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, January 29, 2023, the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany. If you missed the service, then please click below for a replay.
Worship Bulletin for January 29, 2023Please 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, January 29
9:10 a.m. – Sunday School in the Parish Hall.
10:00 a.m. – Worship: Pastor Allen Dayal of the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church of India presiding.
11:15 a.m. – Confirmation Class will meet in Room 13.
Sunday, February 5
9:10 a.m. – Sunday School in the Parish Hall.
10:00 a.m. – Worship: Prof. Shawn Strout of Virginia Theological Seminary presiding.
11:15 a.m. – Confirmation Class will meet in Room 13.
As our series of guest pastors continues, Resurrection welcomes Pastor Allen Dayal of the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church of India, and also a graduate student at Virginia Theological Seminary, to preach and preside this Sunday, January 29. He will be followed on February 5 by Prof. Shawn Strout of Virginia Theological Seminary. On February 12, Pastor Gordon Lathrop will return to lead us, and Rev. Tiina Talvitie, Pastor of the New York Finnish Lutheran Congregation, will preside on February 19.
A member of Resurrection who attended the annual congregation meeting and potluck lunch last Sunday tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this week and is being treated in isolation at a local hospital. Members who attended the congregation meeting should be especially attentive to possible symptoms and consider getting tested, if appropriate. More information will be provided when it is available.
The RELC Reopening Planning Group met Thursday, January 26, and reviewed the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations for communities with COVID-19 metrics in the “medium” level – where Arlington County currently is. Based on those recommendations, the Planning Group agreed that masking should be recommended, but not required for attendance at Resurrection’s worship services.
The CDC recommends that residents in communities at the “medium” level stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines, get tested if they have symptoms, and wear a mask if they have symptoms, a positive test, or exposure to someone with COVID-19 as well as to individuals on public transportation. The agency also encourages residents to wear a mask at any time, if they choose to do so, as an additional precaution to protect themselves and others. Anyone at high risk for severe illness is encouraged to consider wearing a mask indoors in public and taking additional precautions.
Congregants at Resurrection’s worship services are also reminded 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. Our pastors, communion assistants, and ushers will continue to wear masks when welcoming those attending services and in distributing Holy Communion. The wearing of masks in Sunday School will continue to be guided by parents’ feedback. Anyone not feeling well should stay home and access the livestream feed of worship services.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to Resurrection’s annual congregation meeting and sumptuous potluck lunch last Sunday! The congregation adopted operating and capital budgets for 2023 and elected four new members to the Congregation Council: Ron Bergman, Dennis Polla, Valerie Pratt, and Jack Schoen.
Many thanks to everyone who made the meeting possible, including Pastor Gordon Lathrop, Tom Mugavero and the Fellowship Committee; Ted Mortensen and the Property Committee; Mark Linton and the Finance Committee; Financial Secretary Jennifer Schoen – and to Steve Black for assembling and editing the "2022 Annual Report" and his technical support during the meeting.
The congregation, at the conclusion of the meeting, acknowledged, with an unprecedented standing ovation, the immensely important contribution of Glen Mason to our congregational stability and its continued vitality. Thank you, Glen!
Having adopted our 2023 operating and capital budgets, Resurrection’s financial team needs to ensure that our congregation will back these budgets with its generous offerings of support. Please let us know of your giving intentions by answering the Stewardship Committee’s request and returning your Giving Intent response at our Sunday services, mailing it to the church office, or using the online form on the Resurrection website.
You can also choose to have your offering automatically drawn from your bank account on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis with the “Simply Giving” electronic funds transfer program. Just complete an enrollment form and return it along with your giving intent – or schedule a recurring offering using the “Donate” button on the Resurrection website.
Resurrection’s collection of donations of food items for AFAC will continue on Sunday, January 29, in conjunction with our regular worship service.
This Sunday, January 29, is the last day to give Resurrection your broken holiday lights for recycling. Our Creation Care Team will take them to MOM’s Organic Market, which is accepting strands of lights for recycling through the end of January. A Better Way Recycling collects lights from MOM’s and breaks them down through smelting or shredding to recover raw commodities which are then used to create construction materials, car batteries, other electronics, flatware, jewelry, and more! You can visit https://momsorganicmarket.com/recycle-center/ and https://www.abetterwayrecycling.com/ to learn more.
We continue to await the delayed arrival of Resurrection’s 2023 offering envelopes and regret the inconvenience of not having new envelopes to start the New Year. Your offerings remain critically important to the church, so please use any unused 2022 offering envelopes for the next few weeks until the new envelopes arrive – just correct the date to the current Sunday. Your envelope number will remain the same for 2023.
If you don’t have any 2022 envelopes left, substitute envelopes without numbers can be provided. To ensure that your offerings are properly credited to you – especially cash offerings, please include your name on a substitute envelope.
The Creation Care Team has placed several new blue recycling bins throughout the building. Please use these bins to recycle paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, and aluminum/steel cans. Please do not put anything else in the bins, including no plastic bags or paper towels. Thank you for supporting this program as we work to reduce the amount of trash collected at our church.
Winter is here – and Resurrection is looking for volunteers to help clear the sidewalks and entrances to the church after snowfalls. The Property Committee has only three volunteers thus far and more hands will make lighter work! If you live within walking distance of the church – or even a short, safe driving distance – and would be willing to help with snow removal, please speak with Ted Mortensen.
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 January. 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!
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.
