CWU Invites Community To Join

Circles Of Love Service

World Community Day 2003 will be on Friday, November 7.

Church Women United/Bethel-Newtown and CWU/Greater Danbury are co-sponsoring a worship service open to all residents – male and female – to be held in the lower meeting room of C.H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street in Newtown. The service will begin at 1 pm. Light refreshments will follow.

The Rev M. Sargent Desmond of Brookfield will be the guest speaker for the service.

(Please note this service was incorrectly described as a Bible study in last week’s Newtown Bee. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.)

There is no charge to attend, but participants should be aware that a freewill offering will be collected as part of the service. A canned food drive will also be held that afternoon and anything that is collected will be forwarded to local food banks.

The service will be led by members of CWU/Bethel-Newtown and Greater Danbury. It will include Scripture readings, prayers, and hymns. “Circles of Love” is this year’s World Community Day theme. The service draws on lyrical writings and songs by Sister Miriam Therese Winter, a professor of liturgy, worship, spirituality and feminist studies at Hartford Seminary.

Rev Desmond was first welcomed by CWU years ago by the late Margaret Winchester of Newtown, who was the co-founder of the CWU/Bethel-Newtown chapter in 1958 along with her mother, Pearl Winchester. The Rev Desmond, who retired in 1997 after 21 years as pastor in The Congregational Church of Brookfield, UCC, will celebrate his 47th anniversary as an ordained minister in November.

“Rev Des” as he was called when he attended Bangor Theological Seminary and worked with the 22 members of Newington Congregational Church in New Hampshire, came from Manchester, N.H. He graduated from Harvard Divinity School and went on to pastor in churches in Plymouth, Mass., Verona, N.J.; and four years (1956-60) in Danbury before arriving in Brookfield.

World Community Day is an annual event that brings Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox and other Christian men and women together in a common worship experience that focuses on issues of piece and justice. It is also an opportunity to share in projects for local communities.

For more information call a church’s key woman: Carol Mattegat (426-3228) for Christ the King Lutheran Church; Betty Williams (270-9931) for Newtown Congregational; Barbara Gates (426-3446) for Newtown United Methodist; Doris Schoonmaker (270-0311) for St John’s Episcopal; Pat Stroud (426-5270) for St Rose of Lima; Norma Gray for Trinity Episcopal; Althea Benedict for St Thomas Episcopal in Bethel; and Barbara Gorham (426-0638) for Walnut Hill Community Church in Bethel.