O Christ Jesus,
when all is darkness
and we feel our weakness and helplessness,
give us the sense of Your presence,
Your love, and Your strength.
Help us to have perfect trust
in Your protecting love
and strengthening power,
so that nothing may frighten or worry us,
for, living close to You,
we shall see Your hand,
Your purpose, Your will through all things.

- St. Ignatius of Loyola

On Sunday April 15, the VOPC leaders presented proposed changes for the future, which included discussions about our church structure, willingness to fully depend on God, strengthening our children’s education department, the possibility of moving to an afternoon service time in the main sanctuary or even to a new service location.

This meeting was a call to prayer and discernment for the congregation.

Let’s pray for the Pastor, the leaders and the entire congregation as we all discern God’s will for our church.

The presentation for the town hall meeting, contact list, and feedback form are posted below.  You may use feedback@vopc.org to submit your questions/comments to everyone on the contact list.

Town Hall Presentation

Contact List

Feedback Form

-Mother Teresa

Grant that putting You first in all my lovings I may be liberated from all lesser loves and loyalties, and have You as my first love, my chiefest good and my final joy.

-George Appleton, Oxford Book of Prayer

O Lord Jesus! How continually You must reprimand us for our unbelief. Our terrible inability to trust our Father and His promises must appear quite strange to You. Lord! Let Your words, “Because of your unbelief,” sink into the very depths of our hearts and reveal how much of the sin and suffering around us is our fault. Then teach us, Blessed Lord,that faith can be gained and learned in the prayer and fasting that brings us into living fellowship with Yourself and the Father.

-Andrew Murray, from “With Christ in the School of Prayer”

I do desire to come into harmony with you more fully and more often.  I do desire a fellowship that is constant and sustaining.  Please nurture this desire of mine, which seems so small and tentative right now.  May I someday become like the trees, which are “planted by streams of water, which yeild their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.  In all that they do, they prosper.”  For Jesus’ sake. -Amen

-Richard J. Foster, from “Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home”

O God, the Light of the heart that sees You,
The Life of the soul that loves You,
The Strength of the mind that seeks You:
May I ever continue to be steadfast in Your love.
Be the joy of my heart;
Take all of me to Yourself, and abide therein.
The house of my soul is, I confess, too narrow for You.
Enlarge it that You may enter.
It is ruinous, but do repair it.
It has within it what must offend Your eyes;
I confess and know it,
But whose help shall I seek in cleansing it but Yours alone?
To You, O God, I cry urgently.
Cleanse me from secret faults.
Keep me from false pride and sensuality
That they not get dominion over me.

A PERSONAL INVOCATION

O Love of God, descend into my heart;
Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling,
And scatter there Your cheerful beams.
Dwell in the soul that longs to be Your temple;
Water that barren soil overrun with weeds and briars
And lost for lack of cultivating.
Make it fruitful with Your dew.
Come, dear Refreshment of those who languish;
Come, Star and Guide of those who sail amidst tempests.
You are the Haven of the tossed and shipwrecked.
Come now, Glory and Crown of the living,
As well as the Safeguard of the dying.
Come, Sacred Spirit;
Come, and fit me to receive You.

-St. Augustine