The Courier

Click here to read this month's newsletter, The Courier:

September, 2010

August, 2010

July, 2010

June, 2010

May, 2010

April, 2010

March, 2010

February, 2010 Courier

January, 2010 Courier

December, 2009 Courier

November, 2009 Courier

Upcoming Retreat Opportunity

"Intimacy with God: Abundance and Scarcity"

Offered by Spiritual Directors Gerry Hair, Joe Yun and Elizabeth Andrea

Deepening our Faith through Christian Community

Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) has approximately 2.4 million members, 11,100 congregations and 14,000 ordained and active ministers. Presbyterians trace their history to the 16th century and the Protestant Reformation. Our heritage, and much of what we believe, began with the French lawyer John Calvin (1509-1564), whose writings crystallized much of the Reformed thinking that came before him.

• Presbyterian Youth Connection is the Presbyterian Church USA's youth ministry web site.
• PCUSA Washington Office, the voice of Presbyterian Public Policy
• An alphabetized list of email newsletters and updates about the mission and ministry of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Subscribe here to those of interest to you.
  
  

Bread of Life Center for Spiritual Formation offers Spiritual Direction, classes and programs, retreats, and an intentional community at Davis Community Church. Bread of Life also offers visual and performing art space and materials and Spiritual Direction at the Spirit in the Arts Center in north Sacramento.

Cal Aggie Christian Association (CA House) is an ecumenical campus ministry serving college and graduate students of all faiths in and around the Davis community. We offer opportunities for worship, service, intentional living, personal growth and study. Through action on issues of peace and justice, this ministry enables individuals to discover and fulfill their human and Christian vocation. The Cal Aggie Christian Association provides a diverse, open community, following the example of Christ in the midst of University.

Covenant Network of Presbyterians is a broad-based, national group of clergy and lay leaders working for a church that is simultaneously faithful, just, and whole. We seek to support the mission and unity of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in a time of potentially divisive controversy. We intend to articulate and act on the church's historic, progressive vision and to work for a fully inclusive church. We are committed to finding a way both to live out the graciously hospitable gospel we have received and to live together with all our fellow members in the PC(USA)."

Davis Community Church Nursery School is a cooperative nursery school located at Davis Community Church.

More Light Presbyterians"...are individual members and congregations of Presbyterian Church (USA) who are faithful to God's call and believe that God continues to open new understandings of scripture and the Word in the life of Christ. Following the risen Christ, and seeking to make the Church a true community of hospitality, the mission of More Light Presbyterians is to work for the full participation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans gender people of faith in the life, ministry and witness of the Presbyterian Church (USA)."

Practicing Our Faith is is sponsored by the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith, a project whose purpose is to develop resources to help contemporary people live the Christian faith with vitality and integrity in changing times. The Project is ecumenical in orientation and appreciative of the legacies of a range of Christian traditions."

That All May Freely Serve is a group of dedicated Christians, working within the boundaries of existing Presbyterian Church (USA) policy. Through education and dialogue, we strive to open barriers in order to permit gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans gender (GLBT) people to serve openly as clergy, elders, and deacons within the denomination."

The First Church of Cyberspace is an Internet community with online conversations about the Bible, spirituality, sexuality, chat, humor, music, movies, movie reviews, etc.

Wicker Park Grace (WPG) offers an invitation to individuals who are seeking an authentic encounter with Spirit and Community. Through activities in the neighborhood such as open conversations about spirituality, intellectually honest discussions about the bible, poetry slams, service projects, and creative worship events, WPG seeks to engage our hearts, hands, and minds in a sincere exploration of questions of faith.

Deepening Our Faith Through Action

Habitat for Humanity is an ecumenical, grassroots, non-profit Christian housing ministry, committed to providing decent, affordable houses in partnership with God's people in need.


The Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter of Davis (IRWS) is a community based-effort enabling member congregations to provide cold-weather shelter and hospitality on a rotating basis to persons who are homeless in the Davis community.


Short Term Emergency Aid Committee (STEAC) is a volunteer-oriented organization. STEAC's purpose is to provide immediate, short-term emergency assistance with basic necessities to families and individuals whose incomes are at or below the poverty level.

Yolo Hospice is a unique healthcare option a
vailable to those who have been medically determined to be living through their last 6 months of life. Hospice care is designed especially for those who, along with their families, want to deal with their illness in an open, supportive way, reducing fear of the unknown and finding ways to live life to the fullest despite advancing illness.

Yolo Wayfarer Center offers many services and programs, including meals, cold weather shelter, grocery
distribution, showers, laundry, messages, mail, and other services to people in need.

Deepening Faith through Prayer

Pray As You Go offers daily morning and evening prayer downloads for MP3 players. Combines music, scripture, and some questions for reflection.

Three Minute Retreat provides a slide show with images for reflection.

Upper Room offers a daily devotional including a brief scripture reading and a meditation.

Deepening our Faith through Study

About Christianity: The apostle writes: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child; when I became an adult, I gave up childish ways." What are the characteristics of fully developed, mature form of the faith? A collection of outstanding links on Christian topics often thought of as "for adults only" by the Rev. Charles Henderson.

Bible Gateway is an electronic concordance for several versions of the Bible, enabling you to do searches by word, book, verse, language, or version.

ECUNET is a gateway to resources about major Christian denominations.

Faithful America includes Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Baha’is, to name a few. Many express their faiths in individual ways. Yet all of us share a common bond - when it comes to government, we believe our faith does matter. Our voices are needed. Our values must be reflected in our nation’s public policies. A program of the National Council of Churches, USA, FaithfulAmerica.org is made up of persons who believe that one’s faith - however broadly or uniquely expressed - has a word to say about our nation’s government and its priorities.

Guide to Early Church Documents has information and documents from the early history of the Church.

HungryHearts is a quarterly publication of the Presbyterian Church's Office for Spiritual Formation. It contains articles, prayers, quotes, and meditations that may be helpful for the Journey.

Religion-Online: Full texts by recognized religious scholars. Over 5,200 articles and chapters. Topics include Old and New Testament, theology, ethics, history and sociology of religions, comparative religion, religious communication, pastoral care, counseling, homiletics, worship, missions and religious education.

TextWeek features a variety of resources for study and liturgy based on the 3-year Revised Common Lectionary cycle.

The Jesus Seminar includes texts of weekly debates by Biblical scholars.

Sojourners Magazine is a progressive Christian commentary on faith, politics and culture. It seeks to build a movement of spirituality and social change.

Deepening our Faith through Retreat

Chautauqua Institution in New York

Ghost Ranch in New Mexico

Montreat in North Carolina

Westminster Woods in Occidental, CA

Zephyr Point Presbyterian Conference Center in Lake Tahoe

Other Important Web Sites

Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.

Al-Anon/Alateen offers and hope for friends and families of problem drinkers.  

Davis Cub Scout Pack 111 is sponsored by Davis Community Church and meets weekly in the Cub Scout Room in the basement of Phoenix Hall. 

The National Bone Marrow Donor Program allows you to help those in need. Please consider joining the registry so that you may give someone life.

Sacramento Healthcare Decisions (SHD) is a non-profit, community-based organization that is focused on improving end-of-life care. It is supported by Sutter, Kaiser Permanente, and Catholic Healthcare West. You may obtain information on an Advance Healthcare Directive at SHD. You may also download a form.

Proposed Improvements Report for DCC's Sanctuary Entrance on 4th St. 
February 9, 2010
Read the report here. 

Missional Church
Winter, 2010

What's the Session reading?  The Missional Leader: Eqipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World by Alan Roxbury. 

Podcasts
Winter, 2010

You may or may not be in the Godpodding group with Pastor Mary Lynn Tobin but check out the podcasts she is recommending:

• Episode #75 from "This American Life". Which story most speaks God's word to you?
• Afterlife 
• "Obama's Theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr: "Obama and Niebuhr"
• more to follow....

Gratitude Journal, November, 2009
From Pastor Mary Lynn...

Anyone keeping a gratitude journal this month?  I’ve found it difficult to keep up the discipline, but I’m still trying – especially as we get close to Thanksgiving itself.  You might want to check out the website http://www.gratefulness.org/.  There, David Steindl-Rast writes about living a life of gratitude.  Here is a sampling of his topics – quite provocative, I think:

·Grief and Gratefulness

·Being Grateful for Your Uniqueness

·Deepening Your Sense of Belonging

·How can I find inner peace through gratefulness?

·The Practice of Using Your Nose

·Harvesting the Past Gratefully

·How do animals teach gratefulness?

Revised Common Lectionary

Davis Community Church follows the Revised Common Lectionary, a calendar of scripture texts for each Sunday that are shared among most mainline denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church.  You can read and meditate on the texts for each Sunday by going to this link:
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/

The particular text that is the focus for each Sunday is usually the same text that children and youth will be studying in Sunday School.  If you want to see which of the four readings is likely to be the focus for the sermon and the theme for worship, you can find it here if you click on “Focus Passages”:
http://spiritseasons.com/sublevel.taf?sl=yes&site_uid1=8833&hallway_uid1=16091&search_id=&catalog_uid1=&link_type_uid1=&person_id=&u_currency_id=0
 

The recent Courier article announced that slides from the congregational meeting could be viewed on our website.  Here they are: 

RECENT COURIER ARTICLE: 

To the DCC Community: The Financial Support Ministry would like to provide you an important update upon the conclusion of our formal stewardship and budget season.  

First, we want to thank everyone for their support and pledges.  In a difficult year, we saw that those who pledged increased their pledges on average 8%. For this we are blessed and grateful.  In addition, 2009 ended very well...our net income cleared us of a cumulative deficit, so we ended the year in the black. 

The first six months of 2010, we have been in transition changing the timing of our fiscal year.  Our plan for this first 6 months of 2010 included the expectation that giving would remain at least at the same  level during these interim months as 2009 and budgeted for a slight increase.  That steady giving did not materialize and we are currently projecting a $30,000 deficit. During the past few weeks as our budget situation was shared with the congregation, many have responded with extra giving.  Thank you to those who made an extra contribution in June. 

During the past few weeks, Session has spent a great deal of time in careful discernment and adopted a balanced budget for 2010-2011 on June 22nd. This budget was presented to the members of DCC at the congregational meeting on Sunday, June 27th.  Copies of the budget are available at the church office.    

Reaching a balanced budget required Session to reduce the original ministry budgets by $98,000.  Specifically, the Minister of Finance and Session tightened the overall budget by $33,000, ministries across the board cut $31,000, and personnel cut a total of  $34,000.   Stored funds will be used in a couple of ways to help balance the budget.  First, $20,000 in stored funds which are designated for facilities improvements will be used to complete the Christian Education wing improvements.  In addition, unrestricted stored funds will be used to fund the $30,000 deficit from the first 6 months of 2010.  Session intends that this use of unrestricted stored funds ($30,000) will be replenished in the 2011-2012 fiscal year.   To more deeply examine ongoing ways to align our church budget with the missional vision of DCC,  Session will be appointing a mission study task force next month.  The task force will aim to culminate its process and report to Session in Spring 2011. 

If you have any questions or comments please do not hesitate to call Maria Rodriguez, Minister of Finance and Facilities, at (530) 753-2894 x 102 or Lewis Becker, Co-Chair of Financial Support Ministry, at (916) 985-3275 (evenings).  Thank you!

http://app.sliderocket.com/app/fullplayer.aspx?id=5fa66ae5-86e3-40b6-8781-a9bf2eac125d

Updates from the Minister of Finance: 

We distributed quarterly pledge statements on July 12^th.  110 statements were picked up, a $48.00 postage savings.  That is not quite as many statements picked up as last quarter (140), but we will continue to have them for you each quarter.  A special thank you to the great people who helped distribute these statements:  James and Jane McDevitt, Mary Ann Goodenough, Cindy and Lew Becker, and Charre Symms.  

The Ministries of Financial Support and Buildings and Grounds will conduct an asset inventory soon.  We have engaged Darrell Christensen of Thompson Noble Company to assist us with this process.  Earlier this week I worked with Darrell to get the original cost of our land and buildings.  According to the “Report of Chairman of the Trustees Davis Community Church”, dated March 31, 1926, the total cost of the original property, sanctuary building, pipe organ, pews and furniture totaled $99,885.  (That year’s annual budget was $9,500.)  According to the report, “The people living in the vicinity of the Davis Community Church will have the privilege of using a splendid church structure which has been largely furnished to them through State and National agencies.  These gifts are largely prompted due to the location here of the Branch of the College of Agriculture, and the opportunity we have for demonstrating the working together in a rural community of all those interested in the Protestant church.” Some of the initial funds came from the State Synod of the Presbyterian Church, the San Francisco Presbytery, and the Sacramento Presbytery.   

This reminds me…   Per Capita…if you have not made your per capita contribution please consider the $22.00 contribution.  Our per capita payment supports the mission of the Presbyterian Church, USA beyond our local community.  The payment is $22.00 per church member.  ($6.04 to General Assembly, $5.17 to the Synod of the Pacific, $9.79 to the Presbytery of the Pacific, and $1.00 for New Church Development in our Presbytery)  Please note “Per Capita” on your payment.  A response from 44 more members will get us to our budget goal. 

Maria Rodriguez

Minister of Finance and Facilities