Counting Our Blessings Slideshow

This slideshow was created from the many images that have been used throughout the Counting Our Blessings: Stewardship 2012 program. We received such positive feedback about the slideshow on Festival Sunday that we decided to post it on the Counting Our Blessings blog website. Hope you enjoy the show!

Blessings Without Number

By: Melanie Ohnstad, Minister of Music and the Arts

Counting is part and parcel of a musician's practice. The beats that I have counted since my girlhood seem more numerous than the stars on a clear North Shore summer night. Like the pulsing of the human heart, a steady beat creates a framework in time in which music can flow. Its predictability brings both stability and excitement to musical performance. If you count music as a blessing, you probably already know that counting in music is also a blessing! A spiritual director once told me that counting blessings was a good way to begin developing a spiritual practice. She urged me to name a blessing from each day before going to sleep at night. While I have not been as diligent about counting my blessings as my beats, I do recognize two things: 1) that counting blessings is a blessing, and 2) that my blessings, too, are more numerous than the stars on a clear North Shore summer night. 

Westminster accounts for a galaxy of my life's blessings. Like a piece in ¾ time, let me count some of the “stars” of my blessings: 

1. Being part of a community of caring, committed people who make my life so rich and make Sunday the best day of the week
2. All we can do together that we could not do alone
3. All we can do alone from the strength gained from our togetherness

1. Having place to develop and share the gifts that I have been given
2. Creative and talented colleagues whom I enjoy and trust without exception
3. Freedom of thought and expression that allow the Spirit to take us to new places

1. Brad Ollmann's and Kela Wanyama's skill and delight in working with our young singers
2. Jere Lantz's energy and musical understanding in directing the Global and Westminster Choirs
3. Nancy Carter's love of handbells and her ability to share the joy of their music

1. Barbara Prince's creamy voice, administrative foresight and Chamber Ensemble leadership
2. Rodney Allen Schwartz's enrichment of our space and lives with art
3. The hundreds of people who devote thousands of hours to offer music in our worship

1. The joy of hearing the congregation sing the great hymns of faith
2. The diversity of music that deepens my faith and provides me a way to worship God
3. The Christmas Dinners that bring in the holiday season and celebrate the Westminster family

Music: Cantus, "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"

May Clean Water Flow

by Ed Cunnington, Jr

Those of us who have been involved with the installation of clean water systems in Cuba have been able to count many, many blessings. We count them in the faces of families, orphans, known as children without families, and the elderly who have known only gastrointestinal problems since birth. We can count the blessings in our faces as we see the benefits of clean water for those who have never experienced clean water. 

Living Waters for the World is a mission outreach for the Synod of the Living Waters in the Southeast United States. This outreach offers education, training and supplies that have reached over 300 sites in 22 countries. To date, eight Westminster members have been trained, either at the site in Mississippi or in California. 

Those WPC members who have been trained have counted their blessings and committed their time, talent and money to a ministry of helping to provide “clean water to all God’s children.” Further, several others in the congregation, touched by the effect of clean water on people’s lives, when counting their blessings, have contributed to this water ministry.

Because of the partnership we have with the church in Matanzas, members from WPC have been blessed with the opportunity to participate in delivering clean water systems to our brothers and sisters, in Christ, in Cuba.  We have been witness to changing the health in people’s lives. The blessings in that ministry abound.

Construction of the clean water system at the orphanage in Matanzas, Cuba...

 ...under the watchful eyes of the beneficiaries of clean water.

 Learn more about the vital importance of available clean water to people's lives:

Stewardship 2011 Video

Westminster is blessed to have so many people with varied and wonderful talents. Enjoy this video made by member Marion Tucker, which she made for last year's Stewardship season. We don't know how she does it, but we sure are glad she did!