eVOICE for October 02, 2025



GOOD SHEPHERD EPISCOPAL CHURCH



The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

October 05, 2025

We will be celebrating with Transfiguration Church via Zoom at 9:00 am, and in-person at Good Shepherd Church 10:30 am.

Listening Sessions

What is keeping you, your family, and your community from thriving? This is the

question we will be asking at a “listening session” to be held after the 10:30 service on

October 12, both in person and on Zoom. Everyone is invited and encouraged to

participate! This is part of a community-wide listening campaign organized by AIM,

Action in Montgomery, part of the Just Power Alliance (the other local member

organizations are ACT, Anne Arundel Connecting Together, and PATH, People Acting

Together in Howard). The goal is to really listen to as many people as possible, in order

to identify the most pressing issues throughout the community. We can then follow up

by considering how our ministries at Good Shepherd can respond to these challenges.

Those who wish can also join AIM in working with the county council and the state

legislature to make positive change on the issues we have identified. You can read

more about this initiative on the Just Power Alliance website, at

https://thejustpoweralliance.org/about/. For more information, watch this space or

contact Lillian Luksenburg, Ldoherty@umd.edu, or Linda Mahler, deacon@gsecmd.org.

Construction has begun!

Hear directly from Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless's CEO regarding loss of Federal Funds. Join Jen Schiller on Zoom this Friday at 12:30pm to learn the latest about these potential changes and what they mean for our community.

Lunch Bunch - Expect no tricks, but just treats at the October Lunch Bunch Potluck. We will gather next Wednesday, Oct. 8th, at 12:30 in the Narthex. Bring a favorite dish to enjoy and share.

Good Shepherd's YouTube can be found here: www.youtube.com/@GSECMD

You can watch last week's service here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75txH-JrUAg

Fall Parish Retreat to Shrine Mont: Our annual parish retreat to Shrine Mont in Orkney Springs, VA will take place the weekend of October 17 - 19. "To provide a place apart for rest, devotion, fellowship, learning and education, where all may grow in the grace of God." Come and connect with your Parish family. Celebrate the 57th year we have crossed the river, gone over the mountain to Orkney Springs. Experience the beauty of fall in the Shenandoah Mountains, education and reflection with our Parish. Also, we can hike, read, relax and play! There will be a bonfire SATURDAY night with smores, arts and crafts, and some competitive card games! Please use this registration form to sign up. We need your registration as soon as possible.  

Wednesday Bible Study - 11:30 am in-person with Deacon Linda Mahler 

Telephone prayer meeting every Thursday at 9:15 am. The number to call to join the prayer meeting is 518-318-5354. If you have any questions contact Lynette Clark at 301-357-1726.

Food Drive - We are accepting non-perishable food donations and work with partner organizations like MUM (Midcounty United Ministries) and Luther Rice to ensure that all food donated to Good Shepherd reaches our neighbors in need. Here's how you can help:

· Bring your food donations to Sunday services and place them in the wooden chests at the rear of the sanctuary

· Drop off food on weekdays when the Office is open (currently Wednesdays and Thursdays)

· Drop off food in the plastic bin outside the narthex entrance any time, even when church is closed

 With your help we can continue to respond to the words of Jesus that have become the motto of Good Shepherd: Feed my Sheep.

SENIOR WARDEN'S MESSAGE

Feast of St. Francis of Assissi (October 4)

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi rev. ed. (Franciscan Media, 2024), 33–36. 

"Francis and Clare were not so much prophets by what they said as in the radical, system-critiquing way that they lived their lives. They found both their inner and outer freedom by structurally living on the edge of the inside of church and society. Too often people seek either inner freedom or mere outer freedom, but seldom do people seek and find both. Francis and Clare did. 

Their agenda for justice was the most foundational and undercutting of all others: a very simple lifestyle outside the system of production and consumption (the real meaning of the vow of poverty), plus a conscious identification with the marginalized of society (the communion of saints pushed to its outer edge). In this position, we do not “do” acts of peace and justice as much as our lives themselves become peace and justice. We take our small and sufficient place in the great and grand scheme of God. 



By “living on the edge of the inside” I mean building on the solid Tradition (“from the inside”) from a new and creative stance (“on the edge”) where we cannot be co-opted for purposes of security, possessions, or the illusions of power. Francis and Clare placed themselves outside the social and ecclesiastical systems. Francis was not a priest, nor were Franciscan men to pursue priesthood in the early years of the order. Theirs was not a spirituality of earning or seeking worthiness, career, church status, moral one-upmanship, or divine favor (which they knew they already had). Within their chosen structural freedom, Francis and Clare also found personal, mental, and emotional freedom. They were free from negativity and ego. Such liberation is full gospel freedom. 

Today, most of us try to find personal and individual freedom even as we remain inside of structural boxes and a system of consumption that we are then unable or unwilling to critique. Our mortgages, luxuries, and privileged lifestyles control our whole future. Whoever is paying our bills and giving us security and status determines what we can and cannot say or even think.  

When Jesus and John’s Gospel used the term “the world,” they did not mean the earth, creation, or civilization, which Jesus clearly came to love and save (see John 12:47). They were referring to idolatrous systems and institutions that are invariably self-referential and “always passing away” (see 1 Corinthians 7:31). Francis and Clare showed us it is possible to change the system not by negative attacks (which tend to inflate the ego), but simply by quietly moving to the side and doing it better! "

GOOD SHEPHERD EPISCOPAL CHURCH

818 UNIVERSITY BLVD. WEST, SILVER SPRING, MD 20901

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