Friday, September 24, at 5 p.m.through Saturday, September 25, at 3 p.m. at Camp Comeca, Cozad, NE

The theme of this year’s Fall Retreat is Hope for Today, based on Revelation 3:20 – “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.”
Our Friday evening speakers will be Rev. Amy Jo Hawley, speaking on “Hope for Today” and Rev. Elaine Besthorn from Cozad spaking on “Spiritual Disciplines”
Our Saturday morning the speaker will be Rev. Caroline Vickery, from Lexington, who led worship at the Synod Gathering in June. She has recently been on sabbatical in Scotland and will have much to share about her experiences. Rev. Vickery will introduce the Horizons Bible study. 

Registration deadline is September 15th. Please contact Geneva John for more information. ggjohn@frontier.net

As we look at doing “mission discernment” instead of “mission study” in our churches I fear the hurdle of “shedding” or “letting go.” Are we going to be able to really set aside our personal agendas for what we think would be good for the church and listen for God’s voice in the process? Are we going to be able to set aside our agendas and possibly hear God’s voice as it speaks to us from someone else, someone that perhaps we don’t often agree with? If we can’t, it probably means that we aren’t going to be truly able to enter into spiritual discernment processes of any kind.

In order to do that there are two things that need to be incorporated. The first he says is Bible Study. Not just getting information about bible stories but actually helping students learn to read the Bible for what it has to say to them.

The second is an engagement with the other. Engagement with the other is the practice of placing ourselves in those situations that stretch us and lead us to have to deal with what is outside of our “Christian Experience.” He says that mission trips are examples of this kind of engagement. Other possible experiences would be dialogue with people of other faith traditions – which includes other denominations but beyond that to the Muslim and Jewish world as well; exposure to people of other cultures from the perspective of learning about and from them and then engaging that from our own context of faith.

It would seem that a simple choosing of a curriculum for use in our Sunday Church Schools is no longer enough.

10 a.m. Book of Confessions Training

2 p.m. Hospitality Training

Please email your RSVP to the Presbytery office office@centralnepresby.org  by no later than September 8.

The Sunday offering totaled $33,189.58 which will be distributed to GAATW (the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women), the PC(USA) Office of Collegiate Ministries, the Presbyterian Student Advocacy Leadership Team, The Presbyterian Student Fellowship and Clearwater Forrest Camp and Conference Center.

For the first time in my memory there was a baptism celebrated as a part of the Sunday worship service. Eight mission personnel with combined service totaling 222 years, and two very recent gifts totaling $650,000 were honored. Mission partnership funds will end in 2013; these funds have found their way through the Synod and to our presbytery each year as a $40,000 grant to help fund the position of General Presbyter. We heard Phyllis Tickle point out that since the time of Jesus the church has gone through a major upheaval every 500 years and we are in the middle of such an upheaval now.

Julia Glasgow, 9, and her sister Hannah, 11, taught the band at Hell’s Kitchen, a popular downtown Minneapolis restaurant the song “Jesus Loves Me.” Eighteen shelters in the Twin Cities received over 6800 donations of socks and underwear. We also heard Rev. Noelle Damico say “Modern-day slavery and human trafficking is alive and well in the 21st century.”