Announcements for October 27, 2011

Greetings from Texas!

I hope all of you had a truly rewarding Feast of Tabernacles and have now all safely returned from your travels. Members of the Dallas and Sherman, Texas, congregations who made it back from the Feast this past Sabbath commented on the wonderful atmosphere of peace and the spiritual depth and maturity of the messages that they experienced at their respective sites.

All of the reports we have received from the Feast coordinators point to a most wonderful Feast of Tabernacles at the many sites the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, hosted this year around the world. I commented on more than one occasion to others at the Feast in Branson that being able to focus for eight days on the true goal and “mission” of God—His incredible plan to bring many sons to glory—was so appreciated! With the challenges we have had to deal with this past year within the Church, being reminded of the plan of God and the incredible good news of the future was welcome indeed!

I want to sincerely thank all of the men who served as our Feast coordinators in the United States and around the world for their service and planning to make this Feast the wonderful occasion that it was. And of course, we could not organize the Feast without all of the willing and able member volunteers who serve around the world as well.

I also want to thank our many speakers for the work put into their messages. All reports are that the brethren felt thoroughly nourished with the spiritual “meat in due season,” focusing on the great hope of the Millennium and coming Kingdom of God!

At present, it looks as if we had over 9,000 in attendance at our many Feast sites around the world! If we include the Internet webcast and phone connections, it is estimated that about 9,600 attended or “tuned in” to our services during the eight days of the Feast.

While all reports are not yet in, I wanted to give all of you a taste of a few comments from the various site coordinators on the observance of God’s Feast of Tabernacles in their areas of the world. So, we’ve included a special report as an addendum to this week’s update. We hope you enjoy this overview of comments, attendance figures and pictures from your brethren around the world!

Sincerely,
Doug Horchak

Announcements for October 29, 2011

Winter Family Weekend—Dec. 23-27, 2011. For many years the Church has offered a winter event that has come to be known as the Winter Family Weekend. It is a time when many people are on school break or able to take time off from work to get together for more spiritual food, physical food, fellowship and activities. The Galt House in Louisville, Kentucky, is host once again this year.

With endless educational seminars coupled with sporting activities—such as basketball, volleyball, speedaway and bowling—novelty Olympics, the family fun fair, three dances, a jam session for musicians and, new this year, Zumba classes for females, there is definitely something for everyone. You can go to http://cogwa.org/wfw for details on what will be taking place, how to make reservations and when and where to register. Housing reservations open this coming Monday (Oct. 31). If you have been in the past, you know how rewarding and how much fun it is. If you have never been, why not make plans to join us this year? You will be glad you did. Please make copies of the attached flyer available to the membership. Thank you very much.

Submitted by Mark Winner

Winter Camp. Winter Camp is coming soon to Montello, Wisconsin. Teens will be coming together to enjoy six days of winter fun, friends and spiritual education that is unique to our camp program. Camp will run from Dec. 27 to Jan. 1. Staff and camper applications are now being accepted. The staff application deadline is Nov. 1, and the camper deadline is Nov. 15. For more information and to register online, please visit the COGWA Youth Camps section of our website at http://camps.cogwa.org.

Submitted by Gary Black

Sing Praises and Rejoice! New Hymnal Arrives in Time for the Feast. One of the wonderful opportunities we have as God’s people is to sing songs of praise to God. In fact, the Scriptures are clear that singing praise to God should be a part of our worship. “All the earth shall worship You and sing praises to You; They shall sing praises to Your name” (Psalm 66:4). Desiring that this tradition continue in our worship services, the Interim Leadership Team of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, moved near the end of May 2011 to develop a hymnal for use in our worship services.

Clyde Kilough, interim president, asked Dave Myers, pastor of the Akron and Youngstown, Ohio, congregations to oversee the project and organize a team to develop a hymnal—if possible by the Feast of Tabernacles. Timetables and cost projections were calculated, leading the Leadership Team to approve the production of a hardcover hymnal. It would be extremely tight; but with God’s blessing and lots of hard work, we hoped that the Feast deadline was not out of the question.

Many of the same talented people who had served on the team that developed the hymnal for the United Church of God—Dan Anderson, Janel Johnson and Teddi Treybig—are now members of COGWA and were available and willing to serve on the musical team. While there are many others who have the talent and skills to have served on this team, we knew that the group had to be kept quite streamlined in order to attempt to meet the deadline.

Work began immediately to sort out which hymns from previous Church of God hymnals we might like to include in our new book. Many were in the public domain and could be used without copyright restrictions. Ken Treybig did a great deal of work sorting through the ownership of various hymns, and he and Dave Myers began contacting composers for permission to use their works. Permission was sought and obtained (with one exception) from all church composers who had pieces in previous Church of God hymnals that we desired to use in the new book.

Use of hymns from those outside the greater Church of God proved to be a much more complex issue. Due to technological advances, the music industry is striving to keep up and protect the work of composers. Many songs that were in previous hymnals could not now be used without fulfilling arduous legal requirements.

For example, many required obtaining a mechanical license (to print physical copies), projection permission, electronic transmission permission and webcast permission. The webcast permission would require record keeping by each webcasting congregation, by each webcasting Feast site and, believe it or not, by each congregation that might do a phone hookup for a widow who is not able to attend services! A fee would be paid in advance for the number of times that hymn would be used in a year multiplied by the number of people tuned in to the webcast or phone hookup.

As you can see, this would prove too cumbersome to be practical. Since there were so many good hymns available that had no restrictions, we decided to use only those that provided us unrestricted use of their material.

As hymns were selected, they needed to be placed into a usable format for printing. Hundreds of hours of volunteer labor were provided by our technical team to “engrave” the hymns—meaning enter them into the computer program—primarily using the music program Finale. Lora Lallier, Rachel Luecke, Ivor Mitchell, Danny Neal and Audrey Neal all did an outstanding job of serving to make this a reality.

Once the hymns were in the correct musical format, they had to be made ready for the printer. Our chief servant in this realm was Adam Kahn. Adam served many long hours converting files to portable document files (pdf), placing them in the correct order and placing page numbers on each hymn. Adam also designed the cover, spine and end sheets. Once a draft was ready, it was turned over to the proofreaders to check. Becky Bennett did the lion’s share of this job, with assistance from her husband Mike, Debbie Pennington and others. After a doctrinal check of lyrics by the Leadership Team, the first draft was ready for the printer.

While all this was going on, negotiations with the printer regarding price, paper, cover, embossing, number of copies, copy deadlines, piano version, binding, etc. were continuing. In addition, pastors were contacted to determine how many piano versions each congregation might require and to ask them to recruit volunteers to bring back congregational copies from the Feast sites, which would save the Church thousands of dollars in shipping costs. Feast coordinators were asked to recruit volunteers to distribute hymnals at the Feast, and hymnal vouchers were printed and distributed to members across the country.

The printer strove mightily to get the product delivered on time. The result was that all eight U.S. Feast sites received copies in time for the opening service of the Feast of Tabernacles! Considering all that had to occur in such a short time, we really feel a miracle took place! The ability to sing songs of praise to God out of our own hymnal was warmly appreciated by all.

As well as providing congregational copies for each of the local churches, from the start of the project, the Leadership Team desired to provide a personal copy of the hymnal as a gift to each member family. The slate gray color was chosen for these copies, which were distributed at the Feast. Copies will be shipped to the international areas before the end of the year.

Seeing the beauty and quality of this new hymnal, many members desired to donate to offset the cost of the hymnal production and did so at the U.S. Feast sites. Many have mentioned that they did not see the hymnal donation information during the Feast and would like to send a donation in now. Any who would like to donate to offset the cost of the beautiful work can send a donation to our mailing address in Dallas. Put “Hymnal Project” on your check’s memo line or an enclosed note to be sure the donation is credited to the correct fund.

As we move forward in our responsibility of preaching the gospel, this new hymnal will serve us in praising God for many years to come!

Submitted by Dave Myers

Web Content. Several more Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) have been added to the COGWA website. These include:

Is the Apocrypha Part of the Bible?

Does 1 Timothy 4:1-5 Abolish the Law of Clean and Unclean Meats?

Does Colossians 2:16-17 Abolish the Law of Clean and Unclean Meats?

Did Jesus Purify Unclean Meats in Mark 7?

Does Romans 14 Abolish the Law of Clean and Unclean Meats?

Do You Have to Be Baptized to Be Saved?

What Is Baptism?

The FAQ on the Apocrypha is an update of an earlier one on the same subject. Realizing that various sources provide different lists of the apocryphal works, we chose one source to cite and we also included additional information.

The various FAQs on clean and unclean meats are all linked to each other, so a reader who looks at a specific explanation of a scripture can easily look at other FAQs on the same subject. As we are able, we are trying to link all of our website materials to related material.

To coincide with Halloween, a banner on this holiday has been running for several weeks on our main website in advance of this popular celebration. A click on the banner takes one to the FAQ: Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?

As for blogs, 485 have now been posted. Realizing that a number of humanly devised holidays are quickly approaching, the Daily Bible Verse Blog is scheduled to focus on several scriptures showing that humans should not create their own days of worship.

Sermons, Bible studies and seminars from each U.S. Feast site are now being added to the Feast of Tabernacles website. We also revised the Updates on this page so they now address the Feast in 2012.

Submitted by David Treybig