Newsletter May 12, 2010
From the Senior Pastor
Pastor Mullinax and his “team” will be leaving tomorrow (Tuesday, May 11) for Haiti. They’ll be gone for just over a week. Remember them in your thoughts and prayers before the Lord as they serve the people of Haiti and encourage those who labor there year round.
Kyle Mullinax will not be returning next week with the others. He will remain in Haiti for several weeks. So remember him as often as the Lord brings him to your mind. He will be serving as an extension of CPC in that poor and devastated country.
Every fall and spring we experience a similar pattern in attendance in relationship to the various gatherings of our church other than morning worship. Come fall, our attendance will be high and healthy. Come spring, those numbers will dwindle.
The reasons are many. Most are understandable. They reflect, in part, that we have many families with young children who become involved in activities each spring as the warmer weather returns and the hours of daylight lengthen.
The Session has decided to try an “experiment” this summer. The Music Camp program presented Sunday evening, June 13, will be our final Sunday evening service until the third Sunday in August.
During the summer months many are coming and going on vacation and for various weekend excursions. So we’re going to take an eight week hiatus from Sunday evening services.
If you look at a calendar you will realize that in fact this means that we will not be meeting at church the four times we would have met during these eight weeks. Traditionally we don’t meet the last Sunday evening of each month, nor the Sunday evenings of Father’s Day and the Fourth of July weekend. So that means that four of these eight weeks are Sunday evenings we traditionally wouldn’t meet on Sunday evening.
The Session’s hope is that this break will prove refreshing for everyone, and will allow us to begin anew on Sunday evenings as the school year resumes.
It will be a good opportunity for various small groups to meet. Obviously, our shepherding groups will continue to meet, but they may choose perhaps to follow a different schedule. That will be up to each group’s discretion.
The Session hopes that some of you will take this opportunity to invite one or two other families into your home on a Sunday evening. When Pastor Mullinax returns, he’ll try to facilitate such gatherings.
The Session realizes that some will not think this a good idea. Come fall we’ll try to evaluate the worthiness of our experiment. We may never do this again. But we’re going to try it this summer.
So, if you will, when you do something “different” on a Sunday evening during the summer, let Pastor Mullinax know what you’re up to. That would be helpful to the Session.
And allow me to make one further observation. Every now and then it seems important for me to remind you that morning worship begins at 9:30. At times, when morning worship begins, the church appears to be more than half empty. If you will, please try to be at church in time to hear the welcome, take part in the greeting, hear the announcements, and prepare prayerfully for a time of worship as the prelude is played. You never know when the prelude may include a duet which includes the playing of a tuba!
Pastor Caines