As we approach the celebration of Christmas, I want to pause and give thanks for the gift you as a congregation are to me. This season always invites reflection, and as I look back across the years we’ve shared, I am continually reminded of the ways you display the heart of Christ.
This Christmas marks my 25th Advent season as your pastor, and with each year, God reveals again the quiet, steady gifts of His people. Today I want to reflect on three of those gifts — faithfulness, generosity, and community — and offer my gratitude as we journey toward Bethlehem once more.
The Gift of Faithfulness
Every Advent, there are moments that anchor our lives together: the beauty of the Hanging of the Greens, the voices of our children, youth, and adults lifted in familiar carols, the simple joy of preparing our Sanctuary for worship.
As your pastor, one of my great privileges has been watching you — and your families — grow in faith. I have witnessed children become youth, youth become young adults, and now even the children of those who were once children themselves taking part in Hanging of the Greens.
This is the gift of a long pastorate — seeing God’s faithfulness over generations, lived out in the faithfulness of God’s people. Week after week, year after year, you show what it means to serve, worship, and walk together. I am grateful.
The Gift of Generosity
Each Christmas, our congregation gathers a Global Missions Offering that helps share the good news of Christ around the world. What I love about this offering is its simplicity: we give, and we send.
Once these gifts leave our hands, we trust God — and we trust our ministry partners — to use them in ways that best serve the Kingdom.
Your generosity extends beyond finances. It is reflected in the way you trust one another, work together, and step into ministry with a spirit that believes the best of your brothers and sisters in Christ. That is a generous way of living, and I am grateful for the countless ways you embody it.
The Gift of Community
The Gift of CommunityThe holidays have a unique way of drawing our attention to the people God has placed in our lives. During this season, we remember those who shaped us and have now gone on to be with the Lord. We give thanks for the blessing of having walked with them.
We also welcome new people into our church family, hopeful and excited about what God will do in the seasons ahead. Through every joy and every sorrow, every tradition and every new beginning, we are reminded of the gift of community — the gift of knowing we do not walk alone.
We walk with God, and we walk with one another.
A Christmas Prayer and Blessing
As we celebrate this Advent and Christmas season together, I want to express my deep gratitude for these 25 years we have shared. I look forward with great joy to the seasons still ahead — to the faithfulness, generosity, and community God will continue to cultivate in us.
My prayer is that we will be:
Faithful to God and to one another,
Generous in all we have and all we are, and
Joyful in the gift of sharing life together.
Merry Christmas,
Dr. Jeff Roberts
