Worship Schedule:
10:00am in the Sanctuary and on YouTube
Due to the pandemic the need for food is increasing daily. In addition, the annual Letter Carriers Food Drive (Stamp Out Hunger) which normally produces more than 50,000 lbs. of donated food has been canceled which makes the need even greater.
AFAC needs canned vegetables, cereal (low sugar), canned tuna, canned tomato products (stewed, diced, paste), and peanut butter (in plastic jars).
Contributions can be dropped off in the Narthex.
Please join us for a live stream of our 10:00am Worship Serivce on Sunday, December 4, 2022, the Second Sunday of Advent. If you missed the service, then please click below for a replay.
Worship Bulletin for December 4, 2022Please be aware that there may be moments of silence during the hymns, choral pieces, and organ voluntaries for which we have not been able to secure streaming rights from the music publishers. We apologize for this disruption and thank you for your understanding.
Sunday, December 4
9:10 a.m. – Sunday School in the Parish Hall.
10:00 a.m. – Worship: Rev. Dr. Sarah Colvin, former Rector at Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, presiding.
5:30 p.m. – Confirmation Class will meet in the Parish Hall.
6:30 p.m. – Confirmation and Youth Group dinner in the Parish Hall.
Monday, December 5
7:30 p.m. – Congregation Council Executive Committee will meet via Zoom.
Wednesday, December 7
7:00 p.m. – “Waiting with the Saints” Advent Evening Prayer via Zoom.
Thursday, December 8
7:30 p.m. – Congregation Council will meet via Zoom.
Sunday, December 11
9:10 a.m. – Sunday School in the Parish Hall.
10:00 a.m. – Worship: Prof. James Farwell of Virginia Theological Seminary presiding.
On the second Sunday in Advent, Resurrection welcomes Rev. Dr. Sarah Colvin, former Rector at Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit in Vashon Island, Washington, to preside and preach on December 4.
Our outstanding array of guest clergy continues on December 11 with the return of Prof. James Farwell of the Virginia Theological Seminary, followed by Pastor Gordon Lathrop on December 18. At our single Christmas Eve Service on Saturday, December 24, Pastor Wally Jensen will preside, with Pastor Lathrop leading us in worship on Christmas Day, Sunday, December 25.
Congregation COVID Protections
Attentive to the recent rise in COVID, RSV, and influenza cases, the wearing of masks at church is optional as long as Arlington County's COVID-19 community level remains “low” based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) assessment. Our Reopening Planning Group encourages congregants to wear masks if they choose to and will adjust our precautions if necessary based on the CDC assessment.
Congregants are also encouraged to continue to maintain appropriate distances when sitting in pews, sharing the peace of Christ and taking communion, and to wash hands and use sanitizers in church. Pastors, communion assistants, and ushers will continue to wear masks when welcoming those attending services and in distributing Holy Communion in deference to congregation members who choose to take that precaution. The wearing of masks in Sunday School will continue to be guided by parents’ feedback. Congregants are also encouraged to keep up to date with vaccinations, and anyone not feeling well should stay home and access the livestream feed of worship services.
Services for Edna Frady
Edna N. Frady passed away peacefully on November 25, 2022, at her place of residence in Falls Church, Virginia. Edna was a longtime member of Resurrection, serving on the Congregation Council and as Chair of the Morning Circle and Assistant Financial Secretary. A visitation and refreshments will be held Friday, December 2, at Murphy Funeral Home, 1102 West Broad Street in Falls Church, Virginia from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., with interment to follow at National Memorial Park, 7482 Lee Highway in Falls Church, at 2:00 p.m. The family is discussing a future memorial service at Resurrection.
This Sunday, December 4, is the deadline for reserving your poinsettias in honor or memory of family and friends as part of Resurrection’s traditional Sanctuary Christmas decorations. Please complete the form provided in the Narthex along with our worship program and place them in the offering trays along with cash or a check made out to Resurrection Evangelical Lutheran Church with a notation that it is for poinsettias. A donation of $15 for each poinsettia is suggested. Reserved poinsettias are yours to take after the conclusion of the January 8, 2023, church service.
Resurrection will be receiving donations of food items for AFAC on Sunday, December 4, in conjunction with our regular worship service. December 18 will also be an AFAC Sunday.
Sunday school for 3 years through 5th grade will meet Sunday mornings in the Parish Hall at 9:10 a.m. We have a lot of learning, games, art, video clips, conversation, prayer, challenges, laughter and FUN that takes place when we are together. Come join us! If you would like to be added to our email list, please reach out to Angie Brooke.
Also, mark your calendars for our upcoming meeting date for Confirmation and Youth Group on December 18.
Advent Mid-Week Services
Our Advent mid-week virtual services continue on Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. via Zoom. The theme is “Waiting with the Saints – Advent Evening Prayer.”
December 7 – Ambrose
December 14 – John of the Cross
December 21 – Winter Solstice
Each service will include an introduction by Gail Ramshaw. The liturgy will be led by our own members. Look for a Constant Contact email on Tuesdays, which will include the Zoom link and a copy of the bulletin.
Please join us on December 18 after the service to help decorate and make the church festive for Christmas. Many hands are needed, and all ages are welcome!
Thanks to all who contributed to the Doorways Winter Wishes Donation Drive to provide winter coats for families coping with domestic violence. During the holiday season, Resurrection will share its Advent offerings with Doorways, the Arlington organization assisting those families.
Resurrection is continuing to work on updating its membership directory with the most current, accurate and preferred contact information. Member Information forms are available in the Narthex – we urge each member of the congregation to fill one out and return it to the church office.
To view our 10:00 a.m. Sunday worship service on YouTube live, click on the live worship link on the RELC home page on Sunday mornings during the worship hour and be redirected to the YouTube live stream. The Live Stream will "go live" at 9:55 a.m. on each Sunday morning. To view the service at a later time, go to our YouTube Channel. Click on the videos tab to browse archives of past services. Click on the Subscribe button and create an account to be notified when Live Streams are started or when other videos are added. For any questions, please contact the pastor.
During our pastoral transition, we will suspend the compilation of a formal and published prayer list. Our intercessory prayer lists are crafted and maintained by the pastor who receives names and who exercises pastoral discretion and care in relation to those named and those who name them. Without an interim or called pastor to generate and maintain the list and to follow up pastorally concerning those named, an intercessory prayer list would be challenging to maintain with pastoral integrity and sensitivity. That said, each Sunday’s prayers of intercession include a petition during which members of the worshiping assembly can call out aloud specific names of persons for whom they would like to pray, and during this time of pause, worshipers can also name persons in the silence of their hearts and minds. Please be assured that your prayerful intents and those of the whole worshiping assembly are heard by God.
Pastor Amy Feira has graciously agreed to be on call for members of the congregation to contact in case of pastoral emergency and other pastoral needs through the month of December. She may be reached at: (703) 303-9388 and/or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Alexandra Mattson, the editor of our now quarterly Steeple Light newsletter, is now also serving as the editor of our Weekly Announcements messages, working closely with Council President Glen Mason. If you have any items that you wish to communicate in the Weekly Announcements as committee chairs or those responsible for other ministry initiatives at Resurrection, please send them via email to both This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by late Wednesday mornings for inclusion in the message for the coming Thursday. Thanks!
Please join us for a live stream of our 10:00am Worship Serivce on Sunday, November 27, 2022, the First Sunday of Advent. If you missed the service, then please click below for a replay.
Worship Bulletin for November 27, 2022Please be aware that there may be moments of silence during the hymns, choral pieces, and organ voluntaries for which we have not been able to secure streaming rights from the music publishers. We apologize for this disruption and thank you for your understanding.
Dear Friends in Christ:
This is my final Midweek Message to you as your pastor. What started as an outreach effort to make possible some form of contact with you as members during the pandemic shut-down when we could not meet much at all in person has continued for these two plus years as a regular weekly offering. I am glad to have had this occasion to engage in an epistolary form of ministry, which has its own roots in the letters of the New Testament. Now some final words.
This has been a most unusual time, to say the least, to have been in ministry together. I could be tempted to reduce this call to having been the “pandemic pastorate,” given how heavily the global health crisis has weighed on us all and colored so much of what we have been doing in all aspects of our lives. But that kind of reductionism would not be a fair and complete picture of what we have shared. For we have had, in my estimation, many very lovely occasions indeed which express the richness and fullness of Christian community when we are gathered around Christ in word and sacraments.
It has been a privilege to have proclaimed the gospel to you, first via video and then eventually in person on Sundays. You are attentive and engaged hearers of God’s word, and you have kept me on my toes, as it were, as a preacher, because I know from your feedback that you truly have been listening. And we have worshiped so faithfully together, employing a full range of the many resources available to us from our wider church in the service of the praise of almighty God when Christ in fact ministers to us through the word and the sacraments. Likewise, it’s been a joy to have been a teacher in your midst, for again, you are engaged and thoughtful participant disciples, students of our Lord. In many settings we’ve had rich conversations indeed, learning together and growing thereby in faith. These experiences have been a two-way street, for I have learned a great deal from you even as I have attempted to serve as your teacher! Moreover, it’s been a privilege to have walked with you in times when you’ve been in need of pastoral care and of prayer. I have truly enjoyed hearing stories of your life’s journeys and adventures when we’ve been in holy conversation together. Resurrection Church has remarkably gifted and dedicated lay leaders and staff members. I have consistently been impressed with the expertise you have brought to our life together pertaining especially, for example, to the administrative concerns of the church. I do believe that Resurrection Church persists in being an attractive and compelling congregation for qualified pastors seeking a call, even as this setting also presents challenges, as do most all congregations these days, given the tumultuous and ever-changing circumstances in nation and world.
What is left for me to say but thousand, thousand thanks? Thousand thanks to you and to God for the privilege of having served in this season as your pastor. In this mortal life, we never know what time is allotted to us. That’s true in all of our comings and goings, and it’s certainly true also concerning longevity in ministry. The fact that we have only been together for two years and some months does not detract from my cherishing our time together. Words begin to fail at moments like these. I pray that I have been faithful in upholding my side of the bargain in preaching the gospel, in presiding at worship, in teaching, and in offering care and leadership for such as time as this.
I know that it’s also true that I will not have occasion to say goodbye to many of you in person given the nature of summer travel and commitments on your parts. May these words, then, serve as a heartfelt goodbye for those whom I will not see this coming Sunday when our worship will include a rite for the conclusion of this ministry call and when we otherwise say personal goodbyes during the social time following in the parish hall.
Turning now to matters of transition, I have put into the hands of congregation leaders a document that lists particular matters that I had attended to as pastor so that it will be clear going forward who will do what in the coming season without my presence and before there may be an interim or another called pastor to lead and to serve. This document is offered in the service of making the transition as smooth as possible and so that matters of concern have less of a chance of falling through the cracks.
Also, please know that a call committee is being constituted even now and that preparations are being made in the bishop’s office to provide names of pastoral candidates as soon as possible. And Gordon Lathrop has devoted significant time and energy to lining up pastors to preach and preside each Sunday well into the autumn season. It’s also true that other pastors are at the ready to be on call for pastoral care needs. All of this will be further described in the weekly announcements messages that will continue to go out via Constant Contact.
You will note, if you’re present this Sunday for the rite for the conclusion of a call at the end of worship, that my first name will be employed in that rite, and not the title pastor. Beginning at that moment, I should be known to you as Jonathan, a baptized child of God, and not the one who serves as your pastor. It will be essential going forward that appropriate boundaries be maintained in the service of making the way for whoever next will be known to you as pastor. Which is to say, beginning with the end of worship this Sunday, I will no longer be available to you to serve in any pastoral capacity, and I will be steadfast going forward in maintaining those boundaries, again for the sake of honoring the leadership of the one who will succeed me as pastor in this place.
In conclusion, I will forever hold you and this place close to my heart as I give thanks to you and to God for this particular call which now becomes part of the richly textured fabric of my three decades of leadership and service in public ministry. And I will be praying for you as a congregation, especially for the Spirit’s guidance in soon bringing to you your next pastor as you are led into God’s promised future.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks be to God.
In Christ,
Pastor Jonathan Linman
Service of Holy Communion will once again be held in the Sanctuary at 10:00am. Everyone is asked to wear a mask, regardless of vaccination status, and to maintain social dinstance out of respect for those who cannot receive or who have chosen not to receive a Covid vaccine. Please bring a small juice glass, so that you may receive wine with Communion.
Dr. Melvin S. Lange, pastor of Resurrection Lutheran Church from 1958 to 1971, prepared the theological material for the artist, Roy Calligan, of the Hunt Stained Glass Studios in Pittsburgh, PA. The meaning of each of the seventeen windows is indicated by a Bible verse. The theme begins with the window to the left of the lectern (when facing the altar) and proceeds around the nave toward the back, and then forward on the opposite side toward the last window to the right of the pulpit.
Stained Glass Windows Information
We are a church that strives to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). We do justice by serving our community through our social outreach activities and through contributions of finances and member’s time to local programs, including, for example, Lutheran Social Services. We provide opportunities for a rich Christian education to our members and to the community. Many of our members are active in synod activities and in ecumenical activities with other Christians.
We love kindness in the Christian work we do, often quietly but resolutely, for our members and for the community. Benevolence has always been a priority for our church, and we are a significant donor both in our financial resources and, perhaps more importantly to us, our member’s time. We are active with food assistance programs in the Arlington area and to other social service organizations.
We strive to walk humbly with our God in our worship services. We take liturgy, prayer, and music very seriously in our church as a path through which our parishioners can experience the word and sacrament in their lives. Finally, we are excited about offering the sacrament of communion to our parishioners at every Sunday service and believe it is important that we continue to do so.
