Each week we include a recipe in the Church Chimes and we hope that you are enjoying reading and trying them. You can add your favorite recipes to the Chimes by sending them to Cheryl Beck at cabeck@ncsu.edu. This is an ongoing WMU project.
Thanks for participating!
As I survey the nativity scene and the crowded collection of figurines that help make up the Christ’s child welcome party, I cannot help but imagine how grateful their Biblical counterparts were to bear witness to the in-breaking of God’s presence in the world.
With the arrival of Emmanuel, God birthed something wonderful and extraordinary in our world. Only a select few—Mary & Joseph, the shepherds, Anna & Simeon, and, in time, the Magi—could be a part of the inauguration.
Likewise, friends, I am so grateful to have been invited to see God at work in your lives these last eleven years. Without question, I believe that God birthed a season that was both wonderful and extraordinary. I am privileged to have come up alongside you, learned your stories, and shared life with you. It has been one of my life’s great honors to serve as your minister and to call myself your pastor. Thank you for calling me to serve alongside you in 2012 and entrusting me with shepherding the First Baptist Church of Sylva.
I believe that God has done good work in us this past decade, and we have been able to experience God’s grace when our horizons were darkened by uncertainty. Because God has proven to be our refuge and strength in countless moments and numerous ways, this is my hope: I am confident that the good work that God began in you, He will see it through to completion. In the months and years to come, it will be a joy to see how God will finish what He’s started in each of us.
So, as I conclude my tenure as your pastor, I am filled with a spirit of gratitude for the time we have spent together.
Thank you for trusting me to lead you.
Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt when my efforts fell short.
Thank you for joining me in discerning God’s call, praying with me, and choosing to take Christ-like risks in partnership with me to expand our mission and ministry at First Baptist Church. I am grateful for the opportunities I had to learn from you and how we imagined what it looks like to be the Body of Christ in the time and place we found ourselves.
Twenty years ago, Rebecca and I discerned that God was calling us to be a family who serves together. First Baptist Church, thank you for blessing my family’s desire to serve and affirming our sense of call to answer God’s call. I am very grateful for Rebecca’s faithful leadership in worship these many years and for her wise counsel to our church and me. Additionally, Rebecca has faithfully served and pastored the Table Fellowship Class since its inception a decade ago. In all of this and more, I am thankful that she is a ministry partner who challenges me and continually shapes the questions I ask and the faith I seek to practice.
Just as my ministry has been more than my own efforts, I am grateful for Zeb and Ellen’s willingness and enthusiasm to be worship leaders and to be ever-present in my life’s call to serve. From assisting in worship to singing each week in the song of praise offering, Zeb and Ellen’s presence beside me has made me a more effective pastor.
My time with you, First Baptist Church, has changed my life. I will remember our hikes in the Smokies and travels to Arkansas, Washington DC, and Cuba. I smile in recalling the numerous ‘boring but important’ meetings we held and our innumerable attempts to streamline, spearhead, and spark new initiatives to be Christ-like. You supported me during difficult seasons. You encouraged me when I sought my Doctorate of Ministry. You cared for me when my father died, and you have held my hand as I’ve mourned the loss of my mother’s memory. Thank you for pastoring me while I sought to pastor you.
Without question, I am excited about God’s call to serve Wake Forest Baptist Church. But my departure is also a moment for me to consider the loss of many I have come to know and love—individuals who were with me when I started this journey but who are no longer with us. While I am grateful that the vocation of pastoring allows me to walk with people on their path for a season, I will concede that I often wish that these paths were longer. You can hardly blame me. As a professional shepherd of people, I delight when sheep are in the flock, and I’m sad when they are not.
Speaking of shepherds, I will always be grateful for the stained-glass image of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, that hangs in the baptistery. More than any other symbol, the care and hospitality embedded in this picture speak to the heart of my experience at First Baptist Church.
Alas, you are a church that has a gift for hospitality. Indeed, you delight in providing care and in being a blessing to others. This spirit of generosity will situate you well as you consider the path going forward.
I pray that you will know of my love and care for you as our paths diverge but head in the same direction. It will always be an honor to call you friends.
Thank you for being our family of faith, First Baptist Church. May God bless you as you continue to “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.”
Thank you, First Baptist Church, for your extraordinary reception to our family on Sunday afternoon, December 10. I was overwhelmed by your thoughtfulness and all the work that went into crafting a thoroughly-baseball-themed event. Short of having the entire roster from the Atlanta Braves in attendance, you hit it out of the park! Thank you for the hot dogs, the nachos, the cake, and the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame!” during the seventh-inning stretch. We will forever cherish your presence at our going away event and treasure your kind words and generous gifts. Please know of my deep love and appreciation for you in my life.
— Jeff
If you would like to provide flowers in the sanctuary for Sunday morning services, please contact Gwen Messer at 828-506-8370, or Janice in the church office to be placed on the calendar.
(Kristopher’s Favorite)
Ingredients
4 cups cranberry juice
4 cups pineapple juice
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon almond extract
2 quarts ginger ale
Instructions
Keep all ingredients cold. Mix together. Add ginger ale just before serving. Makes about 30 cups.
–Provided by Ruth McConnell
Cranberry Punch
Click here to download a printable version.
--Provided by Ruth McConnell
Dear First Baptist Church,
In the midst of the whirlwind of transition, I don’t fully have the words to express my deep love and gratitude for each and every one of you. For the past 11+ years, you have loved and nurtured our whole family and you have loved and nurtured me personally. When we first arrived at First Baptist in the spring of 2012, I was in the process of graduating from seminary and working towards ordination. You all embraced my own sense of call to vocational ministry from Day One. You celebrated my graduation from seminary and even traveled to Chattanooga to attend my ordination to the Gospel ministry. Thank you for valuing women in ministry and church leadership. Thank you for valuing me as a minister in my own right and my sense of call to serve in faith-based nonprofit leadership. For years, I have been so honored when you have introduced me to newcomers by saying, “This is our pastor’s wife and she’s also a minister. You should hear her preach!” Thank you for going out of your way to be affirming of God's calling on the lives of both men and women. We have been proud to raise our children at First Baptist, where they have been loved and nurtured in the faith by strong women and men. Thank you for pouring yourselves into both Zeb and Ellen. Thank you for the way you have shown interest in them for who they are– you have attended cross country meets, walked the path with them in Cuba, shared your camping equipment with them when you learned about their zeal for the outdoors, texted them encouraging notes, given them goodies before fun trips, and sent them handwritten cards and notes of encouragement along the way. Thank you for loving and supporting Jeff through his father’s death, his completion of his doctorate, his walk of grief with his mother’s memory loss, and his journey of pastoral leadership here in our beloved mountains. We have cherished our time with you and love you deeply. You will always be such an integral part of our family’s story and our faith story. Thank you for how you have molded and shaped us. Our family is a stronger ministry family because of being a part of you these past 11+ years. Thank you for sharing the love of Christ with us. You will always be a part of our story and we will always be a part of yours. As the Servant Song says, “We are travelers on a journey, fellow pilgrims on the road.”
With love,
Rebecca (Your Fellow Pilgrim)
A big thanks to Harold and Gwen Messer along with the funding support of First Baptist Church to insure the graves of Frank and Anne Cowan are properly marked. Frank and Anne (brother and sister) were long time members of First Baptist Church and held many roles in our church. Their main contribution was serving as historians. Much of the church’s history was collected by Frank and Anne and since maintained by Harold and Gwen in the upstairs History Room.
Also, a big thanks to Harold, Arlin Middleton, and Guy Hall for providing the “heavy lifting” to get the grave markers in place.
The CDC recommends that you wear a mask indoors.
Maximize protection from the Delta variant and prevent possibly spreading it to others.
Our worship service will be streamed online at firstbaptistsylva.com.
Children, parents, and grandparents: Be sure to check out the Children's Library next time you are at church. There is a good selection of Christmas books for toddlers through older children as well as some holiday DVDs. There is also a Christmas scavenger hunt (with prizes) you can do while you are in the library. Check it out!
I always remember that, as a kid, I was so impressed with some of the prayers I would hear in church, especially those in the King James/Reina de Valera version. You know, the ones, with the old language words. Since that was the language of the Bible, I thought those were the prayers to which God gave priority.
Another thing that impressed me was the length of the prayers. The only time I did not like the long prayers was when we gave thanks for our meal. The elders of our church would hold our hands while giving thanks. I always thought it was to keep us kids from eating during the long prayers. How did they come up with so much to say? My prayers always seemed to be short and to the point. I would ask my Sunday school and discipleship teachers and my pastor how could I learn to pray like that; but they would try to explain it to me with theological church words which they themselves probably did not understand.
One day, during a sermon on the Pharisee and publican’s prayers, it dawned on me. It was not so much about the words we use in our prayers, but our attitude before God. Then, a few years later, I learned about the things we do as an activity, rather than living it as a lifestyle. What did Jesus mean to pray without ceasing? Do I really need to close my eyes? Do I have to kneel, sit or stand? Does it have to be while everybody is still sleeping to count? Do I have to sacrifice something so that God will listen to my prayers? The more I pondered, the more questions came to mind.
As a (rotten) kid, my grandmother would punish me by making me kneel in a corner of the house. Every once in a while, she would check up on me. She knew me too well. She would ask me if I was still kneeling and my response was that on the outside I was kneeling, but on the inside I was standing up. That was how rebellious I was! Is that not what we do sometimes before God? We give the appearance of being humble, but in our hearts, we are filled with pride and standing up.
Before leaving for India in 2002, we would ask people to give to missions. Come and do missions, we would say and, if nothing else, pray for missions. When we first returned to the United States, we apologized to those to whom we had said those words. It was during our first years on the mission field that we realized the best thing anyone can do for us is to pray. Many times we would find ourselves ready to give up because of the situation we were in and, almost like clockwork, at our lowest points, we would receive a note, a letter, a phone call from someone letting us know they were praying for us. WOW! We came back and asked everyone to simply pray for us. We learned that when people pray for us, they will want to support the work we are doing and to be a part of it in other ways. They might even come join us! With all my heart, I believe this is the power of prayer.
PRAY . . . GIVE . . . GO . . .