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Ash Wednesday, February 6
12 noon -- Noonday Ash Wednesday Service, FCCC Sanctuary
7:00 p.m. -- joint Disciples Ash Wednesday Service at Lakewood Christian Church

Palm Sunday, March 16
9:30 a.m. Readers Rehearsal in Sanctuary
10:30 a.m. Palm Sunday Service

Maundy Thursday Service, March 20, 7 p.m.

Ecumenical Good Friday Service, March 21, 7 p.m. at St. Paul's Community United Church of Christ, W. 45th & Franklin Blvd.

Easter Sunday Service, March 23, 10:30 a.m.

New Worship Initiatives Team ~ Next Meeting: Tuesday, February 12 @ 6:30 p.m.

Previous Special Opportunities:

October 7 ~ Bring "Your" Bread For World Communion Sunday

World Communion Sunday is October 7th. This is a time when Christians throughout the world celebrate together the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ in the act of Communion. What a wonderful throughout that the diversity of God's world comes together in a single act that bonds us into community.

To celebrate our diverse community at FCCC we are celebrating the "breads of the world" on World Communion Sunday. We invite you to bring a loaf of bread that celebrates your culture and heritage. From cornbread to challah, the loaves will be brought up as an offering.

Be creative! If you don't feel you can easily identify "your" bread, bring something you'd like to eat (I personally like matzah!) and let us "break bread together."

Carrie Culleen ~ Worship Team Chair

For more information, go to: http://www.ncccusa.org/unity/worldcommunionsunday.html

Join Us For Worship!
Special Gospel Worship Service

Sunday, July 29th ~ 9:00 a.m.
for the first of TWO services
on that day…

The New Worship Initiatives Team, along
with musician
Afi Odelia Scruggs and
Pastor Allen Harris
welcome one and all to this special
service of praise and prayer.
“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord!”

Click on the poster to download a pdf version. ( You will need Adobe Acrobat to read it and print it.)

More Info: In addition to being a wonderful musician, Afi Odelia Scruggs is also involved in other creative projects. She writes on her website:

"I have been writing since 1978, when I took poetry classes at the Womans Center in Los Angeles. Then I expected writing would be a hobby. I was surprised when the hobby became an essential part of my life. Now, almost 30 years later, I can reflect over career as a journalist and an author.
I have written three books: Jump Rope Magic, a picture book published by Scholastic, Inc., Claiming Kin: Confronting the History of an African American Family, a memoir published by St. Martins Press; and Beyond Stitch and Bitch: Reflections on Knitting and Life, published by Beyond Words Publishing.
I became a full-time journalist in 1988. I've worked for newspapers in Jackson, Miss., Dayton, Ohio, and Cleveland, Ohio, where I was a metro columnist for four years.
In 2001, I left the newsroom to teach at a university where I was introduced to blogs, bulletin boards and other types of new media. I realized I'd been sleeping through a revolution. So I went back to school to study visual communication and design.
Now, when I go out to report and write, my mind is on more than facts and sources. I think about stories and ways to tell them. I think about combining words, sounds and pictures to create an experience for the reader, viewer or listener.

Two teams, each existing for only one year, are being formed to help continue the transformation God has already begun at Franklin Circle Christian Church. Building on Pastor Allen's Five-Point Plan for the next year, these two groups will seek to draw out the creative strengths and graces from our congregation in order to address two critical needs of our church: 1.) to create another opportunity for persons to worship in new and more interactive ways AND 2.) to get word out about our church in bold and broader ways. Both have the blessings of the Board and the Mission Council.

The New Worship Initiatives Team will explore over the next year how other churches similar to ours, in location, size, and theology, have expanded their worship opportunities to include another service in a different style. In addition to much prayer and Bible study, we will visit "second services" at other churches, read up on the latest literature about creative and transformational worship, and we will experiment with some worship possibilities ourselves. By next June the New Worship Initiatives Team will present a proposal to the church's Board for another worship service, including a budget, space requests, and staffing. If the Board accepts, it is hoped that the new worship service will be in place by fall 2007. Ten to twelve people are needed to make this team most effective.

New Worship Initiatives Team ~ Next Meeting: Sunday, September 30 immediately after Community Hour

TODAY'S LESSON [Pastor Allen typically uses the Revised Common Lectionary to choose his scripture lesson. This is a three year cycle of major scripture readings created by the ecumenical church. For a listing of upcoming lectionary texts, please go to http://www.disciples.org/lectionary/]

This benediction was inspired by Bishop John Shelby Spong's discussion of non-anthropomorphic images of God, as discussed in his book: Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks To Believers In Exile, Harper Collins, 1999. The phrase "Ground of our very being" is directly from theologian Paul Tillich.