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11/27/2018 November 27th, 2018 Preparing for ChristmasAs we finish off the Thanksgiving leftovers and see the last days of November fly by, our attention turns, of course, to Christmas. It will not be long before the holiday arrives, so there are many preparations to be made. As we prepare for Christmas, in the church we celebrate the season called Advent - the anticipated arrival. We anticipate the Christmas holiday with all of its gifts and cookies, and we anticipate the celebration of the birth of Jesus the Christ child. Part of Advent is also the anticipation of Jesus' return - a time of promise when all things will be made right and God's work of redemption, resurrection, and re-creation will be made complete. As we prepare our homes for Christmas, we are also called to prepare our lives for Christ to return. Through prayer, sabbath, and worship, we have the opportunity in this busy season to make the preparations that truly matter. Here at Port Church, we will have several opportunities to do just that over the coming weeks. On December 14 and 15, we will hold our Live Nativity Drive-Thru from 7 pm to 9 pm. Come out and be a part of bringing God's story to life, and take the time to experience the story yourself by driving through. On December 23 at 7 pm, our choir will present their Christmas cantata and musical celebration. We will have two opportunities to worship on Christmas Eve - 5 pm and 11 pm. Both services will include candlelight and communion. Prepare your hearts for God this Advent! Blessings on the journey, Jim Sunday's Sermon SnippetPromises to God: Witness (1 Corinthians 15:3-10; Hebrews 12:1-3) As we conclude our series on the vow we have made to faithfully participate in ministry, we turn our attention to the final way we have promised to do so - through our witness. To witness is to report what we have seen to establish the truth of a matter. As Christians, we witness to what we have seen God do to establish the truth of what has happened and who God is. To explore how we are to witness, let us first consider how we have received the witness of others. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews affirms that we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses that we should run the race marked out before us focusing on Jesus. This image of a race reveals something important about the witness of others and our own witness. There are different types of races with different goals. In a sprint, we run full-out to win. In a long-distance race like a marathon, we run at a more intentional pace hoping just to finish. Faith is more like the latter than the former, but perhaps there is a better race to consider as a metaphor for faith - the relay race. In a relay race, we run our leg as best we can with others cheering us on. One of the key elements of the relay is the handoff - how we receive the baton passed to us and how we pass along what was first given to us are essential to both completing and winning the race. This is witness - the witness we receive from those who are out ahead of us and the witness we pass on to those who follow us. Moreover, we run the same course marked out by those who have already run it because we have the encouragement of their witness. Paul sees the handoff of the faith through witness as essential in his First Letter to the Corinthians. We see an example here of his own witness to them - passing on to them what he received. He details the life of Jesus and salvation we find in his death and resurrection in accordance with Scripture. He points to the witness that he received Jesus' disciples and followers. Then he turns to his own experience - his own story - of how Jesus worked in his life. This is all a part of his witness, and all these elements are a part of our own witness. When we witness, we share the words of Scripture, the stories we have heard from others, and our own stories as well. Witnessing is not just about the Bible but also about our life stories and the stories from the lives of others. Paul demonstrates all of these in this brief witness to who Jesus is. What stories do we need to tell? What stories are a part of our witness? Update on Veterans Snack MissionLast week, Dianna and Bob responded to our remembrance of veterans on Veteran's Day by inviting us to provide snacks to those undergoing treatment at the VA Hospital in Richmond every other week. Here is an update from them: Veterans Snack Mission: Our 1st Veterans Snack Mission to the VA Hospital in Richmond was November 23. We took 4 dozen cookies and placed them on the serving table. We also placed a picture of Port Church with an inscription expressing our heartfelt thanks for their service. The smiles, laughs, "MMMM Good" comments and lip smacking told the whole story. We took home an empty container...not even a crumb was left. Our mission is a quiet one, but our witness for Jesus is sweet. Thanks so much for all that have helped and for those who are helping in the future. Our 2nd Veterans Snack Mission will be December 7th. Please keep this outreach mission in your prayers. With God's guidance we will continue this for one year or maybe longer. God's Blessings...Dianna and Bob Sign Up for Nativity Drive ThruIt is almost time for our Live Nativity Drive-Thru on December 14 and 15! Sign ups for both nights are underway, and several scenes are close to full. We are hopeful we can fill both nights, but we can't do it without you! We still need adults and children for a variety of roles. Don't forget to sign up this Sunday at church, or contact Davida this week! This Week at Port ChurchWednesday, November 28 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours 6:00 pm - Youth Group 6:30 pm - Hanging of the Greens Thursday, November 29 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Sunday, December 2 9:30 am - Worship with Communion: The Best Christmas - The Deepest Faith 11:00 am - Sunday School Looking AheadPoinsettia Order Deadline - December 9
Drive-thru Nativity - December 14 & 15, 7-9 pm Christmas Cantata - December 23, 7 pm 11/21/2018 November 21st, 2018 Happy Thanksgiving!As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, I give thanks to God for each and every one of you! As you spend time with friends and family around the table this week, I want to share this ancient Celtic prayer of blessing for you: Bless this house and those within. Bless our giving and receiving. Bless our words and conversation. Bless our hands and recreation. Bless our sowing and our growing. Bless our coming and our going. Bless all who enter and depart. Bless this house, your peace impart. Blessings on the journey, Jim Sunday's Sermon SnippetPromises to God - Service (1 John 3:6-18) As we continue to explore the vow we make to participate faithfully in the ministries of the church, we turn our attention to service. To serve means to do something for the benefit or on behalf of another. In the church, we think of service not only as helping others but also as worshipping God. This connection is noted by a theologian who saw worship and service as two sides of the same coin. Worship is what we do for God because we need to do for our own sake, while service is what we do for God because God wants it done. Service in the faith sense is running God's errands. In this sense, service is something we do for the benefit of others and on behalf of God. So how do we faithfully participate in ministry through our service? In his first letter, John encourages us to love not with words and speech but with actions and in truth. Love is at the root of service. When we serve, we love both God and neighbor. John says, however, that love expressed only in words and speech is not enough. To see someone in need and not to have compassion in action is to not have the love of God within us. This echoes James's claim that faith with works is dead. "I love you. God bless you. I will pray for you." These words are meaningless if not matched by loving deeds. To be faithful, we need to go beyond mere words and begin to act. John goes a step further and says that we are to love in truth. This is an odd phrase - "love... in truth." Truth here is not a set of facts but a state of being, much like being in love is not just a feeling but a state of being that changes everything about us. What is truth? This is a question we might ask today when the truth of everything is called into question. Of course, this is also an ancient question even asked by Pilate as he interrogated Jesus. Paul gives us an answer here: the truth in which we are to live and love is that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us and we should in turn lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. This is what it means to be faithful in service. God calls us to love with actions and in truth. This is a love that costs something - a love that may be free but certainly is not cheap. This is a love that breaks our heart and requires a sacrifice. This is a love that causes us to have many tears and yet promises us that the day will come when God will wipe away our tears with a tender hand. Love with actions and in truth - this is how we live out our vow to faithfully participate in ministry through our service! Living in CommunityThank you to everyone who made this fall session of Wednesday at the Port possible! Cooks, servers, cleaners, teachers, bus drivers and riders, thank you! This Week at Port ChurchMonday, November 19 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Wednesday & Thursday, November 21-22 Office Closed Happy Thanksgiving! Sunday, November 25 9:30 am - Worship: Promises to God - Witness 11:00 am - Sunday School Looking AheadPoinsettia Order Deadline - December 9
Drive-thru Nativity - December 14 & 15, 7-9 pm Christmas Cantata - December 23, 7 pm 11/14/2018 November 14th, 2018 That Pastor ThingAs we were travelling to Georgia over fall break a couple of weeks ago, we approached everyone's favorite part of a trip: making our way through the airport security line. Before we could go through the scanners, we had to show our IDs to an agent at the entrance. Courtney had made it through with one of our sons, and I stepped forward with our other son. As we offered the agent our IDs, I said in a cheerful voice, "How are you today?" As the agent looked over our pictures and then gazed up to confirm we were who we claimed to be, he replied, "Not too great." "Having a rough day, huh?" "Yes, I am." Reaching out to take our IDs back as he waved us through, I wished him well, "I hope your day gets better. Thanks for all that you are doing!" As we walked to catch up with the rest of the family at the line to enter the scanner, my son said perhaps with a bit of embarrassment, "Of course you would be the one to do that pastor thing." "What do you mean?" I asked. "Well, you get that voice that says you care and try to cheer people up. I guess he probably appreciated it though. It seems like he needed it today. It probably made his day better." As I thought about my son's perception of "that pastor thing" I do, I am not only thankful that he has grown to understand the value of small acts of kindness but also challenged because it appears as something I do because I am a pastor. I hope that one day my pastor thing will simply be a "Jim thing" - something that is so deeply rooted in me that it comes out in everything I do and not just when I am acting as a pastor. I hope that one day my pastor thing will simply be a "Jesus thing" - something that reveals more about who Jesus is than about who I am and what I do. And I hope the same thing for you - that kindness and caring will flow from your life so strongly that everyone will come to know who Jesus is through you. May it be so! Blessings on the journey, Jim Sunday's Sermon SnippetPromises to God: Gifts (2 Corinthians 8:7-15) When we are baptized and join the church, we vow to faithfully participate in the ministries of the church by our prayers, presence, and our gifts. When we speak of gifts in church, we most often mean one of two things: the money we put in the offering plate or the spiritual gifts we use to do ministry. Gifts are, we think, what we give to others. Yet there is something more to these gifts. Gifts are what are first given to us by God: our money, our spiritual gifts, our time, our health, etc. God blesses us, gives us these gifts, and calls us to use them to accomplish the work of Christ through them. So how do we faithfully participate in ministry through our gifts? To explore, we consider what Paul instructed the Corinthians to do regarding their gifts of money. A gift is acceptable, he wrote, when it is given according to what one has not according to what one does not have. This is good news for us. Instead of being held to an impossible standard of giving more than we have, faithfulness in giving is giving according to what we have. There is, however, a temptation here for us. We often mistake what we have leftover for what we have to give and thus justify giving only a little of what we have. We think of what we want, spend our gifts on that, and then give a little of what remains. This is not faithful according to Paul's standard. Another temptation comes in the way we equate money with our vote and speech. Giving to something means we support it completely, or so we think. When the church decides to engage in a ministry we do not think is the one it should do, we think about withholding our giving or designating the giving to only the things we like. We wind up giving according to our opinion rather than according to what God has given us. This is like refusing to sing a song in worship because it's not our favorite one, and we wish a different one had been chosen. This is not faithful either. We have made a vow to faithfully participate in the ministries of the church through our gifts. We give even when we disagree because we have made a promise to God and one another to be in this together. Giving according to what we have also raises the bar above one we often set - giving according to the need of the church's budget. That is, if the church is good enough, there is no need to give anything more; if the church gets behind, we will give a little more. While this makes logical sense, it falls short of the faithfulness of giving according to what we have. If we all give according to what we have, the church can move beyond good enough to the amazing work God dreams of for us. At our church, we are doing good enough and meet most of our budget (although we do need a push by the end of the year to meet our missional apportionment goals). How much more could we do, however, if we gave according to what we have rather than what the church "needs"? We could hire someone to coordinate and grow our children's ministries just as we have done for our youth. We could fill another 100 shoeboxes without even thinking about it. We would have so much more energy for actual ministry because we would not have to worry where the money was going to come from for each thing we want to do. God calls us to share the gifts we have and to let blessings flow through our lives! Praise God from whom all blessings flow! Pledging Our GiftsLast month, we included a pledge sheet along with our quarterly giving statements. The pledge sheets are an opportunity to commit to the level of financial support we want to provide for the coming year's ministries. This Sunday, we are asking that you return your completed pledge sheets during worship as a part of your faithful participation in the ministries of our church through the offering of gifts. Please prayerfully consider your giving towards our ministry budget, sponsoring children at Vacation Bible School, and support of our ongoing building projects, and bring your form this Sunday or return them to the church office at any time. Copies will be available Sunday morning if you have misplaced yours. Thanks for your faithful participation in our ministries! Living in CommunityThank you, Lee, for your hard work preparing for our charge conference! Thank you to all of our leaders who completed the reports needed for our conference! We had a wonderful time reflecting on our vision for ministry with Rev. Gomez at our conference. Thank you to Mary, Sue, Hannah, and Steve for leading our Operation Christmas Child and Packing Party efforts! Thank you to everyone who purchased items for the boxes and those who have brought in boxes! This Week at Port ChurchWednesday, November 14 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours 6 pm - Wednesday at the Port Thursday, November 15 Office Closed Sunday, November 18 9:30 am - Worship: Promises to God - Service 11:00 am - Sunday School 2:30 pm - District Conference at Bridgewater UMC Workshops to follow at 4:15 pm See flyer for more details Looking AheadDrive-thru Nativity - December 14 & 15, 7-9 pm
Christmas Cantata - December 23, 7 pm |
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