20 Dec Christmas at Salem UB (Chambersburg, Pa.)

Art Page (right), senior pastor, Salem UB church (Chambersburg, Pa.)

At Salem, we decided to do something new before Christmas this year. We called it “Christmas on the Road.” We reduced our normal Sunday morning schedule from three services to one service for everyone–it was crowded. We had a message on how we are God’s current generation of missionaries to bring blessings into the world, and then we bundled up and went out.

We had twelve teams with from 8-19 people each go out from our church for about two hours–into neighborhoods, into nursing homes, out to where shut-ins live–to bless people near and far with what we hoped to be the aroma of Christ. We delivered 130 plates of cookies that had been handmade and decorated by our women’s ministry, along with invitations to and information about our church family.

We then returned to the Salem Community Center to share in a banquet of hot Italian food (we are not Italian, but we like it anyway!). There was a lot of excitement and enthusiasm by our Salem folks, and we heard testimonies of lives who were very deeply touched by our outreach. One lady said she had been living on her street for 22 years, and this was the first time anyone had come to her door to sing Christmas carols or give her anything!