Lighted Tower Newsletter

The Lighted Tower

Church Phone: (203) 235-1389

Church E-mail: secretary@centerchurchmeriden.org

Church Website: www.centerchurchmeriden.org

June is a month of transitions. The school year ends: college students come home, perhaps;

graduated high school seniors look forward to what comes next – college, the military, a trade,

married life, whatever it may be. On Friday, June 20 the summer solstice arrives on the

longest day of the year. Throw in vacations, days at the beach, regular lawn mowing, and

constant care of the garden, then the time of leisure we are expecting becomes as busy as the

“regular” hectic everyday life we thought we were beyond. Such is life.

For the church, the season of Eastertide ends on June 7, and the longest liturgical season of

the church year begins with Pentecost. On the 50 th day after Easter, the Church observes the

feast and memorial of the gift of the Holy Spirit by which the Church was established (Acts 2:1-

31). It is also one of the English-language names for the Jewish holiday of Shavuot (see the

footnote below about this Jewish holiday).

The season of Pentecost, then, is the season of the Holy Spirit, and the season of the Church.

The vitality, the mission, the unity, and the holiness of the Church are the gifts of the Spirit to

the community of believers. In 2025, we experience the focus of our worship on the life of faith

in Jesus Christ for 25 weeks. June 15 marks Trinity Sunday. June 29, the fifth Sunday of the

month, rather than preaching a traditional sermon, I will receive from you questions for which

you would like my thoughts. The queries may be biblical, theological, spiritual, or historical.

We will provide a place in the June bulletins for you to write your questions and then place

them in the collection plates. I will attempt to give short responses: but sometimes a big

question deserves a big answer. In that case, I will save such a question for a full Sunday

sermon.

So put on your thinking/feeling caps. I am curious to see what you might ask. – Pastor Kent

Shavuot, a Jewish holiday, is one of the biblically ordained Three Pilgrimage Festivals. It occurs on

the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan. In this 21st century, it may fall anywhere between May 15

and June 14 on the Gregorian calendar. This year it is on June 2 nd .

In the Hebrew Bible, Shavuot marked the wheat harvest in the Land of Israel (Exodus 34:22). Rabbinic

tradition teaches that Shavuot also marks the revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses and

the Israelites at Mount Sinai, which Orthodox Judaism tradition date-places at 1312 BCE.

The word Shavuot means "weeks" in Hebrew. The date marks the end of the Counting of the Omer.

and is directly linked to that of Passover; the Torah mandates the 7-week Counting of the Omer,

beginning on the second day of Passover, to be immediately followed by Shavuot. This counting of

days and weeks is understood to express anticipation and desire for the giving of the Torah. On

Passover, the people of Israel were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot, they were

given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God. Shavuot is sometimes referred to as

Pentecost (Koine Greek Πεντηκοστή, Latin Pentecostē meaning “Fiftieth”) due to its timing fifty days

after the first day of Passover. But it is not the same celebration as the Christian Pentecost or Whitsun,

which comes fifty days after Easter. That said, the two festivals are related, as the first Day of

Pentecost, as told in the Acts of the Apostles, is said to have happened on Shavuot.

In Israel it is a one-day public holiday; in some countries it is two days. [adapted from Wikipedia]

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

*IMPORTANT* Youth Sunday and a Church Lunch to celebrate our Youth will be

held on Sunday, June 8 th at the Church. This is a change to our usual Youth Sunday

and picnic, due to it falling on Pentecost Sunday. 

The Youth will be leading the worship service at 10:00 am (with Pastor Kent giving the

sermon). A Church Lunch to celebrate our Youth will immediately follow the service

downstairs in Fellowship Hall. The CE Committee will

provide the lunch food, drinks and a cake for dessert.

Please bring a dessert to share with others. Candy Bar Bingo

and other games will be played! The Youth are excited to share

their talents with you.

We hope that everyone can attend!!

MISSIONS

Thank you for your generous giving through your pledges of support to our

church’s Missions. The Mission Committee continues to provide ongoing valuable

assistance to several community and global charities.

First, we are giving Food Share at least $100.00 a month especially in response to seeing

that one out of six children are food insecure and that one out of ten adults are food

insecure as well. Food Share is not getting the assistance (especially the federal support)

that they have counted on over the years and so they need all the help that we can give

them.

We are also assisting several organizations such as: American Red Cross, American

Cancer Society, and Seafarers International.

We sent money to Dan and Linda Hatch and the Hatch family to support the Alzheimer’s

Association. The family is riding in The Ride to End ALZ New England, on June 14th.

Their team name is Team Be Good and we from Center Church are sponsoring them in

this great endeavor. This is a “metric century” (i.e., 62 miles) bicycling on roads of

northeastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire and we wish the Hatch family

well in this cause.

Please remember we are still collecting non-perishable food for the Little Food Pantry

down the hill at the Meriden Church of Christ. Also, we are continuing to collect items

for babies for BirthRight.

Greetings and News from the Diaconate

Pentecost Sunday is June 8, Pastor Kent and the Youth will be planning and doing the

worship service together. A luncheon in Fellowship Hall will be held afterwards.

Summer worship services will continue to be on Sundays at the 10AM hour. Combined

services with First Church have not been scheduled as of this time.

The Adult Bible Study led by Pastor Kent is going well. These are held on Thursdays at

11AM in the Federal Room. There is also a Zoom link for those who wish to participate

online from home. Contact Pastor Kent if you would like the link.

Some of the deacons decluttered and reorganized the Deacons closet and the Sacristy.

There were years and years of stuff which had accumulated there. Now it will be much

easier to find those things that are needed for worship services across the various church

seasons.

The Care Team continues to pray for good health, recovery and comfort to Judy Karle

(knee surgery), Colleen Stack (broken arm), Nancy Uryase, Joan Halla, and Dan & Linda

Hatch. In-home visits were made to Dan & Linda Hatch and to Nancy Uryase.

Is there someone who could use support from the Care team? Please let Joan Gordon or

Susan Trella or Karen Krick know.

The next meeting of the Deacons is Sunday June 1.

Thank you to Deacon Frank Covey for providing communion bread and preparing

communion every month. The June servers will be Chris Tabor and Diane Stolting.

Please see a deacon if you have items to discuss.

Peace to all.

From your Deacons:

Susan Trella, Chris Tabor, Frank Covey, Maggie Schillberg, Diane Stolting, Mary Zysk

COME TO DINNER - THURSDAY, MAY 8 th

All members and friends of Center Church are invited to come together for an evening of

fun and fellowship at 6:00 on Thursday evening, June 19 th . The date is a little unusual

in that it is the 3 rd Thursday of the month, whereas our dinners are usually on the 2 nd

Thursday. Oh, well. Vive le change!

Birthdays this month of June are being celebrated by

Ardene Courchesne, Pam Gorman and Tom Schillberg,

and for our dining location this month they have selected

Close Harbour Seafood Restaurant at 959 Meriden-

Waterbury Turnpike in Southington. It’s right by the old

Southington Drive-In, so I guess that if you wanna go see

a movie after dinner, the opportunity could be there.

If you are planning to come, or if you would like to join us for the first time, please

contact Ardene Courchesne at 203-631-7307 or ardene.courchesne@yahoo.com, as she is

making the reservations. This group, informally referred to as the “Tri-C”, meets once a

month on the second Thursday of each month.

TRUSTEES NOTES

As the Spring the season speeds by and we are practically into Summer already, just a

couple of things you might be seeing around the neighborhood. First, the lawns are now

being taken care of by Alpine Landscaping, which is the same contractor who handles

our snow removal in the winter. We are seeing definite improvement in regularity of

service as opposed to the two previous contractors we formerly had over the past few

years.

The change that you will see shortly is that in the downstairs retail space, which was rented for the past several years to the Love You

More boutique (which went out of business last Fall), a new business is soon to open: a

bakery. La Tia Bakery is in the process of getting their shop set up and, in the not too

distant future, we will be enjoying the aromas of breads, pastries and other baked stuffs in

the air.

It's rental income from the downstairs commercial tenant that really makes it possible to

provide an affordable rent (a rare thing to find in Meriden) for our little Dot’s Place

family.

REMEMBER WHEN

In this issue of The Lighted Tower we present to you this invitation:

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE XIII SCAVENGER HUNT

Some churches have a veritable plethora of plaques commemorating members of their congregation, usually financial contributors to their buildings.  Sometimes such a tribute piece is simply an “in memory of” artifact.  Over the 195-year history of our current and historic building, the oldest church building in Meriden (built in 1830), for our covenant community here at Center Congregational Church this custom of plaquing has simply not been a tradition.  Just not our thing.

However, that is not to say that such things do not exist.  For example, if you are upstairs in the church, there can be found memorializations of the following members of the congregation from over the history of this church:

Reverend Alfred Henry Hall

Aksel E. Hansen, Jr.

Miss Martha Hansen

Nathan Greenbacker.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find upstairs in the church all four of the plaques that honor these four individuals and to report your discoveries to Joan Gordon in the church office.

There will be a prize awaiting the first person who gives Joan the correct findings.

Good luck in your quest!