Dear Friends:
What a special time we had beginning the season of Lent on Wednesday. About 300 of you joined us for Worship in the Round that evening. I always love the sense of connectedness with one another in that service as we gather around the table and draw nearer to Christ and one another in the liturgy.
Earlier that day, we greeted 50 people who participated in Trinity's first drive-through ashes. Some were Trinity members and quite a few others were people from the community who saw friendly faces waving them in from the side of the road, or who were dropping off Stepping Stones and Talbot kids, or attending the morning business networking meeting in the Youth Building, or found the announcement online. We had the privilege of praying for marriages, for illnesses, for persons who recently had deaths in their families, for someone to find a job, and more. Holy moments, for sure.
In other news, our Bishop Ken Carter has prepared a letter to be shared with congregations in our Florida Conference in response to the conclusion of the UMC General Conference in St. Louis. You can read it
here
and we will also be providing copies to everyone on Sunday.
This Sunday you'll have the opportunity to hear youth minister Rebekah Saveland preach for the first time at Trinity. She will be sharing the first message in our Celtic worship series for Lent. In two weeks, I'll be preaching on the goodness of creation, a prevalent theme in Celtic theology. I'd love for you to help me. For you photographers out there, feel free to send me a picture of creation/nature that you've taken. You can simply reply to this email and include a digital version.
Also, you can still submit your question
here
for our Wednesday series during Lent, Desert Wanderings: Exploring Questions of Faith. For this series, Catherine and I will be selecting one of your questions each week as the preaching focus. They can be questions about the Bible, about theology, about something that causes you to struggle in your faith, or anything else that you would like to know more about as a follower of Jesus.
Lastly, I want to invite you to participate in this year's special Easter offering for ZOE. One fun way to go ahead and do that now is to place your "vote" for what I'll wear on Easter Sunday. The shirt I have on in today's photo was custom-made for me by a young man named Anthony while I was in Rwanda last month.
Anthony is a ZOE graduate. Just a few years ago before starting ZOE, he was an orphan who didn't know from one day to the next if he would have food to eat. Now he and several other ZOE graduates, who received vocational training to become tailors, business education, and life & leadership skills, co-own and operate a tailor shop in the city of Huye.
So...wanna help change the lives of other kids like Anthony?
Click
here
and
select the "Yes! Steve wears the ZOE shirt on Easter" fund and make your contribution.
Or, if you prefer, y
ou can make your contribution to the "NO! Steve doesn't wear the ZOE shirt on Easter
.
" Every dollar raised goes to support kids through Trinity's partnership with ZOE.
