There is still room in the in-person option Bible studies on Sunday mornings at 9:15AM or Wednesday morning at 10AM. There are even a few spots still open in the Zoom Bible study on Tuesdays at 6PM. To sign-up, go to - https://www.signupgenius.com/go/8050e4dada929a0f85-politics
Upcoming Worship Opportunities
September 13 at 10:30AM is our Confirmation service. There are ten confirmands: Jasmine Agustin, Ella Erdmann, Christian Mikolajczak, Amelia Monroe, Alyson Olson, Riley Schumacher, Addison Sternhagen, Casdyn Thomas, Ashton Vallner, and Gavin Vallner. May they boldly confess their faith forever!
September 19-21 at ALL SERVICES we will celebrate The 20th Anniversary of Our Shepherd Childcare!
Voters' Meeting Recap
Our Family Forum on Sunday, August 30 was held and about half who attended were in person, while the other half participated online, We reviewed God's blessings at Bethany and Our Shepherd during our last fiscal year and unanimously approved our 2020-21 Ministry Financial Plan.
Thank you to all who participated in this meeting and thanks for your tremendous support over the past year. May God bless us in the year ahead.
Bible Classes and Sunday School Starting Soon
Large Group - Adult Bible Studies
Our study for the fall is entitled: “Politics is Driving Me Crazy.” Red states. Blue states. Partisanship. Name-calling. Gerrymandering. Seeing the faces and hearing the voices of those who make our blood boil. And then, there are the unending cycle of elections and the rhetoric of social media posts that leave the average constituent frustrated and saying, "Enough already! Politics is driving me crazy!" This study will offer a note of calm and a return to sanity as we listen to God, who rules over all things. It will help us understand and appreciate the separation of church and state and how we as Christians can best serve our fellow people.
This class will be offered three times each week. In-person studies (limited to 30-35 people) will be held on Sundays at 9:15am and Wednesdays at 10:00am in the lower level Fellowship Hall on the Parkway Campus. Online Zoom study will be held on Tuesdays at 6pm. Please note: There will not be a separate Midweek Oasis study. Sign-up sheets will be available in our entryway on both campuses or you may call the church office to register. Since each class may move at a little different pace, we’re asking you to choose one study group (either Sunday, Tuesday, or Wednesday) to stick with for the duration, rather than bouncing back and forth week by week. Our first class will meet on Sunday – September 13th.
Sunday School
For at least the first half of our year, we will be using a home-based Sunday School program published by our Wisconsin Synod. Every family with children in grades preK – 8 will receive a packet of age-appropriate lessons in the mail. Then, each week, an email will be sent to our families with a link to a YouTube video of a trained teacher presenting the lesson for the various age groups. This teacher will also give guidance to the parents about extending the learning at home with the materials received in the mail. We will also have teachers here at Bethany ready to assist you if you have any questions. Please watch for an email coming soon with a more detailed description of just how this program will work.
Upcoming Worship Notes
This coming weekend is Labor Day. Our Monday evening worship service will be held Tuesday at 6PM on our Parkway Campus.
Confirmation Sunday is planned for the 10:30AM service on Sunday, September 13, 2020 on the Parkway Campus. This service will not be available for sign-up, as the confirmands each have their families worshiping with them and filling the service.
The weekend of September 19-21 we will celebrate Our Shepherd Childcare’s 20th Anniversary!
At the end of September, we will begin a new sermon series entitled “Better than Fair.”
New Communication Plan
Well, this looks a little different than your usual Village Voice, doesn’t it? Your pastors and I have been looking at ways to effectively communicate the most important information regarding Bethany and its ministries to you in a timely fashion. Especially in these crazy pandemic times when many are still worshiping from home on their computers, some don’t have access to computers or the internet, and health and safety regulations limit some of what we doing in person—we want to keep all of you informed and spiritually fed.
ENTER OUR NEW COMMUNICATION PLAN!
We have broken our communication plan into three sections: weekly, ongoing, and quarterly.
Weekly
Each week you can expect to learn about the “top 3” things going on at Bethany in a variety of ways!
Weekly Update via Facebook Live on Monday with Pastors Brown, Gebert, or Staff Minister Suedmeier.
Friday email “A Peek at Your Week”
When we return to using bulletin announcements at in-person worship services, we will highlight only the top 3.
Various Facebook posts throughout the week highlighting the top 3.
Ongoing
Those top 3 things will be added to an on-going list on our website—bethanyappleton.org/news and can be accessed anytime.
This list will be printed once per month and sent to those who do not have access to a computer/internet to keep them informed of our “happenings” here at Bethany.
A monthly calendar will be made available online (with paper copies available as well), and sent with the list of announcements from our website to those without technology.
Quarterly
Your Village Voice newsletter will come out quarterly and highlight upcoming events and sermon series, as well as include more devotional materials, pictures, and stories from within our congregation.
We hope and pray that you will be patient as we all make this change in how we stay up-to-date on all things Bethany and Our Shepherd.
Discipleship.101 to Begin
Discipleship.101 is a study from the Bible on some of the main teachings of what the Bible says about humans and God and the relationship between us and God.
This class is a good way for you to see what the Bible teaches, and it can also be a next step for someone to become a more formal part of the Bethany church family. So, if you're curious about what the Bible or our church teaches, if you have questions about God and salvation and life on earth, or if you're interested in making Bethany your church home, then please consider joining us for this nine-week class.
The class begins the week of September 6. We'll have 2 times each week for the class:
Tuesday 6 pm - socially distanced in-person class (masks required)
Wednesday 6 pm - live virtual Zoom class
Expect each session to run 60-75 minutes. There's no charge for the class,.
If you're interested, you can find more information and register online at www.bethanyappleton.org/d101 and email (zagebert@bethanyappleton.org) or call/text (920-860-2497) me if you'd like to chat about it first.
August 30 Family Forum & Voters' Meeting
Our Family Forum & Voter's Meeting, which focus especially on the 2020-2021 Fiscal Year Budget, will be held in-person at the Praise Center on our Lynndale Campus at 11:40AM, after the 10:30 worship service. We hope that many of you will be able to join us in-person for this important meeting, where masks will be required and social distancing will be observed. There will also be the option to participate in the meeting via "Zoom". A Zoom meeting invitation with a link to the meeting will be sent out this afternoon. Though our congregational president will be focused on presenting to those who are attending in-person, we will have a moderator at the computer to make sure that the voices of our virtual attendees can be heard as well.
Bethany members will receive information regarding this meeting via email later today or go to bethanyappleton.org/votersmeeting on Sunday for more information.