When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him,[j] God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 13: 31-34

O God of love you have called us into the larger church and into a specific community known as Ark and Dove. We thank you for this communion of worshippers and disciples and our thirty years of ministry. We thank you for the opportunities we have to grow in understanding and concern for one another. We thank you that this Ark and has been a place of shelter and safety for so many people. May our congregation continue to be an incarnation of your love both within and beyond our church doors. Wherever there is loneliness, injustice, sadness, oppression or misunderstanding, may we answer your call to love as Christ loved and to labor in your holy name for your kindom, the beloved community. Amen.

Thank you to those of you who attended the Beau Soir Ensemble concert after last week's services. Wow, they were absolutely incredible!! If you ever have the chance to see them perform, I hope that you will.  

I am very grateful to Laura and Paul Doughty, and Paula Sparks for filling in for me this Sunday while we attend our final wedding of the year in New York City! Paul and Laura will present the Prelude music, Majesty of the Most High by Matt Redman, and Laura and Paula will present a flute and piano offertory- a stunning arrangement of Morning Has Broken.  

On Sunday evening, you are in for a VERY big treat! The LOGOS children, along with the Adult Choir and Band will sing a combined song at the end of the Anniversary Celebration dinner and we will invite you all to sing it with us. You won't want to miss it! Don't forget to sign up for the dinner!

With love,

Rebecca

Director of Music

rechols@arkanddove.org

Dear Friends and Members of the Ark and Dove Community,

I have been hired to serve as the interim director of youth ministry for the next few months as we search for an associate pastor. Children’s and youth ministry is my passion, I have been involved in it in some capacity since high school, and I am incredibly humbled and thankful that I have been called to serve Ark and Dove in this way. Ark and Dove has been an oasis of love, acceptance, and affirmation for me and I hope to continue to create that same environment for our youth.

We are excited to restart Middle School Sunday School after a long hiatus, beginning on October 30th it will be offered during the 10:30 service. I will also be heading up the amazing team of volunteers that lead middle school and high school youth group on Sunday evenings. Please feel free to connect with me if you would like more information (including being added to the youth group email list) or if you would like to get involved with any of our youth programming, we could always use more volunteers!

Kind Regards,

Whitney Grimm

Interim Director of Youth

Whitney.Grimm@arkanddove.org

Celebrate 30 years of Ark and Dove!

Ark and Dove is always growing. Celebrate the past 30 years and the 30 years (and more) to come! We will be having a catered and potluck dinner this Sunday at 5pm on October 23rd in the sanctuary. We are asking folks to bring dishes that remind them of "community", something they feel connected to. There will be multiple ways to get involved - pay attention to the Arkive for even more news to come! Click Here to RSVP!

Names of Lost Loved Ones 

Please send the names of anyone in your immediate family who has passed away this year to Deacon Adell Gaurin at adell.deacon@gmail.com, to be remembered in our All Saints Day service on October 30th.

October is Pastor Appreciation Month!

This is our chance to show Pastor Tim, Pastor Caroline, and Pastor Stephen how much we appreciate all that they do to shepherd us along our life travels with God. Let's show them our love!

How Close Can You Get?

Mask required at 9:00 am Worship, Mask Optional at 10:30 am Worship

Previous Episodes

2 October

Join Guest Host Michelle Schoonmaker interview a member of the Associate Pastor Nominating Team (APTN), Jim Cooper, as they discuss the upcoming APTN listening sessions.

18 September

Join this week's Lobby guest host Lilly as she interviews Amy Tardiff as they discuss and experience what it's like to take part in a Godly Play class. Anyone interested in teaching Godly Play? Please contact Sara Fox.

For five weeks each fall, we collect the Peace and Global Witness Special Offering. This offering is our way of supporting our financial commitment to ACT and to make a financial donation to Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. Your generosity in past years has made this a very successful offering. We would like you to prayerfully consider participating in this year's last call for our Peace and Global Witness Offering if you have not already done so. Thank you for your gifts!

New at the Ark & Dove Library

The Ark and Dove Library is pleased to announce two really cool donations recently gifted to us by Connie Batts. The first is called My God Today: 365 Devotions For People Who Might Be A Lil Ratchet (But God Knows Your Heart) by Dr. Lori Alyse Croom. She has written 365 days of spiritual enrichment based on the Bible and some of her favorite hip-hop anthems. The reviews for this book are enthusiastic about it being a great devotional book for people are don’t normally like devotionals.

And if that isn’t enough, Connie also bought for us…

God Be Knowin': 365 Devotions For People Who Are As Undefeated As Al Green's Internet. In this book, Dr. Croom takes 365 words, phrases, and hashtags commonly found on the Internet and use them to extract daily devotional messages that are inspirational and life changing. By the way, the confusion of Al Gore with the Reverend Al Green is fun and intentional.

Both of these books can be found in the Prayer and Devotions section of the library. If you’d like to read a little about them first, check them out in our online catalog.

Refugee Resettlement: Abawi Family

As the Abawi family settle into their new home, we can then concentrate on the many other ways we can support this family. 

Clothing Donation Needed

In need of donations of men’s casual clothing size large. Please contact Debbie Arey at debarey@hotmail.com. 

Living with Hope

Our 2023 Stewardship Effort theme is Renewed in God: Embracing the Future, Renewed in Faith, and Living with Hope and Love. This week we will explore how renewal in God allows us to confidently embrace the future together while Living with Hope for a better world. A biblical definition of hope is more than simply desiring or wishing for a certain outcome. With our faith firmly rooted in God, our hope is an expectation with certainty that God will do what God has promised. Getting through the past couple years has been challenging in so many ways, yet at Ark and Dove we have remained committed to doing God’s work of justice and inclusion for all. How do we persist on this path in the face of so many obstacles? It is with our hope in God, set free by Christ, that our strength is renewed daily and we “mount up with wings like eagle’s” ready to run without growing weary. Hope redefines what is probable and opens paths to accomplishing the seemingly impossible. Living with Hope means that we forge ahead despite the odds, growing and creating new areas of ministry and mission in order to meet the evolving needs of God’s people. 

It is in this vein that we continue to support people in need in our immediate community, across the nation, and around the world with thriving missions such as our partnership with Anne Arundel Connecting Together (ACT) and our newly active Community Engagement Team. Our Anti-Racism and Social Equity team is planning to begin making financial reparations to organizations of People of Color in order to make amends for our collective participation in acts of oppression in the history of the Presbyterian church. Our GLEAM Team is starting a support group for LGBTQIA+ youth, and our adult and Ally support groups continue to be safe places and sources of support for those who have so often been excluded and alienated by others in the past. Our Earth Care Team continues to make strides in helping us all become better stewards of God’s creation. The team is planning specific projects to help us make our church building, operations, worship services, education, and outreach more respectful of the glory of God’s creation. While we alone cannot solve all the environmental problems that exist, we can continue to integrate more environmental practices into the life of the church and together find renewed hope in the future. 

These ministry and mission activities and so many more are proof of the personal and collective renewal we experience living as a new creation in Christ. God is continually renewing each one of us. Each day we are loved, forgiven, and set free from sin and death because of Christ. As such, we are empowered to boldly engage God’s mission in the world filled with hope for the future. Our giving is in response to God’s immeasurable love for us and the hope we have in Christ. Our very lives and all that we have are gifts from God. We are called in Scripture to give back to the work of Christ through the church. This Fall, spend some time reflecting on the ways that Ark and Dove help you experience God’s renewal and brings hope and healing to yourselves and to a fractured world. Our prayer is that you would consider increasing your pledge an additional 1% of household income. This would help us not only maintain our current level of ministry and mission work but would also enable us to confidently make strides toward our future goals and dreams encouraged by the hope that dwells within us.

Tricia Gray & The 2023 Renewed in God Stewardship Team