financial summary: March 2022

Here is an update on our giving & expenses to the end of February 2022
Thank you for your faithfulness

 

January February March
2021 income 10,714.00 18,482.21 18,625.00
2021 expense 19,750.12 19,207.18 20,872.11
2022 income 18,566.00 18,545.00 16,598.00
2022 expense 14,919.64 16,688.03 21,745.48

24 April 2022

Thank you for joining us on-line.
OCC is made up of people who are meeting in-person and who are meeting on-line.

Welcome to OCC | 24 April 2022

  • God calls all of us into his presence;
  • He calls us to be together both with him and with one another;
  • He calls us to wait with and for him;
  • and He calls us to serve & bless others – those who are part of God’s kingdom and those who have not yet responded to God’s grace

As you prepare to watch our service video, we encourage you to take a few moments…

  • Get your coffee or tea, settle in, be still…
  • Take 2 or 3 deep breaths… in and out… breathe,
  • Invite the Lord to make himself present with you as you watch – he is with you – it’s just that often we are not aware that he is.

Today we are looking at the last title that Jesus calls himself in the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

Here is the video service for Sunday, 24 April 2022.

Click the events tab to discover what is coming up.

Click on news & updates to get other updates

Sunday Night

Zoom Prayer | 6:30pm

 

 

 

 

OCCYouth | 7:30pm

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Week

GriefShare | Monday @ 2pm

 

 

LIFEGroup | Wednesday & Thursday evenings

on the road to Emmaus

A lyric video featuring a song by Jeff Johnson inspired by the story in Luke 24 of the risen Jesus joining two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

The artwork is from a fragment of a painting entitled, “Christ on the Road to Emmaus by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255 – 1318).

 

That same day,
Two men walked up a road –
Posing over questions of a man that they once knew,
For they thought he would be their savior.That same day,
One man walked up that road –
Joining the other two,
He quickly got involved in their discussion.So they talked and they questioned and he answered them,
With scripture and passage proving things that had happened all too recently.That same day,
Three men sat at a table –
The two men sat there staring,
As the one blessed the food,
And broke the bread.

When suddenly their eyes were made wide open,
Open to a man they thought had been long dead.
Yes, suddenly their eyes were made wide open,
Open to a man they thought had been long dead.

Jesus had risen,
Risen from the grave,
Risen from the gave just that day.

Jesus had risen,
Risen from the grave and broken all the bonds that ever held him,
That same day.

Today,
We walk up a long road –
Posing over questions,
Of a life that gives no answers in a world that rarely bares a clue.

But this same day,
Jesus walks up this road –
And he joins us,
Yes, he joins us,
Yes, he joins me and you!

Jesus has risen,
Risen from the grave,
Risen from the gave just today!

Jesus has risen,
Risen from the grave,
And broken all the bonds that ever held him –
Today!

from Two Songs For Holy Week, released March 31, 2015
Performed and recorded by Jeff Johnson at The Ark, “Jesus Is Risen” first appeared on the album, “The Anvil Of God’s Word” (1977).

Easter Sunday service

He is Risen…

He is Risen indeed!

Thank you for joining us on-line.
OCC is made up of people who are meeting in-person and who are meeting on-line.

Welcome on this Easter Sunday.

  • God calls all of us into his presence;
  • He calls us to be together both with him and with one another;
  • He calls us to wait with and for him;
  • and He calls us to serve & bless others – those who are part of God’s kingdom and those who have not yet responded to God’s grace

As you prepare to watch our service video, we encourage you to take a few moments…

  • Get your coffee or tea, settle in, be still…
  • Take 2 or 3 deep breaths… in and out… breathe,
  • Invite the Lord to make himself present with you as you watch – he is with you – it’s just that often we are not aware that he is.

Today we are looking at the last title that Jesus calls himself in the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

Here is the video service for Sunday, 17 April 2022.

 

Click the events tab to discover what is coming up.

Click on news & updates to get all the activities & readings & other things for Holy Week

 

 

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday is “Resurrection Day.”

Today we re-enact, retell, and reimagine the unfathomable event on a morning in Israel over 2,000 years ago. In many traditions this day begins the Eastertide festival, a “resurrection party” that goes on for 50 days and culminates in Pentecost – where we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. A woman visits the tomb. A stone is rolled away. Jesus is seen to be alive. The Body of Christ is unleashed in passion, love, and faith on an unsuspecting empire. Throughout this day and the Easter season, we reclaim the saving work of Christ. Death attempted to swallow into its tomb the very Giver of Life – who transformed the tomb into a womb of new creation life. Sin and death have been conquered for eternity – and also in the present. Christ’s resurrection life is at work within us who have said “Yes” to Jesus and are being changed into his likeness. As a bearer of Christ’s resurrection life, one who is a new creation (“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” – 2 Corinthians 5:17), you are now commissioned to join God’s great work of righting the world, distributing Jesus’ love, and confronting the powers of our age with the empowering life of Christ in you (Colossians 1:27). This is the kingdom life – the Easter life.

“…The resurrection, both of Jesus and then in the future of his people, is the foundation of the Christian stance of allegiance to a different king, a different Lord. Death is the last weapon the tyrant, and the point of the resurrection, despite much misunderstanding, has been defeated. Resurrection is not the redescription of death; it is its overthrown and, with that, the overthrow of those whose power depends on it” (Wright, “Surprised By Hope”, p.50).

“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26

 

 

Rise with Christ to Life.

CHRIST THE LORD

Is Risen Today! Hallelujah!

 

Is there a stone in front of your grave that it’s time for Jesus to roll away?

Hear the glorious Easter story in Luke 24:1-6, once again:

“On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had pre-pared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!”

Like the crash of a celestial battering ram, the angel announces that the Lord Jesus Christ has risen to life from the dead! Every hope, every dream, every spoken and unspoken longing of human life on planet earth finds its fulfillment in an empty tomb in first century Palestine. The resurrection of Jesus is the surest confirmation that God not only loves the world, but is making all things new (Revelation 21:5). Triumphing over the enemy of our souls, the devil, Christ has walked, quite literally, to hell and back. What is in his hands at the end of that journey? A souvenir. The keys of death (Revelation 1:18).

The gate is open! Death will not hold us. Jesus has made death’s tomb a womb of everlasting life! In the resurrection, Jesus has put the world to rights after the first Adam welcomed sin into the human story (1 Corinthians 15:45). Living a blameless life, he walked our journey, familiar in all respects with our humanity (Hebrews 4:15). Rejected by humankind (Isaiah 53:3), his love led him to a cross, and in yielding to death he became the Chief Corner-stone (Ephesians 2:20) on which his community of love, the church, is being built.

Rise with Christ this Easter Day.

Welcome him to lift you from the graves that hold you, and to penetrate the darkness of your fear with an enduring confidence that he is truly making all things new.

Join your resurrected Lord in the healing of a broken world, and show everyone Jesus is alive by living “a life of love” — keeping yourself in God’s love as you wait for his mercy to bring you to eternal life (Jude 1:21).

 

PRAYER

for Easter Sunday

Lord, I choose to rise with you. Lead me.

 

QUESTION

for Your Easter Reflection

  • How will I now live as an heir of Christ’s resurrection life?

Easter Sunrise Prayer

Arise!

People, lift up your eyes,   Isaiah 51:6

And look toward the east;   Psalm 103:12

For soon, the glory of the Lord will be revealed,   Isaiah 40:5a

All flesh will see it together;    Isaiah 40:5b

Arise!

For the Sun of Righteousness will come,   Malachi 4:2a

With healing in His wings!   Malachi 4:2b

Bend your faces to the east,   Isaiah 24:15

Awaken your eyes to the morning of our salvation!   Isaiah 33:2

Arise!

For too long, we hungered in the night,   Matthew 5:6

Scavenging in spiritual shadows;   Jeremiah 6:4

For too long, we thirsted in darkness,   Matthew 5:6

Wandering hopelessly under starless skies;   Exodus 14:3

Arise!

Arise!

And flood the world with light!   Matthew 5:14

End this age of gloom!   Isaiah 9:1

Rain warmth upon our land!   Deuteronomy 11:11

And coax the earth from its winter slumber!   Song of Songs 2:11

Arise!

Arise!

Wipe out the thick clouds of transgression,   Isaiah 44:22a

Break through the fog of despair;   Ecclesiastes 2:20

The heavy mist of ego and pride,   Isaiah 44:22b

The overcast of guilt, which too long kept us captive;   Psalm 32:5

Arise!

Arise!

And give strength to the weary,   Isaiah 40:29

And vision to the prisoners of darkness,   Isaiah 42:7

Arise!

The age of darkness has ended,   Psalm 88:12

Our covenant with death is cancelled!   Isaiah 28:18

Arise!

Shine! For our light has come!   Isaiah 60:1a

The glory of the Lord has risen upon us!   Isaiah 60:1b

Our sun will set no more,   Isaiah 60:20a

Neither will our moon wane!   Isaiah 60:20b

Arise!

The Lord will be our everlasting light,   Isaiah 60:20c

Our nights of mourning are no more.   Isaiah 60:20d

Arise!

 

 

Easter Sunrise Prayer ~ Brent Buhler

foot washing – 4

Over the last few days, I have posted a series of drawing by Jess of the saltandgoldcollection (Instagram). Maybe as you have seen these images you are waiting for a drawing of the person you need to see on the seat. Maybe it’s a representation of you, or someone you love, or maybe it’s someone you hate.

But you don’t “need” someone to draw anyone. These pictures are meant to prompt a conversation between you and the Holy Spirit.

Right now, you can examine your heart and figure out for yourself who you most need to see on the seat. You ALREADY have access to the conversation with the Lord, to His healing, to have your eyes opened, to hear a call to repentance, to understand His love, right now.

The question to ask right now is: “Who do I most need to see on the seat?

You don’t need a picture for God to start ministering to you.

Who do you need to see on that seat?

saturday – music

Alana Levandoski calls this When I Go – a Good Friday song
but I hear it much more as a song for this Saturday – the day before the resurrection

Steve Bell Wait Alone in Stillness

holy saturday

holy saturday

Holy Saturday is the seventh and final day of Holy Week. It’s that weird day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday that we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Jesus’ body is in the garden tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, where he and Nicodemus had prepared the body with a mixture of myrrh and aloes, and wrapped it in strips of linen. Guards are posted in front of the tomb at the request of the chief priests and Pharisees, and a seal is placed on the stone. We can imagine that the disciples are paralyzed by both grief and fear over the events of the past week. It is only a matter of time until the powers of their age come for them, and the tortures will be as severe as those of their Lord. They have given their lives to a dead messiah – and yet his love, life, teaching, miracles, and promises have completely altered their souls. In bewilderment, they hide in silence – and they wait.

“Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” John 16:22

 

live between the times

THE NOW AND NOT YET

Is a tension we must embrace

 

Is there a gift that can only be found when our hope and reality are different?

In John 16:22, Jesus has given his disciples words that must have be-wildered them. “…Now is your time of grief,” he says, “but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” Later in John 16:33 he then adds these words, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Divine bewilderment is familiar to most of us. One moment, our world is pristine, full of possibilities, and marked by a sense of blessing and fulfillment. Then, suddenly, shadows fall. Night engulfs our brightest day in blackness and fear. We are bewildered, pierced by a great unknowing that causes us to question everything that came before this darkness, and everything that will come after.

This was the lot of the disciples on the Saturday after Good Friday. Knowing that the Jewish religious leaders were smelling blood, their loss of Jesus was compounded by their fear of every knock on the door. Just a week before, they had been revelling in the miracles of Jesus, winning a popularity con-test among crowds that were following them across the landscape of Israel.

Now, with the cheers and shouts of Palm Sunday still ringing in their ears, their popularity had fallen to the place of their Lord — they were only seen as worthy of a tortured death.

Into our bewildering world, the Kingdom of God enters with force. One minute a miracle occurs and a boy is healed of blindness. Yet, a minute later, we re-call that slave trafficking continues and young girls lose their innocence forever at the hands of lust-filled men.

The Kingdom of the now and the not yet means that we live out the truth of God’s saving love, even in the face of dire circumstances. We watch for God’s gifts along the way, the echoes of His presence that keep us centered in faith.

 

PRAYER

For Holy Saturday.

Lord, the tensions of this life can disillusion and paralyze me. Take the reins, and teach me to embrace your Kingdom life each day.

 

QUESTION

for Your Easter Reflection.

  • What future does God have for us?