From Pastor Heather | Dec 18
Last night I loved watching the Christmas concert and all the memories of Faith over the years. The music moved me into the mood for Christmas after a challenging week. The beautiful snow on Sunday made for a stressful morning as I weighed the risks of having worship in person or not. On Monday, we buried Janice Hemphill’s mother who was another victim of the pandemic and the funeral home director expressed a weariness that I hadn’t considered. On Tuesday, I found out that a woman who I considered a friend had died suddenly. You may have known her because she attended Faith when her daughter, Becca Goodwin, was in my youth group here. Then on Thursday, our beloved Steve Edmonds crossed over into heaven after a lengthy illness and our dear Elaine Bird lost her brother to Covid. Steve was a man generous with a smile and kindness and he will be missed in both his Sunday school class and on Bill Turner’s crew of handymen.
On a week like this, the interruption of Christmas music is a welcome one. My soul needed it and I was reminded once again what a blessing it is to be a part of this congregation. I also want to say thank you to all of you who made donations for the staff love offering. We are so blessed with an incredible staff who always step up when needed. They make me look good. Since we can not have a Christmas party this year, we are taking the week between Christmas and New Year’s off. On Dec. 30th Glen and Lori will be working from nine until noon on financial tasks and accepting end-of-year giving. Just ring the doorbell and they will let you into the building that Wednesday.
Since we have had snow on the ground all week (isn’t that a strange sentence!) we will continue to have Christmas Eve Kits available for you to pick up this week. Sunday morning 9-12:30 and Monday through Wednesday from nine until noon each day. These bags have your candles, lyrics, and glow sticks in them. They also have all the location options for gathering in person with us. I am really starting to be excited about Christmas Eve and I hope you are too.
As you know, each year we give the Christmas Eve offering to a mission, this year we are giving the offering to help start a new church in north Tulsa. You might have seen the wonderful video Ed Goodrich made last week. If not, you can see it here. I wanted to remind you all that the church planter, Gwen Derrick filled the pulpit as a guest preacher last year. She was very dynamic and engaging and I hope you remember her leading us that Sunday. She has been in a mentoring group that Pastor Charla leads also. You may not have known that I was the first female church planter in the Oklahoma conference when I left Faith to start Living Water. I am looking forward to helping Gwen in this challenging task and I am so excited about our decision to support this kingdom work. If you would like to make a donation to this new congregation, you can do that here on the Faith App, on the website, or by mail. Remember to include “Church Plant” in the memo line so we know your gift is meant for Pastor Gwen and Kingdom Fellowship.
Finally, I want to remind you that after every holiday this year there has been a spike in Covid cases. With that in mind, we are going to only offer virtual church and Sunday school after Christmas (Dec. 27th) and New Year’s (Jan. 3rd). We know that many of you will be around family and loved ones that are not in your typical week. We hope and pray that none of you get ill during the holidays and will resume in-person worship on Jan. 10th. If you would like to see the statistics from the CDC for our county, you can read those here: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view
As we step into celebrating the “Incarnation" together, let us remember that Emmanuel means “God is with us” and this is the most important gift that we can ever receive.
Love,
Pastor Heather
