Choir Tour Trip
April 21-23
Music
Ministry
Just a few facts you need to know about
our choirs:
Handbell Choir is taking a break until
fall.
The Chapel Choir (2 nd grade-5 th grade)
will attend Summer Waves on Jekyll
Island on May 20. The cost is free if you
have been regularly attending Chapel
Choir, otherwise the cost is $19.95. If we
go with 15 or more, the cost goes down to
$15.00. The children will need a towel,
lunch money, a bathing suit, and sun
screen. Lunch is available on site and will
cost $10-15. We leave church at 9:00 a.m.
and return at 5:00 p.m.
Practicing for Sunday
morning at Sovereign Grace
Presbyterian Church
The Chapel Choir will sing for the last
time this spring at evening worship on
May 21.
The Youth Choir will sing for the
opening of Point Pleasant on May 28.
They will be singing during our usual
hymn singing time at 5:15 p.m.
The Youth Choir will rehearse on
Sunday, May 21 at 4:00 p.m.
The Sanctuary Choir will continue to
sing through June. However, Wednesday,
June 3, will most likely be our last
rehearsal until August.
In Christ’s service,
Kathryn Van Eck
T he W ell -O rdered H ome from page 1
environment for children. The first has
to do with driving over a bridge that has
no guardrails. What does nearly everyone
tend to do? he asks. Answer: we all tend to
drift to the middle. Why? When a bridge
has guardrails, do we use them? Of course
not. We don’t drive by Braille, bumping
the rails to identify our position. Rather,
the rails define the space. We gain security
from their presence though we don’t use
them. Borders are comforting for us.
The other illustration he uses comes from
the schools-without-fences educational fad
of the late 1960’s. The theory was that
fences were bad. Fences limit. Fences
restrict. Fences confine. Fences stifle
creativity. Open schools were proposed
MESSENGER
as the answer, schools without fences.
As the fences were removed, school
administrators were shocked by what they
found. When the fences were up, students
would fill the campus open spaces right
up to the fences themselves. When the
fences came down, the students huddled
in the middle. The lesson, he urges, is
that children (and youth) need routines
and rules that define their freedom and
its limits. These “fences” provide secure
borders within which they may safely
live. The fences form part of their identity:
we are a people who thrive within these
parameters, enjoying life within, not
traveling without.
Response? Plan to have regular
mealtimes. Aim to gather the family
MAY 2017
for two mealtimes every day, probably
breakfast and dinner. Plan for the family
to have devotions every day at a set time,
morning or evening. Plan to read to the
children daily. Plan to be at church every
Sunday AM and PM. Plan to observe
a Sunday Sabbath. Plan to attend all
of the children’s special events: ball
games, recitals, awards banquets. Plan to
discipline every infraction of household
norms. Pick up, straighten up, clean up
the house. Let everything have its place.
Your “ardor for order” will go a long way
toward providing a safe, secure, and happy
environment for the rearing of children.
More importantly, it will provide the time
and circumstances to “set before them a
godly example,” and to “bring them up in
TLJ
PAGE 3