New Year Greetings from Church! Please join us for worship, fellowship, and Christian Education this Sunday, January 5, The Second Sunday of Christmas. We’ll have a service of Holy Communion at 8am, followed by fellowship at 9, Sunday School at 9:15, and a second Service of Holy Communion at 10:30, in the sanctuary and online. Mandy, Maddie, Colleen and Blake Shuler will be on hand at the 10:30am Service to sing Benjamin Britten’s peaceful and winsome New Year Carol, a Trinity tradition for the first Sunday of the New Year – it promises to be a lovely morning at church!
Within the Gospel reading’s profound words lies the simple message that God is revealed in a human person. Though we may try to understand how the Word existed with God from the beginning of time, the wonder we celebrate at Christmas is that the Word continues to dwell among us. Christ comes among us in the gathered assembly, the scriptures, the waters of new birth, and the bread and the wine. Through these ordinary gifts we receive the fullness of God’s grace and truth.
Follow this link to the online bulletin for Sunday, January 5.
Thank you! So many souls to thank – especially for all that happened since the last announcements were published! Big thanks to Sue Gordon and her helpers for coordinating such a lovely reception for the Mainstreet Brass Concert on December 22, with thanks, also, to everyone who generously made and brought sweets and savories for the reception. Thanks also to everyone who turned out – it was a glorious night, as well as a generous night: we raised $700 for Lutheran Disaster Response! Thanks to Betty Flyte and her flower helpers for arranging the poinsettias for Christmas Eve, and to Betty, again, for coordinating their post-service distribution. Thanks to the Marano and Setzer families for lighting pew torchest and coordinating the lighting for the Christmas Eve Services, to Reilly Matthews and Philip and McKayla Pratt for acolyting, for our ushers, altar guild, assisting ministers, , communion assistants, candle-lighters, musicians, and everyone who worked to make Christmas Eve an especially lovely one – what a beautiful night, all to God’s glory! Thanks to the Marano family, additionally, for cleaning the church after the big ‘Eve and having everything ready for Sunday (as Kathy returned from her vacation). Thanks to Larry and Kristian Golick for their videography work, and to Larry, especially, for tending to a number of vexing Christmas Eve details behind the scene. Whew – we hope we’ve not missed anyone in this list, but, just in case, a big hearty thank you to everyone with any role in the celebrations! Our Music Ministry will take one more week of hiatus, this coming week, and then comes back swinging (the liturgical year is a marathon, not a sprint).
From the Nazareth Area Food Bank: The Nazareth Area Food Bank will be closed January-March to give their volunteers some much needed rest. If you would like to donate during these months, you may send a check to the Food Bank. We will begin collecting again in April. Thank you for your continued support and generosity.
-Stacey, Kirsten, and Stephen Polgar
All of the rest of this week’s announcements can be found in our Weekly Email. Please follow this link for the most recent message and an archive of past installments. The Weekly is published on Thursdays, by noon.
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