Lent luncheons to be held at Grace United Methodist Church - Record Herald

Lent luncheons to be held at Grace United Methodist Church - Record Herald
Athol Orange Baptist Church to hold installation service for Pastor Theriault - Athol Daily News
First service at Steeple Fellowship Church draws large crowd - Athol Daily News
Central tries Dinner Church | News - news-herald.net

Posted: 05 Feb 2020 11:13 AM PST

The Grace United Methodist Church tradition continues. First hosted in 1970, the tradition of a hot lunch and food for thought from a different local pastor each week for six weeks of Lent begins on Thursday, Feb. 27.

Baked spaghetti will be served along with tossed salad, garlic bread and fresh-baked "church mouse cake." The welcome and message will be delivered by Rev. Tina Fox, senior pastor at Grace UMC. The theme for all six messages is "Jesus' Words of Life."

Other pastors, who will be participating in later luncheons, will be Rev. Jay Lucas, Rev. Dr. Calvin Alston, Rev. Gray Marshall, Rev. Dr. Derek Russell and Rev. Jamie Darling.

The meal is served promptly at noon in Fellowship Hall of Grace United Methodist Church at 301 E Market St. in Washington C.H. Each week, the speaker will end before 1 p.m. so diners can return to work or continue their day's activities. Cost of each meal remains at $8 per person and includes a main dish, side and/or salad, bread, beverage and homemade dessert. The ladies and men of Grace Church are pleased to offer this as a ministry to our community. Any proceeds are used for local mission projects.

Reservations are required by calling the church office at 740-335-0460 by the Friday prior to each luncheon. Please call between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., or leave a message. Payment to "Women of Grace UMW" can be made for all six meals, or just one meal at a time, at the door.

Come a little early, as the meal is served promptly at noon. Grace United Methodist Church is located downtown on the corner of North and Market streets, just across from the Washington Fire Department building. Please enter the church side door, off the alley beside the parking lot on Market Street. Go up the stairs to Fellowship Hall for lunch. Elevator access is available by coming in the handicap accessible front door on Market Street.

The whole community is invited to join this tradition — a very special way to focus on the true spirit of Lent, while enjoying fellowship and good food with many of your friends and neighbors.

Athol Orange Baptist Church to hold installation service for Pastor Theriault - Athol Daily News

Posted: 05 Feb 2020 06:46 PM PST

Published: 2/5/2020 9:42:57 PM

ATHOL — The Athol Orange Baptist Church will have an installation service for Pastor Don Theriault on Sunday, Feb. 9 at 4 p.m.

The congregation of the church, located at the corner of Church and Walnut Street, recently elected Pastor Theriault, the former associate pastor, to the position of senior pastor, following the announcement last year that longtime and much loved Pastor Mark Bariloni, was resigning after 24 years.

Due to family considerations, Pastor Bariloni and his wife, Peggy have relocated to Farnsworth N.H. The official send off for the couple took place July 28 at Tully Lake, in Royalston, where both pastors shared together for the last time in the baptism of three young people.

Following the resignation, a 10-member Pastoral Search Committee was set up to research candidates to fulfill the senior position. The group received valuable support and informational resources from Rev. Timothy Ponzani, district executive minister of the Evangelical organization, "Converge Northeast."

At the completion of the lengthy search process, the committee recommended Pastor Theriault to fill the senior pastor position. Since the July, he has been serving fulltime, filling both pulpit and pastoral needs of the church. On Dec. 15, the congregation, by an overwhelming supportive vote, elected him to the senior pastor position of Athol Orange Baptist Church.

During the interview process Pastor Theriault, who has been a part of the congregation for 11 years, expressed a sincere love for the church family and their strong commitment to missions. He shares a desire to be "the hands and feet of Jesus, to serve and love people, by glorifying God to those in the community."

His hallmark qualities continue to be his great love for the Word of God, his enthusiasm, his strong commitment to family, as well as a sincere desire to reach out further to serve and share God's love to those who have been placed among us, from all varied ages and walks of life.

Pastor Theriault was raised in Royalston as one of seven children and moved in his teen years to Gardner, where he met the love of his life, April. Following a long courtship they married, and together share three daughters, Samantha, Katie and Francesca. The family is a strong support for him as he responds to the spiritual calling on his life.

He earned a bachelor's degree in religion from Liberty University, and was elected associate pastor of Athol Orange Baptist Church in April 2018. He credits Pastor Bariloni for being a very positive mentor in his life who taught him much during the time they served together. The family resides in Athol.

In much earlier years, they attended Bethany Lutheran Church in Orange, where both he and April served in various ministries.

The Feb. 9 service will be held with participation from Elders William Nash and James Lake, Diaconate Chairman, Steve Raymond, Church member Dominic Maillet, and Athol Orange Baptist Church Worship Team members, Carol Cummings, David Welenc and Allison Graichen.

Brief words will be shared from Rev. Ted Boren of North New Salem Congregational Church, Pastor Richard Truesdell, of North Quabbin Bible Church, Rev. Christopher Brown of First Baptist Church of Westminster, and Rev. Timothy Ponzani, of Converge Northeast.

A reception in Fellowship Hall will follow with community members cordially invited to attend and meet Pastor Theriault and his family.

First service at Steeple Fellowship Church draws large crowd - Athol Daily News

Posted: 14 Jan 2020 12:00 AM PST

ORANGE — If anyone showed up, it would be a success.

More than 100 did.

On Sunday Steeple Fellowship church held its first service on the third floor of the Orange Innovation Center on West Main Street.

The church is founded by John Hicks Mackenzie, 30, of Orange, a quadriplegic man who says his faith deepened after he became paralyzed in 2006 as the passenger in a car that crashed in a street racing accident.

"I always said I would be tickled if we got just three people," said Mackenzie, who is also the church's pastor. "Well, we got more than that. We've exceeded expectations."

Behind him, dozens of people trickled into the service Sunday evening. Many stopped to greet him.

"I am so, so blessed. It's beyond words. I am really, really blessed," Mackenzie said.

Steeple Fellowship is a scripture-based, protestant, Christian church heavily influenced by churches of the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, including the North New Salem Congregational Church, which Mackenzie previously attended.

Sunday's service was a mixture of song and sermon, with passages frequently read or cited from the Bible. The service started off with three songs played on guitar with singing from Mackenzie's mother and a few of the teenagers he works with at Revive Youth Ministry, a group that meets every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at 133 South Main St., where teens eat, play games and hear and share Christian messages.

Mackenzie's mother, Johnna Mackenzie, gave a welcome message to the crowd, who applauded after the service officially kicked off.

"I'm so overwhelmed everyone came out to support John," she said.

According to John Hicks Mackenzie, Steeple Fellowship will meet every second Sunday of the month at the same place and at the same time. Eventually, the plan is to increase to weekly services, Mackenzie said.

"It is encouraging to see everyone here tonight, not like it's expected," said Aaron Thibeault, Mackenzie's friend. "We are Christians."

Thibeault said Steeple Fellowship was not started with the intent to draw people away from other churches, and he said he and Mackenzie hope the congregation will have members who regularly attend other churches as well as people who have no established church to go to and "unbelievers."

"This fellowship has not been started as to tear down anything God has established here," Thibeault said, adding he hopes attendees will "love God more" at their own churches after joining Steeple Fellowship.

"There is so much excitement here tonight and so much joy," he said. "We're here tonight in Orange with the book open."

Mackenzie, who grew up in Orange in a Christian family, says he was particularly spiritually influenced by his mother and grandmother, Tillie Hicks.

As a teenager, however, Mackenzie says he drifted away from God as a teenager and, at age 17, he was in a car accident while street racing another car with his friends. He was a passenger and found himself in the hospital severely injured and without the use of four limbs, a C6 quadriplegic.

According to Mackenzie, his struggles since 2006 are part of why his faith is so strong.

He has spent countless days and nights in hospitals, has had a multitude of surgeries and says he "never felt God's presence stronger" than when he was in the hospital after having a staph infection after breaking his elbow in 2017.

During his sermon, Mackenzie talked about personal struggles relative to Christian faith.

"Literally every person in this room has gone through something. Every person has been overwhelmed by the circumstances in their life," Mackenzie said. "It's been through the hardest moments in life that I've felt the presence of God."

"The trials and tribulations of life, they can be conquered by belief in Jesus Christ," he added.

Mackenzie also spoke to what he sees as the "struggle" of being a Christian in the modern era.

"If we are truly living out authentic, biblical Christianity, it is counter-cultural," he said. "We are called to live by a different standard, and it often goes against the grain of the world."

Mackenzie's theology, like most of Christianity, includes the "promise" of heaven for believers. He said his wounds, and all earthly things — bodies, sickness, death — will not matter in the afterlife.

But, while the tone was serious, Mackenzie's sermon was not without some lighthearted humor.

"We stand — or, in my case, sit — on the resurrection side of the tomb," he said.

Mackenzie has been involved in youth ministry for the past decade, running a ministry group that meets at his home and having attended and preached at a number of churches in Massachusetts, including in Orange, New Salem and Greenfield. He has a degree from Christian Ministries from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.

Central tries Dinner Church | News - news-herald.net

Posted: 05 Feb 2020 05:00 AM PST

Central United Methodist Church is trying a new approach to hopefully one day reach people who don't know Christ.

The Lenoir City church is in its second week of four trial runs with Dinner Church.

"Dinner Church is something that has been going on for about 10 years within really the West Coast and UK and England as a way for churches kind of getting back to the original teachings of Jesus and trying to make it simple as possible," the Rev. Scott Layer, Central UMC pastor, said. "Kind of a fellowship meal, prayer, music sharing, and this was something that a church in east Knoxville, a Methodist church in east Knoxville, is doing. We had a team to go out about a month ago to see what that was like and we thought we would try it here."

Visitors gradually Jan. 29 made their way through a food line and sat at a table in the sanctuary before Layer gave a brief devotion. Live music was provided by Lee McCurry.

"From my reading and research, it seems like each one is really different," Layer said. "Some emphasize kind of local music like a coffee house, some do sculpture every night. I know we're going to have tonight Lee McCurry who is one of our band members. He's going to share of his original music and play sort of like a coffee house. And then some of the other ones we're going to have kind of a piano deal with music and then a violinist and just try to experiment with something that would help be a different way of doing church."

While a regular church service typically includes a 20- to 30-minute sermon, Dinner Church focuses on interaction with peers.

Layer asked visitors last week to use crayons on a paper-covered table and describe church using words from the Bible.

"It's also going to be interactional," he said. "I'm going to myself and our director of family ministry, Evan Nester, we're each going to take turns by different weeks. ... Hopefully, it'll be a little more memorable and a little bit more engaging. A lot of times in these types of dinner churches it's really actually more of a conversation than it is kind of a proclamation."

Nester said the service also emphasizes fellowship.

"It's an opportunity to foster community and have people sit down next to people they don't know and build relationships," he said. "For me at the end of the day I think the only way we're truly going to change lives is by truly investing in their life and I think that's done by getting to know people and know where they're at and what they really need and I think this will help with that."

While Nester hopes the approach will blossom into a new effort for the congregation, the future remains uncertain.

"The big thing is going where the biggest need is," he said. "Looking at the community and going to places that make it easier for them to be a part of Dinner Church. So if we do it these next four weeks and we feel like — and the thing is, too, this is all church people doing it the next four weeks. So the reality of it is, in my opinion, I think it's going to look a lot different if we do go forward with it. The hope is through this we hope to get people who would be interested in kind of being like a launch team I think to take it somewhere out into the community away from here."

Layer stressed Dinner Church isn't about bringing more people to Central but is a simple way for people to better know Christ.

"Sometimes a steeple intimidates people, and I think going out deeper into the community and it being in something like a school building, the War Memorial Building or something like that might be more attractive," Nester said. "We're trying to do church in a way that's in a different way."

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