If you purchased a church history book, please bring $40 (cash or check) to Ann Melton on Sunday morning and she will give you your book.
Christmas Offering
If you're looking for a Christmas gift for a loved one, choose to give a gift in honor or in memory of someone special through our Christmas Offering! The income we receive from this offering will be divided equally between our local mission partners, namely: Jackson County Neighbors in Need, AWAKE, Circles of Hope, and Blue Ridge Health Jackson. When you make a contribution to this Christmas Offering, the church will send an informative–and handsome!–Christmas card to the person you are choosing to honor. Christmas Offering envelopes are available in both the pew racks in our sanctuary and in our church office.
A Note from Our Friends at Blue Ridge Health
Dear Jeff Mathis and Deacons,
Please know that your ongoing support makes a tremendous difference in the lives of our community members. The generous financial gifts from your church family provide badly needed care for uninsured patients, purchases vital medications, and supports pediatric medical appointments.
Blessings to each of you!
Pat Blanton
Blue Ridge Health
Sylva, NC
Loving Kindness During Advent
You don’t have to overthink it. God calls us to love others by being kind to them. Put others before yourself. Allow empathy for others to nudge you into action.
Loving kindness during the Advent and Christmas season is more powerful than at other times of the year because the stress and difficulties of these few weeks magnify our need for a kind and gracious spirit.
Here is a practical, straightforward way that you and your family can practice the spiritual discipline of ‘loving kindness’ this Advent Season. Each day make it your goal to take on an act of kindness in the name of the Christ Child. And who knows? These simple acts of kindness may just bring you joy.
December 5: Go out of your way to open the door for a someone you don’t know.
December 6: Tell a server, check-out clerk, or retail salesperson that you appreciate their hard work.
December 7: Text someone you haven’t had contact with in some time and tell them that you’re thinking of them.
December 8: Give up a parking spot for someone else.
December 9: Feed the birds or other woodland creatures.
December 10: Buy a co-worker a cup of coffee, tea, or cocoa.
December 11: Give something that you have to someone who might need it.
December 12: Ask for the manager of a store or a restaurant, and then thank them. Then, take a moment to tell them what you enjoyed or valued about your experience.
December 13: Give someone a hug or a compliment.
December 14: Give a treat or encouraging word to your postal worker.
December 15: Pick out a person in a crowd and smile at them. Tell them you hope they have a good day.
December 16: Put money in a vending machine with a sticky note that instructs someone to simply make a selection.
December 17: Give a treat or an encouraging note to a neighbor you don’t know well.
December 18: Send an encouraging text to a friend or family member.
December 19: Buy a drink or treat for the person behind you in line at a restaurant.
December 20: Invite someone to our church’s Candlelight Christmas Eve Service.
December 21: Sweep a neighbor’s front walk or porch.
December 22: Call someone that you know who has lost a loved one this past year.
December 23: Get someone a cart at the grocery store and wish them a Merry Christmas.
December 24: Take a few Christmas cards to a nursing home or hospital and tell the staff to give them to patients or residents that need them.
December 25: Call or text someone that you’ve fallen out of touch with and wish them well on Christmas Day.
And finally, share with us what these encounters and acts of loving kindness were like for you and yours. Give testimony to the way that God blessed others through your efforts. We’re eager to know and to celebrate your good deeds and to give glory to God in heaven!
A 'Longest Night Service' on Wednesday, December 5th
This year, we will be having a Longest Night Service at the beginning of the Advent Season. We will gather in the sanctuary at 6:00 PM on Wednesday, December 5th for an informal service of reflection and contemplation about the realities of light and darkness that we face during the season of Christmas.
When the Weather Outside Is Frightful...
Here are a few things to remember when snow, sleet, and freezing rain are in the forecast:
1.) Wednesday evening programming will not be determined by local school closings. The church will broadcast any cancellation on Wednesday via an email, our church’s website, Facebook page and in the local media.
2.) If the weather proves to be inclement on Sunday morning, we will make every effort to have church. If that goal proves to be elusive, we will likely A.) cancel Sunday School and offer only Worship at 10:30 AM, or B.) Schedule worship at 2:00 PM in the afternoon.
You may determine the status of our church programming at any time by checking our website, Facebook page, or our local media. A decision will be made at least two hours prior to the regularly scheduled event.
Lastly, thank you for your understanding in advance as we strive to make decisions that are complicated by weather conditions which create different realities in our county due to location and elevation. Overwhelmingly, we are striving to provide continuity of ministry offerings while balancing concerns about road conditions.
Why I Serve...
Gaye Buchanan teaches our 4-year-old Wee Explorers Preschool class.
I serve in Wee Explorers because working with children makes me happy. I was already volunteering on Wednesdays with children at the church in first through fifth grades and enjoying it. I saw the Wee Explorers job advertised in the Sylva Herald and felt instantly that God had led me to it. I wanted something part-time and I love children so it was a perfect fit.
I love the age group (4 yrs) because they are small enough to be hilarious and old enough to teach. I left 2 hours early today for a funeral and they all had to hug me goodbye before I could leave! My grandchildren all live away from here so it also fills a void in my life.
“Hard as Iron, Water like Stone”
We know what to expect this time of year from the church: Celebrations! Cheery gatherings! Joyful musical performances! Christmas Eve Services with faces all aglow! It’s as though we have been programmed to have smiles permanently plastered on our faces during the Advent Season. And while it is certainly true that this is a season of joy, for many of us it is a very difficult few weeks filled with amplified grief, mourning, and sadness.
There is an inclination in our culture to bury these less-than-welcome feelings and emotions. This, of course, only heightens our sense of depression as we feel guilty for the way we truly feel.
The winter solstice is the longest night of the year. Many churches carve out space in their busy December calendars to have a worship service for those who are experiencing darkness rather than light. These ‘Longest Night’ Services acknowledge that our world can feel very dark at times. And so, instead of denying one’s feelings of pain, the Reverend Nancy C. Townley suggests that this unique worship service can be a time where we “remember those for whom the holidays are not joyful.” “Many of us,” she reminds us, “are lonely, in mourning, feeling alienated and cast apart from family celebrations.”
This year, we will be having a ‘Longest Night Service’ at the beginning of the Advent Season. We will gather in the sanctuary at 6:00 PM on Wednesday, December 5th for an informal service of reflection and contemplation about the realities of light and darkness that we face at Christmas.
Winter begins at 5:23 PM on Friday, December 21. But for many of us, the darkness began to swell around us much earlier in the year. As individuals, we have been touched by grief that was unexpected and sudden. We have suffered disappointments and discouragements that continue to haunt us. Anxiety and depression have gnawed at many of us for any number of reasons and it has felt as though our daylight was getting shorter and shorter.
For those who are grieving this Christmas season, we acknowledge that life can feel like a bleak midwinter:
“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter, long ago.”
(“In the Bleak Midwinter” by Rossetti)
Just as a ‘Longest Night’ experience can give us permission to grieve, it can also offer a hope and peace that only Christ can give. Our grief, while unique to us, is also universal. Christ was born into a dark world at a time of great oppression to a people long but forgotten. Seemingly separated by centuries of darkness and exile from the God of their salvation, God’s chosen people felt like victims. And yet we know a light shone in the darkness. And in that moment, a new era began where hope was present but not quite realized. We live in that tension. Although we know that the light shines bright and that it cannot be dwarfed by the sea of inky darkness that surrounds it, it doesn’t always feel that way.
So, in response to God’s eternal presence with us—made new again at Christmas—we choose to offer the gift of our presence to those who are grieving. We remember and share their loss with a timely note, a phone call, an invitation to join our gatherings, a simple, but extended embrace. We choose to hold one another when our arms are lonely for the warmth of another.
This is precisely when we can be church to one another. The loving presence of Christ, shared in a silent embrace, can help us know that we are not alone.
And we mustn’t forget this truth as well: ’The Longest Night’ is indeed the darkest shadow that will envelop us. But the day also marks the beginning of a new season of ever-expanding light and life.
Christmas Decorations
A huge thank you goes out to the folk who stayed after the worship service this Sunday to decorate our church’s sanctuary for Christmas! Around 2 dozen people helped out and the sanctuary looks beautiful and festive!
Why I Serve...
Chelsie Huffman leads our 4th - 5th group in After School. She is from Morganton, N.C. and she is majoring in Criminal Justice at WCU.
I serve at 1st Explorers to see the physical and spiritual growth in the lives of our kids. Being able to witness and be a part of their journey gives me a purpose that God has blessed me with.