SAVE THE DATE

Community Meeting and New Year’s Party All in One!
Mark your calendar. Save the date. The Holy Trinity Annual Community Meeting is scheduled for Jan. 27, 2008. The event begins with worship at 10:30 a.m., followed by a potluck lunch and an exciting and inspiring program where we will share and celebrate what God has done through us and among us in 2007, as well as anticipate what new things God is calling us to in 2008.
In addition, this gathering will give us time for fellowship and lively discussion about issues of concern for the entire community: How God is calling us to use our personal and community assets; how we can schedule worship, prayer meetings and Bible studies to better serve our community and our neighbors; and, of course, our 2008 spending plan. Children are invited to participate in the meeting with their families, but childcare will be provided for the very young.

What can I do?
1. Pray, pray, pray. Pray for the life, health, growth and ministry of this community of Jesus’ disciples. Pray that this gathering would be a time of new insight, inspiration and energy for us a participants in God’s mission to love, save and bless the whole world through Jesus Christ.
2. Remember the stories of God’s love and faithfulness in your daily life in times past with thanksgiving; then turn with hope and trust in God’s love and faithfulness for your present. Be ready to share those stories.
3. Be present in this community that day. The church is people. God’s people, called and equipped to be God’s messengers of love and mercy. The church is you.
4. Invite your friends and neighbors to be part of the story that God is creating through this community of faith. Invite your friends and neighbors to be part of our fellowship.
Do I have to be a “member” of Holy Trinity to join the party?
No! Even if you are not what the ELCA has in the past officially called a “member,” please participate in this community gathering. Ours is a community of people who have been called by Jesus Christ into lives of discipleship and gifted by the Holy Spirit for lives of mission in Jesus’ name. If you’re a disciple of Jesus or if you are hearing our Lord’s call and you care about the mission and ministry of this community of disciples, then mark your calendar, save the date and come be part of what God is doing through us. No matter your age or your “status,” this community wants you to use your unique gifts and talents in Jesus name for the sake of the world. You are God’s gift, and we thank God for you.

How can I help?
If you would like to be part of the planning team for this event, you can come to one or both of two special meetings: Jan. 8 at 7:30 p.m. or Jan. 17 at 7:00 p.m.
If you would like to serve by setting up, cleaning up, sharing food, leading and assisting in worship, or even sharing your story, look for a sign up sheet in this newsletter or in the Sunday worship folder, or you can call the church office and volunteer.

From the Pastor

In some editions of Luther's Small Catechism, we can find a simple pattern for beginning and ending our days in prayer and for placing our entire life, in faith, "under the care of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."
In the morning, as soon as you get out of bed, you are to make the sign of the holy cross and say: "Under the care of God the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen." Then, kneeling or standing, say the Apostle's Creed and the Lord's Prayer. ... After singing a hymn, or whatever else may serve your devotion, you are to go to your work joyfully.
The evening blessing is exactly the same, with one exception: Instead of going to work joyfully, we are to go to sleep "quickly and cheerfully."
There is much, much more to the practice of prayer than seeing to it that God gives us the things we think we need so much. Prayer empowers our discipleship. It strengthens our relationship with the God who loves us, who wants to speak with us and who promises to be with us, our God, forever. In prayer, we turn and return to God in love and trust and, in turning, we find our lives transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In the practice of these simple morning and evening prayers, we bracket our waking hours with a very real return to the event in our past where God claimed us for God’s own — our baptism. These simple prayers, then, become powerful confession by which we announce to ourselves and to the world that the old things have passed away and the new is coming to life as Christ is formed in us.
In prayer, in worship around Word and Sacrament and in study, God is forming us, making us into something, something new and wonderful. In prayer, in worship around Word and Sacrament and in study, God joins us to each other through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. I am excited to be part of what God is growing from out of this community. I am excited to see how God is transforming us as we meet for prayer, for worship and for study.
Our new year of ministry for the sake of God's world begins in baptism. It begins anew each day when the Spirit calls us to prayer. It is empowered as pray together, worship together, study together. It is my prayer at the beginning of this year, that more and more of us will carve out time to devote to these three events: prayer, worship and study. So that after kneeling together, we may stand together; after worshipping together, we may go out together from the Lord’s table to share the good news of God’s love that overcomes barriers and connects one to many.
God bless our new year of ministry together.
Pastor Jim

Thank You!

To all who helped at the our winter clean up day.
To Greg Sekula, Martin Mueller and Chris Duhm for putting up the new shed and for those who gave money to purchase the shed.
To all who helped decorate for Advent and Christmas.
To the Jones family for their many hours spent preparing the worship space for each new Sunday and season.
To Scott and the choir for their hard work in preparing to share the Christmas story the way the heavenly hosts remember and share the story – with music and songs.
To Sally Mueller for teaching Sunday School in December and to Nancy Duhm for teaching in January.
To Tina Patti, our parish administrator for her great work this past year and especially for the extra effort she gave during the holiday season.
To all the people of Holy Trinity for their faithfulness and generosity in the past year.

Stewardship Strengthens our Community

Stewardship strengthens our relationship with Jesus, and stewardship strengthens our life together as a community of Jesus’ disciples in ministry together for the sake of the world.
Thank you to all who committed themselves to sharing a portion of the financial gifts God has given them. To date we have received 29 pledges, totalling $70,454.00. For many, this commitment is an increase over last year’s. Thank you for your growing generosity.
Our stewardship isn’t a matter of paying the bills or meeting the budget. God didn’t call us together so we could be faithful customers of PSE&G. God called us together to strengthen our faith and empower our lives of discipleship so that we can be Christ’s body in the world. God called us together to transform our lives so that through us God might transform the world around us.
Our generosity is a fruit of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. A fruit God causes to grow as a gift to the people around us. Our giving is a statement of faith and trust in the God who has promised to provide us with all we need, a statement made in the face of a culture that continually tells that we will never have enough. Our sharing from God’s good gifts is another step of faith as a disciple of Jesus.
As a community, we thank God for each other and for the generosity of every individual member of this body. Thank you.
You can make a financial commitment to this community at any time during the year. Just call the church office or our financial secretary Elfrieda Fenton at (973) 338-6313 to record your pledge.

New Offering Envelopes

The 2008 Offering Envelopes are in. Please pick yours up in the back of the sanctuary. If you haven’t received envelopes in the past and would like to start using them or if you will not be able to pick them up in the next couple of weeks, please call the church office at (973) 667-0256.

Stories to Tell and Gifts to Share

It’s important to hear stories of how God works through people, changing and transforming their lives so that they, in turn, may be a blessing to the people around them. In this letter, Jeff Grieco give thanks for the many people of Holy Trinity through whom God acted.
Greetings as we begin a new church year!
The Tuesday evening study between Holy Trinity Lutheran and Franklin Reformed Church this fall, discussing “RECLAIMING the “C” WORD – Daring to be Church Again” By Kelly A. Fryer brought to mind many memories of the early years following my
September 29, 1968 Confirmation
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church prepared me for “life” in many ways – in relationships and dealing with all types of people with Vacation Bible School and Sunday Church School teachers, parents and children, 8th & 9th grade taking turns leading Opening Worship under the direction of the late Donald Hoch, Sr., decades later became valuable when planning and leading Worship Services at FRC, also from Pastor Berkobin studying the front “seasonal” section of the (1955 publ. Yr.) “Red Hymnal” as well as learning how to use the addressograph in the office (1978-82). On my second job, the office I was in had one and when they found out I was “experienced”, maintaining the sales mailing list was added to my duties!
“Daring to be Hopeful” was the last chapter we concluded with last Tuesday evening. This chapter especially brought to mind people from Holy Trinity’s past: The late Barbara Nordberg, who in August 1968 at VBS gave me a teacher’s guide and had me teach 3 lessons over the two week session; Evelyn Scheppler (one of six people I’ve known to live to 100) my only VBS teach at HTLC in 1965 who shared her faith and welcomed new experiences; I remember her calling me when Pastor Rickel asked her to participate in the “washing of the feet” ceremony at a Maundy Thursday Service and how thrilled she was! “Encouragers” long time Sunday School teachers who gave me support, advice and shared their faith – too many to list but I think of Ruth Ibbotson, Ann Tiedemann, Lorraine & Otto Bitten, Henry Ohlandt, Don Hoch and our Superintendent, Harold Kahley. “Great Women of Faith” who shared their favorite Bible verses and hymns, who attend worship and church functions as long as they could: Evelyn, Rosa Hasenzahl,
Else Zimmerer, Betty Zimmermann, Esther Hardie, Pauline Carpenter, Viola Meyer, Anne Kreher, Elizabeth Ratcliffe, Ruth Blair Lynch, and I’m sure you can think of some others. During the fall of 1970, my mother was preparing to be the next secretary at Holy Trinity, as the late Winnie Ohlandt was retiring, I remember several Sundays after church Winnie took me around to groups of “older” longtime members who I would not have met before, and she introduced me (I was only sixteen at the time) to people who we did get to know in future years. So many remained faithful to my mother until her death in June, 1983.
In closing, another Confirmation Day memory is that when the service was over and we waited to go out onto the lawn, the very first person to greet and welcome all twenty two of us was the late John Meyer. He was still substituting in Sunday School at the time and shook each of our hands.
Jeff Grieco

Go ahead, share your stories of how God has been working in your life. Just send them to the office or e-mail them to office.htlcnutley@verizon.net

New Year; New Challenges; New Blessings

This is an excerpt from a letter Bishop Riley sent to ministers in the New Jersey Synod. It’s important to note how God is teaching us again that church is God’s people. Being church is being part of God in action in our world today.
… We are in a very important time in our life and ministry together. The Lutheran Church on this territory has been in membership decline for over three decades. Many of our congregations have been aging in place with little serious attention to evangelical outreach. Over the solid foundation of the Gospel and its imperative to go into the world and preach, teach and baptize, we seem to have created an infrastructre of constitutions and committees, building and endowments, traditionalism and tradions, and a lementing-memory of when-didn’t-work-when.
In an earlier time, the best parts of that infrastructure facilitated our participation in God’s mission. Now, instead of opening doors and windows to the world, our accumulated stuff has more often sealed us into buildings and practices that keep us comfortable on a floor well above the gospel-foundation. It’s time for a visit to the basement.
When our Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson preached at the beginning of last summer’s Churchwide Assembly in Chicago, he called us to decide “whether we were going to be a settled church or a sent church;” a church lodged in its own stuff or a church leaping off of its gospel-foundation into the world. I think we know what it is that we want and need to be and do. When we see examples of the church leaping off of its gospel foundation into mission in the world, the adrenaline begins to flow and the music of mission begins to sing in our hearts and minds and souls. …
The challenge that we have before us is bigger than any program could solve. Our challenge is to change the culture of this church from settled to sent, from pre-disposed existence to reengaged missionary journey. What makes this a particular challenge is that together we have responsibility for this culture change beyond our local ministries. If we can together change the way we approach mission in the wider contect, I believe that we will both strengthen the places where mission is the center and reorient for mission the places where we are struggling to be the church for the sake of the world.
E. Roy Riley, Bishop

Living Sent

MAKING DISCIPLES WHO MAKE DISCIPLES
Redeemer Lutheran Church in Westfield is hosting a workshop for “everyday evangelism” on Saturday, Jan. 19 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.. Are you ready for “mission moments,” those moments God give you to share the truth and love of Jesus Christ with family and friends? Equipping to Share Workshops from Lutheran Hour Ministries are designed to strengthen and encourages believers for outreach. If you are interested in attending this workshop, please contact Pastor Jim by January 10. The cost is $10.

Lent 2008: Prayer Empowers Discipleship

Giving Up Something for Lent
Ash Wednesday (Feb. 6) and the start of the season of Lent comes quickly this year. A lot of us are familiar with the practice of giving up something for the season. It is a discipline that leads us to shake off some of the things that hinder us in our walk with Jesus. Through this practice, we can discover God graciously easing the weight of the burdens of life. From out of this sacrifice, then God grows us in a new way of living. In these weeks, prayerfully consider what God is calling you to let go of this year. What’s weighing you down? What’s getting between you and God? What’s keeping you from living the life God wants you to live? Give it up.

Starting Up Something for Lent
In addition to “giving up” something for Lent, we are encouraged to “take up” something to strengthen our relationship with Jesus, something to empower our discipleship. This is one of our goals as a community of disciples: We seek to empower disciples of Jesus Christ. This Lent, turn to God in prayer. Prayer empowers discipleship. Prayer draws us closer in our walk with God.
On Thursdays in Lent, (starting Feb. 14 … what better Valentine’s Gift than to be together in love of God?) we will get together to practice and reflect on the practice of prayer. In the evening, we will host a Soup and Study with our friends from Franklin Reformed Church. We will do the same study on Thursday afternoon for those who do not wish to go out at night. Guiding our discussion and giving us a means of practicing prayer will be the book Forty Days to Closer Walk with God: The Practice of Centering Prayer, by David J. Muyskens. The book is available through Amazon.com or you can use the sign up sheet in this newsletter and we will order a copy for you.

Schedule for Lent, 2008

Ash Wednesday worship
with imposition of ashes:
11:30 a.m. (with brown bag lunch) and 7:30 p.m.

Thursday Soup and Study
2:00 p.m.: Book Study: Forty Days to Closer Walk with God
6:00 p.m.: Soup Supper
6:45 p.m. – 7:45 p.m.: Book Study

Forty Days to Closer Walk with God
8:00 p.m. – Choir

Annual Reports

Please have your Annual Report information submitted to the church office no later than Sunday, January 6. If possible please e-mail the information to Tina at office.htlcnutley@verizon.net or put on disk. Thank you.

Community Meeting and Potluck January 27, 2008

Please call the office at (973) 667-0256 to sign up for your Food and/or Time & Talents donation.

Strengthening our Hearts and Minds

There are a number of opportunities to gather with other disciples in prayer around scripture in the coming weeks. Please take advantage of one or more of these opportunities to strengthen your relationship with Jesus. Call the office to register (973) 667-0256. Bring your friends.

Sunday lunch study (Jan. 13 and on): Theology of the cross.
It is one of the most distinctive themes and contributions of Lutheran theology. The theology of the cross refers not just to the events of Good Friday. It also refers to a cross-centered approach to talking about God that stands in opposition to a “theology of glory” that is focused on the power and majesty of God apart from God’s action in history. We will meet Sundays after worship starting January 13.

Please call the office to order copies of the books, at (973) 667-0256.

Thursdays in Lent (Feb. 14 and on): Prayer Empowers Discipleship
A pattern for prayer and discipleship throughout Lent. Guiding our discussion and giving us a means of practicing prayer will be the book Forty Days to Closer Walk with God: The Practice of Centering Prayer, by David J. Muyskens. Please call the office to sign up, at (973) 667-0256.

Tuesday Night @ 8 p.m.: Reading the Gospel of Matthew
We will get together to read the entire Gospel of Matthew and
then discuss each Sunday’s Gospel lesson.

New Morning Bible Study

We are planning to start an early-morning, before-work Bible study in the new year. We are talking about meeting from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. at a local diner or coffee shop. If you are interested in taking part in this study, please call Martin Mueller at (973) 667-1049 or Pastor Jim at the church office.

New Member Classes

Are you interested in becoming a member of this community? Do you want to simply learn more about what this community of disciples is about and is called to do? Do you want to learn more about being a disciple of Jesus? Then join us for a new member class on Thursday evenings at 7:00 p.m. starting Jan. 3. Please call the office for a sign-up sheet (973) 667-0256.

Note: If you have conflict with Thursday evenings, but you are interested in becoming a member of Holy Trinity, please talk with Pastor Jim.

Three Kings Celebration

Sunday, January 6
10:30 am – 1:30 pm

Worship/Food/Fun
& Gifts For All Children
Save the date
and invite your friends!

"Un-hanging" of the Greens

We will take down and pack away the Christmas decorations on Tuesday, January 8 at 10:30am. Please come out and lend a hand.

We're on a Mission to Fight Hunger!

More than 15 years ago on Super Bowl Sunday, a single youth group was inspired by a simple prayer. They started the Souper Bowl of Caring, a youth-led movement that is now an international event.
Since 1990, the Souper Bowl of Caring has raised more than $33 million for individual charities across the country. It is also turning our nation’s biggest weekend of football into the largest weekend of giving.
Each year, tens of thousands of our nation’s youth, including ours at Holy Trinity, put God’s love into action through the Souper Bowl of Caring. Start saving your change now, and then bring it to church with you on Sunday, February 3, to drop into the soup pot that we will pass during worship. Your donation will go to fight hunger right here in the community.
With your help, more dollars will be raised, more lives will be changed and more young people will experience the joy of serving Christ by serving others. With your help, let’s try to collect $150 this year. Please visit www.souperbowl.org for more information.

Let's Go Devils Fans!

Join friends from Holy Trinity as we attend a Devils game at a huge savings. The Devils take on the Florida Panthers on Friday, January 18, 2008 at 7:00pm at the new Prudential Center in Newark. You will get a $65 ticket for only $35! (Balcony seating (light blue) – for arena map, log onto: newjerseydevils.com) Please make your reservations through Scott Jones at church or at (973) 338-0267. Paid orders must be in by Sunday, January 6 ($35 per ticket, cash or check payable to J. Scott Jones). Family, friends and neighbors are welcome – the more the merrier!

January Birthdays, Anniversaries & Families of the Month

Remember these people and families in our prayers this month.

Birthdays:

Miles Mueller, Phyllis Weber, Peter Franchino, Ken Blair,
Eveln Oberndorf, Chris Siclari, Max Mueller, Nancy Catelli,
Liz Cicci, Richard Bacik

Anniversaries:

Joelle & Matthew Bernhard

Families of the Month:

Jan Strachan, Janet Strachan, Richard, Susan and Sean Ulley,
David Van Houten

In Memoriam

Together we mourn the death of Anita Albert, who passed away on November 28. Our prayers and sympathies continue to be with Nancy and Tony Maguire and their family.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Matt and Joelle (Cicci) Bernhard on the birth of their baby girl.

Directory Updates

We are planning to distribute an updated, non-pictorial Church Directory at the Annual Meeting in January. If you have not previously filled out an updated Family Information Sheet, watch your mailbox for a form and please help us by returning it.