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Click to read
:
Program Highlights
2009 Annual
Meeting Key Note Speaker and Great Friends Honorees
Spotlight on Board Member
Tom Larson
Tell
your children's teachers they are Angels!
Scroll down to
see CCGB events & announcements
Support
the
Janus
Center for Youth in Crisis

While
watching the Travelers
Championship
Golf Tournament!
click
here for details
Those Who Teach Are Angels!
As the school
year draws to a close, how better to express your
appreciation for the dedicated teachers – the special
angels in your children’s lives - than a gift made in
their honor to Project Learn (our after-school Program for
Bridgeport elementary students)?
Just send your gift, along with a list of names and
addresses of teachers you would like to honor and we will
send them a special card proclaiming that you think he or
she is an angel.
For more information, please
call The Council at 334-1121 , ext. 243
click
for Angel Teacher Tribute
click for 25th Annual Angel Giving
Guide
Or email pattyjensen@ccgb.org
Save the dates!
Part 3:
Fall, 2009 ~ Faith: Islam Topic: TBA
Hosted by
the American Institute for Islamic and Arabic
Studies
CCGB
Program Highlight
Safe Place Goes
Digital
By Dale R. Holder, Director of Janus Center for
Youth in Crisis

Location, location, location!!!!
This not only is a key factor in
the real estate market, but also was the
key factor in getting the word out about
Safe Place
during National Safe Place Week.
It’s always good
to know someone who shares your visions
and goals.
Rev.
Jonathan Hevita
, one of
Janus
Center
’s Outreach Workers, had established a
great relationship with Eric Lambert,
Sales Manager for Lamar Outdoor
Advertising, though their roles on the
Bridgeport Regional Business Council.
When
Janus
Center
began planning for National Safe Place
Week, Jonathan had an idea to use Lamar’s
digital billboards to get the word out
about
Safe Place
. Jonathan
approach Mr. Lambert and asked if we
could the billboards as part of the
outreach efforts for the week.
Not only did Mr. Lambert agree to use of
the digital billboards, he agreed to
advertise on five billboards in
strategic locations thru out this the
city of
Bridgeport
. The
best part of this deal was that
advertising was giving to us (a $1,250
value) FREE OF CHARGE!!!
Veronica Cruz
,
Janus
Center
’s other Outreach Worker, was on-call
during the week and reported a
significant increase in hotline calls
from both youth and families needing
assistance.
I guess that there really is
power in advertising.
Read about last
year's honorees:
2008
Great Friends Keynote Speaker &
Honorees
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“Reflections”
June,
2009
“So
thick-headed! So slow-hearted!...Don’t you see that these
things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and
only then enter into his glory?”
Jesus
to Cleopas and friend, Luke 24:25-26 as paraphrased in The
Message
The resurrection story of
Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35)
is a story of loss resolved by love. Unique to Luke, it
follows the first report of the Resurrection at the
beginning of the same chapter, with its empty tomb, men in
dazzling clothes, and the message from these celestial
visitors declaring “He is not here, but has risen.”
Compared to this, the
Emmaus Road story is quietly reflective. The two travelers
talk as they walk along, and it is the pathos of loss that
comes through so powerfully. Jesus joins the two in their
journey but they do not recognize him. Jesus asks the
content of their conversation and they stop. Sadness
envelops them incredulity infuses their speech: “Are you the
only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that
have taken place there in these days?” When Jesus asks
“What things?,” Cleopas and his companion give the Gospel in
a nutshell, with this caveat: “But we had hoped that he was
the one to redeem Israel.”
The phrase is pregnant
with unfulfilled expectations of geo-political hegemony and
the restoration of a small desert nation to the glory years
of Kings David and Solomon. Not only had they lost a
friend, a teacher and a mentor; they had lost a dream.
Godly people live in a
world of loss. We are touched by it and we are called to
reach to others in their place of loss. The stock market
continues its volatile ride. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
grind on. Genocide still unfolds around the world.
Partisanship, domestic and international, has not yet given
way in most quarters to true bi-partisanship.
A congregation reduces
staff as revenue falls. A marriage of 43 years ends as
spouses die within weeks of one another. A marriage
crumbles. Children go hungry. Drugs invade and destroy.
These losses are no respecter of persons. Neighborhoods,
social standing, schooling, socio-economic status are no
protection from the inevitability of loss.
Left to our own
devices, we remain bereaved or, worse, lapse into cynicism
and despair. But two surprising twists in the story help
overcome loss.
First, we know that
Cleopas and his friend knew the Lord before this day. We
know that because the text tells us they did not recognize
him. One can only recognize—“re-cognize,” “to know
again”—those we have “cognized” before. This prior
knowledge prepares them to recognize Jesus when, in an act
doubtless familiar to them, he broke bread with them. The
end of their grief, and the remembrance that their hearts
“burned within them” when they spoke to Jesus before they
recognized him, was based on a prior personal relationship.
Facing any loss can be overwhelming, but without the
spiritual reservoir of established relationships, celestial
and temporal, we have little reserve on which to rely. Now,
before the crisis and loss, is the time to know the Lord.
Second, Jesus did not
allow empathy to limit truthfulness. I confess that if I’m
writing this Gospel story I have Jesus saying something like
“There, there, don’t worry, it will be all right.” He said
no such thing! He called them thick-headed and slow-hearted
to believe the Good Book. Clearly Jesus was not a member of
Toastmasters and had not taken a Dale Carnegie course. But
as the story unfolds, his directness becomes a wake-up call
to prepare Cleopas and his friend for a comfort that words
alone could never have provided: the comfort of Christ’s
living presence in love.
Losses come. No one
is immune. So begin now, or continue, to know the Lord and
to cultivate life-giving relationships with all people.
The Rev. Dr. Brian R.
Bodt is President and CEO
The Council of Churches of Greater Bridgeport, Inc.
continued...(click)
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