May 23, 2021

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This Sunday we celebrate the Day of Pentecost, the Birthday of the Church. For many at St. Andrew, it has been our tradition to wear red–and that works even while we’re worshiping together from home.

Special Congregational Meeting

Members of the congregation will meet via Zoom this Sunday, May 23, at 10:00 am to vote on becoming a Sanctuary Congregation. Please review the proposed

Table Talk: Corporate Social Responsibility

Thursday, May 27, 7:00-8:00 pm
Gathered around the table in his home, Martin Luther talked freely and openly with his colleagues and students about matters of faith, theology, and varied aspects of daily life. In an effort to cultivate this kind of spirited discussion we have a tradition at St. Andrew of gathering for Table Talks. Though we cannot gather in person, Pastor Brocker invites you to participate in the next Table Talk, held via Zoom on Thursday, May 27, 7:00-8:00 pm.

In the ELCA’s social statement on economic life, “Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All,” Christian vocation in the world is described as seeking “what is good for people and the rest of creation in ways that glorify God and anticipate God’s promised future.” This social statement “recognizes the economic power and political influence of transnational corporations and charges the global community with holding these corporations accountable.” In this Table Talk we will discuss the specific role of the church in holding corporations accountable. We will also addresss a related question: What does it mean for the church to be a socially responsible corporation?

In preparation for this Table Talk, participants are encouraged to go to corporate social responsibility resources on the ELCA website and at least download and read the “Corporate Social Responsibility Overview”:

https://www.elca.org/Resources/Corporate-Responsibility.

Connecting Community: The Ties that Bind

Our effort to contact everyone in the congregation has concluded successfully. We believe we’ve contacted everyone in our faith community by talking on the phone, leaving a message, sending an e-mail, or sending a short note. If we missed you, perhaps the church office needs an update. If you were not contacted this time around, please call the office at 503-646-0629 to be sure we have your correct number on file. If you were able to speak with someone, we hope it helped you feel more connected during these disconnected times. Thank you to all who made calls and wrote notes. And thank you, everyone, for remaining in our faith community!

St. Andrew’s MACG Core Team and Caring Ministries Team

May Movie Night: After the Raid

On Friday, May 21, we will meet to discuss After the Raid, a 2019 documentary that explores the devastating effects that an immigration raid on a meat packing plant in Tennessee has on the community. The film asks more questions than it answers, as it explores the ways that faith-based organizations might address these issues.

Stream After the Raid on Netflix and then bring out the popcorn and gather around your computer screens at 7:00 pm on Friday, May 21, as we talk about the movie.

The timing of this particular movie night is fortuitous. Two days following our discussion, on Sunday, May 23, the St. Andrew congregation will meet between services to consider and vote on becoming a sanctuary congregation. Seeing this documentary beforehand may help inform your vote.

You’ll find the Zoom link for this movie night in the “Weekly News” e-mail on Friday, May 21.

High School Senior Scholarships

The deadline for graduating high school seniors to submit their scholarship applications to the St. Andrew Foundation is Tuesday, June 1. The award is available to any St. Andrew youth going on to a community college, college, university, or trade school. The application is available on the church website. If you have questions, contact Foundation President Sonja Ackman, foundation@standrewlutheran.com.

Wednesday Evening Prayer

Midweek Prayer Services continue into the Easter season this Wednesday, May 19, with a new service emphasizing creation’s song of praise to God. Drawing on elements from All Creation Sings, our service combines prayer, song, and meditations from the writings of well-known lovers of creation. Look for links to this worship service at mid-day on Wednesdays in Allison’s e-mail.

Reformation Earth Garden

Recently we’ve planted 47 native shrubs representing 15 varieties that complement the five native trees planted last fall. These shrubs seem small now but will grow quickly; some will be several feet tall in a couple of years. Eventually we will label the shrubs and trees.

Our work now is to design and add a temporary irrigation system to keep the trees and shrubs watered for the next two summers. Watering now is manual.

We’ve scraped the location of a future path that enters the garden from the sidewalk and invite you to look at our new plantings. Alongside the path you’ll see a number of small shrubs. The path proceeds around the cedar tree and then around an open area, the site of a planned pollinator meadow filled with native perennials and annual flowers and grasses; we plan installation of those flowering plants this fall and spring.

Eric Luttrell

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come

Jane Kenyon, born in Ann Arbor, MI, in 1947, is the granddaughter of a Methodist preacher. Her spirituality is reflected in her poetry.

Soil Garden Survey

For the past two years, St. Andrew’s Community Carbon Yard Science team has been exploring gardening strategies that we can adopt to improve the environment. We want to know if the people of St. Andrew have been developing soil gardens as a means to store carbon in the soil, thus reducing carbon in the atmosphere.

Even if you’ve never before heard the term “soil garden,” you may already have created one. A soil garden requires three essential elements:

· a thick layer of organic material on your bed with consistent regular additions of the organic matter,

· consistent moisture during the warm months, either by regular watering of your soil garden or initially covering your soil garden with at least three inches of compost and/or mulch, and

· organic material in direct contact with the soil. In other words, no landscape cloth or plastic can separate the organic material from the soil. You may use paper or cardboard on top of the soil to reduce weeds.

A soil garden can be established by simply changing how one or more of your existing beds is managed (for example, shrub beds, tree and shrub beds, perennial beds, perennial and shrub beds, etc.) by regularly adding compost and/or mulch to those beds. Perhaps the easiest bed to convert to a soil garden is a perennial flower garden. All that is needed is to add about an inch of compost annually when the flowers are dormant. Your plants will grow up through the compost, which feeds the millions of creatures living in the soil and delivers nutrients to your plants.

If you have any garden beds that meet this definition. we want to know. Please go this link to complete the survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PVPBBNR.

Thank you.

Carol Harker, Eric Luttrell, LuAnn Staul, and
the Community Carbon Yard Science Team

Celebrating Juneteenth and the Ending of Slavery

What’s special about June 19^th?

June 19^th, also known as Juneteenth, is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that enslaved people were now free. For black people trying to establish a new status, annual celebrations of Juneteenth were times for reassuring one another, for praying, and for gathering remaining family members. Juneteenth became an official state holiday in Texas in 1980 and in Oregon last month.

This Juneteenth at 10:00 am, the Oregon Remembrance Project (https://www.oregonremembrance.com/) will be installing a historical marker in Coos Bay remembering the story of the only documented lynching in Oregon, that of Alonzo Tucker in 1902. The St. Andrew Reckoning with Racism cohort invites you to participate in person or via Zoom at 10:00 am on June 19^th. [Details to follow.] We hope to find reconciliation and communal healing through a sober reflection on history.

In Need of Prayers…

If you know someone in need of prayers, please contact the church office by phone at 503-646-0629 or email office@standrewlutheran.com Tuesday-Friday, prayerchain@standrewlutheran.com Saturday-Monday.

Family and friends of Marvel Lund	Peace and God’s comfort at her death	Staff
Family and friends of Gale Roy Williams (brother)	Peace and God’s comfort at his death	Claris & Corky Poppert
Family and friends of Jody Podolske	Peace and God’s comfort at her death	Staff
Carol Grover (sister)	Peaceful passing	Nan Thompson
Deborah Townsend (mother)	Peaceful passing	Holly Bishop-Perdue
Mira Nieman	Accurate diagnosis and effective treatment	Staff
Jan Morrell	Healing and Recovery	Amy Harker
Bernie Doering (friend)	Healing and recovery	Jennifer Hooson
Madeleine (granddaughter)	Continued strength through increased chemo treatment	Mary Smith
Everyone affected by COVID-19	Strength and support	Staff
Those facing ongoing illness or distress	Assurance of God’s presence Tandy Brooks, Dave Bumgardner, Vic Claar, Ian MacDonald, Hugh Mason, Brian McKiernan, Ed Pacey, Corky Poppert, Jolie Reyna, Shane Throckmorton, Gary Tubbs	Staff
Bishop Elizabeth Eaton	Wisdom and discernment	Staff
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America	Blessings on our ministry	Staff
Taiwan Lutheran Church	Strength and wisdom	Staff
Pilgrim Lutheran Church (Portland, OR) Resurrection Lutheran Church (Portland, OR)	Serving with us in the Oregon Synod	Staff
Masjid Omar Farooq (Portland, OR)	Blessings on our interfaith partners	Staff
Individual friends and loved ones in need of prayer	Whatever they most need; say their names in your heart or aloud	Everyone

Filling the Food Barrel

Things are beginning to return to something nearer normal. We learned earlier this week that St. Matthew Lutheran Church is once again accepting packaged and canned food for its food bank. Now that St. Andrew’s doors are unlocked during office hours, feel free to donate non-perishable food to the food barrel in the Narthex. We are resuming deliveries to St. Matt’s and know that there are many hungry people who will benefit from our gifts.

Camp Lutherwood Is Hiring

June 23-August 17; Starting Salary: $2,890 for the Summer
Deepen your faith and sense of adventure while growing personally and professionally. Visit Camp Lutherwood online to learn more: www.lutherwoodoregon.org/employment. If you have questions, please contact the camp office for more information. E-mail jobs@lutherwoodoregon.org or call 541-998-6444.

Natives In Bloom

Don Nearhood walks through the woods at St. Andrew frequently and he took this photo of one of our native honeysuckles (Lonicera ciliosa) one day earlier this week.

Another native  plant blooming on church property right now is the elegant groundcover fringecup (Tellima grandiflora), which flourishes in moist shady locations. It spreads by seed rather than runners and is not invasive.

Preparing for Sunday, May 30

Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8
Gospel: John 3:1-17

Go to the “Preparing for Worship” webpage for the bulletins, the complete Lectionary, and more.

Highlights for the Week

Go to the complete online church calendar for the most up-to-date information.

Sunday, May 23

8:30 am	Livestream Worship with Communion	YouTube
9:30 am	Virtual Coffee Time	Zoom
10:00 am	Special Congregational Meeting: Declaring St. Andrew a Sanctuary Congregation	Zoom
11:00 am	Zoom Worship with Communion	Zoom
12:00 pm	Virtual Coffee Time	Zoom

Tuesday, May 25

7:30 am	Men’s Breakfast Group	St. Andrew Room
10:00 am	T’ai Chi	Garden Patio of former Orchards in Petercort Shopping Center
10:00 am	Earth Care Teacher Meeting	Library
12:15 pm	Community Carbon Leadership Meeting	Picnic Table by Community Garden

Wednesday, May 26 – Weekly News submissions due by 4:00 pm

6:30 pm	Informal Gathering Time	Zoom
7:00 pm	Evening Prayer	Zoom
7:00 pm	High School Youth Game Night	Zoom
7:30 pm	Centering Prayer	Zoom

Thursday, May 27

12:00 pm	Virtual Team Ministry Meeting	Zoom
7:00 pm	IT Meeting	Offsite

Friday, May 28

10:00 am

T’ai Chi

Garden Patio of former Orchards in Petercort Shopping Center

Sunday, May 30

8:30 am	Livestream Worship with Communion	YouTube
9:30 am	Virtual Coffee Time	Zoom
10:00 am	Tribute to Trom	Zoom
11:00 am	Zoom Worship with Communion	Zoom
12:00 pm	Virtual Coffee Time	Zoom

Connecting to Worship

Ways to Give: Thank you for supporting our ministries!