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Welcome to Beaver Church!
Worship materials and videos… click here
Videos of past services – click here
Wednesday on–line fellowship… monthly @7:00 PM via Zoom
Worship with BUCC on–line – click here

Beaver UCC

We are a community of caring individuals brought together by a common bond – love!

Our congregation is composed of people from all walks of life who come together to offer healing and comfort, learning and encouragement - much like a family. We welcome all, and believe that extravagant hospitality is central to the role of our church.

At Beaver UCC, we strive to help our members grow spiritually, while at the same time understanding that everyone has their own spiritual path. Our church is a place where you can think for yourself while differing views are respected. It is our hope that through education, fellowship, and service we can, as a community, come closer to God and each other.

Since our founding over 200 years ago, Beaver Church continues seeking to offer an atmosphere of informality, spontaneity, fellowship, and fun. We hope our Church is a place where you and all will feel both welcome and comfortable.

About Our Church

Sunday School Program

Nursery
Meets: Upstairs each Sunday after the children’s moment, year round.
Main Teacher: Hayden Rauls
Ages: Infant through Pre-K
This class is for our youngest students and there will be a combination of play and some instruction depending on the ages present.

Young Learners
Meets: Upstairs each Sunday after the children’s moment, September through May, with a one month break around Christmas.
Main Teacher: Sarah Hogan
Ages: K through 4th grade
This class is for our younger learners and will be focused on instruction and lessons. Material will be taught from a children’s story type Bible. Children less comfortable with working on lessons might wish to stay in the nursery, and those that are more advanced might wish to go to the older class.

Children’s Bible Study
Meets: Upstairs each Sunday after the children’s moment, September through May, with a one month break around Christmas.
Main Teacher: Brittany King
Ages: 4th through 8th grade
This class will be a Bible and faith study where children will read scripture lessons from the Bible each week and study them. Children will also learn about Christian faith themes present in the topics and readings for the week. Readings should somewhat overlap with the readings given in the service. As children reach the point where the curriculum or discussions seem less challenging, then they are encouraged to stay in service, attend the Adult Bible Study, and seek confirmation with the Pastor when ready. During breaks, children will be asked to stay in service.

Adult Bible Study
Meets: In the fellowship hall each Sunday at 9:30 AM, September through May.
Main Teacher: Pastor Brian
Ages: Youth and Adults
This class will be a Bible and faith study each week led by Pastor Brian. Jr. High and Sr. High youth and Adults are encouraged to attend.

Services Provided by Beaver UCC

Prayer List and Card Ministry
Do you know someone who would appreciate our prayers, receiving a card from us, or having Pastor Brian visit with them? Please let us know. The Prayer List and Card Ministry will never be published on our website, although it will be included in our monthly newsletter.

Weddings
Beaver UCC offers wedding services including space rental, pre-marital counseling, and officiating for both members and non-members. Please contact the pastor for more information.

Funerals
Our church offers support in any way we can to assist those who are grieving the passing of a loved one. Funerals are generally held in the sanctuary and a meal is provided by the church afterwards.

Confirmation Classes
Confirmation classes are held each year for teenagers who wish to join the church and know more about their faith. Classes generally start in September and culminate with confirmation in May.

Counseling
The church offers pastoral counseling for members and non-members. Please see the Pastor’s Page for information on office hours.

Accessiblity
Beaver Church is wheelchair accessible with elevators. Sound reinforcement devices are available for the hard of hearing as are signers for the deaf. Please let us know if you have any special needs.

Beaver UCC Choir

Beaver Church Sings!
Music is an important component of worship at Beaver Church, one that lifts our spirits and helps us rejoice in God and with each other. Everyone is invited to participate in Beaver UCC’s choir - all you need is an appreciation of music and a desire to learn. We also encourage any and all musicians who wish to share their talents with us during worship. If you would like to join the Beaver Church Choir or provide accompanying instrumental support during a service, please contact our choir director or Pastor Brian.

Adult Choir
Beaver UCC’s Adult Choir provides music for each worship service from September through May, plus a special service on Christmas Eve. Practices are held following Sunday Worship in the church sanctuary.

Community Service and Support

Service is just as important to Beaver Church as fellowship.

Weekly contributions of food and clothing are taken to local food pantries and service organizations for those in need. Volunteers plan special activities for residents of nursing homes, while the congregation as a whole makes Christmas brighter for folks by sponsoring food and gift drives each holiday season.

Members of our congregation also support a variety of other charitable causes with time, money, and in-kind donations, including
Heifer International, the Dayton Food Bank, the Salvation Army, and the Connor Puckett Fund.

The United Church of Christ

The religious heritage of the
United Church of Christ (UCC) stems from the great traditions of the Protestant Reformation - Lutheran, Calvinist, and Congregational. These traditions were brought to America by Protestants fleeing persecution in Europe.

Four religious traditions, including the German Reformed, of which Beaver UCC was part, united in 1957 to become the United Church of Christ. Today, any local church or denomination is welcome to apply for membership in the UCC.

Beaver Church's services feature a combination of formal and informal worship. Our service includes communion on the first Sunday of the month, and all are welcome to participate.

Worship

Beaver Church's weekly worship service is held in our Sanctuary each Sunday at 10:30 AM. Find Beaver Church

Our 10:30 AM service is also offered on
Facebook Live, YouTube, and, for those who might wish to participate outdoors, is broadcast on 96.1 FM in our front parking lot.

The weekly bulletin (downloadable) and links to each Sunday's scripture, for your reference and study,
are available here as well as a link to the Sunday 10:30 AM service video for later viewing. Our on-line Calendar page also lists the current status of activities and events at our church.

Food Pantry

Our food pantry has been operational now for a little over a year. Thank you to everyone who has contributed items to make it work. The pantry is filled once a week in addition to items that some of you put in directly versus putting on the shelves in fellowship hall. If you drive by and see that it is empty, it means it has helped someone who was in need of food. Listed below are some suggestions for items that can be used for a meal either alone or with another item such as pasta and pasta sauce. When shopping you can also ask yourself what you might be looking for if you needed to come to our pantry.
Sometimes you can find some of these items on sale in the major grocery stores but in general Aldi’s, Dollar Tree and Dollar General are good places to shop as well as Sam's Club and Cosco.

  • Oatmeal
  • Cereal (low sugar)
  • Pancake mix (needs water only)
  • Milk (canned or boxed)
  • Peanut Butter
  • Crackers
  • Hearty soups such as Campbells Chunky

  • Corned beef hash
  • Canned Chili
  • Dinty More Stew or similar
  • Pasta Sauce
  • Pasta
  • Ramen noodles
  • Canned meats: tuna, chicken, salmon, ham, roast beef

Activities, Events, and News

Church News and Announcements are listed here as well as in our Beaver Church Newsletter available here each month.

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™.
Closed Captioning is available on both Facebook and YouTube.

Choir & Bell Choir Starting - September 6
It’s that time of year when our music program starts back up after our summer break. The choir will start rehearsing on September 6th at 12:15. I am quite certain that we have some wonderful voices that are sitting out in the pews. I would encourage you to consider joining our choir. We could use more people to help us make a joyful noise. The time commitment is really minimal compared to a lot of church choirs. We meet at 10:00 on Sunday morning to review the anthem and then we gather again at 12:15 for rehearsal that ends at 1:00. When it comes time for a Christmas program, we will have a rehearsal the Saturday morning before and once in a while we rehearse a little past 1:00 on Sunday. If you are interested in joining us just show up for our rehearsal on Sunday, September 6th. We would love for you to join us.

The bell choir rehearses on Sunday morning at 9:15 in the room right next to the elevator on the upper floor commonly known as the Sunday school wing. We currently have a number of ringers but would love to have more. We have a three-octave set of bells but are only able to play two octave pieces at the moment due to the number of ringers that we currently have. You don’t have to sing and you don’t have to be able to read music. If you can count and if you “know your colors” you’re good! I guarantee you that you will enjoy the experience….take a chance on doing something that’s a little different for you but lots of fun. The one difference between choir and bells, though, is that you will need to let me know prior to our first rehearsal that you would like to join us because I mark each part for each bell ringer. The bell choir will begin on September 13th and NOT on September 6th.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me Karen Barger.

John Bible Study - September 15 through December 1
Our Gospel of John Bible Study will be held on Tuesday evenings from 6:30-7:30pm and take place in-person in the fellowship hall, and online through Zoom. The optional study guide (SG) is the "Abingdon New Testament Commentaries: John" by D. Moody Smith, published by Abingdon Press. Pastor Brian has several copies available for $25. For the John scripture readings, feel free to use any version of the Bible you would like. It is not necessary to read the study guide if you do not want to, but it would be helpful to read the assigned scripture readings in advance of the class. All are invited, and all questions are welcome. Below is the schedule for our John Bible study:
9/15: SG pages 21-64; John 1:1-1:18
9/22: SG pages 65-92; John 1:19-2:25
9/29: SG pages 93-143; John 3:1-5:47
10/6: SG pages 144-189; John 6:1-8:59
10/13: SG pages 190-231; John 9:1-11:57
10/20: SG pages 232-261; John 12:1-13:38
10/27: SG pages 262-292; John 14:1-16:4
11/3: Break
11/10: Break
11/17: SG pages 293-321; John 16:4-17:26
11/24: SG pages 322-369; John 18:1-19:42
12/1: SG pages 370-406; John 20:1-21:25

Payton Project Golf Outing - September 18
The Payton Project golf outing on Friday September 18th, is a fundraiser for the Payton Project, a non-profit organization that helps address issues of bullying, mental health, and peer pressure in schools. It was started to honor Payton Freeze, a member of Mark’s family that was sadly lost due to school bullying. The church will be sponsoring a hole and has two foursomes signed up to play for the event. If you know of others that might be interested, or just want to attend the lunch, or would like to donate to the event, more information can be found at their website.

Chicken & Noodle Dinner - October 17
We will be having our next Chicken & Noodle dinner on Saturday, October 17th. Please save the date and look for more information to come out soon.

Cookie Walk Reminder - November 21
We will be holding our annual cookie-walk again on Saturday November 21st. This is just a reminder that we will need cookies and plenty of them. If you can, please start to make cookies and freeze them in anticipation for our November event. We will also have signup sheets under the clock in the sanctuary as we get closer to the date, so that we can get an estimate of how many cookies people are bringing and what types. The more unusual cookies are the ones that are often the most popular. Please help if you can, it is a fun and delicious way to support the church.

Confirmation Class Available
Each year in the fall I ask if there are any youth interested in confirmation. Confirmation is the act by which youth study their faith, and traditionally confirm the baptism they received as an infant, or receive adult baptism. We usually have a class that starts in the fall and goes through to the following summer. During confirmation youth are expected to remain in worship, complete monthly reading assignments, and meet for a class with me each month, either in person or virtually. The age when confirmation is appropriate varies by the individual. I would suggest no earlier than 6th grade, and certainly by 10th grade, youth would be more than ready. Anyone who is interested should contact me and we will try and have a class start towards the end of September or the beginning of October.
Blessings, Pastor Brian

Reminder about Deacons
Many of you know that last year we reintroduced deacons to the church. The idea is that they are people who can see how church members are doing and help bring any concerns or ideas to the Pastor or the consistory. The goal is to have each person in the church assigned to one of the five deacons. Hopefully you know who your Deacon is. If you do not, or you have not been assigned one, please see Pastor Brian.

Keeping Church Information Up to Date

At Beaver Church, we keep a database of information pertaining to church members so that members can contact each other and we can send things to people etc. We only make physical copies of that information, and it is never available online or in digital format to the public. We do this to provide some security for the information. On the card table at the front of the church there is a directory that is available for editing. If your information has changed and you would like to update it, or if you want to add your information for the first time, you can do that in the card table directory. You can also give any such information to Pastor Brian or Alice Clausing.

Beaver Church Food Pantry
Our outdoor food pantry is very well utilized by the community. Donations have dropped off a bit, and so we are asking people to again think of helping. We need to keep it stocked with new non-perishable food, so that we can fill it at least one time each week. If you could, please think of buying some food items and placing them on the shelves by the elevator in the Fellowship Hall. If you would prefer to place them directly in the food pantry box outside, you can do that as well. Thank you for your generosity to this program.

Kroger Card Rewards - Beaver Church Fundraiser
Beaver Church enrolled in the Kroger Community Rewards fundraiser program in 2011. Since then, the church has received several thousand dollars in rebates. These rebates are earned by members and friends who sign up for Kroger Community Rewards and select Beaver Church as the beneficiary for their Kroger purchases. This is an easy way to donate to the church.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Get a Kroger Plus card, if you don’t have one already.
2. Create a digital account using the Kroger app on your smart phone, or the kroger.com website online.
3. Link your Kroger Plus card to your digital account.
4. In the Community Rewards section, search for “Beaver United”. Click the “Enroll” button under “Beaver United Church of Christ.”
5. Once this is done, Kroger will automatically donate a small percentage of your purchases to the church, at no additional cost to you. Kroger sends a check to the church every few months. If you have trouble registering your card, see Alice Clausing after church, and she will help you set it up.

Beaver Church Beavercreek, Ohio