Bay Shore Church - Sermons and News from Bay Shore Community Congregational Church in Belmont Shore, California.

Nearly everyone who watched last Friday’s opening ceremony of the Olympics said “WOW!”  Having 2008 synchronized drummers and another 2008 people inside pop-up boxes and more fireworks than Disneyland uses in a year was boggling to the mind and eye.  We saw world leaders of China, France, Russia and the United States sitting in the stands – albeit looking a little bored until their country’s team made their entrance.  Then there were great smiles, salutes, flag- and hand-waving from both leader and athletes.

I guess the purpose of the Olympics is to promote international sportsmanship.  A side purpose would be to showcase a country – especially its preparedness for such an event.  China has definitely made great moves in hosting this event.  But is it too much to ask for it to somehow bring an element of peace to our troubled world, especially when the lead-ers of nations and so many athletes from around the world are in one place at one time?

Overshadowing the Olympic opening ceremony was the escalating attack on the former Soviet Union region of Georgia by Russia.  I saw the leader of Russia on TV at the Olympics.  Did any behind-the-stage peace-making efforts go on?

Of my remaining instant sermon requests from last fall, I have one that asks, “As Christ represents peace, where did the concept of ‘Christian soldiers’ come from?”  Just last Friday, I read at a memorial service these comforting words of Jesus:  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”  (John 14:27)  Did Jesus mean only inner peace for someone who is mourning, the context in which we most often use that passage?  Surely his attempts to get people to understand each other, especially to understand his teachings, could be construed that Jesus wished people to live together in unity.

I remember that in my pastoral prayer last Sunday I mentioned how often and how long (will it happen in our lifetime?) we have prayed for peace – between Israel and Palestine, between our country and Iraq and Afghanistan, now between Russia and Georgia.  I won’t question whether God hears our prayers.  I guess I would just ask are the people who can make a difference in making peace happen listening – to our prayers, and to one another?

Charlie Ensley
Senior Minister

…is the theme for summer camp 2008 at Pilgrim Pines Camp.  Each day, at morning sing, campers were introduced to the theme of the day, using Christian scriptures with an analogous verse from one of the world religions to demonstrate that we, too, with our own two hands, can make a difference in the world.  I know that among the 22 minis (1^st-3^rd graders) I worked with, they could think of ways they could help others, thus making a difference.  (Although one five-year-old was anxious to draw flames, so on his picture, he said he could help his mom if the house was on fire!)

 Eleven campers from Bay Shore Church, with a couple of their friends, were at camp week 3, July 13-19.  I was there in my usual role as mini cabin counselor, along with Max Vilander, one of my former minis, now a senior at Wilson High, who was my cabin co-counselor.  Taylor Tschudin was a counselor with the juniors, and Michael Elliott is on the camp staff all summer as a “floater”—a different group each week.  Campers and counselors combined totaled 208 for the week.

 I am very proud of the leadership Bay Shore has grown and provided to the camp in this and past years.  Kirsten Sumpter and Christie Pearce were cabin counselors week 1; Julia Light will do the same week 5.  Many of these counselors and directors began as minis, and continue in their dedication to the values at camp.  We also have additional campers who are attending weeks 5 and 6.

For the first time this year, camp is going for six weeks, incorporating counselors-in-training into week 1.  Last year, camp had 650 campers.  The goal for 2008 was 750. 

At Annual Gathering of the Southern California Nevada Conference in June, it was announced that it was over 800, and last week, I found it is now 900!  Much credit goes to executive director Phil Geissal and program director topher nichols, who both traveled extensively throughout the Conference visiting churches this spring to encourage enrollment and participation.

 Our church and Conference is fortunate to have Pilgrim Pines exist and expand since 1944.  For 40 years, Pinesters (mentally challenged adults) have been included.  Many of you attended, and/or sent children and grandchildren.  Thus, the tradition continues.

Over the past month, you as a congregation have had your opinions solicited several times.  The Associate Minister Search Committee has had questionnaires inserted in the worship bulletin, posted online, distributed at fellowship events, and used in focus groups.  The purpose is to gather a fair sampling of opinions from our congregation so the committee can put together the all-important church profile which will serve as an introduction to potential candidates for the position of associate minister here.  Our committee is not permitted to receive applicants’ profiles until we have completed and submitted our own church profile.  The last profiles prepared by our congregation were in 1985-86 when my position was filled, and in 1993 when the last associate was sought.  In fifteen years, there have been a few changes.

While I was a religious studies major at UC Santa Barbara, I was fascinated by my sociology classes, where we noted demographics and trends in society.  Thus, I was interested to see that the survey results show that our congregation is divided into three similarly sized groups:  birth to 49 years, 50-64, and 65 and older.  The fact that one third of our members are 50-64 tells why there are less children active in our Sunday School.  That is my age-group, and all of us who had children active one and two decades ago have seen them grow beyond college years into adulthood and careers, often away from here.  The parents have stayed, not always so active anymore as their earlier responsibility to raise their children in the Christian faith is fulfilled.  And their places have not been taken, mostly because of the high home prices in the surrounding neighborhoods.  Few young married couples beginning families find starter homes affordable in the Shore, Naples, Alamitos or Belmont Heights.

Couples with children at home are 25%; couples without children at home 44% (see paragraph above!); 3.6% single parent with children at home; and 27% single, divorced or widowed.  We are well-educated, with 22% having some college or vocational school, 40% a bachelor’s degree, and another 32% having attended graduate school.  In our congregation, 55% of adults are employed, 37% retired, and 8% are not currently employed.

These are simply numerical statistics that say nothing about faith issues, but those are portions of other survey questions not yet tabulated.  But I thought you might be interested, as I am, in an overview of the age and employment background of our congregation.

Charlie Ensley
Senior Minister

In the recently-completed congregational evaluation of the senior minister, a couple of respondents commented on my time off. One wrote: “Vacation/sabbaticals/times off feel excessive to ordinary folks who don’t get such breaks from work.” That is likely true, and since I will be away so much of July, I thought this would be a good time to discuss my time off. I’m not attempting to be defensive; simply explanatory.

I receive four weeks of vacation a year. For 2008, Peggy took me to Hawaii April 7-15 to celebrate my 60th birthday. We are driving to Oregon July 23-August 5 to see the Shakespeare Festival, visit our daughter Emily in Portland, and visit church families, the Mowers and Atkins in Bend and Black Butte Ranch. We have booked a week in Palm Desert October 6-13.

Additionally, from June 30-July 3, our family is flying to Wisconsin to attend my brother-in-law’s memorial service. July 13-19 I will be spending my 21st consecutive year as a cabin counselor for Minis at Pilgrim Pines. In 1988, the Board of Stewards determined that is not a week of vacation, but a week of work among our church youth.

I grant you that absences from the pulpit during the time we have no associate minister seem like I am away more than normal, since the Worship Commission arranges for either the Revs. Don Westerland or Laverne Joseph to lead worship. I was away on January 13 with our confirmation youth at Sky Forest, but came back early from their retreat weekend at Pilgrim Pines on March 2 to lead communion.

For the past 30 years, my churches have granted me sabbatical leave, based on three months for every five years of service. I have used that time to take continuing education courses at seminary, read, plan sermons, visit seminary classmates in their churches on the East coast, and, on a 2006 trip to England, visit eight churches in ten days! I twice took all three months together, along with my vacation, but found that too long. In 2006, the Board allowed me to spread my three months over February and October 2006, and
October 2007. I thought these shorter absences would be more helpful to the church.

I typically work six days most weeks, and come back several evenings for meetings. (Which, of course, our volunteers come to after a day’s work!) My day off has been Monday for 35 years, and for all the Monday three-day weekends, I never take a compensatory day off. There’s always a Carillon deadline on Tuesday! I always have my cell phone on to be contacted. This year, while in the desert and Hawaii, I was called to schedule memorial services upon my return. And, like most ministers, doctors, funeral directors, I’m on call around the clock for crises, prayers at hospital bedsides, and deaths.

I hope this explanation is helpful to understand my work schedule. It often feels to me that I’m always here, but I can understand that others might not see it that way.

Charlie Ensley
Senior Minister

The Associate Minister Search Committee is off and running! We had an orientation meeting in April with the Interim Associate Conference Minister, the Rev. June Boutwell and Central Association Ministry Assistant, Carol Fujita who explained much of our job to us. They will return to meet with us again as our process continues. Since our initial meeting we have made much progress as we have met many Wednesday evenings.

Now, we need your input. Throughout June and July, we will be conducting a few different surveys as well as focus groups so we can get the best idea of what the congregation is looking for in our new Associate Minister. By the time you read this, we will have already collected the data for the “Profile of the Congregation.” This included ages and numbers of people in households as well as employment and education information. Another survey, to be available at church social functions during June as well as in the church office, asks all youth (middle school and higher) and adults their opinions about a multitude of aspects of the church. The final survey, available on the church website and in the office, requests each respondent (all youth and adults) to indicate the 12 most important leadership expectations of an Associate Minister from a list of choices. (See the Associate Minister job description on the next page.)

In addition to the surveys, we are also hosting focus groups to get your opinion on broader church needs, desires, and attributes. To enable discussion about the questions we are limiting the number of participants to 12 in each group; however, we will host sessions at various times and locations throughout the next six to eight weeks as to include as many people as possible. They will take about an hour. Focus groups already scheduled are:

Wednesday, June 18, during Knitting Group meeting, 11:00 AM, Concert Hall
Sunday, June 22, 11:00 AM, Library, Small Dining Room, or Gabrielson Chapel
Wednesday, June 25, 7:00 PM, Small Dining Room

Please sign-up on the Concert Hall kiosk so we know to expect you. Additional focus groups will be scheduled during July and announced closer to the date.

We know this is a lot to ask from all of you. We also know how important Bay Shore Church is and how critical it is we do the best job we can in finding the Associate Minister that most fits our needs. With your input we will be able to create the church profile that best represents who we are. Thank you in advance for your participation in this search process!

Kirsten Sumpter
Chair, Associate Minister Search Committee

Cassie Berrisford, Allen Cagle, Jim Morris, Traci Reitz, Laura Tschudin, Mary Lou Walling, Amy Williams (alternate), Moderator Dick Landes (ex officio), Charlie Ensley (ex officio)

Some of you around my age may remember growing up in your churches in the 1950s and ‘60s, when Sunday School classes were bursting at the walls of the classrooms. In that era, we were rarely invited into the sanctuary, where the “big people” worshipped. But on a few occasions, we were, and one of them was Sunday School Promotion Sunday. This was our opportunity to be recognized by the people in the “big church”, different from the weekly or monthly assembly junior church services we had somewhere in the Christian Education wing, as used to happen here in the Louise Henry Youth Chapel.

This Sunday, we are reviving a custom that existed here into the early 1990s, and none of us quite know how it seemed to fade away. We are going to recognize the children and youth of our church, from nursery age through high school. Details of their presentations are on the insert page.

We do see our children in church for half the service each Sunday, a custom I began here early in 1987. A few years later, the Worship Commission began to use a youth lay reader once a month. Then we moved the children’s spring and Christmas music pageants into the sanctuary, so more people could see them than attended an afternoon performance in the Concert Hall. We have also had Youth Sundays, where middle and/or high school students lead the worship service.

Throughout all this time, much teaching has gone on in the two floors of our Christian Education wing. For many years, a children’s church service was held in the Youth Chapel on the first Sunday of the month, when the “big people” were having communion in the “big church.” In recent years, perhaps due to leadership changes, we have been having the children in worship more often. While this was an obstacle to some adults twenty years ago, I believe it helpfully blurs the difference between children’s worship and adult worship. We are not allowing them into “our” church. It is already “their” church as well. And there can be little doubt that they are comfortable there.

This Sunday’s lesson is only found in Luke’s Gospel, and is the only Bible story of Jesus as a young boy of twelve, learning, if not teaching, in the temple. May our church’s children have the same experience.

Charlie Ensley
Senior Minister

On a normal Sunday, I may receive one or two comments about my sermon at the door. (I don’t know what this says about my sermons. I haven’t yet received the results from the 100 who responded to my performance review!) Nor am I fishing for false compliments, like the elderly gentleman in my first church who every Sunday told me, “Excellent sermon!” My balloon was deflated some six months later after the children’s Christmas pageant when he told me the same thing at the door.

But last Sunday I received dozens of comments at the door about the impact of my sermon paying tribute to the 4,082 American service men and women who have given up their lives in Iraq, and the 433 in Afghanistan. When I came into the office Tuesday morning, there were three more comments via e-mail and a phone call.

For me, knowing for some weeks what I intended to focus our worship on last Sunday, it made the events of Memorial Day more meaningful. I was moved by the sight of fluttering American flags on gravesites and roadways of several cemeteries I passed. I paid more attention to the National Memorial Day Concert broadcast from Washington, D.C. on Sunday evening. I read more intently the various articles in newspapers, telling the stories of some of those who sacrificed their lives, or how Americans observed this national holiday. And apparently you felt it too, judging from the silence during much of Sunday’s worship, and the comments I have received since my sermon.

A few days later, at a luncheon I attended, the presider invited each of those present to tell something about how some service person—living or dead, related or not—touched their life. We all have memories of family members who have served in the armed forces, and thankfully many of them returned home alive. But we are struck by the losses suffered by every family who lost a member while serving their country. We need to be especially concerned about their welfare, both currently and in years to come. And we need to be attentive to the needs of those who do make it home alive, scarred psycho-logically, if not physically. May God help us all, and may we continue to pray for peace to come.

Charlie Ensley
Senior Minister

For the past ten years, I have had the pleasant responsibility of interviewing seniors at one of the eight high schools in the Long Beach area. The Kiwanis Club of Long Beach presents scholarships each year to two seniors at each of the schools. The scholarship presentation was made just a few hours prior to my writing this on May 20.

I know that a number of other charitable organizations in our city to which some of you belong provide similar scholarships, as does the Bay Shore Friends Club of our church. (See article on insert.) The Kiwanis Club’s emphasis is not solely on scholarship, but equally on demonstrated leadership. We want to recognize not only students’ educational accomplishments, but also their participation and leadership skills through school, church and community groups and events. Other groups’ scholarships may support those entering certain fields, such as drama, music, design, science, etc.

Some of the sixteen seniors who received scholarships at today’s luncheon have overcome obstacles that might have stalled others. One boy is the youngest of ten, and the first in his family to head off to college. One girl’s parents had to return to Mexico for a month to handle a family emergency when she was a sophomore. One month stretched into six. All the while, she ran the household back home, while maintaining As in all her classes. Some come from families without two parents to support them. In last year’s interviews, a senior, whose father had to take time out to retrain for another career, asked the boy to become the family breadwinner for a while. The boy continued to excel in school while working up to a managerial position in a fast-food establishment.

There are college and vocational school students who work their way through college. On any campus are a great number of students of every age who go to school at the same time as maintaining a full-time job and/or raising a family. For those of us who “sailed” straight through our higher education without some of those constraints, hats off to those who persevere in the face of many competing demands.

Speaking of graduates, it is time to start turning their names into the church office. If someone in our church family is graduating from high school, college or graduate school, let us know in the office. Give us their name, where they’re graduating from, where they’re going on to school, or, if completed, career plans. We like to list them in a June Carillon each year.

I know it always does my heart good to see the accomplishments of those who set their minds to prepare themselves for a future in our world, both through their faith and formal education.

Charlie Ensley
Senior Minister

Within the past week, at least four disasters have occurred in our nation and the world. First there was the typhoon hurricane in Myanmar, killing tens of thousands. Next came a tornado in the Midwest, wildfires in Florida, and on Tuesday, a major earthquake in China, again killing a mounting number of people. As I mentioned in my prayers last Sunday, I am bothered to think that relief was sent to Myanmar, but because of a hermetic attitude on the part of their government, relief efforts were initially turned away.

It is remarkable in this country that when a disaster strikes—anywhere in the world—people want to respond. We saw that a few years ago when the tidal wave hit in Indonesia at Christmas. Currently, our government and charitable agencies like the Red Cross, Church World Service, World Vision and others are seeking to help in both Myanmar and China. Sometimes, because those charitable agencies are 1) already at work in certain areas, and 2) are not connected to a government, they have more initial success in providing aid.

We are horrified and sit transfixed in front of our televisions viewing the devastation. In some areas of China, 80% of the buildings are destroyed. Caring people, not only from the U.S. but throughout the world, reach out to render aid, whether monetary, medical, shelter, clothing, or long-term aid down the road when reconstruction and replenishment of agricultural resources begin.

Somehow this says to me that we might see ourselves not just as residents of Long Beach (or some adjacent city), not just residents of California or only as citizens of the United States of America. We sense ourselves to be global citizens, and strive to make lives better in far corners of the world among people we will never know, and might never visit.

I believe I see the hand of God in all of this. Not that disasters are “acts of God” as insurance policies like to claim. The message of the Genesis creation story, a portion of which we will hear this Sunday, entrusts everything and everyone that God created to the care of those of us who arrived here last on this planet Earth.

Charlie Ensley
Senior Minister

9:30 a.m. Worship Sunday School Nursery

THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION
We celebrate the birthday of the church on Pentecost, when the gift of the Holy Spirit blesses each child of God as they are welcomed into the church. Fourteen of our teenagers complete confirmation this Sunday, also Mother’s Day.
Scripture Lesson: Acts 2:1-8, 37-42
Lay Reader: David Westerfield
Chancel Choir anthem: Come, Gracious Spirit
Rite of Confirmation and Baptisms

Pentecost, Confirmation Sunday, Mother’s Day
8:30 Chancel Choir Rehearsal
9:10 Parish Outreach meets with the
Confirmands in Small Dining Room
9:30 Worship with Rite of Confirmation;
Nursery and Sunday School for Pre-school and Kindergarten
10:45 Fellowship Hour
11-11:30 Children’s Musical Rehearsal