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October 2013
Middlebury Congregational Church United Church of Christ
The Green 1242 Whittemore Rd. Middlebury CT 06762
203-758-2671 www.middleburyucc.org
GENEROSITY “We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us…
ministry in ministering, the teacher in teaching…
the giver in generosity…”
St. Paul in Romans 12:8
Do we have anything in common with Stanley Kresge? I sure
hope so.
Who was Stanley Kresge? Kresge was the founder of what is now
K-Mart. He was a lifelong church member in Detroit, and a man
who lived his faith. He always said money was to be a servant and
not a master.
A devout churchman, Kresge gave away hundreds of millions of
dollars. He died of a heart attack at the age of 85 while on his way
to attend a friend’s funeral. He never let it be known how much of
his personal fortune he gave away saying, “I’d be embarrassed to
have anybody think I was bragging about charity. I do it for the
sake of Jesus Christ, not for mine.” Maybe this explains why all of
his check payments for charitable contributions were signed, “In
the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ, Stanley S. Kresge.”
Like Stanley Kresge, we can be channels God uses to bless the
lives of others. We can be that intersection where God’s gifts
touch this world and leave it a better place – “in the name and for
the sake of Jesus Christ. Soon we will be seeking your support for
the work of God through Middlebury Congregational Church for
the year 2014.
St. Paul asks church people to excel in generosity and to share in
every good work. Stanley Kresge was an example of a person
who did just that. May we be like him. May we also exercise
generosity as we pledge our financial support for the work of our
church in the coming year.
In Christ,
Dave Buchan
Interim Minister
- 1 -
The Sunday School Scoop
On Homecoming Sunday, our students were introduced to our new
curriculum, played some “getting to you” games, and each
decorated a puzzle piece and wrote their name on it. Our older
students put the puzzle piece together. Just like the pieces, each of
our students is different – different shapes, different sizes, and
different personalities. When a puzzle is put together, it shows a
whole picture. The puzzle we created shows the whole picture of
our Sunday School. There are some blank pieces for students who
were not present on Homecoming Sunday – there is always space
add to our church family!
We began Sunday School classes on September 15th
. With our
new curriculum, our lessons all reflect the lectionary readings for
each Sunday. In September, we our Bible lessons were: Psalm 29
(Storm Sunday), Proverbs 8: 22-31 (Cosmos Sunday), and Luke
16: 19-31 (New Directions).
Please remember that Sunday School registration forms were due
in September. These forms must be filled out each year for each of
your children. If you have not yet filled one out, please see me
ASAP!
I’d like to thank our teachers for September and the beginning of
October: Sue Cole (pre-K/K), Kristine Zold and Brenda
Romaniello (1st/2
nd), Lori Giannini (3
rd/4
th), and Andy and Billie Jo
Vincent (5th
/6th
). Without our dedicated teachers, our Sunday
School program would not be possible! We are always looking for
new teachers. If you are interested in learning more about it or
shadowing a veteran teacher, please let me know!
On October 6th
, World Communion Sunday, our children will be
included in Communion in the sanctuary. At MCC, all who
believe are invited to share in it. Communion will take the place of
the Children’s Sermon in the worship service. Following
Communion, the children will go to their regular Sunday School
classes. We are excited to share in this special time with the
congregation.
Valerie Beard
- 2 -
- 3 -
- 4 -
Youth News!
Well we are off to a great start this year with our youth group
meetings. We’ve had between 15 and 18 youth at our weekly
Friday night meetings. Savannah Sprague and Lexi Fielding are
running the junior youth group and doing a fantastic job, while I
run the senior youth meeting.
Our youth group has joined together with 7 other youth groups to
form the “Naugatuck Valley Youth Connection” chapter of the
UCC Giv2 program. Together we will work on local mission
projects throughout the year. Our first official outing will be on
October 19th
as we will journey to the UCC meeting up in Hartford
and following a blessing hop on a bus with the Knox park
foundation to restore Coe Park in Hartford by planting trees, and
cleaning the grounds. We will have a kick off meeting so the
groups can all meet each other On Sept. 29th
with an ice cream
social at our church at 2:30. Hopefully most of the youth from the
other groups will then stay and help us unload pumpkins at 4:00
that day! The other youth groups are from churches from Wolcott
(2), Waterbury (2), Prospect, Seymour and Oxford.
We are looking forward to an awesome pumpkin patch this year as
well as pumpkin festival on October 26th
.
As always we appreciate the support of our church family in all
that we do.
Blessings,
Mary Brown
- 5 -
- 6 -
PUMPKIN PATCH
Pumpkin’s for Sale! October 1st – 31st
Mon – Fri. 11:00 am – 7:00 pm Sat. 9:00 – 7:00 Sun. 11:00 – 7:00
PUMPKIN FESTIVAL A Celebration of Autumn
October 26th
10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Games Crafts
Storytelling Bake Sale
Cook Books for Sale And More . . .
We also will need many volunteers of all ages. Please contact Mary Brown or Jeanine in the
office if you can help!
Please join us Friday, October 4 at 6 p.m. for Dinner and a Show--
featuring Special Guest Star, Wayne Gunther! $10 for adults, $5
for children under 12, maximum $30 per family. We have a goal
of $2500 to pay for repair and maintenance of our handbells.
Did you know handbells are like a car? We got ours about fifteen
years ago for about $18,000. Since then, they've never been tuned
or adjusted or had any maintenance except polishing. Yikes! You
can imagine what would happen to a fifteen-year-old car if it never
had any maintenance, and our bells are in about that kind of shape.
Help us raise the funds to send them into the shop and getting them
running like new again!
The Deacons' Bench
Our special congregational meeting on Sept. 15 focused on two
topics that say a lot about where our church stands now and where
we will be going in the future. Let’s look at how they work
together.
As a congregation, we adopted the goals and priorities set earlier in
the year by the church leadership team and the Church Council,
which we’ve discussed previously in Church Life: Faith and
Spirituality is at the center, the core of our mission. Surrounding it
are the areas we need to address in the coming years –
Membership, Money and Minister. Strengthening each of these
will strengthen the others, and especially strengthening
membership and our finances over the next two years will put us in
a better position to find a permanent minister in the future.
Continued on page 11
- 7 –
“Doing more for Ministry”
“Doing more for Ministry.” That is our slogan for this year. But
what does it mean?
It means building on the progress that we as a church have made
over the last year or so.
It means doing more to get our church to the level of financial
strength needed to call and be accepted by an excellent settled
pastor.
It means making our church stronger so we can be ministers to our
community and the wider world.
It means every individual and every family answering the call to be
strong supporters of our church.
In church this month, we will be hearing from several of our
members about what this church means to them, and how that
relates to financial support. I look forward to hearing what they
have to say, and I think you will, too.
Hopefully all of this will help you to make an informed and
generous pledge of financial support to our church on Consecration
Sunday, on October 27th
this year.
To quote Winston Churchill: “We make a living by what we get,
but we make a life by what we give.”
With that in mind, I know we will be
“Doing More for Ministry ” in 2014.
In faith and fellowship for the
Stewardship Board,
Janine Sullivan-Wiley
- 8 –
COME JOIN US FOR A VERY
SPECIAL NIGHT OF TURKEY AND TUNES AT OUR
HARVEST DINNER!
Sponsored by the Music Committee of the Middlebury Congregational Church
Welcome the Fall season with a delicious turkey dinner prepared by our seasoned chefs
Enjoy a spirited performance of song, piano, drumming and special guest Wayne Gunther!
When: Friday October 4, 2013 6:00 pm
Where: MCC Social Hall
Price: $10.00 ($5.00 children 12 and under, $30 max per family)
Menu: Roasted Turkey w/ dressing Whipped potatoes w/ gravy Green peas with butter Garden Salad Cranberry Sauce Oven fresh rolls Strawberry or Chocolate Parfait
- 9 -
Mission Moment
The mission committee is excited to begin a new year in the life of
our church! We will continue to support the Middlebury Social
Services department and the GWIM Food Pantry and Soup
Kitchen and keep you updated with their needs. Currently, the
Middlebury Senior Center is seeking volunteers to help on
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons from 11:00-1:00 to
set up, serve lunch, and clean up. If you can help, please call
Joanne Cappelletti at (203) 577-4166 for more information or just
show up! Along with desperately needed peanut butter and jelly,
canned vegetables, tuna fish, stew, and cereal, the GWIM Food
Pantry can always use help the last Monday of the month from
7:30 AM to 1:00 PM for distribution of food bags to those in need.
You can help a little or a lot! You can also help serve lunch at the
Soup Kitchen any day of the week. For more information, please
call GWIM at (203) 756-2830.
There will be an Italian Dinner fundraiser for GWIM on Sunday,
October 20 from 3:00 to 5:00 at the First Congregational Church,
222 West Main Street, Waterbury. Help is needed that day, but if
you just want to go out for a great meal and entertainment, you can
reserve a seat for only $15.00. Please see Debra Balletto for tickets
or call Joe or Lisa Trenske at (203) 419-0345.
There will be MANY more opportunities to volunteer in
November and December so feel free to help! Remember, there’s
no I in TEAM, but there is a U in VOLUNTEER!!!!
- 10 -
We need volunteers to help alter the
Cherub Choir Robes to fit our smallest
members. If you can help please contact
Amelia at 203-723-0159 or
The Deacon’s Bench continued . . .
The Church Council has appointed a search committee that
represents a diverse cross-section of our faith community, all of
whom are active in different roles in the church. Some of their
families have three or even four generations active in the church
today.
It was called to the Council’s attention that the age 20-40 bracket,
including young parents, is underrepresented on the committee.
That could be in part because as in many churches, that generation
is underrepresented in the membership as a whole.
That’s one of the issues we need to focus on as we think about
Membership as a goal. Meanwhile, the Council agreed at its
September meeting to expand the search committee by one or two
people to represent the younger families and new members.
Please keep these goals, and your Search Committee, in your
thoughts and prayers as we move through the months ahead. The
best is yet to come!
Howard Fielding for the Board of Deacons
Drop offs at church during regular office hours or any Sunday after
church services. We will be accepting clothing, shoes, ties,
scarves, hats & purses. Set up will take place October 14th
– 18th
.
Sign-up sheets for volunteers will be available Homecoming
Sunday and the following Sundays in the Social Hall.
We are looking to borrow folding tables and clothes racks, as we
cannot hang anything off the walls in our newly refurbished social
room. We will also need shopping bags.
A bake sale will also be taking place, so please plan to bake a
donation to our cause!!
A portion of the proceeds will be used to buy new aprons and
equipment for our kitchen! - 11 -
Days Gone By
Did you know that that the holiday of Halloween probably has its
roots in the ancient and very sacred Celtic festival called
Samhain? Samhain marked the death of the summer season (a
time of life) and the beginning of winter, the dark half of the year
when people worried about the possibility that the Sun would
disappear and all life might end. It was a night of magic and
power. The Celts believed that on October 31st, Saman, the God
of Death, called forth from the Otherworld, all the souls who had
died during the previous year. The souls would roam free,
harming crops and causing all kinds of mischief. Druids (priests)
lit bonfires in homage to the Sun god and for making divinations,
since the roaming spirits were thought to hold the secrets of the
afterlife and the future. People dressed in ghoulish costumes to
disguise themselves from the dead and laid out food to feed the
weary souls and for Saman so that he would be more lenient
when he judged their ancestors.
When the Romans conquered the Celtic lands just before the
birth of Christ, they assimilated many of the Samhain symbols
and rituals and added some of their own. The Roman festival of
Pomona (the Goddess of the harvest) was associated with apples,
the symbol of love and fertility. Samhain, once devoted solely to
the dead, now became a night of romance in which apples were
used to predict one’s spouse.
The Christian Church at first tried to obliterate the pagan rites of
Samhain and Pomona, but finally realized that it would be more
successful in winning converts by assimilating existing rites into
the Catholic rituals of All Saints (All Hallows in England) and
All Souls Days. The Christian rituals were very similar to the
pagan ones, but with a Christian twist. The dead were
remembered with prayers instead of sacrifices. People went
from house to house carrying lanterns made of turnips, with a
candle inside symbolizing a soul trapped in purgatory. They
received “soul cakes” in exchange for their prayers for the dead.
Bonfires were now lit to keep away Satan.
- 12 -
Days Gone By continued . . .
Hallowmas (the eve of All Saints Day or All Hallow Even, All
Saints Day and All Souls Day) was celebrated in many of the
early American colonies, except in New England, land of the
Puritans, who considered Hallowmas a combination of Catholic
theology and a pagan celebration of the spirit world and so it was
banned. The Puritans also didn’t believe in ritual begging or
costumes or having fun, for that matter. Ironically, they did have
a horrible fascination with witchcraft, which they associated with
Satan, and they brought a long tradition of persecuting witches
with them from the Old World.
The American Revolution brought a society more tolerant of
religious freedom and Halloween celebrations became
increasingly popular. In the 1800’s, a massive migration of the
Irish to the United States brought their rich Halloween traditions,
which quickly spread to all parts of the country, even New
England, where they gradually overpowered Puritan thinking. By
the end of the century, magazines were publishing articles about
how to have a perfect Halloween party and Halloween had
become a secular fall holiday.
Trick-or-treating in costume is a 20th
century phenomenon. The
practice was first reported in print in 1911, but it quickly spread
all over the country and by the 1950’s it had become a national
practice. It was also in the 1950’s that our church’s annual
reports often mention that the Pilgrim Youth Fellowship included
Halloween parties and dances as part of their yearly activities.
(Dances were their principle way of raising funds for the year.)
In 2011, our Youth Group worked hard to prepare an elaborate
haunted house and Halloween party, only to have it canceled by
a freak “Halloween Snowstorm.” Last year, undaunted, they
sold pumpkins at their Pumpkin Patch and our church had its first
Pumpkin Festival, complete with pumpkin carving (the early
Americans found that pumpkins work better than turnips),
caramel apples and pumpkin pie… shades of the old traditions of
the ancient Samhain and Pomona Festivals in 21st century
America!
Alberta Weller, Church Historian
- 13 -
The tears have stopped for both the children and their parents,
and the happy sounds of making new friends and learning
through play again reign over the preschool. The four-year-olds
had their first field trip to Blue Jay Orchards where they learned
about apples and bees. They also made homemade applesauce
with the apples we picked ourselves. With the social hall being
added to our licensed space, plug covers have been added to all
of the outlets. If you should remove one to use the outlet, please
remember to put it back in when you are finished. We are very
excited to report that we have been able to order four new floor
scooters with our "Labels for Education" points. The teachers
will look through the catalog to pick out a new goal, so please
continue to drop off your labels into the envelope on the social
hall bulletin board. You can also go to the Labels for Education
website and register your Shop Rite courtesy card which will
automatically put points into our account when you go through
the check out. We really appreciate your support.
Linda Kohler
Preschool Director
Childcare Position Available at MCC
Our church family is growing and our nursery needs consistent
staffing on Sunday mornings. We would like to hire someone to
serve as a childcare supervisor for Sunday morning worship
services. This person must have experience working with infants
and toddlers and would ideally be 18 years of age or older and
have current CPR/1st Aid certification. Anyone interested should
email a letter of intent and resume to
- 14 -
- 15 –
CHURCH RECORDS
BIRTHS Kai Hine Masatsugu, son of Kristen and Mike Masatsugu and
grandson of Donna* and Kenneth Hine.
DEATHS
John (Jack) P. Baume*r in Honolulu Hawaii on May 31st.
Nancy Camp* on August 29th
.
David S. Porter* on Sept. 13th
.
Peggy Ann "Pan" Ruland Seaman on Sept. 13th
.
The Deadline for
November Church Life:
Monday, October 21st @ 9:00 a.m.
- 16 -
If you take pictures during a service or a
function please email them to me for the
Crier, Church Life, Bulletin Board and/or
website.
Thank you! Jeanine
2nd
Annual
G.W.I.M. Italian Night Fundraiser
Sunday, October 20th
3:00 – 5:00 pm
First Congregational Church of Waterbury
222 West Main St., Waterbury, CT
By Reservation Only
$15.00 / person
Live Entertainment
MENU
Antipasto
Pasta Fagioli
Ziti w/ Meatball
Bread
Fudge Brownie Sundae
Coffee & Tea
For Reservations
Call Lisa or Joe Trenske 203-419-0345
