SASS
Weekly Pastor’s Newsletter
October 15 2020
2020 Fall Sermon Series - EXTENDED
We are going to extend our current series up to and including November 22, 2020.
On October 11, Thanksgiving Sunday, we looked at two songs, “Come Ye Thankful People Come” and “Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart.”
What do we give thanks for? Why are we thankful? Is our thankfulness dependent on our own personal circumstances? Or is our thankfulness God focused, and we are thankful because of who He is and what He has done?
The people of Israel were led out of Egypt by Moses. I am sure they were overflowing with gratitude at that time, because they had been set free from bondage and oppression. But arriving in the wilderness they began to grumble. Why? Because their lives once again seemed to become too hard, their thankfulness being replaced by fear and anxiety. It is all too easy to criticize their lack of thankfulness, yet we too can succumb to the same pattern.
Sacrament of Communion
We will be partaking in the Sacrament of Communion on Sunday November 1, so please ensure you have prepared bread and wine.
Catch up on any of our Sunday Worship services you missed on our YouTube channel, which you can access by clicking on the YouTube icon on our church homepage, www.sasspc.bc.ca, or by simple searching for “SASS Presbyterian” on YouTube.
Sunday Morning “in-person” Worship
Would you like to come to the Sanctuary one Sunday as we continue to livestream our services using ZOOM?
If so, you need to contact Angela, in the church office, before NOON on the Thursday of each week. You can contact Angela by email or phone.
admin@sasspc.bc.ca
604 987 6800
Angela is going to coordinate those requesting to come on Sundays to ensure we do not exceed the number expected and to ensure those coming are aware of the following ...
- Access to the Sanctuary will be between 10:15am and 10:30am, through the main door on Chesterfield Ave.
- You must use the hand sanitizer provided before entering the building.
- An usher will check off your name for the purposes of a contact tracing log.
- You must wear a mask at all times. Please bring your own but we will have some disposable masks for those needing them. If music is played at any time during the service you may sing but please keep your mask on.
- Please sit so that you maintain an appropriate social distance from others.
Breakout Rooms
ZOOM includes a feature called “Breakout Rooms.” During an online meeting the host can break the large meeting into small breakout rooms. Basically if you have 100 participants on a ZOOM call it is near impossible to have any real interaction, but if you are in a “breakout room” with perhaps only 4 or 5 other participants for a short time then it is quite easy to “meet & greet” within that smaller context.
We are going to try this on Sunday October 18th.
We will do our best to reduce the worship service to approximately 45 minutes. We will then break everyone into breakout rooms for 5-10 minutes, with the goal of you introducing yourselves to each other, and then sharing what hymn or song is your favourite, and why.
Nothing too formal just a chance to fellowship with a small number of people.
How does it work?
You will see an invite to “join breakout room” on your screen. Once you accept the invitation you will be redirected to your breakout room. After a short period of time the host, Owen Howell, will bring all the breakout groups back together, and I’ll close our worship with a final benediction.
The key thing is that at the time of the breakout rooms we will ask that everyone turns both their cameras and mics ON so that you can see and chat to each other.
I hope you will look forward to the opportunity to “meet and great” a few of your SASS family.
PLEASE NOTE – If you participate in the ZOOM service as a group – i.e. more than one person watching the service a single ipad / computer, then when you are moved into a breakout room your group is considered to be one participant.
SASS Worship Service information
We continue to hold our Sunday worship services online, via ZOOM. The link to all SASS meetings and worship services is easily accessible. Just go to our homepage – sasspc.bc.ca and scroll down and click on the following graphic. The password to access our ZOOM meetings will be “sass” – lowercase, no quotes.
The ZOOM Meeting ID for our SASS worship services is – 795 930 7120
If you DO NOT have access to a computer / internet then you can phone in and listen to any SASS meeting / service using the above meeting ID.
- Dial 778 907 2071
- When prompted enter the Meeting ID: 795 930 7120, followed by #.
- You will be asked for a participant ID - just hit the # key.
- When prompted enter the password: 676824
PLEASE REMEMBER on Sundays to check that your MIC is muted and that your video is disabled / turned off, to limit bandwidth usage and potential on-screen distractions.
If you dial in using your phone please MUTE your phone, if that option is available.
Competition Time
Name that Praise song
Can you unscramble the following to name these popular praise songs?
- 1. attentive sheeny
- 2. secure
- 3. Geri whoever
- 4. berths punish
- 5. ask Felipe
- 6. unci yosemite
- 7. AEC go yogurt
- 8. handbill motheaten
- 9. ahoy moue tower
10.Colver sleeks
11.athlete coatroom
12.BE lightness
13.Walton wreaking
14.AI Roy superwomen
15.Afr doggo hooted
16.distorting manhunt
- 17. aim who
18.claimers
19.Goldwyn nooks
20.devolve logo people
Email your answers to pastormbaxter@gmail.com
Prayer
St. Andrew’s & St. Stephen’s is a “community of faith”, a fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ. Let’s continue to uphold each other, and share our burdens during these days.
During these strange times we want to pray for you. So we have created a new prayer email account. Send your prayer request to prayer@sasspc.bc.ca
The following is a transcript of the prayers of the people from Thanksgiving Sunday, led by Nicola, Bethany and Josh Walton-Knight. Let’s continue to give thanks and pray together …
Heavenly Father we give thanks for all your good gifts; God of wonder, Jesus our brother, Spirit our sustainer, we give thanks for life, for community, and for relationships. We give thanks for your saving grace, forgiveness and mercy. We are distressed by the brokenness we see in the created order around us, personal lives and communities living with the consequences of selfishness, greed and pride. Forgive us we pray, bind up the broken hearted, restore our spiritual health, and as we wait with longing for Jesus to return, when all things will be made new, we ask for patience, love, and justice to be outflowing from our hearts and actions.
Heavenly Father, we give thanks for the seasons, for the harvest, for your sustaining of the earth and provision to us. We pray for areas of the world ravaged by famine, fire, and flood. Have mercy on those struggling to find food, shelter and livelihoods. Give comfort to those that have lost loved ones, houses and land to the wildfires in the USA. Give courage to the rescuers, give strength to the relief agencies; we especially pray for PWS&D, Samaritan’s purse and world vision- three agencies that we are connected to that work in disaster situations to bring relief. May your Love be shared as food and shelter is provided.
Heavenly Father; we thank you for our government and social structures. Thank you that we live in a country with democracy, social order, rule of law, justice systems and governance. We pray for our upcoming provincial election; for fairness, accountability and access so that all may have the opportunity to vote. We pray for those in positions of political power, that they may rule justly, love mercy and seek the common good. We pray for our neighbours in the USA as they face their upcoming election; we pray for peace, truth and honesty to be paramount. Lord, you know that the hearts of men are so easily swayed by the desire for power and position; keep us humble, we pray, in whatever walk of life we find ourselves in, that we will seek the betterment of others, rather than ourselves.
Heavenly Father, we give thanks for medical care, and for social services. We thank you for those leading us through this pandemic and for those working to understand and make advances against the Coronavirus. We thank you for the team at BCCDC, for our Public health leaders and for Dr. Bonnie Henry. Give them wisdom and physical strength as they continue to work to keep us safe. We pray for those affected; those grieving, those physically ill and those separated by restrictions and isolation. We pray for those needing to access regular health care with the extra strain of CoVid safety protocols. We remember Sheila Hall as she faces surgery this week. For those in our community living in long term care; Dean Scott, Alan Bone, Jim Hall, Joanne Graham. We pray for those living with long term illness; Liz Lilley, David Forest, Lorne Denis, Margaret Williams, Jean Bone, David Ballantine, Don Campbell, Kel Kejser, Penny McDonald. We pray for Lachlan and his family and his upcoming treatment in Seattle; strengthen them we pray. We pray for those grieving with in our church family, Darrel Smith, comfort those who mourn.
Heavenly Father, we are your people and today especially we give thanks for all that you have done for us. As we face the fall season, maybe even the Christmas season with a lot of unknowns and ‘what ifs’ still to understand and work out; may we, Lord, look to you; Our faithful and never changing God. May we know, through the peace that comes from you, that no matter what life may look like, and how different it may feel, yet, we stand on the solid foundation of you, that you speak and lead. May we know that we will be held strong and secure by your bounds of love. Keep us strong in our faith, in our witness and in our love for you and each other.
Update on Lachlan Kier
Over these past few weeks we have been praying for Lachlan Kier, and his family. Lachlan has been recently diagnosed with a brain tumor. After surgery to remove the tumor he is now in Seattle for the next eight weeks to undergo radiation therapy. His dad, Dave, is with him. Allie, Lachlan’s mum, has remained at home with Lachlan’s three siblings, Maddie, Georgia and Max. When Lachlan has completed his treatment in Seattle he will return to North Vancouver to undergo further treatment, including several rounds of chemotherapy. As you can imagine this is a very difficult time for the entire family. Some of you have offered financial help. Thank you. Hopefully soon they will have a GoFundMe page setup and I will let you know how to donate to them. In the meantime pray, pray, pray. Nicole Pringle is in contact with Allie and I encourage you all to uphold Darren and Nicole as they walk alongside their long time friends at this time.
LifeGroups & Bible Studies
Are you part of a LifeGroup, a small group who meets regularly for fellowship, prayer and study? Bless you. Do you meet regularly with a prayer partner? Bless you.
Are you not meeting with anyone outside of our Sunday ZOOM worship with the goal of growing your faith? PLEASE change that habit.
Being part of a “smaller-group-then-the-size-of-the-congregation-on-Sundays” permits active discussion, interaction, and learning that leads to growth, that leads to LIFE – hence the name “LifeGroups.”
If your LifeGroup normally meets in a home but because of CoVID that is proving difficult, contact the church office. Maybe you could meet here.
If you would like to be part of a LifeGroup let us know your availability and we’ll do our best to connect you. Maybe we could start a new group or two during this CoVID season.
The SASS Newsletter is morphing in to two “regular” correspondence. Angela has been working on MailChimp which is an email tool. She will be sending these MailChimp emails to you to keep you up to date with important announcements and information. I am going to continue sending you a cut-down newsletter from the Pastor’s desk, as often as I can. We hope these two methods of correspondence will keep you as connected and informed as possible, during these ongoing strange days.
SASS Church Finances
On behalf of the Session & Board – “thank you” to everyone for making the effort to keep your donations going to maintain the life and ministry at SASS, during these changing times.
There are a number of ways to continue supporting SASS during this pandemic.
Send a cheque to the church office, or you can drop your offering in to the secure letterbox attached to the Chesterfield Ave entrance door. This letterbox is checked and emptied every week day.
If you have a PAYPAL account - Go to our church homepage and scroll down and click on “DONATE NOW”.
Using a credit card, or paypal you can donate to SASS through CanadaHelps. Click on the following link to our donation form.
Sandi Romain can setup up for PAR (Pre-Authorised Remittance). This is a monthly direct debit from your bank account. Go to sasspc.bc.ca for more details. You need to download & complete the PAR authorisation and mail it directly to Sandi with a VOID CHEQUE. Sandi’s contact details are as follows :-
SANDI ROMAIN, 2208 Sorrento Drive, Coquitlam, BC V3K 6H5
604-931-6695, romainsandi@hotmail.com
Thank you for continuing to support the life and ministry at SASS.
Pastor Martin’s Musings
“Thanksgiving”
Last Sunday David Jennings led our worship service and David said this …
“It is good and right that we thank God for all that we have received. But it is better still to thank God for His working of the good in all things, even when we don’t see those bountiful harvests. … The great medieval theologian and mystic, Meister Eikhart, said ‘if the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
Wow!
To both David and Meister Eikhart, “thank you.”
Thank you David for the reminder to give thanks in all things, because if we only give thanks when we are in plentiful I believe our thankfulness flows from self-centeredness rather than God-centeredness. Let’s be thankful in all seasons of life.
Thank you Meister Eikhart for that profound exhortation. I wonder if asked “what would be your prayer if you only had the chance to pray once and only once to God?” what would we say?
I wonder if like me your prayer would be “please”? Please God do this, please don’t do this, please give me this, please bless this person, please take this cup from me.
In so many traditions weekly worship includes four prayers that can go under the acronym ACTS
A – Adoration of who God is and what God has done
C – Confession of who we are and what we have done
T – Thanksgiving – that God has met our needs, the daily bread in our lives.
S – Supplication – our petitions to God for our wants.
Try writing your own prayer following that 4-part flow and if you are like me the last section is going to be the longest and if I am honest the easiest to write.
Perhaps, that’s because it is easier to pray about ourselves than to pray to God about God.
Let’s be clear in this – there is nothing wrong with praying our wants to God. Of course we should. But perhaps we could all be better at focusing our prayers on God, who He is and what He has done.
One of the things I have been doing during these ZOOM days is being more conscious about using a liturgy to lead us in the Sacrament of Communion. One of the aspects of such a liturgy is to use the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving.
The prayer of thanksgiving has a long tradition that dates back to the early church and reflects the influence of Jewish prayer patterns, including those of Passover prayers. This prayer is often called the “Great Prayer of Thanksgiving” because, like a creed, it sums up the entire teaching of the Christian faith, offering thanksgiving to God for everything from creation to our anticipation of the full coming of God’s kingdom.
The prayer usually consists of two parts. The first part is a rhapsodic, thankful remembrance of all God’s works of redemption, from creation to new creation. This part of the prayer often sounds like a psalm or a creed as it rehearses the scope of salvation history. In many traditional forms this part of the prayer is itself divided into two parts: thanksgiving for creation, ending with a song of praise based on Isaiah 6:3, “Holy, holy, holy” (the Sanctus); and thanksgiving for the work of Christ, ending with a memorial, spoken or sung, such as “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”
The second part consists of a prayer that God’s Spirit will work in and through the present celebration to accomplish the purposes of the Lord’s Supper, which are to nourish, encourage, and strengthen the church. Sometimes this is called a prayer of consecration or epiclesis (Latin for “to call upon”).
Overall, the prayer has an explicitly trinitarian shape: thanksgiving and remembrance of God the Father, thanksgiving and remembrance for Jesus Christ, and prayer for the present work of the Holy Spirit.
Here’s one such prayer …
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right for us to give thanks and praise.
It is our joy and our peace,
at all times and in all places
to give thanks to you, holy Father,
almighty, everlasting God, through Christ, our Lord.
We bless you for your continual love and care for every creature.
We praise you for forming us in your image and calling us to be your people.
We thank you that you did not abandon us in our rebellion against your love,
but sent prophets and teachers to lead us into the way of salvation.
Above all we thank you for sending Jesus, your Son,
to deliver us from the way of sin and death by the obedience of his life,
by his suffering upon the cross, and by his resurrection from the dead.
We praise you that he now reigns with you in glory and ever lives to pray for us.
We thank you for the Holy Spirit,
who leads us into truth, defends us in adversity,
and out of every people unites us into one holy church.
Therefore with the whole company of saints in heaven and on earth
we worship and glorify you, God most holy, and we sing with joy.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name
in earth and sky and sea.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty!
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!
We give thanks to God the Father
that our Saviour, Jesus Christ, before he suffered,
gave us this memorial of his sacrifice until he comes again.
The Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread,
and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said,
“This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way, he took the cup after supper, saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood;
do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup,
you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
We shall do as our Lord commands.
We proclaim that our Lord Jesus
was sent by the Father into the world,
that he took upon himself our flesh and blood
and bore the wrath of God against our sin.
We confess that he was condemned
to die that we might be pardoned,
and suffered death that we might live.
We proclaim that he is risen to make us right with God
and that he shall come again in the glory of his new creation.
This we do now, and until he comes again.
Heavenly Father, show forth among us the presence of your life-giving Word and Holy Spirit, to sanctify us and your whole church through this sacrament.
Grant that all who share the body and blood of our Saviour, Jesus Christ,
may be one in him and may remain faithful in love and hope.
And as this grain has been gathered from many fields into one loaf
and these grapes from many hills into one cup, grant, O Lord, that your whole church may soon be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom.
Why not try writing your own “Great Prayer of Thanksgiving.”
Blessings
Pastor Martin
pastormbaxter@gmail.com
Direct Line in Church Office – 604 770 1025
www.sasspc.bc.ca
