A. Worshipful Christmas

We are coming up to what this year amounts to Christmas Weekend. The Advent waiting is almost over and we have three opportunities to celebrate coming up.

1) On Friday evening at 7 PM we will have a Candlelight Christmas Service focusing on “Longing Peace in a Broken World”. The message based on Luke 2 will be brought by Pastor Erick.

2) Saturday morning at 10 AM there is a Christmas Day Service on “The ABC’s” of Christmas featuring some excellent work from our children. The message based on Matthew 1:18-25 will be brought by Pastor Peter.

3) Sunday morning at 10 AM we have our regular Sunday worship but carrying on the Christmas themes with a look at Matthew 2, Herod and the Magi.

I am laying this out like this because I would like to encourage you, if you plan to attend in person, to choose one of the first two services and not attend both. We are assuming that Christmas services will bring out more people and so in the interest of allowing more people to attend at least one, please take one or the other of Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Likely for many of you that would happen pretty naturally anyway. You are, of course, more than welcome to view each service on-line as always. And for the Sunday service we will be open to participation in the usual way.

The Christmas services are now open for registration. Please register and register only for services you will attend. We may need to be a little more strict with registration numbers and so accuracy will be important. Thank you.

B. Healthy New Year

The transition to the new year will be part of the Sunday service on January 2. There will not be any extra services on that weekend. There are a number of reasons for this that amount to a reduced level of interest and energy for a New Year’s Eve service. If you would like some resources for ways to mark the transition from old to new year, please ask me and we can help you find those.

For the new year we will start with a series on relationships. At least a couple of these sermons will be based on the Sermon on the Mount (as promised this past Sunday). The idea is that while we participate in Challenging Conversations groups, we are also thinking about a variety of different relationships that we should be paying attention to. We will begin on January 2 with a look at the foundational relationship, our relationship with God in Jesus Christ. Our hope is that we can grow healthier in our relationships as part of our start to a new year.

So, this is the preview to What is Going On in the next while. May your Christmas worship experiences be deep, meaningful and stretching. May your new year include God guiding you to healthier interactions with others. And each step of the way may you sense the Holy Spirit inspiring you to pay attention to Jesus Christ.

Pastor Erick

Worshipful Christmas and Healthy New Year