Watch Past Worship Services
Videos of each week's service are available – click here. Sermons from past years are available on The Pastor's Page™.
COVID Worship Precautions for November
The consistory met and discussed the state of the pandemic and decided that with the continued high infection rates, we will continue to keep the same safety protocols we have been doing. Although the infection rates are coming down, they are still elevated. Hopefully sometime in the next few months, rates will decrease enough for us to start lifting our safety protocols. Current protocols include wearing a mask in worship, social distancing, reduced singing, and no fellowship activities for the time being.
Daylight Saving Time Ends - November 7, 2021 - 2:00 AM
Remember to set your clocks BACK one hour Saturday night before you retire for the evening!
And… this is a great time to check smoke detector batteries and the batteries in any other safety or security systems in your home.
Planning Committee Meeting Again
We are starting up the planning committee at the church again. This is the committee that plans and takes care of various aspects of worship and fundraising events. If you are interested in joining, please let Pastor Brian know. We currently have 6 people that have volunteered, and if we could get a few more that would be great. We will be meeting on the 3rd Wednesday of every month and we will meet over Zoom to begin with, but hopefully move to in-person meetings soon if the pandemic numbers continue to drop. Our first meeting will be on Wednesday November 17th at 7pm.
Annual Volunteer Award
Beaver church sure does have a bunch of great people who volunteer and do many things for the church. A number of years ago we started an award to be given to a new volunteer each year. Our voting box for this year will be in the sanctuary from November 7th through November 21st and each person at the church can write down on a piece of paper who they think the volunteer of the year should be. If you are not attending the church services in person and want to vote, you can email your vote to Pastor Brian. All votes must be placed by November 21st. Please note that prior winners cannot win again, you can only win once. Below is the list of prior winners, so please do not vote for them. We will actually have two winners this year as we are awarding 2020 and 2021. Please still vote only once, the two people who receive the most votes will be given the award.
Prior Winners:
Bob & Ruth Tobias
Steve Filer
Kristine Petrick
Bob Willhelm
Martha Stevens
Alan Nelson
Don & Sharon Parkison
Melissa Baumbarger
Neighbors In Need Offering
(Submitted by Gail Wells): Neighbors in Need (NIN) is a special mission offering of the United Church of Christ that supports ministries of justice and compassion throughout the United States. One-third of NIN funds support the Council for American Indian Ministry (CAIM). Two-thirds of this offering is used by the UCC’s Justice and Witness Ministries (JWM) to support a variety of justice initiatives, advocacy efforts, and direct service projects through grants. Neighbors in Need grants are awarded to UCC churches and organizations doing justice work in their communities. These grants fund projects whose work ranges from direct service to community organizing and advocacy to address systemic injustice. How is the offering used? Through this offering we express our deep commitment to reaching out and touching our neighbors with justice and compassion. This allows us to speak prophetically to those in power and to advocate for a society where all people have a voice in decisions that affect their lives. In the spirit of Christ, we will seek to confront evil in the world and to alleviate suffering. We will do this through direct service as well as advocacy. When Stuart and I were the Interim Pastors in Las Vegas NV, the church was located in a very low income part of the city and the congregation wanted to do something that would be helpful for the neighborhood. The church was already involved with a weekly bread distribution which was very popular but they thought if we added a food pantry to the mix, it would also be helpful. We didn’t have the funds necessary to begin such a project so we applied to the Neighbors in Need fund for a grant. We received $500 to begin to stock the pantry. With the help of volunteers, the pantry began to operate on a once-a-week schedule. We also began distributing children’s clothing each time. Beaver Church will begin receiving contributions on November 7th for the Neighbors in Need offering. I encourage you to be generous in your giving.
Operation Christmas Child (A Holiday Charity Program)
We will be working with Samaritan’s Purse again to send shoebox-sized gift packs to children around the world for Christmas. We will be providing boxes and instructions, which will be available Sunday Nov. 7th through Nov. 14th at the church. We would ask that you bring all of the completed boxes to church by Sunday Nov. 21st.
Book Study: A Psalm For The Wild–Built - October 26 through November 9
We will have a new book study that will be three weeks in length on Tuesday evenings, starting on Tuesday October 26th, and ending on Tuesday November 9th. We will meet all nights at 7PM over Zoom, and the information for the Zoom meeting will be sent out via the all-church email list each Tuesday. The book we are reading is A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. It is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many major booksellers. The ISBN number is (1250236215). There will be several copies available at the church and it is available on Kindle for those that like to read books that way. This is a science fiction book that is set in a distant made-up future; however, the point of the book gets at what it means to be human, and what do we need as humans. There are two main characters, a robot and a monk that explore these questions together. A quick note, although the monk is human, the author has chosen not to assign a specific gender to them, and thus uses the “they” gender when referring to them in the book, which might be a bit confusing at first. My hope is that this will be a nice bit of fiction to offer some distraction from the current concerns of the world, but also will lead to some good discussions. “It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot. Becky Chambers's new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?”
October 26th – Chapters 1-2
November 2nd – Chapters 3-6
November 9th – Chapters 7-8
Visits From Pastor Brian
Due to an increase in the infection rates of COVID-19 for our area, and an abundance of caution, Pastor Brian will not be doing regular visits to people in their homes. This is a continuation of his current policy on visits. Pastor Brian, will however, do visits in emergency cases such as hospital visits. If that is required please contact Pastor Brian to let him know.
Joys And Concerns
We will be continuing our joys and concerns during our online service at 10:30 AM and our 9:00 AM drive-in service. To be included each week, please email your joys and concerns to Pastor Brian before each Sunday. There is also the ability to make comments during the service and we will use that as well for joys and concerns.
Giving To Beaver Church During The Pandemic
All of us have been impacted in so many ways by the Coronavirus pandemic. Many have been struggling financially, and for those of you who have, please contact Pastor Brian and we can assist you from our benevolence fund. For those that are able to continue to give your offerings to the church and wish to, you can either send checks to the church at “1960 Dayton-Xenia Rd. Beavercreek, OH 45434”, or if you wish, you can go to our website www.beaverucc.org and use the yellow donate button in the upper right hand corner of the webpage to donate online via credit or debit card. We also have a box for your offerings available at the 9:00am drive-in service. If you wish to give in person and cannot make it to the 9:00am drive-in service, please contact Pastor Brian to arrange a time to meet. We are very grateful for continued offerings during this period, as we are still paying staff and taking care of other bills and obligations.