but will actually send your money who-knows-where.
Two sites that we know we can trust are Lutheran World Relief and Lutheran World Federation. Links to their Ukraine-specific donation pages are below.
Love and Peace,
We pray for all people
whose lives are in peril in Ukraine.
We pray for the vision to see and the faith to believe
in a world emancipated from violence.Heal the wounds of mind, body and spirit that will occur due to the violence in our world.
Help us to devote ourselves to the task of making peace in our own neighborhoods and around the world. No one is hidden from your love.
Help us be home to others.
Help us manifest your love and peace to the world.
(Prayer from Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Their website lists more ways you can help.)
The annual meeting will be held at 11am on Sunday, January 30, and there will be an online attendance option.
Click the button below to open the 2021 Annual Report. Please note that the official ballot will be slightly different, as the empty slots in committees have been filled out since the publishing of this document.
In the summer of 2021, the remains of 215 bodies were found outside a boarding school for Indigenous children in Kamloops, B.C., even as the remains of 9 children were repatriated to the Rosebud Sioux in South Dakota from a boarding school in Pennsylvania. We are faced with the reality that for nearly 100 years the U.S. government and white settlers forcibly removed children from their families in order to assimilate them into white, “good Christian” culture. Our Native American and Alaskan Native neighbors still suffer deeply from the scars of this trauma and its lasting effects on their individual and community wellbeing.
This congregation is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), whose Northern European forebears settled across the Great Plains and into the Pacific Northwest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, displacing the tribal residents of the lands we homesteaded. But we also made friends: members of tribal peoples joined our congregations. And in 2021 the ELCA American Indian/Alaska Native Lutheran Association asked ELCA churches to hang orange banners in sanctuaries or other prominent places to recognize, remember, and honor the lives of children lost to the boarding school system, the generational trauma incurred by this sin, and our commitment to learn from the past and make amends as best we are able.
Faith’s orange banner features the handprints of our members and words that express our commitment to listen, lament, and love our Indigenous Neighbors. We hung it on Reformation Day 2021, and it will be up through June 2022—a bit more than one day for each child found or returned last summer. Its design was inspired by the University of Victoria’s 2021 Orange Shirt Day “Heart and Hands” emblem, created by UVIC’s Audain Professor of Contemporary Art Practice of the Pacific Northwest, Carey Newman. Newman writes:
"This design was made to honour the children who died in residential school. The hearts express love for all those in unmarked graves and compassion for the families and communities who waited for them to be found. The small and colourful hands remind us of the uniqueness and beauty of every child. Taken together, they represent our commitment to listen to our hearts and use our hands, to do the work that needs to be done.
The visceral confirmation of Survivor accounts that has come from locating these graves has affected many of us on an emotional level. It has changed the way that many people think and feel about our histories and current realities in Canada."
- Artist Carey Newman Hayalthkin’geme (Kwakwaka'wakw/Coast Salish) on "Hearts and Hands"
Click the button below to see the results of the recent feedback form regarding Children and Youth Ministry staffing at Faith Shelton. More detailed results are available from the church office upon request (email welcomehome@faithshelton.org)
We’re hiring a full-time Director of Children and Youth Ministry! Please see the job description below (or click here if it isn’t loading). Please email a cover letter and resume to doug@faithshelton.org by noon on Wednesday, August 11.
The virtual Christmas pageant was a success! 31 children and young adults appeared in the show, as well as a few older children of God. We were even able to incorporate some kids from Kids Cove Preschool, which meets in our building. Thank you to all of the camera-people, kiddo-wranglers, and costumers/prop masters from each household; we couldn’t have done it without you!
Originally streamed on Facebook Live on December 19, 2020.
In August, we asked the congregation to fill out another questionnaire to see how folks are feeling about the church’s response to COVID-19 and to pinpoint areas in which we could serve each other better. Click the button below to view a side-by-side comparison of the two surveys’ results.
In general, it seems that we need to do a better job of communicating what we are doing in each of these areas. Please keep an eye on the newsletters each month, as that’s where a lot of this information will be shared. In addition, we are working on making the newsletters available to read on the website! Look for that in the coming months.
