Church guide

Panera in Homewood. 10:30 am. Laurie will be leading. See you then!

Be Still My Soul​​ | arr. Jayson Keeton | ​(Women’s Ensemble)

REMINDER: Wednesday night at Flossmoor Station meets again 8/21/19. Video presentation by Hugh Ross (Navigating Genesis) with conversation usually lasting till they turn out the lights! Join us! Kathie Hazlett

Bible study with some great conversation @ Panera in Homewood 10:30 am on Tuesday, August 6.

From Tim VanNasdale I hope you've all had a fantastic week. I really enjoyed our sessions and discussions this week surrounding the origin of life. It seems like attempts to solve the riddle of how life began on earth using naturalist explanations has grown increasingly difficult in the last decade or so. We'll have to wait to see if that trend continues or not. Hope to see you Wednesday night 8 pm

3 John 1:2 Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.

James 5:13-15 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

The video series that we will watch and discuss together at *Flossmoor Station this summer summarizes material covered in the first seven chapters of Dr. Ross’s book Navigating Genesis. Each session, we will get to watch a short lecture by Dr. Ross as well as a candid Q&A held with the small group that he is teaching in the video. We will then open up for discussion for those of us in the group to be able to explore our own questions and thoughts about the presentation. *Flossmoor Station Restaurant and Brewery, Jun 26 at 8 p.m.

Note from June 9: CARING FOR OUR COMMUNITIES – A second “Peaceology” forum will be held at Flossmoor Community Church this afternoon from 2:00-5:00 p.m. Several members of our congregation attended the first Forum in May, and this will be another opportunity for speaking, listening, and learning. Dr. Peter St. Jean, a sociologist living in Flossmoor, teaches at North Park College, and has a child at Homewood-Flossmoor High School.

Sunday, June 9, is Pentecost Sunday, understood as the birthday of the Christian Church when the promised Spirit came as fire and wind. Look for red banners, red Communion cloth, and people wearing red—or any other color that represents fire.

SUMMER SUNDAY ADULT BIBLE STUDY This summer, Tim VanNasdale, our music director, will lead the Sunday Adult Bible Study from June 23 through August 11 at 9:30 a.m. in the parlor. The video series, Navigating Genesis, by Dr. Hugh Ross will be the basis for discussions. Read now Tim’s introduction to this Bible study. Have you ever wondered how the scientific claims made in Genesis 1-2 hold up with the increasing knowledge that we have from science about the origins and early life of our universe? Have you ever heard someone denigrate the Bible because he/she thought that it spoke scientific nonsense? The truth is that even if your faith hasn’t been challenged in this way personally, I can practically guarantee that you know someone whose faith has been. The best Barna and Pew poll research that we have on the subject of young adults, in particular, leaving the church is upsetting. Over 90% of young people leaving the church cite two reasons for their decision to not attend any longer: The Bible is in conflict with science. The church is not a place where I can ask challenging faith questions. Truth is, I’m not at all surprised though. I know people in my own life that would cite the exact same reasons. I have friends and family that have left the church over these very concerns. I’ve been having conversations with my peers about these problems all of my life, and if I’m being honest, there were times when I nearly left the church for reasons similar to these. Because of the profound challenges posed by science and other disciplines in the last 200 years, a number of Christian organizations have sprung up to try to answer these questions in an academically responsible way. One such organization is Reasons to Believe, founded in 1986 by Dr. Hugh Ross. Dr. Ross came to faith through his studies of astronomy and cosmology, which led him to the Bible. In fact, it was the better part of a decade after giving his life to Christ that he even had a meaningful relationship with another Christian. While his story is peculiar and certainly doesn’t seem to fit the norm, I found it profoundly interesting to think that an individual could come to have a personal relationship with God this way. I started to think, “Perhaps the scientific statements made in the Bible are more powerful than I realized. Maybe the Bible and science aren’t really in conflict after all.” Early in his professional career, Dr. Ross noticed quickly that the most common objections to the validity of the Bible come from skeptics focused mainly on the text in Genesis 1-11, and the majority of those objections were scientific in nature, which, of course, he found peculiar as those were the very texts that were critical in his ultimately accepting the Bible as inspired by the God that created the universe. It was this constant assault on the first chapters of the Bible that inspired him to write Navigating Genesis. It is in this book that Dr. Ross ad-dresses the objections of the skeptics as well as discusses the different positions that the church has taken (and unfortunately, at times, fought over) regarding these texts. The video series that we will watch and discuss together this summer summarizes material covered in the first seven chapters of Dr. Ross’s book Navigating Genesis. Each session, we will get to watch a short lecture by Dr. Ross as well as a candid Q&A held with the small group that he is teaching in the video. We will then open up for discussion for those of us in the group to be able to explore our own questions and thoughts about the presentation. The topics for each session are: June 23 –Is Putting Science and the Bible Together a Bad Idea? June 30 –Does the Big Bang Contradict the Bible? July 7 –Did Life Evolve from a Primordial Soup? July 14 –Doesn’t the Bible Contradict Science? July 21 –Does the Fossil Record Prove Evolution? July 28 –Did Humans Evolve from Apes? Aug. 4 –Why Does God Rest?Aug.11 –Does Genesis 2 Conflict with Genesis 1? These were the very questions that I had put to me growing up by my teachers and peers for which I never felt prepared to answer, and I know these are some of the questions that have led friends and family of mine to leave the church. However, in the couple of years that I have been working on my answers to these questions seriously, my faith has never been stronger, and I feel as though a weight was lifted for me. I’ve seen material like this cause skeptics to reconsider, cause those that left the church to return, and cause those that have faith to see their faith increased and renewed. So, I am excited to explore Dr. Ross’s responses to these questions with you all and get your perspectives on these issues. We have a great opportunity to explore ways that we can equip ourselves to help people that have had their faith damaged by some of these challenges. I truly hope that you will all attend, I hope you’ll invite your friends and family that might be interested in science-faith issues, and I hope you will bring your best and toughest questions, too! Tim VanNasdale

FROM THE PASTOR Words! As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. With an English teacher for a mother and a Presbyterian pastor for a father, I grew up in a world awash in words. Words repeated time and time again easily become nothing more than familiar background noise. We have been looking at the Lord’s Prayer in detail so the words we rattle off so easily can become new friends to challenge and comfort us along our way. My challenge or summer homework, if you will, is to ponder one word, church. Is it a verb or a noun? Is church a place we go or some-thing we do? Ponder the places you have called church. Ponder the place that you probably wouldn’t call church yet encountered God. Ponder times when church was what we did and not where we were. Recall those times when two or three were gathered and the presence of Christ and the Spirit of God blossomed. Were they dependent upon where they happened or how they happened or with whom they happened or ?? One of the puzzles for educators is to not lose ground over the summer. I remember my children griping about the first month of school in the fall because it seemed to be a repeat of the previous year (boring) and nothing new (exciting). How do we keep our learning, our growing, our discerning alive over the summer? My answer is, “Homework? Yup!”

What’s going on in worship this morning? It’s the First Sunday of Advent! Come worship with us and have your questions asked! Grace and peace to you this new season.

What would YOU say if someone asked you, "Why are you Presbyterian?" http://pres-outlook.org/2017/11/excuse-spell-presbyterian/

Did you read about us? AND the Reformation??? http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/news/ct-sta-reformation-anniversary-st-1026-20171025-story.html