Happy Thanksgiving, Church!
Are you wearing your stretchy pants today? I know I am! At my house, the smells of bone broth are wafting from the kitchen, and I’m hankering for another piece of pumpkin pie. Are you eating leftovers today, too?
Here’s the news for the week:
Jeff Mitchell to Preach this Sunday, the 26th
I’m grateful to Jeff, who will again be bringing our church a word from the Word this Sunday.
Moving the All-Church Potluck to Dec. 10th
Betsy Tisdale noted something important the other day. We were scheduled to have our all-church potluck on the same day that Beth-El hosts their annual Food Festival at their synagogue. This is the first time they’ve had their fundraiser since 2019, and it’s an important opportunity for some of us to show up and support their community– especially in light of the fear and the sorrow that they’ve been living with this last month.
So, we’re going to move our potluck from Dec. 3rd to Dec. 10th in order to allow some of us to go to support Beth-El. I’ll remind us again next week, but don’t bring a dish on the 3rd. We will break bread together on the 10th, instead.
Beth-El’s Food Festival, Sunday, December 3rd
The Food Festival runs from 11am-3pm and will feature matzoh ball soup, kugel, bagels, falafel, blintzes, potato latkes, baked goods, bread sale, gifts, and a raffle.
Pledge Time
Our congregation might be small, but we do some amazing things in the life of our church. This life we create, however, costs money. It costs money to pay our custodian and heat our building. It costs money to pay the pastor, keep the lights on, fix the boiler when it breaks, and support our missional activities.
This coming week you should be receiving your pledge card in the mail for the 2024, and I pray that you will be prayerful about your giving. At the end of October of this year we were $20,000 in the hole, which is neither unusual, or unexpected. (We simply do not have enough money coming in to cover all of the church’s expenses.) Thankfully, we have an endowment that we can pull from to stay afloat, but the less we tap into it the longer it will last.
Friends, might you be willing to increase your pledge for this coming year? Might you have something extra to contribute for this year, to help make up the balance?
I know that for many of us, money is tight and we have to balance our own livelihoods with our giving. But also, if we care about our church, its important to give.
Thanksgiving Day Joy
Yesterday I attended the Community Supper Thanksgiving meal that our church and Trinity Episcopal put on for people in the community. I’m not much help in the kitchen, so I spent my time visiting with guests who had come to the feast. I sat with a 90 year old man named Jim who recently lost his wife of 70 years, and choked up on tears telling me about how much he misses her. I visited with a man named Jonathan who never married and whose mom passed away 2 years ago. He lives all alone and commented that if it weren’t for this dinner, he would have no Thanksgiving to celebrate. I joked with two college students who weren’t able to go home for Thanksgiving break. They were enjoying pumpkin pie before heading back to their dorms to write papers. And then I met a Bangladeshi family who recently moved here for the husband to go to Clarkson. Their two little children attend HeadStart and pre-K, and they had never had a Thanksgiving dinner before. We laughed together about how different food in the US is from Bangladesh.
In all of this time, I saw you giving and serving– your time, your food, and your hearts. And it brought me such joy! Thank you for being the sort of church that comes together every month to feed folks who need love and attention. Thank you for being a church of action. This is the way of Christ.
With gratitude,
Pastor Katrina