August 2020

Winters Chapel United Methodist Church ~ 5105 Winters Chapel Road Atlanta GA 30360 ~ 770-396-4550

“He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him,

“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ ” (Luke 11:1-13)

If we sin by not praying, or by praying with the wrong motivations, then it is time meditate on the

request Jesus’ disciples made to him. “Lord, teach us to pray.” In Luke 11:2-4, Jesus says: “When you pray.”

It is interesting that Jesus does not say “if you pray”, or “in case you pray.” Jesus departs from the premise that

the disciples would pray; as prayer was part of their daily activities. Further, he taught parables to encourage

faith, and discipline.

In the parable of the Persistent Friend (Luke 11:5-8), one may interpret it as a stimulus to be insistent

with God until one gets what one wants. This is not quite a good interpretation of the passage. According to that

culture and time, it was inadmissible for a neighbor to refuse bread, whatever the reason was. It was a hospitality

and moral issue. The Greek word for persistence on verse 8 is anaideia, which means shamelessness, impudence,

lack of morals, and it was attributed to the neighbor sleeper and not the beggar. So, basically if it was not for

friendship, you would give bread because of the shame of not fulfilling a social obligation.

A persistent friend is one who does not act with impudence (lack of modesty), who is always ready to

attend a need, and God is this friend. Yet, you may ask: Why does not everything we ask He answers? Here is

the answer.

It has to do with our obedience, commitment and earnestness with His Word. The verse is quite clear.

If you do not mind knowing God's will, and do things your way, He may not answer your prayer, and it is for

your own good. For some of us, God may seem bad by not giving us what we want. Yet, the Father wants only

the best for us, because he loves us.

Today, let us read Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the

renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will

of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Let us ask God to

reveal, “what is good and acceptable and perfect” to our lives.

Let us pray:

O God, teach us to pray, so that when we pray, we align our will to your will.

Give us this day our daily bread; the bread of life; you, O Lord. In your mighty

and powerful name. Jesus Christ. Amen.

Blessings, Pedro

By Rev. Pedro Silva Lord, Teach Us to Pray

Page 2

Children & Youth Ministry

Preschool Registration: 2020/2021 We have openings in most classes for the 2020 school year. Registration forms are available on our website: https://wcumcpreschool.weebly.com/

The Preschool Open House date will be announced in August. If you would like to learn more about our school, please contact our Director, Erin Carrasquillo. Tours are available upon request. Summer Camp After much consideration and an abundance of caution, Erin Carrasquillo, our Preschool Director, decided that WCUMC Preschool would remain closed for July. With a recent rise in COVID cases, especially in Gwinnett County, many students had dropped out over the past few weeks and the decision was made that we are not 100% ready to reopen. The Preschool Staff is currently evaluating our ability to hold summer camp in August and we will make a decision soon. Kids Closet Consignment Sale: Our Fall Fundraiser is Cancelled Due to the current COVID-19 Pandemic, Winters Chapel Preschool has decided to act with caution and cancel our Fall 2020 Fundraiser. We are so very sorry for any inconvenience this causes. We will keep you updated later in the year about Spring 2021. We will miss all of our regular sellers and shoppers this fall and hope everyone is doing well.

Winters Chapel UMC Preschool

Helping Children Through This Difficult Season of Life

Each day, as news about the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across this nation, families are recognizing a new daily lifestyle filled with anxiety, social distancing, and home quarantine. While it seems that life as we knew it is out of control, this is also an excellent time to be creative in faith formation. Parents now have the opportunity to mentor their children and model faith formation in the home. Remember, when talking to your children to:

1. Empower them to be helpers in fighting this disease. Encourage them to wash their hands and not touch their faces; both actions help decrease the spread of the virus.

2. Truly listen and hear children’s concerns. Let them know that you are listening to them when they voice their feelings of fear and anxiety. Keep lines of communication open.

3. Model faith formation in everything you do. Include children in every conversation. Don’t become the expert with all the answers. Admit when you don’t have an answer; pursue an answer together.

4. Put God first and others second. Take this time to teach your children compassion for others. Pray for others. Model putting others’ needs before yours. Excerpted from: www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/covid-19-childrens-

The Fisher · August 2020 Page 3

All Leaders

Joe Bailey

Carol Beard

Sue Bradley

Alberta Brandon

Jim Bryant

The family of Anna Bynum

Angela Castellow

The Family of Charlotte Courson

Jo Culpepper

Essential Workers

Vicki Brown-Macomber

Eddie McCrory

Jamie Paige

The Family of Phyllis Patroski

Kirk Pfrangle

Kemp Stewart

Michelle Stewart

Marilyn Thomas

Joan Vining

The Wagner Family

Judy Wells

Kelly Yount

As a member of Winters Chapel, I will faithfully participate in its ministries .

By my Prayers . . . By my Presence . . . NGUMC has urged all In-Person Worship Services to pause through July, 2020 Sunday School: 0 (7/5); 0 (7/12); 0 (7/19); 0 (7/26)

11 am Worship*: 26 (7/5); 11 (7/12); 5 (7/19); 45 (7/26)

*Number of Views to Online Sermon Posted on Winters Chapel YouTube Account and/or Facebook

By my Gifts. . .

$1,150 (7/5); $1,550 (7/12); $120 (7/19); $4,500 (7/26)

By my Service . . . (July/August)

Altar Guild: Gail Granberry, Nancy Trumble, Peggy Wallis, Betty Williams

Audio: Jimmy Faulkner

Counters: Thank you to our counter volunteers throughout the year

Greeters: Gail and Mike Granberry

Lay Leaders: Harriet Chapman, Don Dixon, Kathy Honeycutt, Mike Macomber, Judy Woodall

Music: Misha Stefanuk, Chancel Choir, Worship Band, Children’s Choir

Ushers: Thank you to our usher volunteers throughout the year

Jimmy Faulkner

Food Pantry Families

Paul Gallois

Jerry & Sarah Greene

Julius Harris & Family

Healthcare Workers

Sam & Linda Honeycutt

Tajah Hughett

The family of Chan Kelley

Anthony Lancaster

Betty Lancaster

Margie Lloyd

The prayer list is updated each month. Please send your prayer requests to the church office.

Our deepest sympathies are extended to:

~ James Hatton on the death of his sister, Charlotte Courson, who passed away after a long illness on Saturday, July 18, 2020 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

~Marilyn Thomas on the death of her daughter, Phyllis R. Patroski, who passed away in July, 2020.

~Peggy Bynum on the death of her mother-in-law, Anna Bynum, who passed away peacefully on Wednesday, July 29th. Her service will be held on Saturday, August 1st in Sumter, SC.

Page 4

Emergency Red Cross Blood Drive Held in July Was a Great Success!

Winters Chapel UMC scheduled an emergency blood drive on Tuesday, July 14th. The Red Cross emailed us to say: “Your commitment to host a blood drive with the American Red Cross truly made a difference! Your team collected 40 pints of blood and recruited 8 first-time donors. Your efforts have helped boost the community blood supply and ensure hospital patients have the life-saving blood they need.” Well done!

It was a long day, with wait times for donors creeping up to 1 hour by the end of the day. But despite these setbacks, we still managed to hold

a very successful drive. A special shout-out to all of our Winters Chapel members who came out in full force and donated blood! Thank you! We especially want to thank Ron Letson who offered his help after giving blood - and generously came back in to cover the last shift of the day; closing up the church at 8:45 pm! If you see Ron, please share your thanks with him as well. The donor results for COVID-19 antibodies should be ready by checking the online portal: www.redcrossblood.org . And mark your calendars:

Our next Red Cross Blood Drive is scheduled for: Saturday, October 17th, 2020 from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm.

ESOL to Resume Later This Fall

ESOL classes at Winters Chapel UMC have been paused for the Fall semester. We will make a decision soon regarding the launch of ESOL classes this fall.

Scammers Pose as Pastors; Ask Congregation to Buy Gift Cards

The North Georgia Conference Office has heard from a number of Conference clergy and church leaders whose congregations have been the target of online scams. In the most predominant scam, church members receive fraudulent emails that appear to be from the pastor and ask for help (usually financial help).

A common theme is a need for a gift card or urgent help for a loved one. If you receive an email that strikes you as unusual, confirm that it's legitimate before you reply. Refrain from forwarding the email to others. Instead, make a quick phone call to the church or write a new email to your pastor or a staff person. If the email is fraudulent, report it as phishing to your email provider and delete the email. The issue is also not unique to email but extends to text and phone calls as well as social media. As with email, remember that clergy and churches do not ask for personal or financial information by text. Don't be rushed, instead, be cautious and confirm the legitimacy of a communication (including a friend request on social media) before you respond or accept. Churches nationwide are the target of these scams. The Federal Trade Commission offers tips on how to recog-nize and avoid phishing scams at: www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-recognize-and-avoid-phishing-scams

The Fisher · August 2020 Page 5

Back to Church, but Not, Let’s Hope, Back to Normal

By Bill McKibben July 6, 2020; www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/back-to-church-but-not-lets-hope-back-to-normal

I went to church for the first time in many months on Sunday; in fact, it was the first even mildly routine public thing I’ve done since March. The service was outdoors, of course, in a small open-sided tabernacle built here in the Adirondacks, along the banks of the upper Hudson, in 1908, to serve a Methodist campground where congregations began meeting in 1871. Though families still come to the small collection of summer houses along the shore, the place—like Methodism—is a shadow of its former glory: there were but nineteen of us on the straight-backed wooden pews for the service, so social distancing was not a problem, and though I am no young man I considerably lowered the average age when I sauntered in. We all wore masks, and only the preacher, a safe twenty feet from the front pew, sang the hymns; still, it felt deeply familiar and deeply comforting. The first hymn, “We Gather Together,” which is often sung at Thanksgiving, had me very nearly in tears, if only for the sense of how much normal we have done without of late. And, of course, for the understanding that there are 130,000 fewer of us to gather than there should be.

But the point of church is not just comfort or familiarity. It is, or should be, coming to grips with the relentless radicalism of Jesus—with the gospel demand that we love our neighbors in effective ways. The preacher on Sunday was Janet Douglass, and she had journeyed up from Troy, near Albany, where she works helping the homeless. Her message was informed by COVID-19 and by climate change, but mostly by the ongoing push for racial justice that has been the summer’s great hope. Douglass described the way that, in Biblical days, Roman power offered people the choice of acquiescence or—should they choose to fight—obliteration, and that Jesus had helped pioneer an alternative tactic, of nonviolent resistance to unjust power that he, of course, was willing to take to the grave. This sermon came just a few hours after a peaceful protester in Seattle had died, when a driver in a white Jaguar rammed into her, and it all felt very real, even amid the pines and cedars, with the river murmuring through the rocks fifty yards to the east. “Faith is a team sport,” she said. “What are we going to do? What are you going to do?”

It seems the only question, as our institutions of all kinds begin to come slowly, fitfully back to life. Our churches, our governments, our businesses: the main goal can’t simply be to return things to normal, because, in a world that watched George Floyd die, anything like normal is clearly unjust; in a world that is rapidly warming, anything like normal is dangerous. And the challenges that these institutions have in the past been willing to mount to that injustice and danger have been too feeble, too sporadic, too easily ignored. You can tell how much work we have to do by the smallness of the steps that institutions are taking even now: the decision by some companies to pull ads from Facebook for a single month is both highly unusual and remarkably puny. The Redskins might change their name? Great, but it took this to get there? That comforting hymn “We Gather Together” has a sting in its sentimental lyric. “The wicked oppressing, now cease from distressing,” it demands, and so must we, with the growing recognition that most of us are implicated in that oppression.

One way to think about this pause in our lives is as a rare—likely a once-in-a-lifetime—opportunity for a reset. We actually stopped, the one thing our societies have never heretofore done. Things ground to a halt, offering us the chance to examine our lives and our institutions. If your church just performs some delayed funerals and then goes back to where it was in January—well, in that case, none of this will have counted. Much as I enjoy singing hymns, I was glad we were still masked and silent on Sunday morning, that we had to sit apart, that instead of passing the peace with a handshake or a hug we were restricted to a namaste bow. One hopes that these kinds of changes will last for many months to come, and not simply for reasons of public health. They are uncomfortable reminders that we should remain uncomfortable even as life starts back up. Normal is the enemy.

Page 6

Scholarships for the 2020-2021

Academic year will be announced

in August. Winters Chapel UMC has presented the applications to the Board of Trustees for

approval in August. Checks for scholarships awarded will be mailed out by the end of

August. Good luck to everyone

in the upcoming school year!

Winters Chapel UMC Food Pantry Update Our last food pantry report saw a 10% increase in patron visits (year-over-year) in March, a 400% increase in April (with over 50 visits), and a 350% increase in May (with over 55 visits). While June and July have seen a slight decrease in visits when compared to the spring (with 37 and 38 visits respectively for the summer months to date), it is still more than a threefold increase in visits when compared to the same months in 2019. Thanks to our member’s financial generosity, the patronage of the Women of Faith Circle and the ongoing efforts of our hard-working volunteers, Winters Chapel UMC is very pleased to report we still have not turned a single family away without food - despite coming within minutes in July of having to do so.

Additionally, a 4 bag clothing drive was delivered to 10 children in Venezuela and the donations continue to come in. The ability for such a small church to respond to such a large need is a testament to the generous heart of its members. Our food pantry family patrons have consistently expressed their gratitude and many have reported that they are “paying it forward” by bringing food to those who cannot come. In this we know that with God’s help, we will continue to offer our food pantry program as a response to God’s call to “be the church.” Thank you.

Leadership Board Pauses Our Reopening Plan Due to the rising COVID infections in our area (and at the recommendation of our District Office), our Leadership Team has made a decision to take a step back and put our Reopening Plan on hold until further notice. We will continue to provide online service (Live on our Winters Chapel UMC Facebook

page and recorded on our You Tube channel) until we see the COVID 19 infection risk go down in our area.

Please know that the church office remains open from Monday-Thursday, 10:00 am to 1:00 pm and we encourage you to call (770-396-4550) or email (office@winterschapel.org) anytime with any question or concern.

We will review our reopening plans at the next Leadership Board Meeting, scheduled for Sunday, August 23rd.

Christ Walk Will Resume in August!

Our Christ Walk bible study is currently on a summer break. We will resume meeting again via our Church Zoom Account on Wednesday mornings at 10:30 am. starting in mid-August. Just look for the email link sent out by Pastor Pedro in order to join the discussion—or let Pastor Pedro know if you would like an invitation link for the next session. Pedro.Silva@ngumc.net.

Hope to see you then!

The Fisher · August 2020 Page 7

Hope, Act, Vote

We have a dream to carry on and work to do.

By Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe, July 28, 2020

The loss of civil rights leaders is sad and disquieting. This is not the moment to lose the voices and witness of the Honorable John Lewis, the Honorable Elijah Cummings, the Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery and the Reverend Dr. C.T. Vivian. We once were able to celebrate in community; now there are not sufficiently comforting ways to celebrate their lives and legacies in this virus-infected world, making the losses feel more profound.

How do we hold them to the light? What do we do to live out their legacies? What do we celebrate? What do we grieve? What do we hold onto? What do we take into the future? What do we tell our children?

All of these questions are important. Now is the time to lift high their dreams, press on to the goal of freedom and continue the work that they laid before us.

Collectively, they gave us much; passion for justice grounded in the Gospel, non-violence as the way, faith as the foundation, love as the cornerstone, resilience as the response, and action at every point on the journey. Individually, they contributed their own voices and their parts in the struggle for freedom.

We are compelled to carry on. From Hebrews 11 we remember “that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We know they saw the dream and pushed us toward it. Like for most of the faithful the completion of the dream was not totally fulfilled. The writer of Hebrews goes on to call the roll of the faithful. Abel, Abraham, Sarah “who died without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them”. And on the roll call goes, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, David, and the prophets.

Finally in verse 39 we hear our own names:

“Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.”

We have a dream to carry on and work to do.

As John Lewis lies in state, we hold his words close:

“Anchor the eternity of love in your own soul and embed this planet with goodness. Lean toward the whispers of your own heart, discover the universal truth, and follow its dictates. Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confronta-tion wisely, but when it is your time don’t be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice. And if you follow your truth down the road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself .”

Month-at-a-Glance AUGUST Sunday Worship Times: Traditional: 11:00 a.m. Facebook LIVE (See the Phased Re-Opening Timeline Details in this newsletter) Small Groups: Sundays 9:45 a.m. (On Hold)

Winters Chapel United Methodist Church Staff

Rev. Pedro Silva, Pastor 770-396-4550 (office); pedro.silva@ngumc.net

Misha Stefanuk, Organist in Residence, Director of Music 678-520-0749 (cell); misha@stefanuk.com

Michelle Stewart, Bookkeeper 770-396-4550 (office); info@winterschapel.org

Erin Carrasquillo, Preschool Director 770-393-3478 (office); erinc@winterschapel.org

Peggy Bynum, Administrative Assistant 770-396-4550 (office); info@winterschapel.org

You can reach us . . .

Happy, Happy Birthday to You!

August 23 Louise Womble

August 25 Rita Granberry

August 25 Sarah Greene

August 5 Sam Trump

August 8 Sharon Jones

August 16 Summer Bishop

August 22 Gil Danielson

August 23 Gail Granberry

If we are missing your birthday, please let the church office know by emailing info@winterschapel.org

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

1

2

11:00 Worship

Online

3

4

5

6

7

8

DUMC FOODSTOCK is on hold until

further notice

9

11:00 Worship

Online

10

11

7:00 am—7:00 pm

Run-Off Election

12

10:30 Christ Walk

Resumes

13

14

15

16

11:00 Worship

Online

17

18

19

10:30 Christ Walk

20

21

22

23 11:00 Worship

Leadership Board Mtg

30

11:00 Worship

24

31

25

26

10:30 Christ Walk

27

28 29