I pray your Christmas was blessed by the knowledge that Christ was

born to bring the assurance of forgiveness and eternal life to you. Some-
times, even when we remember the ‘reason for the season,’ we forget the

specifics associated with the birth of Jesus. He came to earth to die so that
you can go to heaven to live! It cannot be stated more simply than that.
 

Allowing our faith to reorient us away from our pain and to our Savior enables us to joyfully anticipate Christ’s coming, even in the face of anxiety and uncertainty.

Our faith encourages us to reconnect with our fellow Christians in celebration of the gifts of forgiveness and eternal life his birth promises.
May your faith in your Savior make this season of anticipation and celebration a joyful time for you.

My point is to encourage you to enjoy each season we are in to its fullest. That means take the time to relish all the unique features and aspects of each season, rather than simply check them off the list of holidays to get through until the next one. So, in the next paragraphs I’ll highlight some opportunities to enrich your individual seasonal celebrations in the hope that you will be blessed, specifically by each season. If I might paraphrase, “Let’s remember the reason for each season.”

I look forward to Ian being as minimal as they are forecasting. And I look forward to helping you when an event comes along that allows the church to more broadly serve you in an unexpected time of need.

Our Pumpkin Patch will have pumpkins for sale in October. Consider volunteering to staff our sales table for a couple of hours. It’s a great time to visit with a fellow member (we always have at least 2 on hand), as well as an opportunity to engage our neighbors in friendly conversation.

Our Ministry Expansion Committee has begun their work. Our work in our Sunday Bible study gave them a wealth of ideas to begin with, and I am confident that those will only be the beginning of new opportunities for sharing the Gospel in word and deed. I look forward to their reports to Council and the new ministries that Holy Lamb will undertake in the months to come.

The definition of effective outreach puts it this way:
Effective outreach is the “planting and watering”
cf. 1 Corinthians 3:5-9) through which a congregation intentionally
engages non-churched people in ways that offer appropriate and
appealing entry points (other than worship services and traditional
Bible studies) that encourage non-churched people to participate in
the Word and Sacrament ministry* of the congregation.

A new roof has just been installed on our entire building. This is, nominally, a 40-year roof, although I have never seen a roof actually last as long as promised. Nevertheless, all of our roof surfaces are now on the same schedule. Unless we have additional storm damage, we should be set for
several decades.

As we conclude our second year of dealing with Covid, it is worth noting how Holy Lamb has responded to this challenge. Here are some of the significant developments driven by our desire to continue an effective ministry in this new environment:

This is an exciting time to be a part of the life and ministry of Holy Lamb. I have never been in a congregation that has made such an intentional effort to identify various needs of congregation and community and then, just as intentionally, seek to discern God’s will in determining how to meet those needs.