Upcoming events

Is it really almost October? If you couldn’t tell from the weather, you certainly can from our program schedule! We come from all over the map: geographically, politically, and theologically, yet we are gathered together to be the body of Christ. Through our small group and spiritual formation programs, you have the opportunity to share yourself, meet others, learn your neighborhood in a new way, and glimpse God’s vision for this city, this church, and your life.

Here’s what we will be offering this season – some begin this week! Sign up and join us this fall!
(*denotes visitors and drop-ins welcome)

Sundays:
* Welcome Table (at Einstein’s, 10:15 – 11:15a; weekly)
* Family of God (in the Gallery, 10:15-11:15a; weekly)
* Women’s Group (at Pompei, 5:15 – 6:45p; 2nd and 4th Sundays)

Mondays:
* Theology on Tap (Lakeview, Mondays, begins Oct 3rd! 7-9p)
Tales from the Front: Faith meets Life (Location TBA, Oct 17th – Nov 21st; 6:30 – 8:30p)

Tuesdays:
Ordinary Radicals: Join the Revolution (Lincoln Park, 7 – 8:30; Oct 18th -Nov 22nd)

Wednesdays:
* Worship Workshop (at church, 7 – 8:30, begins Oct 5th!)
* Dinner and a Movie (at church, 7 – 8:30, begins Oct 26th)
Food Group, Part III: Take This Bread (Uptown, 6:30 – 8; Oct 12th -Nov 16th)

Thursdays:
The Hospitality of God (location TBA; Oct 13th – Nov 17th)

October 16 – 7th Annual u2charist Sunday
9:30a Hands-On Mission Projects (Off Site)
All ages can join us for opportunities to engage in mission with our community and partner organizations. Contact us to volunteer.

10:30a and 8p Missions Fair (Gallery)
Learn more about what is going on in our church and community, and meet the leaders who are helping us fulfill our mission.

11:15a and 7p Worship featuring the U2charist
Join us for our annual service of praise and worship through the music of U2, featuring a live band and the Celebration Choir. We are very excited to be adding the u2charist to the 7pm service this year. An excellent opportunity to invite your friends and neighbors to Holy Covenant!

As we move into fall and settle in from a summer full of festivals and festivals, we invite you to a Neighborhood Meet and Greet.  This is not only a great opportunity to get to know Pastor Matt, Emily, and Libby better–but also a great chance to get to know other Holy Covenant members from your neighborhood.

There are five Meet and Greets scheduled over the next month in neighborhoods across the city.  All of the Meet and Greets will begin at 6:30 p.m. Once you have signed up, we’ll send you the exact address.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Candie ODell, Rob Rawls, or one of the Lay Leaders.

Wednesday, August 24th
6:30 p.m.
Host: Candie ODell
Location: Rogers Park

Thursday, September 8th
6:30 p.m.
Hosts: Amy and Andrew Schumacher
Location: Albany Park

Thursday, September 15th
6:30 p.m.
Hosts: Jackie and Jodi Neal
Location: West Town

Tuesday, September 20th
6:30 pm
Hosts: Jeff Rossen and Mark Owens
Location: Edgewater

Thursday, September 29th
6:30 pm
Hosts: Liz Dierbeck and Chris Shickles
Location: Hyde Park

Sign-Up:

“Heaven,” an art exhibit featuring original paintings, prints and cyanotypes by Chicago artist Ken Marier will be on view through June 30th at the Gallery in Chicago’s Holy Covenant United Methodist Church, opening June 10, 2011.

Screen printing photographic images on paper, raw and white muslin, satin, and leather, Marier’s work conveys that Heaven is a sense of place, a state of mind.

“While in Mexico recently during a brilliantly sunny hot afternoon, I came upon a small traveling circus. I immediately knew I had found the beginning of something special. It was gated and roped, as if anticipating the crowd that would appear later. Then it hit me! Heaven is a state of mind. Consciousness. A resonating frequency. This epiphany quickly led me to create the images and icons featured in this exhibit,” said Marier. “I’ve also created cyanotypes (blue prints) of the images that I believe convey the heaven I experienced that beautiful day.”

Heaven Exhibition of paintings, prints and cyanotypes by Ken Marier
The Gallery at Holy Covenant United Methodist Church
925 W. Diversey, corner of Diversey & Wilton, Chicago, IL
Opening Reception: Friday, June 10, 6-9 p.m.
12-5 p.m. on Tues/Wed/Fri and by appointment
312-305-3600

MEET THE ARTIST RECEPTION – Friday, June 24th, from 7 to 9pm

Ken Marier
Ken Marier is a lifelong artist and Chicagoan. He majored in film making at the Chicago School of the Art Institute. He has exhibited at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and was a pioneer in creating music videos for the fledgling MTV. He currently creates hand-printed screened works from his original photography and other legal means. Studio visits welcome by appointment.

Holy Covenant United Methodist Church
Holy Covenant is in century-old neo-Gothic building in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. The west side of the church also serves as the canvas for a large public mural, “For A New World.” The church has always lived out of a dynamic vision, as people on a journey, committed to a fresh way of being a church: open and affirming to all people, blending ancient and contemporary forms of worship and arts, and, through radical discipleship, working for a better, fairer world.

Sign up for any of these small groups online.

Cup of Life

Looking for a simple way to deepen your spiritual life while enjoying weekly food & fellowship by the lake? Whether you are seeking an easy guide for 5 minute daily prayer and meditation to deepen your relationship with God, or you are feeling burnt out and in need of renewal, this small group has something to offer you. We will be using Joyce Rupp’s refreshing book The Cup of Life: A Guide for Spiritual Growth. Using the physical symbol of a cup to represent ourselves as spiritual vessels, this guide provides short but profoundly refreshing daily reflections along with options for related prayer, meditation, scripture, & intention-setting. We will gather for weekly potlucks by the lake (outdoors, weather permitting) to fellowship and share reflections on our journey with “the cup”.

Location: Ardmore & the Lake (there is a nearby indoor rain location)
Time: Tuesdays, May 10th through June 21st, 6:30-8:30
Book: Copies are on their way, for $5 each

HC Hiking Group

Do you love nature? Are you craving some fresh air? Have you been itching to get out of the city and into God’s Good Creation? You’re in luck: there are at least 60 great hikes/walks within 60 miles of Chicago! And Holy Covenant is starting a monthly hiking group to explore some of them. Hikes will usually be 2-4 miles in distance and be of easy to moderate difficulty. We will car pool from Holy Covenant. First expedition leaves HC at 10am on Saturday 5/14 (rain date is after church on 5/15). All are welcome – come once or every month. Feel free to contact us w/ trail suggestions!

Location: Meet at Holy Covenant
Time: Monthly on Saturday, 10:00am
Contact: Brit Holmberg or Chris Shickle

On-going Groups:

Discovery Lunches

Shared leadership, at church
1st Sundays after the 11:15 service
Contact: Rebecca Anderson
New here? Stay after church for pizza, salad, and to find out more about this community. Sessions are planned around our mission statement: Seek God, Love All People, Change the World. After a few sessions, you’ll be well-informed about what HC is all about and will get to know some of the other people sitting next to you on Sunday morning.

Women’s Group

Led by Linda Effinger Quinde at Pompeii (Wellington and Sheffield)
2nd and 4th Sundays at 5:15, ongoing and year round
Join this long-running community-within-a-community. Drop-in or become a regular. We provide a fun, casual place for the diverse women of the church to meet, share our stories, and support each other. A great choice for women who would like to feel more connected within the church, especially newcomers to Holy Covenant. Women’s Group can be attended in conjunction with or in between other groups.

Sunday’s Scripture

Led by Pastor Kate at Holy Covenant
Wednesdays, 7p – 8:30p
Meet with the pastor and others to discuss the text that provides the center of our Sunday worship. Are you interested in engaging scripture outside of weekly worship? Asking questions of the text? Hearing the insights of others? Going deeper into the word of God? Then this is the group for you! Study, explore, and imagine with the Scripture lesson for the Sunday a week and a half away. Your contributions will help shape the sermon and worship services. Join the conversation as we ask ourselves: What’s the history and context of this text? How do we relate to the characters in the story? How does this speak to our lives today? Where is God’s voice for us, here and now? Grow closer to God and one another through the biblical passages that shape our lives as a community.

Sign up for any of these small groups online.

Dear Holy Covenant Family,

As the April showers pour down and we anticipate the flowers of May, we’re also entering a season of change in the life of our church.  In the midst of uncertainty, what remains the same is our membership in God’s family.  Please join us for worship this spring as we journey together as brothers and sisters:

Family of God
Worship May 1-June 12, 2011

God destined us for adoption as God’s children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of God’s will, to the praise of God’s glorious grace that God freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
Ephesians 1:5-6

We are family! Children of God, brothers and sisters with Christ.  During this time of pastoral transition, join us for worship with your Holy Covenant family.  We’ll center our worship and small groups on the letter to the Ephesians, an early church community also in transition.

All are family and all are welcome.

Special Services

June 12^th

10:30am  Pentecost Hymn Sing
Potluck and Pie-baking;
Pastor Kate’s Last Service
7pm Join us for evening family prayer

June 26^th Pride!

10:30am worship followed by marching in the Parade

Beginning Memorial Day, we’ll move to a special summer worship schedule with TWO worship services each Sunday: One morning service at 10:30am (with childcare in the nursery) and 7pm. Three services return after Labor Day.

See you Sunday as we gather around our family communion table, and think about who you can bring with you.

Grace and Peace,

Kate

Dear Holy Covenant Family,

A blessed Holy Week to you. Please join us for our services, and spread the word! This is the week when people are looking to attend church. Who can you tell about Holy Covenant this week? Forward this e-mail, invite people on Facebook, direct folks to our homepage with service times, or even dare to share your love for this place in person:

Maundy Thursday
Sanctuary, 7pm, Thursday April 21st
A service of communion, celebrating the last supper, and foot/hand washing.

Good Friday
Sanctuary, 7pm, Friday April 22nd
A service of music, silence, and agony at the cross.

Easter Sunday
Sunrise Service at the Lake with Broadway UMC
5:30am, gather at the Totem Pole at Addison and Lake Shore Drive

Festival Service of Resurrection
9:30 and 11:15am in the Sanctuary

As we live into the tension between Good Friday and Easter, a prayer to help us through:

Held Back
By Walter Brueggemann

You have texted us yet again
With this glorious text of homecoming and well-being,
We have finished with the text of doom and extermination,
Ready to relish your good news of deep wells, and safe roads, and happy jackals.
We among your ransomed and redeemed, we in gladness and in gratitude. Just beyond the margin of this text, we are your people bottomed in Thursday,
Grieved in Friday,
Our days of doom and failure and death,
Your days of suffering and anguish.
We look past the doom days to the Easter page of good news, ready to dance.
In life as in text, we would leap beyond where we are to where you promise to be,
“Ahead of us in Galilee,”
Held back only by the truth of Thursday and Friday
And by loud crashing weapons,
Held back, waiting, ready to dance, yet held back…
for a little while. Amen.

See you this holiest of weeks, as we wait, pray, cry, and prepare to dance together on the other side. Do think about who you can bring with you.

Grace and Peace,

Kate

Dear friends in Holy Covenant,

Suddenly, we’re near the end of Lent. Suddenly, the 6 weeks without chocolate, caffeine, or fried foods are almost up. 6 weeks of intentional daily prayer walks and Scripture reading. 6 weeks that began in winter and end in spring – suddenly, almost over.

And suddenly, after traveling around, preaching and healing in the Judean countryside, Jesus has turned his face toward Jerusalem. He’s headed into the thick of it: into the crowds who will hail him. Into the Temple to overturn tables and upset the religious establishment. Into the upper room, into the garden of Gethsemane, and into the presence of the authorities.

It’s quite a week..

Suddenly, we’re at the heart of who we are and what we do. Come live the Christian story, starting with Palm Sunday: in the morning, come celebrate with Bluegrass services that’ll break your heart with twang (9:30 and 11:15). Come back that evening at 7 for the unusual Wayfarers’ Potluck Service and be nourished for the final stretch of the journey we’ve been on.

In Christ,

Rebecca Anderson
Minister of Spiritual Formation

P.S. In a follow-up to last week’s invitation to participate in my May 7th ordination, an answer to a question you’ve been asking: my ordination does not affect my continued work at Holy Covenant! Contact Mandy Leifheit with questions.

Dear brothers and sisters at Holy Covenant,

I’m writing gratefully with good news, and an invitation. On Saturday, May 7th, at 3 pm, I am going to be ordained by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). This is the denomination with which I’ve been affiliated since I fell through the wide open doors of Hope Central Church and had the same kind of experience many of you have here: a sense of wonder that there was a place for me at God’s table.

In my time here as a student intern, organizing small groups, leading at the evening service, and getting to know you, you have taught, shaped me, and left your mark on me as a pastor, a person, and a Christian. Last Sunday afternoon, Teddy Jay prayed, “God, you must love Holy Covenant, because of the leaders [and people!] you keep sending us.” I find myself praying, “God, you must love me, because you sent me to Holy Covenant.”

The Christian Church (DoC) is a congregational system with a process and understanding of ordination that differs from that of the United Methodist Church. There are similarities, too, in that I have written papers, gone before boards and committees, and built relationships with pastors and mentors. Last October, I was approved for ordination by this region’s Committee on Ministry.

So: the Illinois/Wisconsin Region of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and my home church, Hope Central (DoC/UCC) in Boston invite your presence, prayers, and participation for my ordination service on May 7th, at 3 pm, in the sanctuary at Holy Covenant. The service will be followed by a reception in the gallery. Please, come lay hands on me.

With humble thanks for all of the ways you have shared yourselves and this place and changed me,

Rebecca Anderson
Minister of Spiritual Formation

Lilies represent new and eternal life, which is why they are traditional Easter plants. You have the opportunity to purchase an Easter lily for $12, in honor or memory of someone. The lilies will fill our sanctuary on Easter morning and then you are invited to take your lily home. We will publish the list of those honored in our e-news the following week.

After growing up in Seattle, Hannah Holtgeerts took a nine month detour to Costa Rica before coming to DePaul University. There she taught math and computer skills in a slum outside the capital to at-risk young women and quickly realized she was there to learn far more than she could teach. Here are some of the life lessons she now carries with her:

• The bigger your world is, the smaller your problems are.
• It’s possible to be alone without being lonely.
• Cynicism can be just as damaging as ignorance.
• If you don’t know what something is, don’t try it in a milkshake.
• We must stop worrying what other people think of us and instead focus on what we think of other people.

Along the way, Hannah took photographs and collected video of her students, their children, and the community that enveloped her in tangible grace. Come by the Holy Covenant gallery on Saturday, April 2nd from 7 – 9 pm for the opening display of her work which will be up for the rest of the month.

Want to see more? Check out her blog(s):
http://hhcreates.tumblr.com/
http://costaricanhannah.blogspot.com/
http://ilovemylifebecause.blogspot.com/