Middlebury Congregational Church

Dear friends in Christ,
I hope you are all doing well this week. There are a few things coming up in the life of the church:

Budget Info Meeting 1/23
This Sunday after worship will be the informational meeting about the 2022 church budget. The meeting will be in person and there will be a Zoom option. This is your opportunity to learn about the proposed budget and ask questions. The Zoom link to this meeting was emailed out.

Annual Meeting 1/30
The Annual Meeting of the Middlebury Congregational Church will take place on Sunday 1/30 after worship. This meeting will be in person with a Zoom option. I will email out the Zoom link next week. This meeting will be to receive reports, approve the 2022 budget, elect board members and officers, and we have two minor changes to the bylaws. (Jeanine emailed out the specific changes.)
1) We are amending the bylaws to allow for virtual meetings.
2) The board of Christian Education has been renamed to the Board of Faith Formation to better reflect their mission, purpose, and what they’re already doing, so we need to just change all the instances of “board of Christian Education” to “board of Faith Formation” to reflect this renaming.

Pastoral Update
A little over a week ago, I shared the sad news that our brother in Christ, John Spain, had died. In case you hadn’t seen it, I wanted to share his obituary: https://www.munsonloveterefuneralhome.com/obituary/John-Spain

COVID Updates
Church Council met last night, and taking into account member feedback, the number of people attending church in person, and that COVID cases seem to be starting to trend downwards, we have decided that the sanctuary windows will be shut if the outside temperature is freezing or below. Council will continue to revisit our COVID precautions monthly.
Additionally, the government website to order free at home COVID test kits has launched. If you haven’t already ordered kits, you can order them here: https://www.covidtests.gov/

General Comments
As we head towards Annual Meeting, I put together a video reviewing 2021 at MCC in pictures with music from 2021 as well:

As I was looking through the hundreds of pictures and figuring out what music to put in, I was realizing how much we managed to do, even in the middle of a pandemic. We tried new things. We worshiped and had Sunday School and fellowship online, outdoors, indoors, and sometimes combinations of all of those in 2021. I just wanted to say I’m really proud of the church and the ways we’ve managed to weather this storm and celebrate in the midst of it.

Psalm 46 has a verse that goes: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change.” The earth has changed a lot during 2020 and 2021, and we have changed in response to all those shifts. And even though the earth should change and we change, our God’s love and presence have and will remain constant, and therefore I have great hope for us as we face the future.
Peace,
Pastor Katrina

Dear friends in Christ,

I hope you’re all doing well this chilly week. I’ve got a few announcements:

Sunday 1/23: Budget Info Meeting

As in previous years, we will have an informational meeting about the budget the Sunday prior to Annual Meeting. This year, the budget info meeting will be on 1/23 following worship. This Is a chance to get more detailed information about the budget and ask our Treasurer (Bob G) questions. The meeting will be in person, but we will have a Zoom option for people who would like to join the meeting virtually. I will email out a Zoom link to the budget info meeting next week.

Sunday 1/30: Annual Meeting

Our Annual Meeting to approve the budget and elect board members and officers for 2022 is taking place on Sunday 1/30 after worship. Like the budget meeting, we will offer a Zoom option for those who aren’t able to join us in person. I will email out a Zoom link the week leading up to Annual Meeting.

Silver Lake Registration Opens 1/15

Silver Lake, our UCC conference’s camp, is opening registration for summer camp on 1/15. I’ve attached their flyer, and there’s a discount code on there for registering early. More info about Silver Lake can be found on their website: https://www.silverlakect.org/

Scenes from Christmas Eve 2021

I wanted to share some lovely pictures from Christmas Eve. Sarah K used her photography talents to take some great pictures at our two services. I’ve attached a few. Thank you to Sarah for capturing these special moments!

ShawnaLee K also did a beautiful drawing of the 11pm service that I’ve attached for you all to see as well.

General Comments

This coming Sunday, the gospel lesson is Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana. This is one of the most well known stories from the Bible, and it’s a story that’s had a lot of influence in the Church’s relationship with and understanding of alcohol. I wanted to share some of my favorite fun aspects of that history here that I don’t think will make it into the sermon.

In the 19^th century, Congregational churches, and many other protestant churches, became very involved with the Temperance Movement, the movement to ban alcohol, and the story about Jesus turning water into wine became a real theological problem for people in the Temperance Movement: how do you square the good Lord Jesus turning perfectly good water into “demon alcohol”? Now, to be honest, the short answer is you cannot make this story about Jesus into an anti-alcohol story, but that did not stop people from trying very hard. My favorite tortured interpretive attempt involves people insisting Jesus turned water into grape juice, which involves a number of questionable interpretive and translation gymnastics.

Now, just as Jesus turning water into wine caused Temperance crusading protestants cognitive dissonance, so too did the church’s ancient practice of using wine for communion. In the early days of the Temperance movement, there was no way to keep grape juice from fermenting into wine, so some Christians opted to use water rather than wine. Water is used in baptism and Jesus changes water into wine, so it seemed close enough. There are some denominations that still use water for communion, and it comes from this involvement with the Temperance Movement. However, the majority of protestant denominations felt that water was a poor substitute, so people had to live with the cognitive dissonance around alcohol and communion for many years.

But, protestant America was  delivered in the late part of the 19^th century from their wine based woes by the work of a Methodist dentist named Thomas Welch. Just like at our church, Thomas’s church had members take turns preparing and setting up for communion. During his volunteering with communion, Thomas had a revelation: he tried the new cutting edge pasteurization process on freshly pressed grape juice in the hopes that it would prevent the juice from fermenting into wine. He turned out to be right, and Thomas eventually launched a company, Welch’s Grape Juice, to provide juice for communion to all the churches desiring a substitute for wine. Grape juice was just the solution most of protestant America was waiting for, and many churches, including ours, shifted to offering grape juice instead of wine. Eventually, Welch’s realized there was a market for juice beyond the church setting, and the company is obviously still around today. So, the reason we have grape juice is because of the Temperance Movement and communion.

I hope you all have a good week.

Peace,

Pastor Katrina