At 10:30 a.m. worship this Sunday, July 27, 2008, Tyrone Presbyterians will feature Pastor Norman Huff, soprano soloist Karen Sollenberger Mogle, cantor Deborah Huff Estright, as well as church organist Richard Merryman in a summer service focused on “The Story of Salvation.”
Using the appointed lectionary reading from Romans 8: 22 to 39, as the bible basis for his meditation, Pastor Huff will bring a message entitled “He Wouldn’t Let go.” Throughout his homily, Pastor Huff will refer to these comforting words from the Apostle John from Romans 8: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor height, nor depth, now any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
On Sunday, July 27, and then again on Sunday, August 3, Pastor Huff will serve as guest preacher during the two weeks that Tyrone Presbyterian pastor and Epworth Manor chaplain Reverend Mark Liller travels to Germany on a journey sponsored by the Church of the Brethren. A retired Methodist minister who resides with his wife Anna Mae Huff in Epworth Manor Apartments, Reverend Huff presently serves as the interim minister of Lower Spruce Creek Presbyterian Church.
Along with guest pastor Norman Huff, Mrs. Karen Sollenberger Mogle will serve as guest soprano soloist at Tyrone Presbyterian Church this coming Sunday. Mrs. Mogle will present two contemporary Christian songs. A 1970 graduate of Williamsburg Area High School, for the past 30 years, Mrs. Mogle has served as staff assistant in Penn State’s College of Education. Across the years, Mrs. Mogle has worked as a singer, a youth choir leader, and an accompanist at both Church of the Good Shepherd and Tyrone’s Grace Baptist Church. Mrs. Mogle and her husband Timothy have two grown daughters. They reside along Highland Drive in Tyrone.
In addition to Mrs. Mogle, guest cantor (song leader) Deborah Huff Estright will lead the audience in Stephen Starke and Bruce Becker’s 1993 hymn masterpiece entitled, “The Tree of Life, With Every Good.”
In their 1993 hymn, Starke and Becker begin the Story of Salvation with a the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. Eventually, that garden tree evolves into the lonely tree on the Hill of Calvary. Ultimately, Calvary’s lonely tree bears the fruit which completes the Story of Salvation.
Church organist Richard Merryman will echo the Story of Salvation when he offers a prelude and an offertory based on American and British Sunday school hymns – “Tell Me the Story of Jesus,” and “I Love to Tell the Story.” With child-like lyrics, the first hymn, by Fanny Crosby, describes the birth, temptation, ministry, rejection, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as it unfolds in the gospel story of salvation. The second hymn outlines the duty of Christians to “tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love,” to ever one, in every time, in every place.
As the days of summer march onward, Tyrone Presbyterians urge the citizens of this community to join them at 10:30 a.m. this Sunday, July 27, 2008, as they hear anew the Story of Salvation, in the eloquent words of Starke and Becker’s recent hymn: “What mercy God showed to our race, a plan of rescue by his grace/In sending one from woman’s seed, the one to fill our greatest need/For on a tree uplifted high, God’s only son for sin would die/Would drink the cup of scorn and dread, to crush the ancient serpent’s head/Now from that tree of Jesus shame, flows life eternal in his name/For all who trust, and will believe, salvation’s living fruit receive/And of this fruit, so pure and sweet, the Lord invites the world to eat/To find within this cross of wood, the tree of life, with every good.”
