PARISH NEWS
Fellowship News
Over the summer the many programs of our Fellowship Ministry Team have touched so many lives! While remasking cut indoor coffee hours short, we were able to provide over a month of casual space for conversation, support and reconnection amongst our indoor members. Many thanks are especially due to Don Bergeron, Linda Santiago and Michael Jegabbi for running coffee hours, as well as Connie Aldrich for giving an INCREDIBLE presentation on her experience growing up in Great Britain during World War II. Our Care & Concern ministry has been going as strong as ever to stay connected with our many members in need of care. Most local nursing homes have reopened to visitors which has been WONDERFUL, and a top priority of Care & Concern in the coming months is to prepare for the launch of a Stephen Ministers program to provide additional mental health support to our members. Finally, we'd like to thank Barb Hallett for her MANY years of service chairing the Care & Concern Committee as she moves into other leadership areas at Messiah. Thank you so, so much Barb for all you've done and continue to do! We've also been able to get the beginnings of an Arts & Culture Committee up and running, with a couple very successful sessions of Zentangle at the Trinity Community Center! Finally, many thanks are due as well to the Crowthers for hosting a really fun BBQ & Axe Throwing Night and to the Olechnowicz family for hosting our upcoming Messiahstock V celebration of Mr. Doug's over 30 years of ministry at Messiah!
Faith Formation News
A great deal of time has been spent over the summer planning for the relaunch of Messiah's many life changing faith formation experiences for all ages! Confirmation Class & Children's Sunday School will relaunch outdoors (or indoors with masks during bad weather) on Sunday, September 19th while Dr. Merle Longwood and René Dunda-Martin will offer a virtual Adult Education course called The Gospel and the Native American Religious Experience: Colonialism, Resistance and Liberation beginning Sunday, September 12th at 8:45am. A fall family course on baptism is scheduled for October while a new member class is scheduled for November, both led by Pastor Dustin. Finally, many thanks are due to Rachel Longmire for leading a WILDLY successful "Community Around the Campfire" conversation series especially for young adults Wednesdays over the summer... stay tuned for more opportunities to connect with other young adults at Messiah soon!
Social Actions News
Without a doubt this has been a summer of Social Action at Messiah. Our Bread of Life Food Pantry is now serving an average of fifty families a month and our Free Produce Pantry every Friday at the Trinity Community Center is serving many more! Many thanks to Joyce Gresham, Judy Becker, Pastor Jonathan, Jill Becker and Sarah Bachorik for their leadership as well as Betsy & Jim Ryan and Paul & Allison Bode for handling so many deliveries and of course our many, many volunteers who have served this summer! While the produce pantry has a very dedicated team of volunteers distributing food, we are in need of more drivers with either an SUV or truck to pick up the produce from the Regional Food Bank in Latham.
As our Community Service Chair, Pete Jones has led an incredible team of volunteers in providing SiCM Summer Lunch out of the Trinity Community Center all summer as well. Our Creation Care Committee, led by Nancy Stuebner, will be meeting this September to discuss further greening our congregation and celebrating the Season of Creation. Weekly creation appreciation hikes led by Jean Jones have also been a wonderful way to connect in Spirit filled community!
Many thanks are due as well to Kimlee Marquise and Barbara Quackenbush for taking the lead on writing a major grant application to the Schenectady Foundation to pay for the renovations necessary to Trinity in order to relocate the Bread of Life Food Pantry there by spring 2022. This grant application will in turn be used to create a final Business Plan for the Community Center. Kimlee, Barbara, Pastor Dustin and Pastor Jonathan are currently scheduling meetings with local leaders to go over these plans and build additional community support. Finally, on Friday, September 17th we'll host a benefit concert as a grand opening of the Trinity Community with all proceeds split between supporting its initial operations and the development of a Pride Center Media Lab in the building. Many thanks to Douglas J. Chilton and Steve Friebel for helping in the organization of that event!
Stewardship News
The committees of our Stewardship Ministry Team have been hard at work all summer both getting ready for our Capital Campaign and helping us navigate so many changes in the life of our congregation. As of July 2021 our deficit declined to roughly $16,000. While this number is high, it both reflects typical seasonal giving patterns and a large planned deficit this year (balanced by a large surplus last year) to support the costs of our unification with Trinity Reformed and the launch of our community center. Keeping up or exceeding your pledged giving this fall will put us in a strong financial position going into our Capital Campaign and ensure the many life changing ministries you read about in this newsletter will continue for years to come!
Our Personnel Committee thanks Pamella Ford for her many years of service as chair and welcomes Pete Jones as our new chair. The two top priorities of Personnel are currently finding a permanent Minister of Music and finalizing what our post-pandemic staff structure will look like. Our Mission Support Committee, chaired by Penny Incitti, has of course been hard at work gearing up for all fall campaign with support from Evan Moilan and Pete Reuss of GSB. Our Property Committee, chaired by Steve Friebel, has been working hard to make various repairs, improve our A/V equipment in the sanctuary and more. Due to a generous anonymous donor, we were able to replace the bottom portion of main sign on Guilderland Avenue with a new magnetized model that will allow us to change worship times, etc. Many thanks as well to the Dunda-Martin Family for mowing this summer and to Jean Jones for leading our harvest gardeners!! Finally, for the first time in many years our Budget & Finance Committee is working to present a budget to the congregation BEFORE the end of the year and thus are meeting on Wednesday, September 14th to craft our 2022 budget. Please reach out to Chair Kristie Becker with any budget requests before that time!
Worship & Music News
It has been SO wonderful to welcome everyone back to in person Sunday Mass at Messiah this summer! We opened our doors early this July for simple services of Word & Prayer and began masked singing and sharing outdoor communion this August. Many thanks are due to our Minister of Music Emeritus Douglas J. Chilton for leading us with such beautiful music and to Jill Becker, Sophie Coleman and Emily Russo for canting for us every Sunday on a rotating basis. One thing that's been absolutely amazing to see is how many folks have begun to join us online with many thanks due to Rich Becker and help from Rachel Longmire and Rachel DeTeso-Mathis. If you add together folks in person and folks watching online, we've certainly had far more people joining us for worship than any summer in recent memory! As we move into the fall, Sunday Mass will once again revert to our regular 10:15am worship time beginning on God's Work, Our Hands Sunday which will serve as a blessing of the Trinity Community Center. For now as we navigate the delta variant, we'll keep our services fairly simple but hope to bring back a wide variety of worship assistants soon. In other worship news, Prayer & Meditation has gone well virtually led by Russell McDonald for over a year now and will switch to 6:30p every Thursday this September as a hybrid in-person/ virtual broadcast from our Worship Center sanctuary. If you haven't already done so, please join our "Prayer at Messiah" Facebook Group as well, a WONDERFUL way we've been able to hold up each other in prayer over the last year!
Celebrating the Life of Bill Becker
His was a life well lived! Please join Bill's family and loved ones as we gather to celebrate the remarkable life of William Charles (Bill) Becker in a memorial service on Saturday, September 18, 2021 at 3:00pm here at Messiah. There will be time both during and after the service to reminisce and remember all Bill accomplished in his 84 years on earth. We will be following the current CDC guidelines for indoor gatherings.
September 2021 Minister of the Month
Congratulations to Crystal Murray who is our September 2021 Minister of Month! A local veterinarian, Crystal loves to explore the outdoors, spend time with loved ones, and train with her horse. Along with her husband Rob and children Katrina and Nathaniel, the Murrays found Messiah in the fall of 2019 (at Messiahstock for the first time actually!) and have jumped right in to serve Christ here in so many ways. Crystal has been an ESSENTIAL member of the Congregation Council, as her business experience has allowed her to lead the search for our Minister of Music and our recent new logo contest amongst a wide variety of other initiatives. She's also deeply passionate about Creation Care and has supported her neighbor and dear friend Nancy Stuebner on a wide variety of our greening efforts! Thank you Crystal for all you do for our Spirit filled congregation and congratulations on being our Minister of the Month!
Serve at Messiah!
In addition to staffing a SiCM Summer Lunch site at the Trinity Community Center this summer, your Community Service Committee is working on providing at least a monthly service opportunity throughout the rest of 2021 for our members. Please mark your calendars!!!
Lead at Messiah!
While a number of folks have stepped up in recent months, we're still looking for a variety of new leaders to fill a number of appointed roles including a Social Justice Chair, a Nursery Chair, a Youth Ministry Chair, an Arts & Culture Chair, a Young Adult Chair, a Men's Group President and an Archives Chair. If any of these things sound of interest to you, please contact Pastor Dustin!
September 2021 Pastor's Letter
Tuesday, August 24th, 2021
Feast of Bartholomew, Apostle
Dear siblings in Christ,
As I write you on the Feast Day of Bartholomew, one of Jesus' twelve apostles (and referred to as Nathan in the Gospel of John), I'm thinking a lot about the traditional meaning of this day and how thankful I am for all YOU are doing to serve Christ in the face of our neighbors here at Messiah. You see, on this day in 1572, thousands of Protestants were killed by Roman Catholics in Paris during the 30 Years War. Centuries later in 1894, this day also marked the beginning of the Armenian genocide, where thousands of Armenian Christians were massacred by Turkish Muslims. Unfortunately, all too often in human history, religion was (and continues to be) co-opted as a tool of division and hate, rather than liberating love! Even the word "religion" itself, derived from the Latin word "religiō," likely has its origins in words meaning "to reconnect" or "to knit together" according to many contemporary scholars.
While we cannot change the past, my goodness, with God's help, we can build a better future, and at Messiah, we're certainly doing all we can to be a part of that holy work! Through weekly hikes, serving SiCM summer lunch five days a week, weekly community campfires, a return to in-person Sunday Mass, Zentangle classes and more this summer, we've begun doing the work of religion, to reconnect folks to God and one another. In all likelihood (stay tuned for updates) by this Friday, we'll officially own the Trinity Community Center, with our "moving in" service day set for after worship as part of the ELCA's national annual celebration of God's Work, Our Hands Sunday on September 12th, a place where we can work to knit community together between folks of all backgrounds! The following Sunday, on September 19th, we'll reopen for outdoor or indoor masked Children's Sunday School to begin reconnecting our young people to Jesus and one another in person for the first time since March 2020. On that same day, we will officially launch a historic Capital Campaign to make sure our Worship Center is fully accessible and that EVERYONE has a place at Christ's table for generations to come! The work of religion, of reconnection and knitting community back together is happening in the small things as well... I've been blessed to be a part of a number of reconciling conversations between old friends who greatly disagreed about social issues posted online over the last year and half, and believe me, healing, truth and reconciliation CAN occur! And wow, one thing that struck me as Paul Bode scored a REMARKABLE soccer goal over Hannah, Grace, Sarah and I at our recent Axe Throwing Night last week, probably the best thing we can do to rebuild community is simply to gather, play and have fun together again!
Thank you for all you have done, and continue to do, in the holy work of knitting our Spirit filled congregation back together and building a place at the table for EVERYONE at Messiah!
in hope,
Pastor Dustin
Capital Campaign for a Fully Accessible Worship Center to Launch on Sunday, September 19th!
After years of prayer, discussion and working through all possible options, at long last we will officially launch a historic Capital Campaign to make our worship center fully accessible for all God's children on Sunday, September 19th during worship! As we begin the holy work of knitting our Spirit filled congregation back together after such a difficult year and a half of COVID19, this Capital Campaign will ensure everyone has a place at the table to meet Jesus at Messiah for generations to come! Our Capital Appeal Task Force, co-chaired by Dave Barnett and Rich Becker, have been hard at work all summer developing a theme, logo and all manner of various materials for the campaign. On September 19th, we're all SO excited to tell you all about it! Between September 19th and our Commitment Sunday on the Feast of the Reformation, October 31st, attending worship each Sunday will be SO important, as each Sunday we'll lay out different aspects of the campaign, announce various events and initiatives, and rise together in prayer for our common future!
Over the summer the many programs of our Fellowship Ministry Team have touched so many lives! While remasking cut indoor coffee hours short, we were able to provide over a month of casual space for conversation, support and reconnection amongst our indoor members. Many thanks are especially due to Don Bergeron, Linda Santiago and Michael Jegabbi for running coffee hours, as well as Connie Aldrich for giving an INCREDIBLE presentation on her experience growing up in Great Britain during World War II. Our Care & Concern ministry has been going as strong as ever to stay connected with our many members in need of care. Most local nursing homes have reopened to visitors which has been WONDERFUL, and a top priority of Care & Concern in the coming months is to prepare for the launch of a Stephen Ministers program to provide additional mental health support to our members. Finally, we'd like to thank Barb Hallett for her MANY years of service chairing the Care & Concern Committee as she moves into other leadership areas at Messiah. Thank you so, so much Barb for all you've done and continue to do! We've also been able to get the beginnings of an Arts & Culture Committee up and running, with a couple very successful sessions of Zentangle at the Trinity Community Center! Finally, many thanks are due as well to the Crowthers for hosting a really fun BBQ & Axe Throwing Night and to the Olechnowicz family for hosting our upcoming Messiahstock V celebration of Mr. Doug's over 30 years of ministry at Messiah!
Faith Formation News
A great deal of time has been spent over the summer planning for the relaunch of Messiah's many life changing faith formation experiences for all ages! Confirmation Class & Children's Sunday School will relaunch outdoors (or indoors with masks during bad weather) on Sunday, September 19th while Dr. Merle Longwood and René Dunda-Martin will offer a virtual Adult Education course called The Gospel and the Native American Religious Experience: Colonialism, Resistance and Liberation beginning Sunday, September 12th at 8:45am. A fall family course on baptism is scheduled for October while a new member class is scheduled for November, both led by Pastor Dustin. Finally, many thanks are due to Rachel Longmire for leading a WILDLY successful "Community Around the Campfire" conversation series especially for young adults Wednesdays over the summer... stay tuned for more opportunities to connect with other young adults at Messiah soon!
Social Actions News
Without a doubt this has been a summer of Social Action at Messiah. Our Bread of Life Food Pantry is now serving an average of fifty families a month and our Free Produce Pantry every Friday at the Trinity Community Center is serving many more! Many thanks to Joyce Gresham, Judy Becker, Pastor Jonathan, Jill Becker and Sarah Bachorik for their leadership as well as Betsy & Jim Ryan and Paul & Allison Bode for handling so many deliveries and of course our many, many volunteers who have served this summer! While the produce pantry has a very dedicated team of volunteers distributing food, we are in need of more drivers with either an SUV or truck to pick up the produce from the Regional Food Bank in Latham.
As our Community Service Chair, Pete Jones has led an incredible team of volunteers in providing SiCM Summer Lunch out of the Trinity Community Center all summer as well. Our Creation Care Committee, led by Nancy Stuebner, will be meeting this September to discuss further greening our congregation and celebrating the Season of Creation. Weekly creation appreciation hikes led by Jean Jones have also been a wonderful way to connect in Spirit filled community!
Many thanks are due as well to Kimlee Marquise and Barbara Quackenbush for taking the lead on writing a major grant application to the Schenectady Foundation to pay for the renovations necessary to Trinity in order to relocate the Bread of Life Food Pantry there by spring 2022. This grant application will in turn be used to create a final Business Plan for the Community Center. Kimlee, Barbara, Pastor Dustin and Pastor Jonathan are currently scheduling meetings with local leaders to go over these plans and build additional community support. Finally, on Friday, September 17th we'll host a benefit concert as a grand opening of the Trinity Community with all proceeds split between supporting its initial operations and the development of a Pride Center Media Lab in the building. Many thanks to Douglas J. Chilton and Steve Friebel for helping in the organization of that event!
Stewardship News
The committees of our Stewardship Ministry Team have been hard at work all summer both getting ready for our Capital Campaign and helping us navigate so many changes in the life of our congregation. As of July 2021 our deficit declined to roughly $16,000. While this number is high, it both reflects typical seasonal giving patterns and a large planned deficit this year (balanced by a large surplus last year) to support the costs of our unification with Trinity Reformed and the launch of our community center. Keeping up or exceeding your pledged giving this fall will put us in a strong financial position going into our Capital Campaign and ensure the many life changing ministries you read about in this newsletter will continue for years to come!
Our Personnel Committee thanks Pamella Ford for her many years of service as chair and welcomes Pete Jones as our new chair. The two top priorities of Personnel are currently finding a permanent Minister of Music and finalizing what our post-pandemic staff structure will look like. Our Mission Support Committee, chaired by Penny Incitti, has of course been hard at work gearing up for all fall campaign with support from Evan Moilan and Pete Reuss of GSB. Our Property Committee, chaired by Steve Friebel, has been working hard to make various repairs, improve our A/V equipment in the sanctuary and more. Due to a generous anonymous donor, we were able to replace the bottom portion of main sign on Guilderland Avenue with a new magnetized model that will allow us to change worship times, etc. Many thanks as well to the Dunda-Martin Family for mowing this summer and to Jean Jones for leading our harvest gardeners!! Finally, for the first time in many years our Budget & Finance Committee is working to present a budget to the congregation BEFORE the end of the year and thus are meeting on Wednesday, September 14th to craft our 2022 budget. Please reach out to Chair Kristie Becker with any budget requests before that time!
Worship & Music News
It has been SO wonderful to welcome everyone back to in person Sunday Mass at Messiah this summer! We opened our doors early this July for simple services of Word & Prayer and began masked singing and sharing outdoor communion this August. Many thanks are due to our Minister of Music Emeritus Douglas J. Chilton for leading us with such beautiful music and to Jill Becker, Sophie Coleman and Emily Russo for canting for us every Sunday on a rotating basis. One thing that's been absolutely amazing to see is how many folks have begun to join us online with many thanks due to Rich Becker and help from Rachel Longmire and Rachel DeTeso-Mathis. If you add together folks in person and folks watching online, we've certainly had far more people joining us for worship than any summer in recent memory! As we move into the fall, Sunday Mass will once again revert to our regular 10:15am worship time beginning on God's Work, Our Hands Sunday which will serve as a blessing of the Trinity Community Center. For now as we navigate the delta variant, we'll keep our services fairly simple but hope to bring back a wide variety of worship assistants soon. In other worship news, Prayer & Meditation has gone well virtually led by Russell McDonald for over a year now and will switch to 6:30p every Thursday this September as a hybrid in-person/ virtual broadcast from our Worship Center sanctuary. If you haven't already done so, please join our "Prayer at Messiah" Facebook Group as well, a WONDERFUL way we've been able to hold up each other in prayer over the last year!
Celebrating the Life of Bill Becker
His was a life well lived! Please join Bill's family and loved ones as we gather to celebrate the remarkable life of William Charles (Bill) Becker in a memorial service on Saturday, September 18, 2021 at 3:00pm here at Messiah. There will be time both during and after the service to reminisce and remember all Bill accomplished in his 84 years on earth. We will be following the current CDC guidelines for indoor gatherings.
September 2021 Minister of the Month
Congratulations to Crystal Murray who is our September 2021 Minister of Month! A local veterinarian, Crystal loves to explore the outdoors, spend time with loved ones, and train with her horse. Along with her husband Rob and children Katrina and Nathaniel, the Murrays found Messiah in the fall of 2019 (at Messiahstock for the first time actually!) and have jumped right in to serve Christ here in so many ways. Crystal has been an ESSENTIAL member of the Congregation Council, as her business experience has allowed her to lead the search for our Minister of Music and our recent new logo contest amongst a wide variety of other initiatives. She's also deeply passionate about Creation Care and has supported her neighbor and dear friend Nancy Stuebner on a wide variety of our greening efforts! Thank you Crystal for all you do for our Spirit filled congregation and congratulations on being our Minister of the Month!
Serve at Messiah!
In addition to staffing a SiCM Summer Lunch site at the Trinity Community Center this summer, your Community Service Committee is working on providing at least a monthly service opportunity throughout the rest of 2021 for our members. Please mark your calendars!!!
- Sunday, September 12th: God’s Work Our Hands Sunday: Cleaning up and moving into the Trinity Community Center.
- Late October/ Early November TBA: Schenectady Interfaith Community Service Day: A countywide day of service in partnership with Schenectady Clergy Against Hate.
- Saturday, November 20th, 8:30a - done: Concerned For The Hungry Thanksgiving Basket Packing Day Hoping to staff three “fresh” vegetable stations again this year.
- Saturday, December 4th from 10:00am - 1:00pm: #HelpPortrait Schenectady Our annual effort to provide studio quality portraits for families and individuals in need right before the holidays.
Lead at Messiah!
While a number of folks have stepped up in recent months, we're still looking for a variety of new leaders to fill a number of appointed roles including a Social Justice Chair, a Nursery Chair, a Youth Ministry Chair, an Arts & Culture Chair, a Young Adult Chair, a Men's Group President and an Archives Chair. If any of these things sound of interest to you, please contact Pastor Dustin!
September 2021 Pastor's Letter
Tuesday, August 24th, 2021
Feast of Bartholomew, Apostle
Dear siblings in Christ,
As I write you on the Feast Day of Bartholomew, one of Jesus' twelve apostles (and referred to as Nathan in the Gospel of John), I'm thinking a lot about the traditional meaning of this day and how thankful I am for all YOU are doing to serve Christ in the face of our neighbors here at Messiah. You see, on this day in 1572, thousands of Protestants were killed by Roman Catholics in Paris during the 30 Years War. Centuries later in 1894, this day also marked the beginning of the Armenian genocide, where thousands of Armenian Christians were massacred by Turkish Muslims. Unfortunately, all too often in human history, religion was (and continues to be) co-opted as a tool of division and hate, rather than liberating love! Even the word "religion" itself, derived from the Latin word "religiō," likely has its origins in words meaning "to reconnect" or "to knit together" according to many contemporary scholars.
While we cannot change the past, my goodness, with God's help, we can build a better future, and at Messiah, we're certainly doing all we can to be a part of that holy work! Through weekly hikes, serving SiCM summer lunch five days a week, weekly community campfires, a return to in-person Sunday Mass, Zentangle classes and more this summer, we've begun doing the work of religion, to reconnect folks to God and one another. In all likelihood (stay tuned for updates) by this Friday, we'll officially own the Trinity Community Center, with our "moving in" service day set for after worship as part of the ELCA's national annual celebration of God's Work, Our Hands Sunday on September 12th, a place where we can work to knit community together between folks of all backgrounds! The following Sunday, on September 19th, we'll reopen for outdoor or indoor masked Children's Sunday School to begin reconnecting our young people to Jesus and one another in person for the first time since March 2020. On that same day, we will officially launch a historic Capital Campaign to make sure our Worship Center is fully accessible and that EVERYONE has a place at Christ's table for generations to come! The work of religion, of reconnection and knitting community back together is happening in the small things as well... I've been blessed to be a part of a number of reconciling conversations between old friends who greatly disagreed about social issues posted online over the last year and half, and believe me, healing, truth and reconciliation CAN occur! And wow, one thing that struck me as Paul Bode scored a REMARKABLE soccer goal over Hannah, Grace, Sarah and I at our recent Axe Throwing Night last week, probably the best thing we can do to rebuild community is simply to gather, play and have fun together again!
Thank you for all you have done, and continue to do, in the holy work of knitting our Spirit filled congregation back together and building a place at the table for EVERYONE at Messiah!
in hope,
Pastor Dustin
Capital Campaign for a Fully Accessible Worship Center to Launch on Sunday, September 19th!
After years of prayer, discussion and working through all possible options, at long last we will officially launch a historic Capital Campaign to make our worship center fully accessible for all God's children on Sunday, September 19th during worship! As we begin the holy work of knitting our Spirit filled congregation back together after such a difficult year and a half of COVID19, this Capital Campaign will ensure everyone has a place at the table to meet Jesus at Messiah for generations to come! Our Capital Appeal Task Force, co-chaired by Dave Barnett and Rich Becker, have been hard at work all summer developing a theme, logo and all manner of various materials for the campaign. On September 19th, we're all SO excited to tell you all about it! Between September 19th and our Commitment Sunday on the Feast of the Reformation, October 31st, attending worship each Sunday will be SO important, as each Sunday we'll lay out different aspects of the campaign, announce various events and initiatives, and rise together in prayer for our common future!