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.
United Christian Ministries is in need of pasta sauce, Ramen, pancake syrup, applesauce (6-pack individual cups), and laundry detergent. To donate items, please drop them off at UCM’s building at 191 Skyland Drive. Thank you!
In the midst of Holy Week and on this day, which marks Dad’s first birthday since his death, I am pondering the prompt for this year’s Prayers of the People: spiritual guides. I am reminded of a note sent to supporters a little over a year ago. You may have read a tribute to my husband, Hunter, who died in 2021, in CBF’s fellowship! magazine. Hunter and my dad shared the unenviable bond of simultaneously battling cancers. After completing a series of chemotherapy treatments in the middle of 2021 with mixed results, Dad had been ready to put an end to the treatments. Then Hunter died more quickly than we had hoped. At that point, Dad asked for another round of chemotherapy. (I would be told these things after he had begun these treatments.)
Why the change of heart? He wished to stay longer to console me and to spare me additional grief so quickly on top of Hunter’s death. For a brief season, I struggled with this choice. For my part, I would not have asked him to do this. In fact, it is likely that I would have discouraged it. I knew what awaited this faithful follower of Christ—and smile now when I think of him in God’s presence even as I long to hear his voice. While I did not want to lose him, I would have spared him the suffering that his choice to remain entailed. Like the characters in O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi, we would sacrifice our desires for the joy of the other.
As Good Friday approaches, yes, I consider the great sacrifice made for all of us on that day. I also see so many of the faces of those who draw others closer to the sacrificial One through their acts of love and joy-infused sacrifice. “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:12-13). God loves lavishly, and people respond with daily acts of laying down their lives. Through the years, ever so slowly, I have learned to pay attention to those acts. Some of those acts, like my Dad’s, are hard to miss. Others are easy to overlook: a listening ear, a kind word, a necessary hard word not easily spoken, patience beyond measure, abundant provision disguised as daily bread, humble instruction, a “widow’s mite,” “seventy times seven” forgiveness, and on and on and on. God is speaking and acting all around us. May God, give us ears to hear and eyes to see. Thank You, God, for each of Your children whose love brings us closer to You.
All children are invited to participate in the Palm Sunday processional on March 24. Children will meet in the church vestibule at 10:15 a.m. to distribute palms and then walk into the church with their palms during the singing of the hymn "All Glory, Laud, and Honor." Please come as a family to see this joyful celebration!
Just like everything else, the price of Passport has gone up this year! The children who are planning to attend from our church hope to defray some of the expense of this wonderful camp by hosting a yard sale in early May.
As you do your spring cleaning over the next few weeks, look through your house to see what you could contribute to make the yard sale a success. You may bring your items to the Sunday School room beside the choir room, beginning Wednesday, April 10. If you need help transporting items, please let Cheryl Beck know and we can arrange to have items picked up at your home. The date of the yard sale will be announced soon. Thanking you in advance for your contributions!
Unimaginably, Holy Week is upon us. A significant scheduling difference involves Wednesday and Thursday of next week. On Wednesday, March 27, there will be NO evening activities at church, including choir rehearsal.
On Thursday, March 28 at 6:00 p.m., we will gather in the sanctuary for a brief time of worship, as we commemorate our Lord’s inaugural communion. As you know, Maundy Thursday is the catalyst for Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Glorious Easter.
On Maundy Thursday, we’ll observe the Lords table through intinction. If coming forward presents a barrier to participation, the elements can easily be brought to you.
At approximately 6:45 p.m., the service will conclude and choir rehearsal will follow.
YOU have an opportunity to help the Pastor Search Committee!
Through our relationship with CBF-NC, we are hosting three important Sunday events intended to shed light on (1) where we have come from, (2) who we are now and (3) what God is calling us to be in the future. These events will directly feed into the important decision making that we have vested in our Pastor Search Committee to find our full-time Pastor. Your voice is important.
The first conversation (focusing on events in our past that have shaped our church) will be held following the worship service on Sunday, March 17th. We encourage all to attend and to have a voice. Importantly, the insights of those who have been members for many, many years will be great contributions to the conversation.
Andy Hale will preach our worship service and will also lead our conversation. We will have a pizza and salad lunch after worship in the MFC around 11:45. From 12:30 -1:30 Andy Hale will lead us through a conversation that will help the Pastor Search Committee to look at how our past actions, activities and missions have shaped us. This is an important first step in gaining church-wide input.
FOOD: Pizza from Mad Batter will be our main entree. We are asking for volunteers to bring side salads and desserts. Please let Janice Trull know what you will be bringing. You may call her at 828-586-2095 or email her at fbcsylva@gmail.com.
CHILDCARE: We invite you to bring your young children to lunch and there will be childcare available in the nursery during the meeting that follows.
The second and third church-wide conversations are scheduled for Sunday, April 21 and Sunday, May 19.
Weekly, we broadcast our service to YouTube.com and FirstBaptistSylva.com, with 30 to 50 connections. During the broadcast, one camera focuses on the pulpit, and another showcases different church areas. However, the camera’s only capture the front half of the pews, making it seem like there’s less attendance. We ask that the congregation please consider moving closer to the front during the service. If attendees could sit closer to the front, it would accurately reflect our congregation’s size. Your help in showing the true might of our congregation is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Alicia and Jeff Lee
CBF field personnel, North Macedonia
Just over a year into our marriage and well into our graduate programs, we were ecstatic to learn we were expecting our first child. That joy turned quickly to concern as Alicia was very sick, in and out of the hospital. We desperately hoped to make it through the second trimester. When that hope was crushed and our world devastated, the Logsdon Seminary faculty enveloped us with love.
Each one of the Logsdon professors spent time with us in our hospital room, praying over us. They entered the worst moment in our lives and stepped into our grief. In a generous act of compassion, they organized a beautiful memorial service for our son—for us, really. However, it was more than that. They created space for our grief, honored our grief and shared in our grief.
We had no idea how our grief would break us, how the loss of our son would nearly destroy our faith and our marriage. While we know God saved our faith and marriage, we can testify that it was God through Logsdon Seminary professors. Their faith provided the scaffolding for our own while we examined the holes our experience had created in our faith. Rather than crumbling altogether, we were sustained by their faith while we reconstructed our own. They acted as our spiritual guides, showing us who God is when we were not sure anymore. They spoke truth into our lives and marriage when we could not see a way forward. They offered us a safe place to question, doubt, reconnect and rebuild.
Now, 17 years after the loss of our son and nearly 11 years in overseas missions, STILL Logsdon professors minister to our hearts, encourage us in our faith and marriage, walk with us through our grief, and partner with us and champion God’s work in North Macedonia. As our spiritual guides, they taught us how to minister to people in their grief through their ministry to us all those years ago. They taught us what it is to embody a ministry of long-term presence because of their faithful ministry to us. And we are forever grateful.
Pray. . .Give. . .Go.
Tuesday, April 2 at 11:30 at the Mission & Fellowship Center
Margo Capparelli had four college degrees in Sociology and Counseling Psychology including a Ph.D. but more than that she had a vision and a heart for the men and women who had served our country in terrible situations that had left them wounded and suffering – veterans who had invisible war wounds – veterans who suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or military sexual trauma – a place that provided suicide prevention – a place that would allow the veterans to get help outside the confines of a hospital and immerse them in a positive environment surrounded by nature.
Margo had taught Sociology on military bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Djibouti. She had served as a responder on the National Veterans Crisis Line. She had done many things in an effort to help our veterans but it never felt like it was enough. And then her parents passed and left her with enough money to begin to fulfill her dream – to have a place where wounded veterans could come and find peace, comfort, and healing. She wanted a place removed from the sights and sounds of our busy, noisy civilian world. She searched several states until she found just what she was looking for in Cullowhee. Twenty-three acres that the Tuckasegee River wrapped around on three sides. A place where wounded warriors could fish, go tubing or rafting, hike, experience the music of the mountains, or sit around campfires and just be. This peaceful tranquil place is called Equinox Ranch. The name comes from the two seasonal markers to help bring veterans from the dark to the light. For many the ranch is a mission of urgency.
The program focuses on building the skills that help veterans readjust to the civilian world and their work, relationships and communities. For many returning combat veterans their homecoming was not the celebration that they or their loved ones dreamed about while they were deployed. These veterans often cope with invisible wounds that lead to emotional numbness, anger, depression, anxiety, isolation and hypervigilance. Attempting to distance themselves from their pain and its effects, they try to repress the intrusive thoughts, flashbacks and nightmares. Their military training, fear of psychiatric labels, lack of trust makes it difficult to ask for help. If they do summon the courage to ask, the treatment is often cursory, capricious, involves long waiting periods and sometimes confinement to a hospital. Locked in the past, feeling alone and in agony, some veterans seek the antidote in suicide. The conservative estimate calculated by the Veterans Administration report, is that at least 20 veterans end their lives every day and many more attempt suicide.” But Margo’s plan is to help alleviate such suffering.
What is so special is that the veterans who come for a week can return again. When they leave, the ranch will aid the veterans in connecting to the Veterans Administration or civilian follow up care to ensure they have the social support to continue their recovery when they return home. And the best part is that this program is free to combat veterans.
Many of us have a dream of helping others. Too many only dream but Margo Capparelli made her dream a reality. Please join us on April 2 at 11:30 at the Mission & Fellowship Center of Sylva First Baptist and let’s support Equinox Ranch and the many veterans who have served our county and now need our help – veterans who have put their lives on the line in protecting our American way of life.