Good Shepherd Weekly Update, November 19, 2020

What’s Happening at Good Shepherd This Week

Do you have Room at your Table?  As Thanksgiving rolls around this year, many people are finding themselves more alone than ever before.

If you have room at your table and are willing to host an extra guest or two, please contact the office by email or phone over the next few days and we’ll try to connect you.  If you’d like to host, but can’t afford to put together a meal, please let us know at gs.binghamton@gmail.com or leave a message at 607-723-8032 as Good Shepherd can help.

Likewise, if you have nowhere to have dinner this year, but would like to gather with others to observe the day, please also contact the office.  We will be happy to connect you with a family that has an extra seat or two.

Both Youth Group and Catechesis will not be meeting for the next two weeks.  They will resume meeting on December 6^th.

Upcoming Schedule Changes All Bible Studies are cancelled for the week of November 22-29 and will resume during the following week.

Zoom Mission Group There has been some interest expressed in putting together a mission group that meets by zoom for those that cannot attend an in-person mission group.  If you would be interested in joining, please contact Jonathan Groves for more information.

Morning Prayer Good Shepherd will be having a Zoom meeting for morning prayer during Advent.  The service will be held online at 7am Monday through Friday.  If you’d like to take a look at what a morning prayer service looks like, please visit dailyoffice2019.com.  The site should open to the proper service for the day and time that you access the information.  If you’re accessing it in the evening, you’ll need to click ‘morning prayer’ to get to the correct liturgy, but the readings are automatically updated daily, making this a really simple way to access morning prayer (or any of the daily office liturgy).  This is the tool that Good Shepherd will be using for the entire Advent season, so familiarizing yourself with the technology in advance would be a great way to start.  There is also an app, available on the Apple store called The Daily Office, created by Benjamin Locher.  This service is by invite only, so please look for an email invitation in your inbox in the coming week.

Catching Up…

Last Sunday’s Sermon Did you miss last week’s sermon?  You can catch it here.  Last week, Matt preached on John 17:14-19.

Christian Education If you missed Christian Ed last Sunday, you can watch it here.  Matt continued the current teaching series entitled Controversies of the Apostolic Age.  In part 11 we studied Jesus’ words to the seven churches in Revelation 3.

Tuesday Morning Bible Study This Tuesday morning we continued our study of the minor prophets in the book of Hosea in chapter 4 and will, hopefully, move on to chapter 5. In chapter 5, God, through Hosea, confronts Israel regarding her syncretism. They have blended together the worship of other gods and use of human made images with the worship of YHWH, setting him among the gods as if he were like them. The church in our day does the same, taking the gods of our day, sex, money, success, assuming that God blesses our misuse of them. And yet, the overarching message of Hosea is that God, despite our infidelity, is always faithful. He purchases his bride back and cleanses her because his property is always to have mercy.

You can read You can read Hosea 4&5 here.  If you missed the Tuesday morning study, you can find it here.

Thursday Evening Bible Study This Thursday evening, bible study was cancelled.  We will resume our study of Ecclesiastes on December 3.

Men’s Breakfast and Bible Study is currently studying the book of Matthew.

Sunday Morning Worship and Christian Education

Both the 8am Service and the 10:30 service are currently being held in person at Good Shepherd each Sunday.

The 8am service is a mandatory masking service where all of the maximum guidelines are being observed.  If you are high risk, or at all nervous to be in social gatherings, this is the service that is the ‘safest’. The 8am service is not currently being live-streamed.

The 10:30 service is available to experience online as well as in person at Good Shepherd.  The livestream can be accessed at this link.  The stream will begin on Sunday starting at 10:20am but the service will not start until 10:30am.  If you don’t have a Facebook account, you will still be able to view all of the services, classes and studies.

This service is currently observing ‘restaurant style’ masking guidelines.  We ask that if you come into the building for the service that you wear a mask (unless you are unable due to health reasons) until you get to your seat, sit in family groupings, and practice social distancing of at least six feet between your family and the next grouping. Once you are seated, you are free to remove your mask.  Masks must be worn anytime you are standing or moving around in the sanctuary.  Moving forward, communion will only be distributed in the sanctuary.

You can download the bulletin, including the scripture readings here.  One of the joys of having a fully digital bulletin is that we are free to use color!  You’ll find that the artwork and many of the directions are in full color.  You’ll also notice that there are links in the offertory section to take you out to two different means of giving electronically.  If you would like to send your tithe digitally, these are the best ways to do so. You can still send your tithe in by traditional mail as well.

Christian Education begins at 9:15am and will continue to be live-streamed, however the class is open to the public with the same guidelines as the 10:30 service.  It will be will be available at this link.  We’ve finished the Controversies of the Apostolic Age series. You can watch all of the classes here. This Sunday we will have a Q and A session so please send any questions to lambeth98@gmail.com.