September At The Table!
September has been a beautiful time of doing life together as a church family. This has included everything from eating wings and watching football at Uncle Bears, moving beds and refrigerators, attending high school band performances, going to district women’s conference together and of course breaking bread, prayer, worship, and the eucharist each Sunday evening. We have shared grief and joy and united on the things that matter most.
Early in the month we heard from guest speaker, Tori Graham, during our Sunday gathering. Tori taught from Galatians 5 which led to a wonderful discussion on not only the fruits of the spirit but on the importance of that metaphor. A fruit is something that grows slowly and becomes sweet in season. This was such an important concept for us to grasp as we continued throughout the month to learn how to follow the Way of Jesus through Paul’s letters to the early Church.
Our circle groups have began to pick up momentum as we gather around a spiritual purpose, such as with our ladies’ prayer circle, and also around shared interests like Thursday night football. If you want to get a taste of what this is all about, join us at Uncle Bears at Recker and Baseline Thursdays at 5:30. We’ll buy you some wings! These kinds of circle groups often serve as a great way to touch base with each other during the week, and to invite others to participate in our community.
Then, on our fifth Sunday of the month we devoted the whole evening to prep work for the New Scent Fundraiser coming up this weekend, October 12, 2024 at Chandler Nazarene. The New Scent Fundraiser itself has been one of those stories that we hope comes to define who we are as Jesus followers at The Table.
How did this start?
Back in May a few of us sat with our Nazarene brothers and sisters at the District Assembly and listened to a woman named Flora from Kenya share her story. Flora had been going through the routines of ministry and taking care of the basic spiritual needs of those she was given responsibility for. But horrible things were happening to women all around her. Domestic violence towards wives, sisters, and daughters. Girls trafficked by their own family members, sometimes in order to pay for basic needs such as food and school fees. She finally couldn’t ignore that someone needed to care enough to do something about it. At great personal expense she launched New Scent, a center offering these victims a safe place to stay, receive free education and the counseling they needed to go be world-changers. Our district was challenged to raise the money needed for necessary renovations on the school.
If you’re familiar with who we are, you probably know that the Table is neither a large nor rich congregation. If we were large we wouldn’t be crammed into one living room every Sunday and if we were rich at least one of us would have a living room where we didn’t have to mean “crammed” so very literally. But just like Flora we couldn’t unknow these things about these women who God cares about so deeply. Our hearts couldn’t be unbroken for these girls. So we started asking ourselves what we could do with just our five little loaves of bread and two fish.
An idea hatched.
What if we begin making and selling craft items? Between us we had some jewelry supplies, some yarn, some really gifted cookie bakers. But we also had friends. Friends all over the district with their own set of talents who also were wondering what they could do to help Flora and her girls. So, something beautiful took root. A friend at Chandler Church offered to get use of their facilities for a craft fair. A pastor's wife in Surprise offered to bake some of her world-famous sourdough bread, and sewing circles at the Tempe and East Valley church started working on projects. And before we knew it we were swept up into something much bigger than ourselves. Something that reminds us that we’re people of the Kingdom, not just people of East Mesa, or Chandler, or Tempe.
I have to say we have had so much fun together, painting clothes pins for wreaths and baking (and tasting) cookies. We really hope you join us and do some shopping:
Saturday, October 12th, 2024, 10a.m.-2 p.m.
Chandler Nazarene
301 N. Hartford St. Chandler, AZ 85225
Or, regardless, consider helping out Flora’s girls at New Scent, using the link below:
Donate - Arizona Nazarene District (churchcenter.com) and selecting NMI District Project New Scent Centre
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Miss any of our sermons this month? You can check them out on our podcast!
