September 10, 2026

 Dr. Paige Rawson will deliver the Thomas E. Stricklin Lectures in Church History at Northminster on this coming Saturday, September 12 to be followed by the morning sermon on Sunday, September 13. The title of the lectures will be “The Gospel Decolonized: Deconstructing Christianity to Save Faith”. The lectures will begin on that Saturday at 10:00 am and will end at noon. The lectures and sermon will also be streamed live and archived on Northminster’s YouTube channel. Thanks to our Hospitality Commission time for a light breakfast will precede the lectures beginning at 9:30 am. Childcare will be provided. Dr. Rawson’s lectures promise to be insightful, challenging, and prophetic.

Dr. A. Paige Rawson (Ph.D., M.A., M.Div.) is a certified life coach, interdisciplinary scholar-practitioner, spiritual teacher, healer, writer, public speaker, and professional enthusiast. She is also a long-time friend of our own JK Kimble from high school days, so a Northminster connection. Paige knows firsthand the trauma inflicted by toxic theologies and exclusivist ideologies as well as the way to personal healing and spiritual wholeness. Dr. Rawson focuses her energy and attention on serving clients who struggle with self-love, religious trauma, embracing their own authority and embodying their truth.

Paige spent over a decade in the ministry as a youth pastor and teaching pastor before transitioning into academia to study and teach the Bible, religion, and philosophy, through feminist, queer, and postcolonial lenses. As a professor of Religion and Philosophy, Paige taught at Wingate University, The New School, and Seton Hall University. Paige’s writing is animated by a fierce commitment to spiritual wellness and social justice as well as her own queer, antiracist epistemological activism. Integrating the spiritual, physical, mental, and psychological, Dr. Rawson’s coaching eschews traditional Western European individualism and its methodologies, emphasizing instead the communal, interdependent and embodied nature of knowing, loving, being and becoming the best version of yourself.

Tom and Marjorie (“Marj”) Stricklin were founding members of Northminster. Tom was a long-time professor of history at ULM, and Marj was Northminster’s pianist for more than 20 years until her health failed. Shortly before Tom’s death from cancer in 1995 this lectureship was established and endowed by his good friend, fellow ULM history professor and also Northminster founding member Dr. Marshall Scott Legan. The lectureship was inaugurated by Rev. Dr. Walter B. Shurden in 1996. Other lecturers have included Rev. Dr. Stan Hastey, Dr. Bill J. Leonard, Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, Northminster’s pastor emeritus Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, and more recently Amanda Tyler, executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. For more information about Dr. Thomas E. Stricklin and the Lectureship please see Northminster’s website (northmin.org) under the “Lecture Series” tab.

Save the dates, spread the word, and plan to join us this coming Saturday and Sunday. We look forward to welcoming Dr. Rawson to Northminster.

SUNDAY WORSHIP

September 13 at 10:45 am

Dr. Paige Rawson preaching

Be Brave: Faithful Witness in a Time of Fear

Mark 7:24-30

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MUSIC MINISTRY

The Opening Hymn: When in Our Music God is Glorified Fred Pratt Green wrote this text at the request of British editor and composer John Wilson, who asked for a "festival" hymn to be set with the tune Engelberg. Charles Villiers Sanford originally composed the tune for the text "For All the Saints" in Hymns Ancient and Modern of 1904.

The Middle Hymn: Be Now My Vision Dating from the eighth century or earlier, this Irish hymn was translated into prose by Mary Byrne. It was then versified by Eleanor Hull, author of several books on Irish literature and history. David Evans arranged the Irish melody for this text in 1927.

The Anthem: An Irish Blessing arranged and paraphrased from two traditional Irish tunes by D. H. Clark and set to the tune SALLEY GARDENS.  

The Communion Anthem: You Do Not Walk Alone by Elaine Hagenberg. A traditional Irish blessing.

The Closing Hymn: O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing The hymn is a cento from a longer poem of eighteen stanzas written by Charles Wesley on the first anniversary of his conversion. The present form of the hymn is one edited by John Wesly for The Wesleyan Hymn Book, 1780.

Avarice greed, concupiscence, and so forth are all based on the mathematical truism that the more you get the more you have. The remark of Jesus that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35) is based on the human truth that the more you give away in love, the more you are. It is not just for the sake of other people that Jesus tells us to give rather than get, but for our own sakes too.

OUR JOYS AND CONCERNS

John Boone 13th

Tori Krutzer Fisher 14th

Parker Keen 14th

Elvis Stelly16th

LOVE OFFERING AND FAREWELL TO JUSTIN

Justin's last day with us is this Sunday and it is also the last day to contribute to his love offering.Pleas make your check payable to Northminster and mark for “Justin’s love offering”. You can also make the contribution via Northminster’s PayPal account with the same designation. We appreciate Justin so much and will greatly miss him. We wish him much success in his new position.

Following worship during our regular fellowship, we will honor Justin with a cake and have the chance to say "goodbye" before he leaves Sunday afternoon for Savannah.

NORTHMINSTER’S SOLAR PANEL SYSTEM GIFT

 ELECTRIFIES ENMANUEL!

 MORE NEWS FROM NOEL

[News received this week from Rev. Noel Fernandez, pastor emeritus of our partner church, Iglesia Bautista Enmanuel, in Ciego de Avila, Cuba. This is from an email sent to D. H. and me. For better understanding I have added the notes. Happy reading! Craig Henry]

Current circumstances keep us physically apart, but NEVER in terms of affection, care, and brotherhood.

The most significant news at ENMANUEL these days is the preparation for the EXAMINING AND GUIDING COUNCIL, which will confer the status of "Pastors Ordained to the Holy Ministry" upon Keila Cuesta and Alma Betancourt. Both are nervous about the process. [Note: Keila and Alma are church members who were recently called as associate pastors at Enmanuel to assist pastor Eduardo Gonzalez with pastoral duties. D. H. and Craig have known Keila and her husband Mauré since at least 1996.] Brother Osvaldo Gutiérrez is the person responsible for the church's preparations. I do not yet know who will ultimately make up the Council. We had considered Ramonita Matos, but her husband's illness makes that impossible. [Note: Ramonita is a pastor in Las Tunas and someone who goes back a long way with some Northminster folks.]

Eduardo insists on inviting Ester Quintero, who is delighted by the idea. Eduardo currently lacks the fuel to go pick her up, but she is determined to come, even if it means taking the bus (Vía Azul); the strength of this woman—who turns 98 on September 30th—is incredible. [Note: Ester is a retired very progressive Pentecostal pastor living in Camaguey about a two-hour drive from Ciego de Avila. She is indeed incredible! A beautiful countenance and spirit.] FIBAC [Fraternity of Cuban Baptist Churches, of which Enmanuel is an affiliated church, equivalent to the Alliance of Baptists] will send a representative, though I do not know who it might be. At the request of the two pastors, I have provided them with five written questions to be asked during the Council regarding the five subjects being evaluated. They say I chose the most difficult ones, and that was indeed my intention.

After a week without water from the city’s municipal supply, it is finally flowing into our tanks today. We had a very hard time, but thanks to several brothers from the church—Emilio Legón, Eberto Blanco, Alexis Velázquez, Alipio Toledo—we did not go without that precious resource; they brought tanks of water to meet our needs from our church building, located just two blocks away. We aren't affected much by power outages, but the lack of water is terrible.

Reinaldo Pausa—husband of Miriam Paz, the church treasurer—was involved in a motorcycle accident; he is scheduled for surgery next week to treat his fractures.

Wilson, his family, and the church are overjoyed and deeply grateful for everything that arrived for them in the shipping container. [Note: Wilson is pastor of Iglesia Bautista Bethania in Chambas, a former mission congregation of Enmanuel. Northminster groups have visited and worshipped with the church in Chambas on many occasions. Two Alliance of Baptists churches that don’t have partner congregations in Cuba sent humanitarian items to them.] Wilson is the only young man we have trained for ministry who has fully grasped and embraced our teachings. He is recognized in Chambas—by both the community and the authorities—as a faithful servant of the Lord. You may not know that he holds a secular job at the municipal agency responsible for allocating unused arable land to applicants; it is a good job, but a complicated one, because "you can't please everyone." We would be delighted if a congregation were to establish a connection with Chambas, just as many others have done. [Note: Unfortunately, Bethania does not have a partner church in the United States.]

Our brothers and sisters in Bolivia were also happy and grateful; I spoke with some of them, and they brought back memories of the years we spent working in that area. “To remember is to live again.” [Note: The church in Boliva, Iglesia Bautista Canaan, also a former mission of Enmanuel, is partnered with Kirkwood Baptist Church in St. Louis, Missouri.]

I have reached an agreement with the provincial representatives of the Assemblies of God to hold a meeting with all their congregations in the province. I will speak to them about a biblical figure who “lived according to his circumstances” despite having low vision, and I will distribute a “Proclaimer” audio player to the blind and low-vision individuals who attend. This is a goal I have long wanted to achieve but never managed to accomplish until now. I am overjoyed. [Note: Noel has been blind since he was a young man. His memoir published in 2024 is entitled LIVING ACCORDING TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES.]

I won’t go on any longer—if I do, you’ll get bored with my message—but it is worth saying that we love you and pray to the Lord that His guidance and companionship will always be with the two of you, your family, and Northminster.

In the love of Jesus Christ,

Noel.

CHILDREN AND YOUTH

YOUTH FOOD PANTRY NEEDS

We are having a time keeping the Youth Food Pantry filled. Folks are utilizing it and we need your help with items for the youth to stock the pantry with. We are in need of items that will keep in the heat and are sealed:

Any/all Canned Goods, (including meat, sauces, vegetables, etc..., Baby Food, pastas, mac and cheese, instant potatoes, rice, spapgetti sauce peanut butter crackers, snacks, protein/breakfast bars...just about anything you can think of that are considered "staples."

CHURCH LIFE

NORTHMINSTER BOOK CLUB MEETS

Book Club will meet Tuesday, September 15 at 6pm in the home of Barbara Thompson for potluck and discussion. Our book this month is "The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek" by Kim Michele Richardson.

PUB THEOLOGY

Pub Theology is held on the third Thursday of each month at 7pm at Melvyns, 1128 Oliver Rd., Monroe.

COMING UP

THE FLORAL OFFERING

Arrangement by Peggy Burns

GIVING TO NORTHMINSTER