It’s that time of year again, time to celebrate our Graduates!
Graduates (or parents of graduates) see the form link below to give us information about your graduation.
We will recognize all graduates on Sunday, June 6.
2021 Graduate Information Form
It is only necessary to register to attend Sunday Morning Worship if you have not previously registered in 2021 AND if your answers to the health screening questions have not changed. If you have previously registered for a service, feel free to come on Sunday morning and simply tell the greeter your name. They will have a list of everyone who has registered in the past and will check off your name. We still ask that you follow the established guidelines (3 W’s, etc.).
The Elizabeth Windsor Memorial Scholarship was established in 1998 in memory of Elizabeth Windsor, a teenager at NPMC at the time of her tragic death. The Scholarship serves as a living
memory of Elizabeth and as an opportunity to encourage and reward outstanding Christian character and Church participation. This document updates and supersedes all prior Joint Board action
regarding the Scholarship.
The purpose of the Elizabeth Windsor Memorial Scholarship is to promote, encourage, and reward outstanding Christian character and participation. For high school students there shall be a
demonstration of active participation at NPMC. For post-secondary students, past participation at NPMC as well as current Christian participation in their local school community will be considered. Participation may be considered qualitatively, quantitatively, or both. Recipients of an Elizabeth Windsor Memorial Scholarship may attend any accredited post-high school educational institution consistent with the Internal Revenue Code and may choose any course of study. Each Scholarship is for a period of one year, and may not be renewed.
Recipients of the Elizabeth Windsor Memorial Scholarship must be members in good standing of New Philadelphia Moravian Church. All scholarship recipients will be selected by the Elizabeth Windsor Memorial Scholarship Committee based upon the application forms, recommendations, interviews, and such other information and recommendations as the Scholarship Committee shall determine to be necessary or appropriate. The number and amount of scholarships awarded will vary from year to year based on the number of qualified applicants, and depending upon the proceeds available in and income available from the Elizabeth Windsor Memorial Scholarship fund.
Click the link HERE for more information as well as the Scholarship application.
On Palm Sunday (March 28th) we were blessed to welcome 5 new members (Mac Greenwood, Cora Hawfield, Noah Macemore, Sam Spach and William Starling) into our congregation by the rite of Confirmation; and one new member (Blake Woods) by the sacrament of Baptism. Two young adults (Bethany Davis and Hal Westmoreland) were also confirmed into the membership of Fries Memorial Moravian Church. The Rev. Joe Moore was the officiating pastor. Joe began classes with these students in 2019 but the classes had been put on hold for a year. We welcome you among us here!
We look forward to welcoming more members on Pentecost Sunday (May 23rd) through Confirmation, Baptism and Letter of Transfer.
We have all heard the musings of one year “lost” in a pandemic. But perhaps as we have listened to God’s leading in this time of our lives, as we have sought light in the darkness, we may have found some things too. We may have learned that we did not need and could not be as reliant on what we call “material things.” We may have “lost” our regular seats in Sunday worship, but we may have found a different perspective that allows us to see and hear worship in a new light. We may have realized that no matter how many losses we counted, God was with us to lead us to respond in faith, love and hope.
Regathering: We have missed the companionship of loved ones and friends as we first sheltered in our homes and continued to restrict physical contact during these months of pandemic. Of the 94 persons who responded to the Regathering survey sent to members last week, 85 had watched the livestreamed worship or watched it later on Youtube, 24 had attended a worship service in person and 58 had attended meetings or Bible study by Zoom. Eight others mentioned handbell practice, playing in the band outside and drive-in communions as ways they had gathered during this past year. We will continue to follow guidelines for safety (3 Ws) as we gather for now, but our gatherings for meetings and fellowship inside and outside can be up to 25 persons.
We have learned that sharing worship on a screen or by sitting masked and apart from others isn’t the way we expected or even wanted, but we may have found ways to listen to God in the stillness, in the music and liturgy read and sung to us, and even in the clatter and noise of keyboards and dishes and dogs. We may have looked outside ourselves to see God at work in our world as we began to watch the world transform with spring’s beginning. We may have seen the enormity of feeding the hungry in just our small neighborhood and stocked the Blessing Box or sent food to Sunnyside or supported missions like H.O.P.E. through our Missions and Social Concerns Committee. These efforts, like dropping coins into the huge lovefeast candle that lit up in December, may seem small, but to one person who lost a job during a pandemic and needed to feed a family, it may have been large. Diapers, books, school supplies, Imprints Cares, delivering communion kits, doorstep visits, benevolence to help a neighbor in need—none of these may solve all the shelter, world hunger or food deserts or even keep everyone connected, but each of these acts is the something we can do and have done to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this world.
Justice and Reconciliation Team has continued to study, to share conversation and action with our neighbors, looking for ways to partner with Estamos Unidos, the Moravian Hispanic ministry led by Rev. Angelica Regalado Cieza and with Rolling Hills Moravian Church in Miami. Meetings each Wednesday night during Lent and through the first of April focus on sharing the Lenten series A New Way of Being.
Stewardship: As a congregation, we are being led by the Stewardship Team and our pastor Sam to think about stewardship in some different ways over these next months of 2021, a refocusing to follow cross-shaped-giving and cross-shaped-living as we examine practicing Jesus’s economy. How can we continue our mission to live like Jesus, serve our neighbors like Jesus and love our neighbors (next door and across the globe) like Jesus? Consider your talents and gifts and how you can use them to serve like Jesus in the coming months as we regroup and regather.
We kept lights in our windows and in our hearts when news of the world seemed so dark and heavy. We lit our lovefeast candles this year in a different way: we shared them with family and in small groups physically distanced as some of us stood outside in the dark on Christmas Eve, but we also lit them in our bringing them to some of our members with portable lovefeasts and porch visits and as we shared our lovefeast kits and a recorded Christmas Eve service with our families. Pastor Sam shared stories of how God’s light in our lives inspires us. Are you seeing some light in your life? We are gaining about a minute’s worth of light every day as we move toward a season of warmth and hope.
Stories can help us process both the joys and sorrows of our lives.It’s how Jesus often taught—with parables. Let me tell you a story of one member’s path to participation in worship during this past year. This member was present in person last March on the last Sunday we were able to be present in person without masks, distancing and the protocols we adopted to keep each other and our community as safe as we could from infection. Within a week after we were shocked into realizing that we could attend only by finding our livestreamed service online, we started using Zoom, a videoconferencing tool, to have members call in by phone–usually landlines– to listen to the service as it is livestreamed. For approximately 52 Sunday mornings, this member with impaired vision, found a neighbor to dial a Chicago phone number, key in the meeting number, press #, press # again to bypass a participant number, key in the passcode, press # again, then choose speakerphone for the phone and tab the star and 6 keys in case she wanted to mute or unmute herself. All of that process to be able to join a few other church members to participate in worship. Every single Sunday morning. A year of Sunday’s. And now screens. Some of our members who had called in faithfully on landlines to hear worship can now see worship on tablets borrowed from New Philly using hotspots to connect them. We found some ways to stay connected.
Communication and connection happen because one person or group has a message to send to others to receive it. It can be like the old game we sometimes played in school where one whispers a message. . .
A town crier gave daily news in the village of Salem in the 18th century. This small community in the midst of the woods was 5-6 miles from Salem so it is doubtful that those residents of this community could hear that town crier shouting the news of the day. During the past year, communication and connection became even more important.
How do you receive news and information from New Philadelphia?
Sometimes we have to learn new ways to send and receive information to stay connected. Here are some of the ways we communicate and connect today:
We are grateful for the shepherding, leadership and teaching of our pastor Sam Gray, who answered our request for a call to ministry last spring and who, since July, has led us, taught us, and encouraged us. We are grateful for church staff: Clyde’s enthusiasm, Evie’s creativity with children’s ministries, Zach and Erin’s creative planning for middle and high school youth, for Tim’s rearrangement of the spaces in this facility and on the grounds to provide safety, for Rachel who keeps us scheduled, organized and informed and Donna who manages financials. We are grateful for all staff and for the worship team: for Steve Gray whose leadership and teaching has amplified a few voices to sing and play so richly for us all. We are grateful to the small but dedicated tech team (Michael Crotts, Eric Bradley and Valerie Crane), who have used the media of sound and video to allow us to share in livestreamed worship, especially for the last 52 Sundays.
We are grateful for these outgoing board members who spent hours in prayer, in Zoom and in-person meetings, in faithful dedication to our congregation. For three years and three months, and in at least one case five years, these members of your Board of Elders: April Greenwood, Frank Chitty, Nancy Renn, Tina Spach and your Board of Trustees: Alan Barber, Brad Pitts, Chris Rogers and Ron Tedder have served in these capacities. Our Rules and Regulations say that they can have a two-year break before being nominated to serve again, but they continue to lead us as they seek to follow Jesus’s example. Thank you to this group and to April Greenwood and Chris Rogers who have chaired the Nominating Committee, and who have invited many of you to serve on our boards for the coming term.
Congregational council elected four candidates for Board of Elders and four for Board of Trustees who will help to lead New Philadelphia’s congregation in living, serving and loving like Jesus during the next shortened term of two years and nine months. We welcome Mike Sloan, Will Spach, Darla Bonnett and Shannon Koontz as members of the Board of Elders and Steve Huddleston, Darlene Reinhardt, Dan Franklin and John Geis to the Board of Trustees to serve through 2023. Nancy Holland will serve as Congregational Council secretary. Board members who continue to serve are Andi Williams (2022), Cindy Daggett (2022), Cynthia Fearrington (2021), Frank Nifong (2021), Michael Crane (2022), Tiffany Woods (2021), Maggie Davis (youth representative) and Kay Windsor (2022) on Board of Elders, and Becky Ward (2021), Bill Byrd (2021), Bruce Bradley (2022), Constance Linville (2021), David Stanfield (2022), Earl Wall (2021), Susie Tickle (2022) and Tony Ebert (2022).
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