Dear Friends,

            Greetings to all in this post-Easter season!  We’ve been to the pinnacle of our worship experience with our Services of Resurrection on Easter Sunday!  Both of our services here as well as the sunrise service at 6:30am  (where we were greeted by the

Sinking moon and the glorious rising sun) generated Easter enthusiasm with our alleluias” and the often repeated refrain, “Christ The Lord Is Risen Today!”  It really felt like Easter (except for the temperature) and it smelled and looked like Easter with our beautiful Easter lilies.  I hope that you were on an Easter “high” along with me!  Does the “high” have to end so abruptly?

            The season of Easter in the church year stretches all the way to Pentecost on May 11^th this year.  Can we maintain the Easter “high” through this season?  Scripture readings and sermons during these weeks will focus on post-resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples.  Our worship services will seek to inspire us to be attentive for “resurrection moments” in our own lives where the risen Christ encounters us.  It is my hope that our spiritual journey in the Easter season will lift our spirits and keep us “high” at least as much as the disappearance of the snow and cold and the oncoming of Spring!  As new life will again shoot up from the good earth, so, too, may our faith as a resurrection-people continue to generate new life and growth within us through the whole Easter season.

            Everybody should know by now that our church family will be engaged in some crucial strategic planning on two Saturdays in April, 4/19 & 4/26.  Your church family needs YOU there because this is YOUR church and YOUR opportunity to shape the course of its future.  These two workshops will be facilitated by our own Bill McGregor whose ministry over the years in church-growth matters has provided him many valuable tools of learning to assist churches like ours – churches that will not survive for long if they continue the same patterns of worship and ministry.  I hope and pray that these upcoming workshops will provide “resurrection moments” for us as we share our ideas and our aspirations for our church.  I hope that much excitement will be generated and that we become passionate about the direction of our church’s future.

            If you’re traveling on Rt. 108 and go by Christ The King Church, you’ll see the following on their sign;  “Passionate about Jesus.  Passionate about church.  Passionate about people.”  It is my fervent hope and prayer that our strategic planning workshops will help us to become more passionate in those matters.  The life of YOUR church, First Church Congregational UCC, depends on that!

            Easter Season’s Blessings to You & Yours,

             Mark Hamilton