Advent News Bulletin

This fall, we're combining the blog/email and podcast formats. The form will be shorter than it was with the previous podcasts and will be sent as an email with a link to a podcast - a recorded version of the email. You can choose which format you prefer to receive it in!
If you subscribe to the podcast through Google podcasts, it should show up in your feed so you won't need to go find it. Our social media sites will link to our podcast page, which also offers a PDF of the text. Hopefully, this will help reach as many people as possible!

Click here if you would prefer to listen to the podcast audio of this message!

I’m on the tail end of a few days off so we don’t have a full Covenant Weekly today. I do want to take a few moments, however, to make sure you’re up to speed on some of the ongoing and upcoming things at Covenant during this season.

This coming Sunday is the first week of Advent. Our wreath and candles are ready to go and we’ll be starting this week with the theme of Hope. Angie Limmer will be speaking this Sunday.

December 4 is going to be a full and special week for us at Covenant. Our Sunday gathering will be focused on the theme of Love. As a part of that week, we are going to introduce a special time and space for us to remember loved ones who are no longer around our tables during the Christmas season. We will also be receiving Communion together during the gathering.

But our December 4 time together isn’t limited to our main gathering. Everyone is invited to bring a potluck meal item you come on Sunday and we will eat together following our gathering. And following our meal together, we will have a congregational meeting. A portion of this meeting will be a formal business meeting in which we need to approve our staff salaries for 2023. Beyond that formal portion, we will have space to talk and share together and to hear from each other, particularly in this area of finances. While that’s never an easy topic to talk about, we are praying and trusting it will be a good conversation and a good time together.

Finances are essential for us to talk about and manage, but they are not why we gather or what we are about. We aim to be a community where people can know and understand that they are beloved by God and others. We long to be a space where people can belong within the family of Jesus. And within that context, we each want to become more of what Jesus invites us to be as we centre our lives and our life together around him.

Our Compassion ministries flow out of this centring on and following Jesus. We are continuing to collect toiletries and toques and gloves and treats to put together into Necessity Packages in partnership with Beausoleil First Nation Social Services and for people in our own community. We also have other compassion work through our meal program, the Water Street home ministry, and through the efforts of our youth to collect food for the food bank and to serve hot chocolate to our community. You are invited to support our compassion ministries by donating to the Necessity Packages up to December 4 or by contributing financially to our Compassion Fund.

I’m really looking forward to this advent season together. If you’d like to take advantage of this advent season to recentre and reflect, I encourage you to use our Be In Christ Church of Canada Advent Guide. Paper copies are available at our church building at 95 Robert St. E. in Penetang. Online versions are available at beinchrist.ca/advent. May you know the hope, love, joy, and peace of Christ during this season of waiting as we move toward Christmas.

Blessings to each of you.