Windsor Heights, Iowa
News & Events
Oct 7 - World Communion Sunday
Oct 11 - Session Meeting 6:30 PM
Oct 21- Food Pantry Sunday
Oct 21 - Deacons' Check-In
Oct 22 - Newsletter Articles Due
Oct 28 - Reformation Sunday
On Saturday, October 13, a group of volunteers will participate in ROCK THE BLOCK, serving two near-north side neighborhoods, focusing on repairs, maintenance, weatherization, beautification, safety, and accessibility projects. We need skilled and unskilled labor (16+). If you would like to volunteer, please see Pastor Shamaine, contact the church office, or go online to rocktheblock@gdmhabitat.org.
On Saturday, October 13, from 6 - 8 PM, WPC will host an International Peackmaker Dinner. Rev. Michael Muot Put of South Sudan will be the guest speaker. Pastor Put serves as the Youth National Secretary for the Presbytery of South Sudan (PCOSS). He has extensive training in mediation, peace building, reconciliation, trauma and healing and workshops with the PCOS. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to revmeghandavis@gmail.com. A freewill offering will be taken to benefit the First Arabic Presbyterian Church.
Worship in June
June 3 - Psalm 113
June 10 - Psalm 69
June 17 - Psalm 27
June 24 - Psalm 40
Summer Preaching Series
We kick off summer, and Pentecost, with six weeks in the Psalms. The Book of Psalms is the prayer book of the Hebrew Bible. Throughout the centuries, faithful Jews and Christians have learned to pray by praying the Psalms. Almost all of us want to pray but don’t really know what to say. Thanks and help are our basic prayers. Beyond that we can use some help.
That is where the Psalms come in. Praying the Psalms can teach us that prayers do not need to be polished or polite or perfect. The language of prayer is honest and personal. The Psalms are passionate words—full of joy and praise, anger and frustration, grief and sadness. In these prayers we learn to lay ourselves bare before God. We learn honesty and vulnerability. We learn to pray alone and with others. We learn to sing praises to God and to shake our fists at the heavens.
The Psalms are all corporate prayers. They are meant to be prayed in community, with others. The life of faith is life with others.
There are different types of Psalms just as there are different types of prayers and emotions. Our series will try to move us through six psalms in a manner that reflects how we might actually experience the life of faith, through the ups and the downs.
Up: When life is stable and the world seems trustworthy (Psalms 1 and 113), to
Down: When the bottom drops out and the tradition feels like a lie (Psalm 69), to
Up again: When faith in a trustworthy God and creation are found again, but the experience of disorientation is not forgotten (Psalms 27, 40 and 146)
(This Narrative Lectionary series loosely follows OT scholar Walter Brueggemann’s typology— Orientation, Disorientation, Re-Orientation)