E-Newsletter

Announcements

It’s time for the Souper Bowl of Caring! We’re going to do it a little differently this year—the food will be taken directly to the Chattanooga Rescue Mission on February 14 (what better way to celebrate love?), while the money will go to the Food Bank. Food will be collected from Feb. 1-8. Money will be collected this Sunday.

Calling all young adults (21-40)! If you’re interested, or know anyone who would be interested, in taking part in a young adults group, we’re having a kick-off Super Bowl party at Keith & Rachel’s house. We plan to meet weekly, usually on Saturdays. Activities will include Bible Study, local events (concerts, bowling, etc.), outdoors stuff (hiking, rafting, etc.), and whatever else the Spirit might lead us towards!

This Sunday there will be a new Adult Sunday School class offered in the small classroom off the McMillan Building. The focus will be on what God is doing in our lives, here and now. Join us from 9:30-10:15.

Swing by my office to meet Calvin, Hobbes & Suzie, New Hope’s new resident theologians.

Pray for…

Mike Bryant

Links

'Leave People Better than you found them'

Stories behind Dr. Seuss stories

She spent 13 years working with rice to help the hungry

Yes, looking at this makes you less healthy

The end of solitude--a great read



Church History Quiz (Answer Below)

Q: When was the first protest against the exploitations of the Indians in the New World?

Text for Sunday, February 1

Jonah 3

Conversion of Nineveh

3The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.’ 3So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ 5And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’

10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

A Reading from the Confessions

THE SCOTS CONFESSION 3.19


The Authority of the Scriptures

As we believe and confess the Scriptures of God sufficient to instruct and make perfect the man of God, so do we affirm and avow their authority to be from God, and not to depend on men or angels. We affirm, therefore, that those who say the Scriptures have no other authority save that which they have received from the Kirk are blasphemous against God and injurious to the true Kirk, which always hears and obeys the voice of her own Spouse and Pastor, but takes not upon her to be mistress over the same.

The Monastic Moment (From The Monastic Way)
January 30
A Sufi tells of the old, old woman who was on pilgrimage to the shrine at the top of the mountain at the height of the monsoon season. ‘You will never be able to climb that mountain in weather like this,’ the innkeeper said on a dark, wet night. ‘Oh, my friend,’ the old woman said, ‘that will be no problem at all. My heart has been there all my life. Now it is simply a matter of taking my body there as well.’ It is time now in religious history to form for pilgrimage; to ignore the storms around us and to press on, press on, press on to where our hearts await our bodies this very day. (Joan Chittister OSB)

Church History Answer

A: 1511. The Dominican Antonio Montesinos preached a sermon in Santo Domingo. The dispute eventually reached the courts in Spain. He was protesting the system of encomienda, in which groups of natives were ‘entrusted’ to a settler who was free to work them in trade for the settler’s ‘guidance’. The settlers were supposed to civilize them and teach them Christian doctrine, but the reality was worse than slavery, for the settlers had no investment in them and therefore no concern for their well-being.
(Answer taken from Justo Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity , Volume I, pg. 382)

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