Bethany United Church of Christ - Lawndale - Philadelphia

Bethany United Church of Christ - Lawndale - Philadelphia Bethany United Church of Christ was your community church from 1907-2023.

04/20/2025

The friends and family of the former Bethany UCC wish you all a very Happy Easter. 🎶 Christ the Lord is Risen today! Hallelujah! 🎶

03/10/2024

Bethany UCC closed back in April 2023 for those of you who are liking this page. The church itself no longer exists. We’ve left the page up in case anyone wants to watch any of the old services. You need not mark that you like the page or that you want to follow it because no new information will be posted.

08/19/2023

All historical documents, member records, baptism, marriage certificates, death info, etc., has been turned over to:

Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society
555 W. James Street
Lancaster, PA 17603

Bethany started as a German Evangelical and Reformed Church and it was only fitting our records are safely housed and protected here.

Please contact them should you need any of these records. Thanks!

08/18/2023

Hi everyone. After 116 years, we have said “amen” to our ministry at Bethany. We are blessed that the property is being used by a dear Haitian congregation we have been close to for over ten years. In another post, we will explain how and who to contact should you need church records for either yourself or genealogy. We are so fortunate that we had such a good run for Lawndale, for Philadelphia, and for the world. Now it’s time to spread our blessings and talents in more congregations. This page will stay open for anyone wanting to watch old services or to see old pics. And maybe we will post some archival photos over time. We love you all!

08/27/2022

BETHANY NOTES

This Sunday at Bethany: Worship in the Fellowship Hall. We hope to include Facebook Livestream for those who cannot come in person!

Sermon: Church Today.

Old Testament: Psalm 81: 10-16;
Epistle: Hebrews 13: 1-8;
Gospel: Luke 1: 1-4

The lector this Sunday is Peggy Willis.

Thank you for continuing to support Bethany financially even when we are not able to gather in person. Offerings may be sent to the Church’s PO Box #24640 Philadelphia 19111 or to the home address of Joyce Charles.

PASTORAL REFLECTIONS

The Chinese character for our word crisis is supposedly comprised of the two characters representing danger and opportunity. I’m not sure how factual that is, but it’s a great image for us! The danger part of a crisis is quite real. The opportunity part is really more like "a dangerous moment, a time when things start to fall apart. Of course, in a crisis, what we tend to want most of all is safety and security rather than change, but these are also times when fundamental change can happen and the new can begin. It is usually no fun to go through those times of crisis, but they can be transitional opportunities for our lives.

We are certainly going through a crisis in our American society these days. The crisis is most clearly visible in the political arena but has. its roots in the American religious community. Many Christians on the more progressive left have moved away from the Church in search of spiritual meaning through social or political action without the context of organized religion. Many on the more conservative right have also moved away from the mainline Church into independent and fundamentalist church organizations also in search of spiritual meaning through social or political action without the context of traditional church values. Many on both sides of this division continue to exploit the spiritual and patriotic passion to gain power and money.

Violent events are fanning flames of anger at generations of injustice. The injustice The danger is that we will retreat into camps either for or against the police, for or against the Republicans or the Democrats, rather than work to implement necessary reforms, curtail hate-filled rhetoric, and reduce violence. The dangers are that we will either support or condemn people because of what side they represent without holding accountable the few whose words and actions precipitate the violence; that we will battle each other without taking seriously the underlying racial, economic, and basic fairness issues that have send caring people into the streets of our cities. What is the opportunity that is present here and now?

The opportunity is to take the concerns seriously, to hear them, and work to reform policing, to make our economy more just for all people, and to be sure that the blessings and hospitality of society are available for people of all races. Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote, “You must give up everything in order to gain everything. What must you give up? All that is not truly you.… What will you gain? Only your own true self. Nothing is simpler and nothing is more difficult.” (Death: the Final Stage of Growth, 165). Let us put forth the to be reflective and contemplative in our lives; to be sure that we absolutely matter to each other so that, out of our diversity, we can become one. There is danger in these times and there is also great opportunity to move forward together.

--Pastor Jack Price

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT BETHANY?

Summer Schedule: We are on a summer schedule. Worship is still at 10:30am, but it will take place in the Fellowship Hall. There will be a Fellowship time with a light breakfast at 10am. Come, worship with us!

Suds & Scripture Bethany Young Adults): Tuesday, August 30, 6:30pm at Iron Hill Brewery.

UPDATE

As we are turning the page toward fall, we continue to live in a time of great uncertainty and even fear in the nation, our world, and, for many of us, in our own lives. The great gift of faith is the ability to look into the abyss of life with allowing fear to dictate our actions. With gratitude for your friendship and partnership in life, we can trust. That God is with us and in us and, even more importantly, we are in God—all of us!

--Jack

08/19/2022

NOTES FROM OUR PASTOR

This Sunday at Bethany: Worship in the Fellowship Hall. We hope to include Facebook Livestream for those who cannot come in person!

Sermon: Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Old Testament: Isaiah 43: 16-21; Epistle: Philippians 3: 10-14; Gospel: John 12: 1-8

Thank you for continuing to support Bethany financially. Offerings may be sent to the Church’s PO Box #24640 Philadelphia 19111 or to the home address of Joyce Charles.

PASTORAL REFLECTIONS

Our nation marked a significant anniversary quietly last week. Five years ago, Charlottesville, VA became synonymous with a Unite the Right rally that led to violence. There were. attempts to equate the Neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups with those who were opposing them. I wrote at the time, and still believe firmly that the violence was precipitated by the Alt Right side because people I know, who were there, said so. Attempts to claim a moral equivalence between these groups and those who opposed them, were very disappointing.

U.S. society has a very bleak history of the treatment by Anglo-Americans of African-Americans.

The unspeakable cruelty of slavery in the colonies, and later the United States, persisted even through the writing of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution (slaves to count as 3/5’s of a person). We eventually fought a war between the states of our union when the Confederate states chose to secede rather than give up slavery. Even after that war’s devastation and the granting of rights to former slaves, the later 19thand early 20th centuries saw the repeal of most of those rights and the imposition of Jim Crow laws that reinstituted a form of slavery. It was during those years that most of the Confederate memorial statues were built, as a show of dominance by whites over blacks. These practices continued into the 1950’s.

The 1960’s marked acts of progress toward equality with the requisite tensions. The Civil Rights laws from that era have done a great deal to move us in the direction of the equality our founding ideals espoused. Sadly, today, there is a resurgence of white supremacy in many forms, exemplified by the recent Charlottesville experience. Discrimination by whites toward blacks, and many of people of color, is our society’s sin and we cannot allow it to go unopposed!

As a Christian, I do not believe that opposition should be violent, but it must be active and definitive. There is no moral equivalence available for our nation, despite the voices that are saying so! We must face our sin and continue to work with honesty and diligence toward that day when racism largely disappears and there is truly liberty and justice for all.

May God bless us as we journey together,

--Pastor Jack Price

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT BETHANY?

Summer Schedule: We are on a summer schedule at Bethany. Worship is still at 10:30am, but it will take place in the Fellowship Hall. There will be a Fellowship time with a light breakfast at 10am. Come, worship with us!

UPDATES

We are living in a time of great uncertainty and even fear in the nation, our world, and, for many of us, in our own lives. The great gift of faith is the ability to look into the abyss of life without allowing fear to dictate our actions. God is with us and, even more importantly, we are in God—all of us!

--Jack

08/13/2022

NOTES FROM OUR PASTOR

This Sunday at Bethany: Worship in the Fellowship Hall. We hope to include Facebook Livestream for those who cannot come in person!

Sermon: A Theology of Success;

First Gospel Lesson: Matthew 13: 1-9; Second Gospel Lesson: Matthew. 25: 14-30

Thank you for continuing to support Bethany financially even when we are not able to gather in person. Offerings may be sent to the Church’s PO Box #24640 Philadelphia 19111 or to the home address of Joyce Charles.

PASTORAL REFLECTIONS

What good does it do any of us to be on an individual journey of faith that ignores the broken state of the world and of the environment? I suspect you know my answer. It does precious little good! The purpose of the life we are living is not to finish first or with the most stuff, but for everyone to finish. This idea is based on the belief that God has given us what we need as long as we work together and share for the benefit of all. As a result, our faith journey compels us forward in life is to change the world by changing the religious and social systems that can perpetuate poverty, discrimination, and division. This is what God calls all disciples to do on our life journeys: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other faiths and philosophies. This is the invitation I hope we're all hearing today.

We share a world in which we breath the same recycled air and share the same water and food sources. When one damages the environment, all suffer. When one contracts a virus, all are likely to be exposed to it. When one develops a treatment or cure, all can benefit if we choose to share. When one uses weapons of destruction, all are in danger.

Faith is often described as having a personal relationship with God. That's how many people of faith understand the purpose of their religious life. Of course, this language is a shorthand way of describing how we choose to orient our lives in the belief that there is a spiritual reality at the heart of all of life, including our lives, and that it has the essential nature of what we call love. Having a personal relationship with God involves growing to know ourselves more honestly and also being in community more intimately. It involves our relationship with the larger community of humanity and the natural order as well. This is the piece of the faith journey that engages our passion for social justice and that engages all communities of faith in terms of their policies and posture, and attitudes of hospitality and of welcoming.

May God bless us as we journey together

--Pastor Jack Price

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT BETHANY?

Summer Schedule: We are on a summer schedule at Bethany. Worship is still at 10:30am, but it will take place in the Fellowship Hall. There will be a Fellowship time with a light breakfast at 10am. Come, worship with us!

UPDATES

We are living in a time of great uncertainty and even fear in the nation, our world, and, for many of us, in our own lives. Even as we go about our daily lives and experience the routines and the new opportunities that come to us, we need to hold the larger picture of our nation and world in our hearts and minds. Before we, as a human race, go too far in the direction of self-righteous anger, division, bitterness, and hatred, I pray that we will step back, remember our shared humanity, and remember our oneness in the spirit who creates and sustains us. We must choose to act with love before it’s. too late.

07/31/2022

We are live for the Ask Jack Price Summer Sermon Series on The Lord’s Prayer!

07/31/2022

We are going LIVE today at 10:30 - join us!

07/30/2022

BETHANY NOTES

This Sunday at Bethany: Worship in the Fellowship Hall at 10:30 a.m.

Sermon: The Lord’s Prayer.

First Gospel Lesson Matthew 6: 9-15; Second Gospel Lesson Luke 11: 1-4.

Thank you for continuing to support Bethany financially even when we are not able to gather in person. Offerings may be sent to the Church’s PO Box #24640 Philadelphia 19111 or to the home address of Joyce Charles.

PASTORAL REFLECTIONS

Tree are images used through the Bible to represent God’s presence around us and in us. People are often pictured as trees that grow when planted by water and when we have roots that sink deep into the earth.

Eternal God,
Who makes the earth and the life on it
The sea and all that lives in its waters
The sky and all that flies there
The universe and its breathless uncountable limits

Remind us that you have made us people
And assigned to us care for this world
That you have made us
To tend and nourish each other as well

God of all our lives,
Make us faithful stewards of all
You have given to our hands
And let us never ignore the lesson of the trees
That stand as silent guardians of our past and future
That sink roots deep into the earth and stretch arms to heaven
Offering you a continuing prayer of thanksgiving and praise

We join them, O Lord, with our prayers of
Thankful praise and humble appreciation
For life in and through Your Spirit. Amen. (©Jack Price, June, 2015)

May God bless us as we journey through life together.

--Pastor Jack Price

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT BETHANY?

Summer Schedule: We are on a summer schedule at Bethany. Worship is still at 10:30am, but it will take place in the Fellowship Hall. There will be a Fellowship time with a light breakfast at 10am. Come, worship with us!

UPDATES

As the summer season passes its midpoint, I find myself so grateful for the rhythm of these weeks. It is a little slower and a little less stressful. I am so grateful for the beauty of trees, singly and in clusters and in forests; trees which give us oxygen to breathe and cool the hottest days. The summer season reminds me how often I forget to just do something fun during other times of the year! And remember, there is still a lot of summer left. Make the most of it!

--Jack

07/22/2022

REFLECTIONS FROM OUR PASTOR
- by The Rev. Dr. Jack Price

This Sunday at Bethany: Worship in the Fellowship Hall at 10:30 a.m.

Sermon: How Can We Judge without Being Judgmental?

Old Testament reading Job 34: 21-30; Gospel Lesson Matthew 7: 1-6.

Thank you for continuing to support Bethany financially even when we are not able to gather in person. Offerings may be sent to the Church’s PO Box #24640 Philadelphia 19111 or to the home address of Joyce Charles.

PASTORAL REFLECTIONS

We all have to make choices in life about where to place our trust. This may be the purest form of faith—our ability to trust. Trust can mean many things whether the focus of that trust is another person or in divine wisdom—God. Faith is primarily a matter of trust. We can ask each other important questions of faith such as: “Can I trust you to work with me for our mutual growth and well-being?”

It takes work to be in relationship. It takes work to be a community and to be in the circle of community, the same way it takes work to grow as a person. It is the work of honesty and risk: the risk telling and hearing truth, and the risk of being wrong. Our future as individuals, as faith communities, as a nation, and as a human race depends on reaching out across barriers of comfort and familiarity not just to bring new people into our organizations, but to bring them into our lives; to become sisters and brothers with many who are now virtually strangers.

It’s easier to stay inside my comfortable sphere and let others come to me, rather than reaching out to them. Then, I get to decide if they fit in my life. But that’s not how life works best; not how God’s dream unfolds, not how God’s purpose for us happens. The circle that matters for all of us Is a circle to which all are invited, in which all are needed, and to which all are welcomed.

The Bible tells us that we are all children of God like a poet once expressed:
“He drew a circle that shut me out; heretic, rebel, a thing to flout But Love and I had the wit to win. We drew a circle that took him in” (Edward Markham)

We are struggling with this in American society today. We have a history of principles, norms, and laws that enable us to live and grow together. Today, many of us have been led astray by those who demonize the other side. We have always believed in personal freedom and also in accountability under the law. We have believed in the right of people to voice conflicting views, but not to manipulate governmental structures in order to get our way, no matter how right we think our way is. We have believed in the idea of one person, one vote, but gerrymandering and the Electoral College undermine that today. We need to have a media who hold our leaders accountable for telling the truth and who are themselves accountable for telling the truth. We need to be able to count on our government (local, state, and federal) to deal with our societal challenges, but huge issues like climate change and gun violence continue to put all our lives at risk. We need to work together so that we can live together. Let this be our mission, our marching orders, the priority of our lives wherever we live: to draw that circle larger now and always.

May God bless us as we journey together

Pastor Jack Price

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT BETHANY?

Summer Schedule: We are on a summer schedule at Bethany. Worship is still at 10:30am, but it will take place in the Fellowship Hall. There will be a Fellowship time with a light breakfast at 10am. Come, worship with us!

UPDATES

Today, July 22, Kathy and I celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary. Where has the time gone? I am so grateful to Kathy for sharing life with me; so grateful for our children, our children-in-law, our granddaughter, our extended family, the church families and work colleagues we have been blessed to know, and all of the relationships and experiences that continue to bless our lives.

--Jack

07/16/2022

NOTES FROM OUR PASTOR

This Sunday at Bethany: Worship in the Fellowship Hall. We hope to resume Facebook Livestream soon for those who cannot come in person!

Sermon: Talking about Race and Finding Healing?

Old Testament Reading: Old Testament Reading: Psalm 25; Gospel Lesson: Luke 10: 25-37.

Thank you for continuing to support Bethany financially even when we are not able to gather in person. Offerings may be sent to the Church’s PO Box #24640 Philadelphia 19111 or to the home address of Joyce Charles.

PASTORAL REFLECTIONS

Evil is real and it is present in this world. Evil has its roots in injustice and inequity when some have too much and many have too little, and many people’s rights are violated. The politics of grievance, bitterness, and violence take root and are nurtured in the fear of not surviving or of not having access to the benefits of a society. When grievance, bitterness, and violence take root and grow within the human spirit, evil results. When that evil reaches a tipping point in a society, those in power begin to treat others as less than human, and there is evil.

There is significant evil that has taken root and is growing in our society today. The evil is present in the more extreme elements of our politics and our religious communities. Though there have always been differences and animosity between conservatives and liberals, today that has escalated to a level of hatred. Mutual respect has generally given way to a despising and dehumanizing of the other side. Debate has given way to verbal and emotional warfare that is used to justify abuse and, too often, physical violence.

It is important to recognize evil as evil and to oppose it, but it is equally important not to stop there. As we fight evil, we have to remember to treat people as people. We are all human beings—children of God! We often ask “Why does God allow evil to prosper?” The answer is pretty straight-forward. Evil is the result of our wrestling with our use of free will, our human capacity to make choices and then, to live with the consequences of those choices. We grow in clearer and more profound ways when we struggle with the evil around us, and within us, and choose to work together for the good of each other. The freedom God gives is the ability to choose to act for the good. This freedom is the ability to recognize what is destructive, what will ruin our lives and the lives of others, and to resist those things.

Just because we have the freedom to choose, that does not make all our choices good ones. Evil is quite real and we see it in our world today. We see it in the mindless destruction of our environment. We see it in the withholding of life-saving medicines from those who are unable to pay and through the greed of those who manipulate financial systems to horde wealth, depriving so many of a living income. We see it in heartless acts of terrorism and murder, and in the refusal to allow people the right to make moral and ethical choices about their own bodies.

Ultimately, the most important each of us can do is to live positively, to treat others with respect and love. The temptation that faces all of us is to settle for a lesser way, a lighter faith, a way that does not require a significant commitment. The invitation of faith is to follow the Spirit. It is to shine the light of love in the darkest places of injustice and inequity. It is to replace the pain of despair with the passion of hope. The promise of faith is that we can discover the opportunity and challenge to grow into that “greater self [we] can become.” May God help us to grow in love and compassion!

--Pastor Jack Price

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT BETHANY?

Summer Schedule: We are on a summer schedule at Bethany. Worship is still at 10:30am, but it will take place in the Fellowship Hall. There will be a Fellowship time with a light breakfast at 10am.

UPDATES

Spiritual growth is God’s ultimate will for all our lives. Dealing with evil always begins and ends with growing in the Spirit, not as a way to avoid trouble, but as a way of making sure our actions are in synch with God’s values.

--Jack

Address

6545 Rising Sun Avenue
Philadelphia, PA
19111

Telephone

(215) 745-5231

Website

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