Committee Meeting

We will meet from 7 PM till 8 PM on Monday, November 5th, in the church parlor (across from the kitchen). Main agenda topics are the budget and leadership for the subcommittee structure.

All are welcome.

Special Offerings

At Connie Hunter's request, we ran a short notice in the bulletin earlier this month to let new members or visitors of Sixth know that we do participate in the Presbyerian Peace offering, but that we do so in May (many congregations collect the Peace offering during World Communion Sunday at the beginning of October).

I thought it might be useful to include here on the blog the 'special offerings' agreement that the Church & Community Committee presented to Session last year. This schedule was approved by Session and is our congregation's current practice.
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We recommend that the Church and Community Committee assume oversight of our church's special offerings. To implement this responsibility for the year 2007 we recommend the following:

That the One Great Hour of Sharing focus should occur between the dates of March 4 and April 8 (Easter) and that Jane Fox will oversee this offering with regard to the ordering of materials and various forms of publicity;

That the Peace Offering should be collected between May 13 and 27 and that Nora Johnson will oversee the process;

That the Joy Offering should be collected between December 9 and 23 and that Diana Wood will oversee the process; and

That special offerings in support of the Lazurus Fund should occur on the four Sundays of the year 2007 which are 5th Sundays in the months of April, July, September, and December. Dave Wood will oversee this process and decide on publicity and procedures for dealing with this offering.

Opportunities Ahead: PIIN and Hazelwood

(1) The PIIN Covenanting Event will be held on Sunday, 11 November, 6 p.m., at St. Benedict the Moor Church, 91 Crawford St. (near Mellon Arena). Fr. Jared Jackson invites Sixth Church to attend and bring a banner. Please post here or let Kit know if you are able to attend.

(2) The elders and congregation of Hazelwood Presbyterian Church invite their partners and friends to join them as they celebrate and show appreciation for their new pastor, Rev. Leslie Boone, Sunday, October 28 at 3 p.m. at the church.

Project Amistad at East Liberty Presbyterian

You are invited to hear a presentation by Susanne Frerichs, missionary in Mexico on October 15, Monday evening, at 7:00 pm at East Liberty Presbyterian Church. She is U.S. coordinator of Proyecto Amistad of the Presbyterian Border Ministry (PBM). The PBM is a joint ministry of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico.

Susanne is visiting Pittsburgh Presbytery from October 12-19 as part of the PC (USA) Mission Challenge '07- a denomination-wide effort to reconnect local congregations to overseas missionaries.

Sunday: Partners in Progress (Haiti) and VBCM (Very Brief Committee Meeting)

Dr. Richard Gosser of Partners in Progress will speak to the committee and other interested members of the Sixth family this Sunday, September 16th, about his work in Fondwa, Haiti. This work is done in cooperation with the Haiti Solidarity Committee and includes efforts on sustainable development, an open air university, and the Fonkose Bank. See http://www.piphaiti.org/ for more on these efforts.

We will welcome Dr. Gosser at 12:30 PM (after worship and fellowship) in the Ridinger Room. Please RSVP to Nora at crjndj@earthlink.net if you are interested in attending. It may be nice, though not necessary, to have refreshments there. If you would like to provide or coordinate refreshments for the presentation, please let Nora, Fred, or me know. If no one volunteers to do this, we'll let the notion of refreshments slide.

A very brief business meeting of the C&C Committee will follow this presentation. We will keep this short and sweet. You will be asked to give careful and prayerful consideration to three requests: (1) willingness to serve as chair/coordinator for one of the C+C Committee sub-committees; (2) our budget request for next year (do we want to ask for more? less? why?); and (3) a possible request from Breachmenders for a very judiciously managed project.

October Fellowship Hour

The Church & Community Committee is responsible for finding hosts for the post-worship receptions in October. Huge thanks to those who have already volunteered!

October 7: Dave and Diana Wood (room for another volunteer for this one)

October 14: Volunteers needed

October 21: Volunteers needed

October 28: Louise Ford and Millie Barnes

Cliff Johnson is willing to help you with fellowship hour on any of these Sundays except the 21st, so if you'd like to tackle this with him, just let him know!

Birth of the Sub-committees

At the last meeting of the C&C Committee, we found that in many cases our work falls into some natural groupings that could become focused subcommittees. A rough draft of the suggested groupings is below, thanks to Fred's notes.

Your comments are welcomed! Just hit the little pencil at the bottom of the post.

1. Muscles and Mops (too flippant?): Organizations for whom we have provided or may provide labor resources, such as for construction, etc:

• Breachmenders
• Disaster Relief Efforts, such as those provided following Hurricane Katrina
• Volunteers at Camp Crestfield
• Construction help for Hazelwood Church
• Hosanna Industries (note that the youth group is also involved in this)

2. Environmental Activism

• Recycling programs
• Others? (note that Maggie and others have suggested we try to grow this area of the Church and Community committed, so having it as its own sub-committee may help with this)

3. Hunger relief efforts

• Church World Service
• Crop Walk
• Men’s Shelter meals

4. Support for Developing Countries (such as Haiti)

• Global Links
• Covenant Hospital

5. Political Advocacy and Social Justice issues

• Healthcare issues
• Darfur support
• PIIN
• Abolish the Death Penalty


6: Programs in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Presbytery

• Malawi partnership
• Peacemaking efforts

7. East End Cooperative Ministries

• The C&C committee felt that since we are involved in many ways with this organization, we may want to consider it as its own sub-committee for now.