December 2018 at Grace Fellowship!

GRACE FELLOWSHIP (December 2018)

Hello Grace family! With December being a month filled with travel and commitments, we wanted to take this time to lay out some of the things going on around our church. Advent is a special time of celebrating all the Lord has done, is doing, and will continue to do. We invite and appreciate your participation in this joyous season leading up to Christmas! Here’s a quick list of all the things you need to know about!

Community Food Drive

We have the unique opportunity to provide food for some families our community this Advent season. It’s a great undertaking, and we would love for everyone to partake in serving those around us who are in need. You may sign-up to bring items online here, or you may donate money to @Grace-Fellowship with the notation “Food Drive.” Please signup or donate by this Sunday, 12/9! Special shoutout to Jenny Firth and Rachel Miley for making this possible!

Nine Lessons and Carols

On Wednesday, 12/12 at 6:30pm, we will gather at Second Presbyterian for a time of singing songs and reading the Scriptures. Feel free to come as you are from work, invite friends, and bring the whole family! A nursery will be provided for children under 4-years-old.

Grace Kids Advent!

It is such a joy to lead our children at Grace in the celebration of Christ’s first and second coming. Marjorie Eiland and Ethan Smith have labored faithfully to create a masterful workbook for our kids this Advent season. Our kids will hear an Advent lesson each Sunday, and each family will have activities throughout the week centered around Christ’s birth and work on our behalf. Make sure to grab a copy of the curriculum next week if you haven’t received yours already!

Advent Gatherings

The Advent/Christmas season is a perfect time for sharing the love of Jesus with those around us. This year, we would love for members of our church to host an Advent Gathering. We wish to build relationships with our neighbors, practice hospitality, and give an experience for churched and unchurched people to hear the good news of Christ. This is a time of sharing food and drink, singing carols, and reading the Christmas story. Contact john@gracebham.org to learn more about hosting an Advent Gathering!

Christmas Eve Service

We will have a simple and simple service this Christmas Eve, at 4pm, at Second Presbyterian. We are eager and excited to celebrate the fulfillment of Advent preparation with the joyous celebration of Jesus’ birth. Nursery will be provided for under 4-years-old.

We're Hiring! Ministry Coordinator at Grace Fellowship

 Grace Fellowship longs to see Jesus glorified and treasured above all things, and the Magic City renewed by the power of the Gospel. We believe that we're called to be a family of Christ-followers sent to celebrate and declare the gospel in our homes, neighborhoods, workplaces, and to the ends of the earth.

As the church continues to grow both numerically and spiritually, the administrative, pastoral support, and operational needs continue to expand. Therefore, Grace is looking for an individual to partner with the ministerial staff, elders, and other ministry leaders to help coordinate details and bring cohesion to the implementation of plans, thus serving to ensure a quality of ministry across all areas of the church.

This is a part-time position. We are flexible with regard to hours, but we anticipate the role requiring up to thirty hours per week.

Inquiries, including a chance to see the full-job description, can be directed to Grace’s lay elders: elders@gracebham.org

The Word Does the Work

(Over the next few weeks, our pastor will write a series of posts about our Core Convictions as a church body. We hope these encourage you and remind you of who we believed Christ has called us to be)

So this a Grace worship guide. It lays out the order of worship for our body. It lays out the passages we read and hear, the prayers we pray, the testimonies we celebrate, the sermons we preach, the songs we sing, the confessions we confess, the hope of the gospel we are assured of, the benedictions we are blessed with as we go, and all the other things we do together.

We’ve gathered to do some combination of the above, 71 times.

A big part of my role is to work with others to order, form, and shape our worship gathering every week. It’s a tremendous joy and privilege to work on this every week. The pastoral task is overwhelming. It’s makes me tremble to know that particular souls are being shaped by what is chosen for our worship. In many ways, we desire for our times of gathered worship to be normal, steady, faithful reminders of the good news of Jesus. 

We take the long view and believe, in advance, in their cumulative effect over the decades that are to come. A pastor we admire captures it this way, “It won’t be one church service that will change your life. It will be a lifetime of church services that will change your life. Singing the same songs, reading the same Scripture, hearing the same gospel, over and over again, are used by the Spirit of God to shape and fashion your heart toward him, to cultivate your loves, and to make your more like Jesus.” 

This is why gathering each week is essential to the life of a Christian and to the health of a body. We need Christ to renew us, each week, and there simply is no substitute for our physical presence with each other every week.

Our worship is built around this Core Conviction: The Word Does the Work.

We believe the Holy Spirit travels alongside God’s word to form, create, and shape Christ’s church. In the truest sense, the church is a “creature of the Word.” 

Our gathered worship is word-centered: reading, hearing, reciting, responding to the word (our Opening Scripture and Prayer, times of confession and assurance), singing the truths of the word (our songs/hymns), declaring the glory of the person of the Word-Made-Flesh, Jesus Christ, and the work he has done for us (the sermon), hearing how the gospel has shaped a soul (times of testimony), remembering, celebrating, tasting, touching, and seeing the hope we have in him (the Table), and being sent out by the risen and ascended Christ as witnesses (times of prayer, commissioning, benediction).

And then again next week.