Here is our first issue of 2010, with a new look, and Pastor Bill’s own Monthly Column, “AOK” which is an acronym explained in this way: “ A conservative philosophy for approaching social/political issues with the emphasis on A merican (unique role and love of this country, its spiritual roots), O rthodox (in faith and Bible), and K nowledge (grounded in objective historical fact and Biblical truth). “

We are in the planning stages of a Spring Concert, and on Sunday Feb 28th we kick off a new outreach to the Community. “Ethnic Dinner and Music” will feature delicious homemade Italian cuisine, along with live music featuring Andrea Anelli, Soprano and Director of Opera Per Tutti. (www.operapertutti.org)

Dinner will be served around 12:30-1 PM, and we would love to see you there! As seating is limited. We would be pleased to take your reservation. Call the church at 440-943-3611.

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The Manhattan Declaration

January 22, 2010

It’s one of the most dramatic scenes in a really great movie. The movie is Amazing Grace. The scene is the House of Commons in the latter years of the eighteenth century. William Wilberforce stuns his parliamentary colleagues by unrolling an enormous scroll down the aisle. On the scroll were the signatures of 390,000 Englishmen, demanding that Parliament abolish the slave trade—the greatest moral issue of the day.

The signatures of nearly five percent of the country forced his reluctant, if not hostile, fellow members of Parliament to understand that the evil status quo could no longer stand.

Two hundred years later, in the spirit of Wilberforce, Christians across this country are affixing their signatures to another document as a way of saying “enough!”

Before Wilberforce presented his petition, slave traders and the economic interests that benefitted from the trade believed that they owned Parliament. That’s why it was called the rotten borough system. They literally bought seats! They believed they could ignore Wilberforce without repercussions. The petition showed them otherwise. It broke the back of their resistance.

Today, when it comes to sanctity of life, the traditional family and religious freedom, we are told that the cultural tide flows in only one direction—and that Christians should adapt.

Well, the last time I checked over 400,000 people have disagreed—loudly and clearly. They have signed the Manhattan Declaration, which, among other things, forcefully rejects the idea of Christians adapting to the cultural tide. It makes it clear that there are times when “civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required.”

While it took years for Wilberforce to gather his petitions, thanks to the internet, it has only taken us only two months to get 400,000 signatures. But our goal is one million.

Not because one million is a round and impressive number, but because that kind of response has the potential to electrify the church and make the cultural elite take notice as it did in Wilberforce’s day.

The church needs to get over this business that “we can’t get involved in politics.” That’s an excuse. It needs to understand that bearing witness about the sanctity of life, the traditional family and religious liberty isn’t political – it’s profoundly moral. It’s about who we are as a church and our relationship to the rest of the culture.

Likewise, it’s about making it clear that the cultural elite cannot silence us simply by labeling our views out-of-bounds. It’s about their having to realize that they cannot silence the church, especially when it speaks authoritatively across confessional lines.

By telling them that we will not render to Caesar what is God’s we can break the stranglehold that the abortion lobby has on Congress and the stranglehold of the gay rights movement on politicians.

But this willingness to swim against the tied can come at a price. Like Martin Luther King, whose birthday the nation honored this week, we must be clear that an unjust law does not bind the Christian conscience. And that we’ll pay the price to oppose it as he did.

The church in America must say “enough!” We must strive to overcome the reluctance and hostility we face. Whatever else the supporters of the status quo may own, they do not own our consciences.

To read the entire feature, please visit www.colsoncenter.org. Once there, you will find a link to the Declaration, with additional opportunities to show your Christian support.

The Manhattan Declaration-A Call Of Christian Conscience

We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.

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55 Plus Luncheon

Saturday Feb 20th 12:30 PM

MENU: Meat Loaf, with green beans and mashed potatoes/gravy. Jello salad-fruit & marshmallows. Dessert is Pepperidge Farms cakes

PROGRAM

Our friends from the Lake County Historical Society will join us with a fun and delightful presentation called “Fans, Fashions and Flirting”

Members of the Society have been with us before, and always provide an entertaining and informative program.

Please call Louise Green for reservations at 216-541-0660 or you can also call 216-894-3087

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An eleven year old lad, who suffers from autism, left his classroom very upset on his first day in the class and crawled out onto a 3rd floor balcony at Srinakharinwirot University Special Needs Centre in Bangkok, Thailand.

Fire-fighters were called and they attempted to talk him down from his dangerous and precarious position. Nothing appeared to work until the lad's mother arrived and suggested that her son would listen to a "superhero".

Up jumped fireman Somchai Yoosabai who promptly donned a Spiderman costume normally used to entertain kids during fire drills. The boy's face lit up like a beacon as he recognized his hero holding a glass of juice out for him. The lad embraced his superhero and was brought to safety.

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Things God won't ask on THAT day

1. God won't ask what kind of car you drove.
He'll ask how many people you drove who didn't have transportation.

2. God won't ask the square footage of your house.
He'll ask how many people you welcomed into your home.

3. God won't ask about the clothes you had in your closet.
He'll ask how many you helped to clothe.

4. God won't ask what your highest salary was.
He'll ask if you compromised your character to obtain it.

5. God won't ask what your job title was.
He'll ask if you performed your job to the best of your ability.

6. God won't ask how many friends you had.
He'll ask how many people to whom you were a friend.

7. God won't ask in what neighborhood you lived.
He'll ask how you treated your neighbors.

8. God won't ask about the color of your skin.
He'll ask about the content of your character.

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On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play. But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap -- it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.

People who were there that night thought to themselves: "We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage to either find another violin or else find another string for this one."

But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity, as they had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone, "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life... not just for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.

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One beautiful Sunday morning, Reverend Barnard announces to his congregation, 'My good people, I have here in my hands three sermons......
A $100 sermon that lasts five minutes
A $50 sermon that lasts fifteen minutes
And a $20 sermon that lasts a full hour.

Now, we'll take the collection and see which one I'll deliver.'

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A drunken man staggers in to a Catholic church and sits down in a confession box and says nothing. The bewildered priest coughs to attract his attention, but still the man says nothing.
The priest then knocks on the wall three times in a final attempt to get the man to speak.
Finally, the drunk replies, "No use knocking, there's no paper in this one either."

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Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6