PARISH NEWS
Trinity Community Center Takes Shape!
Our Community Center Redevelopment Task Force and Bread of Life Food Pantry leaders have been hard at work in recent weeks to approve final plans for the renovation of the Trinity Community Center! As shown in this basic schematic, the final plans will leave access to the four downstairs restroom fixtures, revitalize a secondary entrance to allow for increased anonymity for 12 Step Meetings, provide a new downstairs welcome area and most importantly, nearly DOUBLE the existing footprint of the Bread of Life Food Pantry, in turn doubling our ability to feed our neighbors in body, mind and soul. Construction will begin as soon as permitting is completed and should be complete in time for our Bread of Life Food Pantry to be fully moved in by the end of this April. After a couple months of getting use to the new space, our food pantry leaders are tentatively planning on launching a fourth monthly pantry session this coming summer. In other Community Center news, our Community Center Advisory Group will likely soon begin working with Executive Service Corps of the Tri-Cities to finish developing long term safety, operations, marketing, governance and sustainability plans for the Trinity Community Center.
January 2022 Ministers of the Month: Dave Barnett & Rich Becker
What more could be said about these two incredible people? Both have served multiple terms as President of the Congregation. Both have served in a myriad of other capacities... Dave Barnett as our former Treasurer and active member of the Budget & Finance Committee... Rich Becker as our Kitchen Committee Co-Chair and producer of our Sunday Mass and Holy Days broadcast. From Property Committee workdays to Men's Group Christmas Parties and more, Dave & Rich always show up to make a difference in our Spirit filled congregation! Most recently, they teamed up to serve as Co-Chairs of our historic and wildly successful "A Place at the Table for Everyone" Accessibility Campaign. When that golden shovel breaks ground, hopefully by this June, it wouldn't have happened without their dedicated work! Congratulations Rich and Dave for being our January 2022 Ministers of the Month!
Awesome Yellow God's Work, Our Hands T-Shirts for Sale!
Our "procurement specialist" Jill Becker has recently placed an order for God's Work, Our Hands t-shirts in various sizes (M, L, XL, 2XL) and will be selling them for $12 each in the narthex following worship. Especially as we wear all these shirts to service projects like thanksgiving basket packing and Help-Portrait, be sure to pick up your shirt asap!
Small Groups Launching Soon!
In order to knit our community closer together after so long apart, at our June 2021 Special Meeting of the Congregation, the people of Messiah Lutheran Church voted to launch a small group ministry in January 2022! We'd love for you to take part! Simply fill out our registration form at https://bit.ly/MLCSmallGroups and we'll be in touch as groups begin in the coming weeks!
Lily the Therapy Dog
After a variety of delays related to the pandemic, we were SO excited to bless Lily as our new Messiah therapy dog, as well as her handler Michael, during our Blessing of the Animals service this past October! Lily and Michael are certified through Therapy Dogs International! According to the Mayo Clinic, "Animal-assisted therapy is a growing field that uses dogs or other animals to help people recover from or better cope with health problems, such as heart disease, cancer and mental health disorders." If you or a loved one would like a visit from Lily, just contact Michael at 914.755.6788!
Camp Calumet is Back!
Registration for Camp Calumet's Resident Camp is up for the summer of 2022! If you have kids aged 8-16, find out more at https://calumet.org/summercamp/residentcamp or speak with Pastor Dustin. Messiah has committed to paying for half the cost of camp attendance at minimum, so please don't let finances get in the way of your child enjoying a life changing week on the shores of Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire this summer!
Lead at Messiah!
Many thanks to Kristen Olochnowicz, Sheri Lamb and Russell McDonald who have recently taken on roles as our Youth, Welcome and Arts & Culture Chairs respectively! In order to fill out the new governance structure we developed right before the pandemic hit, we are still looking for a Care & Concern Chair, a Historian, a Young Adult Chair, a Lutheran Men in Mission Chair, a Social Justice Chair, a Nursery Chair and two SiCM Delegates. We are recruiting Ushers, Greeters and a renewed Altar Guild to support our worship services as well!
January 2022 Pastor's Letter
Dear siblings in Christ,
As you're likely aware of from the far too often typos I miss, a big part of writing The Messenger is often looking back a year or two ago, tweaking various events and publishing them for the year ahead. What's far more interesting for me (and especially this month at least), is what I wrote to you exactly two years ago:
I’ll forever remember this past week as both one of the best but also most difficult weeks of my professional life thus far. At last Tuesday's SiCM Assembly, delegates voted near unanimously for love and solidarity by opening SiCM’s doors to congregations of non-Christian faiths. Already a major area synagogue and an environmentalist druid group has expressed interest in joining, with many more synagogues, mosques, temples and other faith communities on the way. During a time of such division, this initiative started here at Messiah way back on Easter Sunday. It started with you!
This past Wednesday proved a bit more complicated. On Wednesday morning I found out our final master plan for making our facilities fully accessible came over at twice the cost of what we were expecting, over $500,000. This was indeed heartbreaking, but what I saw next gave me great hope. Our first community conversation with our architect went extremely well under far less than ideal conditions, with folks remaining respectful of each other’s opinions, asking good questions, and open to everything from doing a more limited campaign to moving our primary church facilities to our friends at Trinity Reformed’s already accessible building.
Ah, well, so much for remembering January 2020 as the best and most difficult weeks of my professional life! In the midst of the day to day frustrations, the ongoing heartbreak of the pandemic and uncertainty about what the future might bring, it's SO easy to lose track of how far we've come under the most adverse conditions of most of our lifetimes! It turns out we did end up raising near half a million dollars to make our Worship Center fully welcoming and accessible to all! It turns out we did end up merging with our friends at Trinity Reformed, and with the generous support of the Schenectady Foundation, will break ground on renovating that facility hopefully within the month! Members in need of care were called and visited, an incredible broadcast ministry was begun and the prayer life of many of us has greatly strengthen. All that despite a global pandemic, a COMPLETE staff turnover outside of myself, complicated economic conditions and so much more!
None of this could have happened without you, dear friends. This Epiphany, Christ is certainly reflected in all your faces! Thank you for all you do support our Spirit filled congregation in feeding our neighborhood in body, mind and soul!
in hope,
Pastor Dustin
PS: As always, a major, major thank you from Rachel & I's little family to you for all the ways you've supported us throughout the year, including your generous gifts for Clergy Appreciation Day and Christmas! Especially with our wedding and honeymoon break coming up, this is a HUGE help! By the way... save the date! Our wedding is here at Messiah on Saturday, June 18th at 2:00pm. We're still working out the details, but definitely want our faith family here with us to celebrate!
"A Place at the Table for Everyone" Accessibility Campaign Plans to Break Ground this June!
As of this writing, we have raised $483,274 in direct contributions and pledges over a three year period to our A Place at the Table for Everyone Accessibility Campaign, over 85% of our goal! This INCREDIBLE good news in turn led us to feel quite confident as a congregation about voting to move forward with our Worship Center Accessibility Project at this past December's Annual Budget Meeting of the Congregation, where we voted unanimously to affirm Neal Fisher, Brian Maki and George Small as leaders of our Capital Appeal Task Force.
Over the last month our team has met weekly with architects Jaclyn Tyler and John Fry of Nexus Creative, as well contractor Wade Coton of Manchester Homes, LLC to finalize the layout of our Community Center renovations (see separate article). With those plans now complete and moving to permitting, we can soon begin concentrating on the Worship Center. A more detailed timeline will be available by our next edition of The Messenger, if not earlier, but we are certainly still on track to break ground shortly before Pastor Dustin and Rachel leave on their honeymoon on June 19th. Before our timeline is finalized, a final congregation vote will be needed to authorize the necessary financing, so stay tuned! If you haven't already made a Statement of Intent or contribution to the campaign and wish to do so, please visit https://www.messiahschenectady.org/campaign.html or speak with Pastor Dustin.
The Rev. Jonathan Vanderbeck Mental Health Fund
At the conclusion of most calls, congregations traditional rally to provide outgoing rostered leaders and senior staff with a going away gift of sorts. Our outgoing Interim Associate Pastor, the Rev. Jonathan Vanderbeck, has asked for something somewhat different. At his request our Congregation Council recently voted to affirm a decision made this past June to created a Mental Health Fund in his honor at Messiah! Moving forward, the Senior Pastor will have the discretion to use funds accumulated here to support members in paying for necessary mental health care. Even with health insurance (never mind those who are uninsured or underinsured), the cost of regular but necessary therapist visits can often be cost prohibitive. All are encouraged to contribute to this fund either on tithely or by putting "Mental Health Fund" in the memo line of your check today!
Our Community Center Redevelopment Task Force and Bread of Life Food Pantry leaders have been hard at work in recent weeks to approve final plans for the renovation of the Trinity Community Center! As shown in this basic schematic, the final plans will leave access to the four downstairs restroom fixtures, revitalize a secondary entrance to allow for increased anonymity for 12 Step Meetings, provide a new downstairs welcome area and most importantly, nearly DOUBLE the existing footprint of the Bread of Life Food Pantry, in turn doubling our ability to feed our neighbors in body, mind and soul. Construction will begin as soon as permitting is completed and should be complete in time for our Bread of Life Food Pantry to be fully moved in by the end of this April. After a couple months of getting use to the new space, our food pantry leaders are tentatively planning on launching a fourth monthly pantry session this coming summer. In other Community Center news, our Community Center Advisory Group will likely soon begin working with Executive Service Corps of the Tri-Cities to finish developing long term safety, operations, marketing, governance and sustainability plans for the Trinity Community Center.
January 2022 Ministers of the Month: Dave Barnett & Rich Becker
What more could be said about these two incredible people? Both have served multiple terms as President of the Congregation. Both have served in a myriad of other capacities... Dave Barnett as our former Treasurer and active member of the Budget & Finance Committee... Rich Becker as our Kitchen Committee Co-Chair and producer of our Sunday Mass and Holy Days broadcast. From Property Committee workdays to Men's Group Christmas Parties and more, Dave & Rich always show up to make a difference in our Spirit filled congregation! Most recently, they teamed up to serve as Co-Chairs of our historic and wildly successful "A Place at the Table for Everyone" Accessibility Campaign. When that golden shovel breaks ground, hopefully by this June, it wouldn't have happened without their dedicated work! Congratulations Rich and Dave for being our January 2022 Ministers of the Month!
Awesome Yellow God's Work, Our Hands T-Shirts for Sale!
Our "procurement specialist" Jill Becker has recently placed an order for God's Work, Our Hands t-shirts in various sizes (M, L, XL, 2XL) and will be selling them for $12 each in the narthex following worship. Especially as we wear all these shirts to service projects like thanksgiving basket packing and Help-Portrait, be sure to pick up your shirt asap!
Small Groups Launching Soon!
In order to knit our community closer together after so long apart, at our June 2021 Special Meeting of the Congregation, the people of Messiah Lutheran Church voted to launch a small group ministry in January 2022! We'd love for you to take part! Simply fill out our registration form at https://bit.ly/MLCSmallGroups and we'll be in touch as groups begin in the coming weeks!
Lily the Therapy Dog
After a variety of delays related to the pandemic, we were SO excited to bless Lily as our new Messiah therapy dog, as well as her handler Michael, during our Blessing of the Animals service this past October! Lily and Michael are certified through Therapy Dogs International! According to the Mayo Clinic, "Animal-assisted therapy is a growing field that uses dogs or other animals to help people recover from or better cope with health problems, such as heart disease, cancer and mental health disorders." If you or a loved one would like a visit from Lily, just contact Michael at 914.755.6788!
Camp Calumet is Back!
Registration for Camp Calumet's Resident Camp is up for the summer of 2022! If you have kids aged 8-16, find out more at https://calumet.org/summercamp/residentcamp or speak with Pastor Dustin. Messiah has committed to paying for half the cost of camp attendance at minimum, so please don't let finances get in the way of your child enjoying a life changing week on the shores of Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire this summer!
Lead at Messiah!
Many thanks to Kristen Olochnowicz, Sheri Lamb and Russell McDonald who have recently taken on roles as our Youth, Welcome and Arts & Culture Chairs respectively! In order to fill out the new governance structure we developed right before the pandemic hit, we are still looking for a Care & Concern Chair, a Historian, a Young Adult Chair, a Lutheran Men in Mission Chair, a Social Justice Chair, a Nursery Chair and two SiCM Delegates. We are recruiting Ushers, Greeters and a renewed Altar Guild to support our worship services as well!
January 2022 Pastor's Letter
Dear siblings in Christ,
As you're likely aware of from the far too often typos I miss, a big part of writing The Messenger is often looking back a year or two ago, tweaking various events and publishing them for the year ahead. What's far more interesting for me (and especially this month at least), is what I wrote to you exactly two years ago:
I’ll forever remember this past week as both one of the best but also most difficult weeks of my professional life thus far. At last Tuesday's SiCM Assembly, delegates voted near unanimously for love and solidarity by opening SiCM’s doors to congregations of non-Christian faiths. Already a major area synagogue and an environmentalist druid group has expressed interest in joining, with many more synagogues, mosques, temples and other faith communities on the way. During a time of such division, this initiative started here at Messiah way back on Easter Sunday. It started with you!
This past Wednesday proved a bit more complicated. On Wednesday morning I found out our final master plan for making our facilities fully accessible came over at twice the cost of what we were expecting, over $500,000. This was indeed heartbreaking, but what I saw next gave me great hope. Our first community conversation with our architect went extremely well under far less than ideal conditions, with folks remaining respectful of each other’s opinions, asking good questions, and open to everything from doing a more limited campaign to moving our primary church facilities to our friends at Trinity Reformed’s already accessible building.
Ah, well, so much for remembering January 2020 as the best and most difficult weeks of my professional life! In the midst of the day to day frustrations, the ongoing heartbreak of the pandemic and uncertainty about what the future might bring, it's SO easy to lose track of how far we've come under the most adverse conditions of most of our lifetimes! It turns out we did end up raising near half a million dollars to make our Worship Center fully welcoming and accessible to all! It turns out we did end up merging with our friends at Trinity Reformed, and with the generous support of the Schenectady Foundation, will break ground on renovating that facility hopefully within the month! Members in need of care were called and visited, an incredible broadcast ministry was begun and the prayer life of many of us has greatly strengthen. All that despite a global pandemic, a COMPLETE staff turnover outside of myself, complicated economic conditions and so much more!
None of this could have happened without you, dear friends. This Epiphany, Christ is certainly reflected in all your faces! Thank you for all you do support our Spirit filled congregation in feeding our neighborhood in body, mind and soul!
in hope,
Pastor Dustin
PS: As always, a major, major thank you from Rachel & I's little family to you for all the ways you've supported us throughout the year, including your generous gifts for Clergy Appreciation Day and Christmas! Especially with our wedding and honeymoon break coming up, this is a HUGE help! By the way... save the date! Our wedding is here at Messiah on Saturday, June 18th at 2:00pm. We're still working out the details, but definitely want our faith family here with us to celebrate!
"A Place at the Table for Everyone" Accessibility Campaign Plans to Break Ground this June!
As of this writing, we have raised $483,274 in direct contributions and pledges over a three year period to our A Place at the Table for Everyone Accessibility Campaign, over 85% of our goal! This INCREDIBLE good news in turn led us to feel quite confident as a congregation about voting to move forward with our Worship Center Accessibility Project at this past December's Annual Budget Meeting of the Congregation, where we voted unanimously to affirm Neal Fisher, Brian Maki and George Small as leaders of our Capital Appeal Task Force.
Over the last month our team has met weekly with architects Jaclyn Tyler and John Fry of Nexus Creative, as well contractor Wade Coton of Manchester Homes, LLC to finalize the layout of our Community Center renovations (see separate article). With those plans now complete and moving to permitting, we can soon begin concentrating on the Worship Center. A more detailed timeline will be available by our next edition of The Messenger, if not earlier, but we are certainly still on track to break ground shortly before Pastor Dustin and Rachel leave on their honeymoon on June 19th. Before our timeline is finalized, a final congregation vote will be needed to authorize the necessary financing, so stay tuned! If you haven't already made a Statement of Intent or contribution to the campaign and wish to do so, please visit https://www.messiahschenectady.org/campaign.html or speak with Pastor Dustin.
The Rev. Jonathan Vanderbeck Mental Health Fund
At the conclusion of most calls, congregations traditional rally to provide outgoing rostered leaders and senior staff with a going away gift of sorts. Our outgoing Interim Associate Pastor, the Rev. Jonathan Vanderbeck, has asked for something somewhat different. At his request our Congregation Council recently voted to affirm a decision made this past June to created a Mental Health Fund in his honor at Messiah! Moving forward, the Senior Pastor will have the discretion to use funds accumulated here to support members in paying for necessary mental health care. Even with health insurance (never mind those who are uninsured or underinsured), the cost of regular but necessary therapist visits can often be cost prohibitive. All are encouraged to contribute to this fund either on tithely or by putting "Mental Health Fund" in the memo line of your check today!