THE 4TH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

19 December 2021

Welcome!  We extend a warm welcome to our guests, and invite you to sign the guest book at the back of the sanctuary.  Unfortunately, however, we are not yet able to resume our after-service fellowship time in the Church Hall.

Online Services – An abbreviated version of the service is recorded each Sunday, and uploaded to YouTube.  If you would like to receive the link to the recorded service each week — or even just occasionally — please let John know.  The link to the weekly service can also be accessed from this website.  Each service is saved for two weeks, and then deleted.

The Greeter this month is Charlie Clifford.

This Week in First Church:

– Friday, 7:00 p.m. – Christmas Eve service

Coming Up:

– Saturday, 8 January – Soup Kitchen Christmas dinner (usually held the Saturday after Christmas Day)

The Christian Year – The Christmas Season, the second season of the Christian Year (and also the shortest) begins on Christmas Day, and lasts for just twelve days, ending on the 5th of January.  Christmas celebrates God’s coming into the world in human form in the person of Jesus.  As John 1.14 puts it, The Word [Jesus] became flesh, and made his dwelling among us.  And, as Luke 2.1-21 tells us, Jesus came into the world in the same way that all humans do — as a baby.

     There was no formal celebration of Jesus’ birth in the earliest centuries of church history, and it was not until the 300s that Christians created a festival for this purpose.  Since no one knew the actual date of Jesus’ birth, the church “Christianized” an already-existing Roman festival celebrating the “re-birth” of the sun after the winter solstice, and made it instead a celebration of the birth of Jesus. Christmas is the first of the four major festival days of the Christian Year.  It is closely followed by the second, Epiphany, on the 6th of January, which commemorates the visit of the Magi (Wise Men) in Jesus’ early childhood (Matthew 2.1-12). The other two major festivals are Easter and Pentecost.  The symbolic color for both Christmas and Epiphany is white, signifying joy and celebration

The full announcements are here.

The December 2021 newsletter is here!

THE 2ND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

5 December 2021

Welcome!  We extend a warm welcome to our guests, and invite you to sign the guest book at the back of the sanctuary.  Unfortunately, however, we are not yet able to resume our after-service fellowship time in the Church Hall.

Hanging of the Greens – Today’s service is our annual “Hanging of the Greens” service, which we had to cancel last year, since we were not able to have services in person at the time.  This service explores the significance of many of our Christmas and pre-Christmas traditions.  However, today’s service is an abbreviated version of what we’ve done in the past, since we’ve reduced the number of hymns, due to the pandemic.  We are also keeping the amount of movement in the service to a minimum; so we will remain seated, and will not get up to decorate the Christmas tree, etc.  We are reducing the number of readers to a minimum for the same reason; so the reading parts will be read by Lalaine and Ruth Buan, and John, only.

Online Services – Since the format of the Hanging of the Greens service doesn’t lend itself to being recorded (with our very limited equipment), today’s service will not be recorded and uploaded to YouTube.  If you’d like a copy of the script to read at home, please let John know, and he’ll send it to you.

This Week in First Church:

– Thursday, 6:30 p.m. – Finance & Maintenance Committee meeting (rescheduled)

Coming Up:

– Sunday, 12 December – Communion Sunday

– Friday, 24 December, 7:00 p.m. – Christmas Eve service

Newsletter – The December issue of our congregational Newsletter has been sent out by e-mail, and hard copies are being mailed to everyone for whom we don’t have an e-mail address.  Many thanks to all who contributed news items or photos; also to Lisa Sneesby for putting the Newsletter together, and to Mardine Garnham for printing and mailing the hard copies.

Full announcements here