Worship Calendar


April 3, 2022 — 5th Sunday in Lent

April 10, 2022 — Palm Sunday

April 14, 2022 — Maundy Thursday

April 15, 2022 — Good Friday

April 17, 2022 — Easter Day

April 24 2022 — 2nd Sunday of Easter
Word from the Pastor

Friends,
We are approaching Holy Week and Easter, the mystery of resurrection for which, as South African poet John van de Laar reminds, “we have no frame of reference… no logical explanation to make resurrection a normal everyday occurrence.” 

Yet, we continue our Lenten journey in the footsteps of the eternal, relentless, abundant Life-giver. We keep on listening to the stories of scriptures that sometimes whisper, and sometimes shout that chaos, suffering, pain, betrayal, violence, and death are not the end of God’s story. For God desires life for all. God weaves, nurtures new life in and through the broken fabric of our lives, even at times when we don’t expect it or and places where we cannot imagine it possible. 

So, as we enter Holy Week, a time that so starkly reminds us of human brokenness and heartache, I invite you to keep looking for and live into this defiant “Yet.” Nurture, and celebrate the seeds of new life springing in ourselves and in our community!

May the words of another poet guide our sacred travel toward Life in Fullness!

Maybe today
we can take a moment.
Maybe today
we can silence the inner critic.
Maybe today
we can leave perfection at the door.
Maybe today we can allow ourselves to be here.
 
Maybe that’s all that matters.
Maybe this sunrise is for us.
Maybe these Hallelujahs are for us.
Maybe the hope blooming in my chest is for us.
 
Maybe the resurrection was not just about God’s body,
but it is about our body.
Maybe this new life reaches all the way to the edges. 
Maybe we are free to live in a new way
where love is the currency and we are enough.
 
Maybe that’s what this is about—
not a restless pursuit of more
but God’s relentless pursuit of me.
 
New life 
is right here.
Like the women—say it loud.
Like Peter—run that way.

—“New Life is Right Here” by Sarah (Are) Speed


Holy Week Worship Schedule

Palm Sunday Service
Sunday, April 10 – 10:00AM
 
Maundy Thursday Service with Communion
Thursday, April 14 – 7:00PM 
 
Good Friday – Prayer Vigil for Ukraine – Wooster City Square
Friday, April 15 – 4:00PM
 
Easter Sunday – Sunrise Service – Mackey Hall Parking Lot
Sunday, April 17 – 7:30AM
Easter Breakfast – The Meeting Place
Sunday, April 17 – 8:00-9:30AM
 Easter Sunday Service – Mackey Hall
Sunday, April 17 – 10:00AM
 
Hope you join us in proclaiming with shouts or in whisper that New Life is here and keep on walking or running toward it holding each other up along the way!

Grace and peace,
Pastor Enikő
Easter Flowers

Mackey Hall will once again be decorated in beautiful Easter flowers. Twenty potted plants have been ordered and may be purchased by members as a donation to help cover costs. You may choose to honor or memorialize friends and/or loved ones and after Easter Sunday, they can be picked up, delivered to a homebound member or planted in a beautiful garden outside the church house. Click here for the order form or blank ones are available in the sanctuary.
Easter Breakfast

WHEN: Sunday, April 17th following the 7:30 Sunrise Service

WHERE: The Meeting Room

To sign up to help set up, clean up or participate in supplying the Easter Breakfast Feast, please click here.


See you there in your Easter Bonnet!
Highlights From This Month's Session Meeting

The Westminster Session met in the Lounge at Westminster Church House on March 29, 2022 at 6:30pm. The following are highlights from the meeting:

Session voted approval of the following officers for 2022:
  • Heather Veney – Treasurer
  • Bill Weiss – Financial Secretary
  • Josie Drushal – Clerk of Session
 
Pastor’s Report
After sharing her activities since the last Session meeting, Pastor Eniko shared the schedule for her Service to the Larger Church as Vice-moderator of Theology, Worship, Education Committee for the 225 General Assembly of PCUSA:
  • Leaders’ Briefing 1 – March 15-16, 11am-6pm
  • Leaders’ Briefing 2 – May 3-4, 11am-6pm
  • TWE (Theology, Worship, Education) Committee in session - Louisville, KY - June 17-23
  • Plenaries - online – July 5-9 (all day)
 
Congregational Life Cohort
Worship Committee:
  • Motion: Approve Communion Service for Maundy Thursday, April 14
  • Motion: Approve Joel and Dianne Chupp to join WPC by Affirmation of Faith on April 17, Easter Sunday
  • Announced an ecumenical service on the Square on Good Friday. April 15 at 4:00pm
 
Mission Cohort
Immigration Justice:
  • Our committee thanks the twenty-four members or friends of Westminster who attended or contributed to Open Arms Hispanic Ministries through its annual fundraising banquet, "Taco Tuesday" held on March 15th of this year.
 
Benevolence Committee:
  • Due to changing rules and guidelines by Our Family, labels will no longer be collected. 
  • Soup Sales are completed and raised $1,140.00 through soup sales and donations.
  • $1000.00 will be donated to Salvation Army Cold Weather Shelter for homeless, and to Afghan refugees through Akron Church.
  • The committee will retain $142.00 for supplies for next year.
 
Property, Finance and Personnel Cohort
Treasurer’s Report:
  • The monthly financial summary is available from the church office at your request.
 
Building Committee:
  • The Eagle Scout project of painting Mackey Hall has been completed. 
 
New Business
Session approved the following motions:
  • Session will be following the Mask Optional guidelines that are now in place with the College of Wooster. We will continue to encourage respect for all members in our community. People have a wide variety of needs, experiences and concerns. Anyone who wishes to mask will be supported in doing so - at any place and time. Safe health practices are encouraged. 
  • Changes to health policies and procedures will begin March 30, 2022. Committees will begin working on new protocols in order to move forward.

The next Session Meeting will be Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:30p in the Lounge.
 
Respectfully submitted,
Josie Drushal, Clerk of Session





If you are interested in learning more about the General Assembly (2022) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), please click here to access their webpage. Check out the 225 GA docket here.
‌
Pastors and Wars
Muskingum Valley Presbytery Reflecting on the Crisis in Ukraine

Friends, as we discern how to engage with refugee support in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine, on Monday I led a conversation with members of our presbytery on my experience with accompanying refugees in Hungary in the mid 2000s. I highlighted learnings that seem relevant for the current situation. I invite you to listen and share your questions and ideas about how we might support Ukrainian refugees as a presbytery.
If you'd like to learn more about how Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is engaged with the crisis in Eastern Europe, click here.
Hartville Migrant Ministry Welcome Bags

With Westminster's theme of “Full to the Brim” this Lent, and its invitation to counter scarcity and pour grace out wherever it is needed, the Immigration Justice Group is asking your help. 

For more than seventy years, the Hartville Migrant Ministry has assisted migratory farm workers and their families who work the area muck farms with health services, educational centers and spiritual gathering places.

Our Immigration Justice Group has committed to provide to Hartville Migrant Ministry five (5) "Married Couple" Welcome Bags filled with basic household items for these incoming farm workers and their families. These are five of the hundreds they will supply overall. Many other churches are also involved, providing, in addition to "Married Couple" Welcome bags, ones for single adults and for children.

Will you help us provide some of the items for these bags? We need these items collected by April 30. Please click here to sign up for what you can do to help these five bags be "Full to the Brim".

If you are able to help with additional items, please refer to this document for the complete list of items needed.

Invitation to
Severe Weather Shelter Volunteers


Thank you to Linda Barbu for passing along a message from Wyn Jones and Janet Burkhart with the Severe Weather Shelter project.

With the project winding down for this past season, they would like to recognize all the work so many put into making it successful.

Please click here for the full message.
EARTH DAY 2022
 
Linda Wierwille, chair of Trinity UCC Missions committee passed this Earth Day opportunity along to share with our congregation. If you have questions, please contact their church office at 330-264-9250 and they will get a message to Linda to get back to you.

To celebrate Earth Day, on April 24, 2022 at 12 Noon, the Trinity UCC Mission committee will host a viewing of “Kiss the Ground,” a film about how regenerating the world’s soils has the potential to rapidly stabilize Earth’s climate, restore lost ecosystems, and create abundant food supplies.

Soup and salad will be served.

Please join us at Trinity United Church of Christ, Fellowship Hall (150 E North St, Wooster, OH 44691).
First Aid for Earth Emergency - No. 3

Contribution by Juli Douglass-Gillespie

Count your blessings. Living in a smaller city like Wooster, we are very fortunate to have a rather good environment compared to most large metropolitan areas, with relatively unpolluted air to breathe and plenty of fresh water to drink. These are real blessings.

Bridge the gap between you and the rest of nature.  You can claim your part in the integral whole of Nature. It’s not hard to connect with the living world, which includes people as well as plants, animals, insects. Get away from your computer screens to get some fresh air and rest your eyes. We all tend to take the environment for granted, even though we’ve all heard the warnings from climate scientists. Do you think of climate change as happening elsewhere (fires on the west coast, rising sea levels along the coasts, drought in the southwest)? Increase your awareness of what’s happening right in front of your nose . 

Step outside at least twice everyday for no other reason than to listen, look, and feel what the rest of the “outside world” is experiencing. 

This morning (Thurs. March 10 as I write this) before getting bogged down by my onslaught of emails, I opened my front door and walked out onto the edge of the muddy lawn with my coffee in hand to find out what was happening outside my house. Just trying to concentrate on the non-human noise and activity is sometimes a challenge, but if you try, you can discover a lot. I observed that the pachysandra patch was full of little pre-blooming flower buds. Daffodils are poking their shoots a few inches already above ground. Robins and hawks (Redtail or Coopers?) dominated the sounds from birds in my neighborhood, very actively flying around, landing on the moist soil and perching in the treetops above me. If I listened more carefully I could hear smaller birds’ call as well (sparrows, tufted titmice, juncos, wrens, cardinals, and more). I breathed in the cool air which my thermometer read at 38 degrees. It was cloudy, and not unpleasant for an early spring morning. Our usual gangs of squirrels (Black, grey, and mixes) were busy chasing each other in circles and up and down trees. All these beings are just living their lives the best they can, truly connected to and dependent upon the environment. I, however, then turned my back on them and went back inside, shutting them all out. But I try to stay in contact by making a point of using my senses to experience the out of doors. This helps me feel alive on the earth, and it connects me to the God-given responsibility I feel for preserving it.

Now that it’s starting to get warmer outside, instead of exercising on indoor (lifeless) machines, or going to a gym, take a walk (every day) in your neighborhood, or go to a park (better yet– go with a friend) and make some springtime observations. Look more carefully and realize how the warming planet is changing what you see, for instance, that many common bird species are laying their eggs earlier in response to global warming. Which ones will be able to adapt and for how long? 

This month’s 5 tips for less waste of energy (overwhelmingly fossil fuel energy), the worst offender for adding carbon to the atmosphere and thus increasing global warming: 

  • Drive less. Clump your errands together so that you make less car trips to stores. Don’t think that you have to drive every time you go out, and see if walking is possible instead.
  • Adjust your home’s thermostat: lower the temperature a little when it’s cold; raise your temperature when you’re on air conditioning. (Remember those birds outside? We can help them not have to deal with so much change to their environment.) 
  • Carpool as much as you possibly can so there are less polluting cars on the streets where you live.
  • Reduce or even stop ordering so much on line that has to be transported to you in polluting trucks. Try to buy more locally and support your community.
  • Push for use of more electric vehicles, personal and fleets, by messaging your state senators and representatives to tell them Ohio needs to lead on this. Switching to electric would create jobs and ensure cleaner air for all Ohioans, saving lives and billions of dollars for health care.

If even small changes are made consistently by a lot of people, the benefits to the environment are substantial. Spread the word.
Recycling Simplified

The following link is from the April 2022, Better Homes & Garden magazine. Melanie Mannarinio, author of The (Almost) Zero Waste Guide, is offering some insights to "raise your recycling game.

Please click here for the article.
Centering Prayer

Westminster Presbyterian Church in collaboration with the College of Wooster's Religious and Spiritual Life Office invites our community to a special journey through the practice of Centering Prayer led by Joel Chupp (WPC). 

Starting on Tuesday, March 29th and running through May 3rd, participants will engage in 6 sessions that will provide an introduction to the life-changing practice of contemplative praying. Contemplative prayer is a form of spiritual practice that has the power to take us beyond the surface of our ego-centric minds to a whole new level of interior consciousness and awareness, having the power to transform our daily lives and routines. 

The 6 sessions will focus on different aspects of Centering Prayer:
  • First Steps of Centering Prayer
  • The Sacred Word
  • Handling the Normal Flow of Thought & Images During Prayer
  • The Divine Indwelling
  • Spiritual Non-possessiveness
  • From Healing to Holiness

All students, faculty, and staff and community members are welcome!
Contemplative Prayer

When: Every 2nd Sunday of the month, 8am
Next meeting: Sunday, April 10, 2022
Where: Mackey Hall

Please contact Joel Chupp with questions.
Westminster Entryway Spring Clean-Up

By now, most of you have seen the cart in our entryway that replaces the various totes, laundry baskets and cardboard boxes that collected various items for many worthwhile causes that our members support. If one of these totes or laundry baskets replaced, belong to you, they are in the closet for pick up.

We want to continue these collections and thought we could make it more organized and sightly to show an inviting and cared for entrance into our sanctuary.

If you plan to drop off a large amount for one of our collection areas, please contact the committee chair or the church office so arrangements can be made for the drop off to be taken to its destination in a timely manner.

For your convenience, there is an updated listing on the Mackey Hall bulletin board of all Session members, Cohorts, committees and their members. If you would like a digital copy, please let Judy know.

We have a few items in this area that we are looking to be claimed. If no one claims, we will donate in the next month or so.
We also would invite you to help yourself to the "Glad You're Our Neighbor" signs. These signs have been under the bench and we would like to get them out in the community to continue to support inclusiveness and kindness.

Please feel free to pick up one for you and your neighbor, along with a metal holder. When they are gone, they are gone.

Thank you for your continued support of the label and plastic caps collections, as well as items for People to People.
April and May
Hospitality & Liturgist

Westminster's worship and fellowship time is an important way to build relationships among all attending.

We invite you to participate as a liturgist, assistant or provide flowers to decorate our alter.

If you are able to fill one of these areas,
please click here to sign up.

Thank you for your contribution to our worship service.
Correspondence

Please click here to see the letter of thanks we received from People to People.

Please click here to see CAMO's January-February 2022 Newsletter.
Church Office Hours
Tuesday - Friday, 8:30 am - 1:30 pm

Need a Ride to Church?
Now that we are meeting again in person for Sunday services in Mackey Hall, please let the Church House know if you would like transportation to and from the 10:00 service. You may contact the Church House at (330) 263-2398 and we will be happy to make transportation arrangements for you. We look forward to worshipping with you!
Ongoing Volunteer Opportunities
Click the links below to learn more about Westminster's ongoing volunteering projects.

Ongoing Fellowship Opportunities
Click the links below for more information on Westminster's ongoing fellowship opportunities. Please note some of them have paused or moved online due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Westminster Presbyterian Church
353 East Pine Street Wooster, Ohio  330-263-2398

~ Follow Us and Stay Connected ~ 

To receive our monthly newsletter and the weekly "This Week at Westminster",
please text WESTMINSTERPRES to 22828.

CHURCH DIRECTORY: If you would like a current digital or paper copy or if you know of an update to be made, please contact the office.