Author Archives: Lynn Golen

I cannot believe we are at Memorial Day 2025!  Time flies when you are having fun, I guess.  I believe in my heart that our church is on the right path.  Financially we are holding our own.  Our pastor is settling in very comfortably with us.  I love his sermons, and he has got the Lutheran Liturgy down well also.  I do not want to say too much good about him as he will get a big head or a bigger head!  The Trustees and Pastor are still working on some changes for the Maggiano Scholarship Fund to make the requirements for a scholarship more in line for where we are today as a church.  We are also working on term limits for all members of any committee within the church.  And we are suggesting some changes in the Nominating Committee.  These will go to the Council at our next meeting in June.  Then in the fall we will present them to the congregation for approval.  These are more changes to get aligned with where we are today as a church.  The Property Committee had three large projects for this year:  Fix the driveways as we come in and out on Route 46 and replace the two handicap spaces out front which are larger than what was there.  This project is done.  Removing the two remaining pine trees and grinding the five stumps to ground level back by the patio.  This is not completed yet.  Finally, having the parking lot seal coated and lined.   This is in the process of being scheduled.  The flowers have been planted and are growing, plus the colors are good this year.  We will be finishing the project with mulch.  Thank you again for making this possible through your donations to the Outside Flower Fund.  Well, that’s all for this month and I will continue to keep you informed of other things as they come up.  Please remember to love everyone as God loves us!

Church Information…Please remember that you can obtain church information from the monthly Lamplighter Newsletter, the Constant Contact emails you receive, on the church website (www.lllc.org), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Living-Lord-Lutheran-Church-493806727349110/), and postings on the church bulletin board.  Church Council Meeting minutes are posted on the bulletin board and sent out via Constant Contact.  We would like to see a better “open rate” when we send information to you via Constant Contact so that we know you are being informed of the activities that are occurring at the church.  If you have any other suggestions on how best to reach out to our parishioners, please see a Council member.

We at Living Lord will be collecting toiletries (shampoo, conditioner, body wash, deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrush) for the months of May, June, and July for the Howland Schools’ Paw Pantry.  Thank you in advance for your generosity!  Watch for the container in the narthex.

Monthly Women’s Breakfast…Please join us at our monthly breakfast at Vasilio’s in Cortland on the second Thursday of every month at 10:00 am.  All are welcome!

Greetings in Christ!  Here it is almost May!  It has been said that April showers bring May flowers (May flowers bring Pilgrims!), but April certainly brought us beautiful flowers in our beautiful church!  What a wonderous Lenten season we had.  It gave us the opportunity to celebrate our Lord through our Wednesday Lenten Soup Suppers, Holy Week, and of course Easter Sunday!  I cannot thank you enough for allowing me to participate in all of these wonderful events with you.

Lent is a season of rediscovery.  We rediscover our Lord through fellowship, liturgy, and self-reflection.  We more fully embrace our Lord and the truth of His sacrifice and resurrection on our behalf.  How glorious it was to be part of this rediscovery and growth with each of you.  Thank you again for sharing this with me.  As I had a chance to get closer to each of you, I also had a chance to get closer to Jesus through you.

May will be a time of inspiration and fellowship too.  Not just among ourselves, but with others within our Christian community.  On May 4 we will suspend our Sunday service here at Living Lord to take our faith on the road.  We will go to worship with the congregation of the First United Church of Christ in downtown Warren.  The church is located at 280 East Market Street, just east of the Social Security office building.  The service will take place at 11:00 a.m. and I hear that the pastor will be providing a pasta luncheon following the service!  (The building has an elevator for those that might not be able to handle stairs.)  We are going in fellowship to show our solidarity with those who are losing their church at the end of September.

May 11 is Mother’s Day!  An opportunity to pay homage to the wonderful women that gave us love, guidance, and life.  We will give special thanks to our Lord for this wonderful blessing.

Again, I thank you for counting me worthy of sharing your fellowship and spiritual journey as we continue to express our love for our gracious God and one another.  Blessings to you all!

We had beautiful Holy Week services starting with Palm Sunday with breakfast after the service, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday, with all three well attended.  On Easter Sunday the sanctuary was beautiful with lilies on the cross and flowers up around the altar.  Thank you to all who helped us with all the flowers.  The organ, the Choir, and Don Smith’s solo and, of course, Pastor’s sermons all through the week.  We have turned a page here at Living Lord and are headed in the right direction.  It is such a joy for me, as your Council President, to see what we are doing now as a church.  Let’s just keep reaching!  May will be outside flower month.  We will be picking up our flowers shortly and will be having a planting party within the next few weeks.  Thanks to the congregation our outside flower fund reached just under $1,000.00, which is great!  I cannot wait to see the finished product out front and the patio behind the Fellowship Hall.  We will be doing some outside projects this summer funded by the Fuchs Fund.  The entrance and exit of the parking lot will be dug up and repaved back 40 feet from Route 46 on the exit side and on the entrance side the driveway will be widened at the road and dug up to the sidewalk in front of the church about 50 feet back from the road.  The current handicapped spaces out front will be replaced as they are falling apart.  We will then convert all the parking spaces in front of the Education Wing to handicap spots.  That will give us a total of 14 handicap spaces.  All the spots in the back will cost us nothing.  We will be removing the final two trees behind the Fellowship Hall and having the stumps grinded level to the ground.  My vision for that space is to landscape to some degree.  I will share my visions for that space at a later date.  Thank you all for your help and understanding as your Council President and I appreciate your support.

Church Information…Please remember that you can obtain church information from the monthly Lamplighter Newsletter, the Constant Contact emails you receive, on the church website (www.lllc.org), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Living-Lord-Lutheran-Church-493806727349110/), and postings on the church bulletin board.  Church Council Meeting minutes are posted on the bulletin board and sent out via Constant Contact.  We would like to see a better “open rate” when we send information to you via Constant Contact so that we know you are being informed of the activities that are occurring at the church.  If you have any other suggestions on how best to reach out to our parishioners, please see a Council member.

Thank you to all who contributed to the collection of T-shirts and socks for the Paw Pantry at Howland High School.  Our tallies were:  Girls T-shirts = 30; Boys T-shirts = 25; Girls pr. of socks = 104; Boys pr. of socks = 75; Pajamas = 2; Footsies = 2; Compression socks = 4; Miscellaneous socks = 8.  All schools participate in suggesting student needs for the distribution of toiletries, food, and clothing.  The room in the high school that houses the items for distribution is very well organized, very clean, and supervised at all times.  Thursdays are organized for high school students to visit the Pantry for needed items and teachers in the other Howland Schools send over to the Pantry requests for their students in need.  We at Living Lord will be collecting toiletries (shampoo, conditioner, body wash, deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrush) for the months of May, June, and July for the Paw Pantry.  Thank you in advance for your generosity!  Watch for the container in the narthex.  Pastor Gammon and a member of the Evangelical/Membership Committee have taken communion to our homebound members.  We will start over on the list to visit after Easter.

Our Lenten Soup Suppers and our Palm Sunday Breakfast were certainly big hits.  My sincere thanks to all who donated and helped to clean up.  There was good fellowship and a great message each week from Pastor.  May’s Fellowship will be on May 18 following the service.  I am planning the usual coffee and sweets.  Bakers needed!  Our June Flea Market and Bake Sale will be on Saturday, June 21.  Please consider donating some baked goods for our sale.  This was a great success last year and a good moneymaker.  Please enjoy Spring’s warmth and sunshine.  Everything is so green and the flowers are so beautiful.  Thank you God!

Monthly Women’s Breakfast…Please join us at our monthly breakfast at Vasilio’s in Cortland on the second Thursday of every month at 10:00 am.  All are welcome!

Thanks to everyone who supported our Easter Food Basket ministry.  Whether you donated goods, money, or your time, we could not have done this without you.  Wishing all of you God’s blessings.  You are appreciated!

Time.  The subject of time, and its passage, probably has more idioms relative to the subject than perhaps any other (with the exception of love).  “Time stands still”, “Time heals all wounds”, “Time is a thief”, etc.  The truth is that time, and its passage, is relatively constant.  The variable is our perception of time.  When we are experiencing something we enjoy, time seems to pass quickly; conversely, when we experience something we do not enjoy, time seems too slow.

But the fact is, time, as measured here on Earth, passes at the same rate–60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 365.25 days in a year.  Our relationship with time changes based on our circumstances.  Watching a child grow can give us the perception of time passing ever so quickly; suffering pain (physical or emotional) often seems to bring the passing of time to a halt.  When we are busy, “there’s not enough time in a day”, and when we are not busy or are bored, “time goes by so slowly”.  Sometimes we anticipate an event so much that time seems slow, and then when the event is over our hindsight tells us that time moved too quickly (my childhood Christmases come to mind!).

Whatever the case, time moves on.  With or without us, the clock keeps ticking.  I believe that our amount of time is not as important as what we do with our time.  Obviously, there are certain things we must do with our time–work, eat, hygiene practices, etc.  We all need to have time to relax and reflect, but we also need to make time for fellowship, worship, and being with our Lord.  Not just on Sunday mornings but finding time in our busy schedules to spend time in prayer and reflection with God.  Scripture tells us that our Savior will return someday and that we must be ready when that occurs.  In preparation for Jesus’ return, let us spend time reading scripture, learning more about our Lord, reflecting on our relationship with Christ, and identifying and removing any barriers that might exist.

April is here, and Easter is approaching fast.  Let us look into ourselves and our relationship with the Christ so that we are better prepared to greet His coming.  Afterall, “There’s no time like the present!”

I wish you all many blessings from our Lord this Easter and thereafter.

Well our Ash Wednesday service went very well and attendance was great and that led us to our Wednesday Lenten Soup Suppers and Evening Service for five weeks.  Our first two suppers were also well attended with inspirational messages from Pastor Gerry.  I am hoping the rest of our Soup Suppers and Evening Services will continue to be well attended.  These are the functions that keep our church together and we become stronger in our beliefs and love of God and these functions make us a stronger Living Lord Lutheran Church.  Our weekly church service, our Adult Forum, our Sunday School (when we have children in the building), all the causes that we ask you to support, are all part of Living Lord Lutheran Church.  These are the things that make our church stable and we can continue to do God’s work.  We are now working on some new Fellowship ideas to have here at the church.  We are thinking of Bingo parties and game nights or afternoons and maybe a Chili cook-off.  These will be causal with snacks and beverages and allow more fellowship between our members and possibly other area churches.

At times I feel that we get bogged down by silliness, which means nothing or at the most very little.  And that  is not our goal as a church.  Our purpose is to spread the word of God, help in our communities when we can, have a vibrant and healthy atmosphere in which to worship, and to support our church.

Look, as Council President, I am doing my part the best I can.  We realize that the future of our church is to attract new members.  We are doing our best to make our church as attractive as possible to potential new members.  But I need you all to help me keep us heading in the right direction, to support the church.  I am not saying financially–you are doing that–just please also support the church through its functions.  That makes us stronger as a church.

I would like to take a minute to comment on our pastor.  He is doing a great job learning our liturgy for our Sunday services.  He and his wife, Marian, have settled right in to our congregation.  They are active in most all of our functions here at the church.  Pastor has not said no to anything I have asked of him.  And remember, he is also the pastor to another congregation and that he is a part-time pastor.  I think sometimes he has gone beyond part-time.  So hats off to our pastor!

Let me finish by telling you a little story about Karin and I joining Living Lord.  At the time, we were looking for a new church.  Karin’s best friend was a member here.  She suggested that we consider Living Lord.  Well, an appointment was made for Pastor Williams to come visit us.  I was a little nervous about the meeting because I did not know what to expect.  I was not sure if we were going to hear fire and brimstone and we needed to get to church or we were going to hell!   Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but when the pastor came, Karin and I were so taken by him that we ended up joining Living Lord.  That was 42+ years ago and Karin and I still love this church and the members are part of our family.  We both feel we want to see this church continue on as long as possible.

Church Information…Please remember that you can obtain church information from the monthly Lamplighter Newsletter, the Constant Contact emails you receive, on the church website (www.lllc.org), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Living-Lord-Lutheran-Church-493806727349110/), and postings on the church bulletin board.  Church Council Meeting minutes are posted on the bulletin board and sent out via Constant Contact.  We would like to see a better “open rate” when we send information to you via Constant Contact so that we know you are being informed of the activities that are occurring at the church.  If you have any other suggestions on how best to reach out to our parishioners, please see a Council member.