Christmas Fund for Veterans – The Christmas Fund for the Veterans of the Cross and the Emergency Fund special offering will be received on Sunday, December 4. This is the fifth of our Five for Five offerings in support of the larger UCC. The Christmas Fund for the Veterans of the Cross and the Emergency Fund is a Special Mission Offering that congregations have been supporting for over 100 years. The offering is administered through the United Church Board for Ministerial Assistance, the charitable arm of the Pension Boards. Funds provide direct financial support to those who serve the church and are facing financial difficulties. Active and retired clergy, lay employees, and their surviving spouses may be eligible for the Supplementation of Small Annuities, Supplementation of Health Premiums, Emergency Grants, and/or Christmas “Thank You” Gift Checks. You may designate your offering on the fourth line of your giving envelope, or you may place it in the one of the special Christmas Fund envelopes you will find in the narthex.
Sweatsuits for Head Start: St. John’s will once again be providing sweatsuits for Head Start children and their siblings. This is a very long-standing Christmas-time ministry here at St. John’s organized by the Membership and Outreach Committee. There is a record number of children this year so we will definitely need our traditionally generous congregation to participate. Names (along with gender, age and size) will be ready for distribution today. Sweatsuits (in wrapped packages) will then be due back to the church by Sunday, December 11th. If you want to participate but don’t anticipate being in church next Sunday, please call Joyce Reives at (937)335-8599 and she’ll assign a child to you. Thanks so much for participating in this long-standing tradition!
Adult Sunday School is at 9:30am on Sundays
with Mike Beamish facilitating the discussions in the cafe.
Worship time begins at 10:30am.
Poinsettias
The Ministry and Worship Committee invites you to be part of this year’s Advent/Christmas Poinsettia Display. Please consider a donation of $10 (or more) in the special Poinsettia Envelopes you will find the narthex. You may also designate your gift on the fourth line of your regular giving envelope. Please indicate in whose memory or in whose honor you are making the gift.
Tree Lighting
Sunday, November 27th is First Sunday of Advent and our Tree lighting ceremony from 5:00pm-7:00pm. We’ll have soup, sandwiches and some crafts for the little ones. More details to follow.
Partners in Hope:
There is a blue bucket in the narthex to donate new toys, toiletry items, and gifts for seniors (ie. electric razors, twin bedding, pots & pans) to support Partners in Hope’s Christmas Shop. It will be there until Dec 5th.
Advent Soup:
You’re invited to join us for a warm bowl of homemade soup and explore what it means to live in hope and wonder during this Advent season. We’ll be meeting on Thursdays from 11:30-1:00 in The Gathering Place. Sometimes we struggle to believe we’ll experience anything new as Advent comes around. What could we possibly learn that we haven’t seen or heard before? In these gatherings, we’ll look at new ways of connecting the Christmas story with our own questions of faith and approach an all-too-familiar narrative from perspectives we may have missed.
Cookies:
Calling all Cookie Bakers! Partners in Hope has requested 10 dozen of St. John’s finest cookies for the families that shop at their annual Christmas Shop on December 14 and 15. To that end, we have scheduled a Cookie-Baking Day on Monday, December 12, from 9-12, here in the St. John’s kitchen (where the range has two ovens J). Please bring your ready-to-bake cookie dough and your own cookie sheets and join your St, John’s family in the kitchen. We will bake cookies together and then package them for the Partners in Hope event, and there will probably be plenty of cookies left over to share, to trade, and, of course, to eat!