This Wednesday: Modern Worship Collective @ 7 pm (Dinner @ 6 pm)

We had an incredible time at our queer-led worship service, celebrating love and unity. Join us as we continue our worship on the streets as we march together in the Silicon Valley Pride Parade this Sunday or join us in the sanctuary for worship with Dr. Rev. Jim Bennett!

Please let us know you're coming by using this link.

Dear Jennifer,

As we head toward the end of August, we mark the unofficial start of a new year, signaled by the approaching Labor Day Weekend, the start of a new school year, and more pleasant weather compared to the heat of the early summer. Such moments are an opportunity to pause and take stock of our lives: where we have been, where we are going, and who we want to be both as individuals and as a community.

This Sunday many in our congregation will represent SVPC in the Silicon Valley Pride Parade, joining with Pastor Laura there, making a public declaration of our church’s commitment to be a welcoming congregation to all God’s people.

At the same time, for those participating in worship in our sanctuary, we will look at a moment in Israel’s history when Joshua called God’s people to a moment of self-reflection to remember who they were and to state publicly who they wished to be.

Laura and I hope to see you Sunday morning in one of those places as we celebrate and affirm God’s love for us.

Peace, 

Jim

Please join us immediately following the Sunday service for our Coffee Hour

(in-person in Trinity Court or online via Zoom).

bit.ly/SVPCCoffeeHour

Theme for Sunday

We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords—areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.

The Christian Church is the congregation...in which Jesus Christ acts presently as the Lord in Word and Sacrament through the Holy Spirit. As the Church of pardoned sinners, it has to testify in the midst of a sinful world, with its faith as with its obedience, with its message as with its order, that it is solely his property, and that it lives and wants to live solely from his comfort and from his direction in the expectation of his appearance.

We reject the false doctrine, as though the church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.

“The Theological Declaration of Barmen,” 

Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church (1934)

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18 

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods.

‘Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.’

Then the people answered, ‘Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; and the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.’