Palm/Passion Sunday, 14 April

Traditional Worship Services at 9h and 11h
Contemporary Worship Service at 13h30

Holy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 15-17 April

Holden Evening Prayer Services at 19h. The Holden Evening Prayer is a lovely setting of vespers, following the traditional form and using contemporary and inclusive language.

Maundy Thursday, 18 April

Worship service with communion and optional foot washing at 20h in the Sanctuary.

Good Friday, 19 April

Tenebrae "shadows" worship service at 20h.

Easter Sunday, 21 April

Sunrise Service at 7h on the quai d’Orsay in front of the ACP.
Easter Fellowship Breakfast at 8h in the Thurber Room.
Traditional worship services at 9h and 11h.
      (Both traditional services on Easter are identical, with choir, handbells, brass, organ and soloists)
Contemporary celebration of the Resurrection at 13h30.

Note: Nursery and toddler care provided at 9h, 11h, and 13h30; Children’s Worship held at 11h and 13h30.

Attendance at the Easter morning service at 11h always exceeds church capacity. If you look forward to worshiping at the traditional service, please consider attending at 9h.

Easter Monday, 22 April

Church building closed.

30 March at the American Church in Paris

Significant Marriage One Day Seminar 2019

In this Seminar, couples are led, inspired and challenged to discover how God wants to use their unique marriage to make a difference. This weekend seminar will teach the couples to be intentional in creating a plan together to become all God has created them to be as a couple.

The Seminar will be led by the founding couple Dave and Mary Gothi. Dave and Mary have dedicated themselves to making a difference in the lives of couples since 1996, through teaching and helping them to enhance, protect and, when needed, restore their marriages. Dave & Mary have mentored couples, led marriage seminars and workshops across the US and overseas, including a workshop for couples in crisis through Marriage Dynamics Institute.

Mary, a Psychotherapist with graduate degrees in counseling and clinical psychology, has been counseling and teaching couples and families since 1978. Because of her own international experience, along with her heart for couples, she has specialized in the care of missionaries and other expatriates overseas with Heartstream Resources. She spent 7 years serving with Young Life in Vienna, Austria, and Eastern Europe, where part of her ministry was counseling people from the missionary, embassy and United Nations communities.

Born in India, Dave is a Chemical Engineer, with 35 years of experience in Engineering, Operations and Quality Control. Half of those years also include his experience in marriage restoration, education and enrichment. The same expertise and desire for excellence which he brought to billion-dollar companies, he shares with couples to enrich their marriage.

To get to know more about Dave and Mary, please watch this video: https://vimeo.com/103245213

Saturday 30 March 9h to 17h at the American Church in Paris

The American Church in Paris welcomes Dan and Fran Michalek.

Dan Michalek is a retired pastor, having served the First Presbyterian Church of Brighton, Michigan, for nineteen years. His wife, Francine, served as director of worship and music at the Brighton church, and together they have two grown children, Krista (married to Jordan) and David (married to Emily), and one grandchild, four year old Emilia Jean.

A native of Flint, Michigan and a graduate of the University of Michigan Flint and Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston, he served two churches in Pennsylvania for a total of twenty years before returning to his home state.

Dan currently serves on the Board of Directors of LACASA, Livingston County’s nonprofit organization that ‘protects, advocates for and empowers victims and survivors of child abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault,' and is also president of the board of directors of the House of Healing Foundation, the agency that oversees a comprehensive mission in Guatemala. He has made numerous mission trips to Guatemala and participated in the United Nations' annual Consultation on the Status of Women, having participated in three presentations there.

Fran recently retired from her position as Worship and Music Director at First Presbyterian Church in Brighton where she served for 14 years. She directed the adult traditional choir in works that included Rutter's "Requiem" and Vivaldi's "Gloria," and led the adult handbell choir as well. She also helped develop a new contemporary service and band in 2005. She worked with teen and children's choirs in the performance of a personally composed musical along with others such as "Godspell." She led children's music camps, developed creative worship services and supervised the direction of children's chimes and teen handbells.

Prior to her church work Fran taught vocal music in a public middle school and served as music director and choreographer for high school musicals. She has performed in musical theater herself but her greatest joy is preparing and directing others.

Fran has served on the House of Healing Foundation Board, volunteered in Guatemala, designed and led women's retreats and directed two choir tours to Scotland. Her most recent work has been at a hobby store selling seed, binoculars and feeders for wild birds. She is an avid "birder" and is looking forward to watching the unique bird species in France.

Thursdays (from 7 March) at 18h30-19h30 in the ACP Chapel

ACP musicians, young adults, pastors, and lay leaders are blessed to offer Taizé Candlelight Prayer Services every Thursday throughout Lent.

Experience sung scripture and prayer in multiple languages in Christian community. Restore your soul midweek with meditative worship based in simple music, scripture readings, and prayerful silence.

Over 100,000 young people come to Taizé each year to pray, study the Bible, and serve. To learn more about Taizé: https://www.taize.fr/en

There will also be Taizé Song Workshops every Tuesday 19h-20h15 in room G5. Nicole Taylor, who has cantored at Taizé, will lead us in learning the simple prayerful songs we will pray throughout Lent. For more information, or to volunteer as musician, contact Nicole Taylor.

Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus.
Tuesday 19 March in the Thurber Room – Meal at 19h; Presentation 19h45-21h15

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, theologian and activist who publicly confronted Nazism and anti-Semitic racism in Hitler’s Germany. The Reich's political ideology, when mixed with theology of the German Christian movement, turned Jesus into a divine representation of the ideal, racially pure Aryan and allowed race-hate to become part of Germany's religious life. Bonhoeffer provided a Christian response to Nazi atrocities that was sparked by his experiences in Harlem in 1930.

What Bonhoeffer learned about Jesus in Harlem's churches featured a black Christ who suffered with African Americans in their struggle against systemic injustice and racial violence—and then resisted. In the pews of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, under the leadership of Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., Bonhoeffer absorbed the Christianity of the Harlem Renaissance. This Christianity included a Jesus who stands with the oppressed rather than joins the oppressors and a theology that challenges the way God can be used to underwrite a union of race and religion.

Dr. Reggie L. Williams is associate professor of Christian Ethics at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. His book Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance (Baylor University Press, 2014) was selected as a Choice Outstanding Title in 2015, in the field of religion. The book is an analysis of exposure to Harlem Renaissance intellectuals, and worship at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist on the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, during his year of post-doctoral study at Union Seminary in New York, 1930-31.

Dr. Williams’ research interests include Christological ethics, theological anthropology, Christian social ethics, the Harlem Renaissance, race, politics and black church life. His current book project includes a religious critique of whiteness in the Harlem Renaissance. In addition, he is working on a book analyzing the reception of Bonhoeffer by liberation activists in apartheid South Africa.

Dr. Williams received his Ph.D. in Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in 2011. He earned a Master’s degree in Theology from Fuller in 2006 and a Bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies from Westmont College in 1995. He is a member of the board of directors for the Society for Christian Ethics, as well as the International Dietrich Bonhoeffer Society. He is also a member of the American Academy of Religion and Society for the Study of Black Religion.

Thurber Lectures is an adult community gathering and growth time that is open to all.

Meal at 19h; Presentation 19h45-21h15 in the Thurber Room

Thurber Lectures is an adult community gathering and growth time that is open to all..

Video recordings of selected past Thurber Lectures available here

Stewardship plays an important role in enabling ACP to continue being an Embassy for the Kingdom of God and in furthering our individual paths of discipleship. We invite you to pray about the role of giving in your spiritual growth and to join us dedicating our pledges on Sunday. You can find our pledge forms for printing here or on-line version here.