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What did the bald man say when he got a comb for Christmas?
I'll never part with it.
What could you never part with at Christmas time? (of course, we're not speaking of hair or combs now).
Family?
A big meal together?
Carols?
How about the real meaning and message of Christmas?
Or outreach?
For a few years now, our church family has been deliberate in articulating our Christmas Outreach priorities and plans annually. We do this because we never want to part with the real meaning and message of Christmas or part with the tremendous opportunity for outreach we have every Christmas.
Allow me to outline our 2023 CPC Christmas Outreach plans:
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Outreach through our Groups. The gospel flows most naturally through relationship. Christmas provides all kinds of opportunities to consider a person / or group of people that don't know Jesus yet and work together with your Life Group/Pop-Up Group/Coffee Club/DNA Relationships to meet a need or bring blessing. These generous acts become a way of demonstrating the gospel. They give opportunity for people to see or feel the gospel. And this sure can help prepare their hearts to hear the gospel one day. As we've been communicating, our church has allocated resources to help support the work of your group in meeting someone's need or blessing them this Christmas season. We want to help what your group does to be even more impacting for the person/people your group outreaching is blessing. You can apply for that here. Look for opportunities where you or your group will have the most natural opportunity for ongoing relationship with whomever is receiving. May your group's outreach be as personal and relational as possible!
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Christmas Eve Services. It seems more and more that if there is one service that someone from the community who doesn't know Jesus yet would come to all year, it would be Christmas Eve. Last year we had hundreds come to our two services, this year we will be able to present the message of Jesus in three services! We plan these services each year with the unchurched community in mind. If you know you'll be in town on December 24th, begin thinking about who you could invite! Who comes to mind?
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Online. As we've done in recent years, we will have some video content created for Christmas Eve that will be sharable online. We continue to be amazed as we learn of the reach of our livestreamed services - locally, and literally around Canada and beyond. I just met another person exploring faith (no Christian background whatsoever), who began exploring faith in Jesus by watching our services online. Now, many months later, they have begun attending in person regularly. Wow! The investment in technology and video creation is worth it.
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Nesting Place Society (formerly Comox Valley Pregnancy Care Centre). After their recent 're-brand' we have an opportunity to help support their important work of providing pregnancy resources and grief support to a myriad of people in need in the Comox Valley. We will help reintroduce them to our community as part of our Christmas Eve services and proceeds coming in from our Christmas Outreach offering and Christmas Eve offerings will help support their impacting cause.
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Blanket Drive. We want to help make sure people who are experiencing homelessness here in the Comox Valley have warm blankets. Last week we begun receiving blankets. Did you know that by lunchtime on Sunday we had distributed 50 blankets to people in town. Thank you Shirley Kirk and Jessica Prichard for coordinating this effort - well done! We will continue to receive clean used (or new) blankets, as well as socks, gloves, tarps, etc for the next several Sundays.
If you feel led to give financially in support of these churchwide Christmas Outreach priorities this year you can note as you give your gift or select "Christmas Outreach 2024" by giving online here.
The message of Jesus and the meaning of Christmas are essential for our world today! Let's empower it this year.
We can't part with it!
Pastor Mike
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