20 Dec Christmas at Our Church: Berea, Ohio

http://youtu.be/W-eUw-dqvYI

Andy Sikorra (right), pastor of Renew Communities (Berea, Ohio)

We are currently do two projects throughout the Christmas season.

First, we are working to plant a church in Haiti in partnership with Haiti Bible Mission. The overall need for funds is $17,000, but we set a goal for this Christmas of $6,000 from our people.

The other project is a local project called Renewing Christmas, where we’re working to collect 1000 new or gently used coats, 1000 hats, and 1000 pairs of gloves for our neighbors who need them most. Many local organizations are partnering with us in this project.

Recently, our Renewing Christmas project was featured in both the local paper and on Fox 8 Cleveland (the above Youtube clip). We wanted to share these things with you.

Tell us something special your church did during the Christmas season–events, programs, ministries, anything. You can use this form or send an email.

20 Dec Christmas at Our Church: Churchville, Va.

Annette Sites (right), Jerusalem Chapel, Churchville, Va.

Instead of exchanging gifts in the Middle School Sunday school class (and tempting ourselves with greed and bad attitudes), we chose to share a gift with the church family. During December, we studied God’s example of gifting and looked at our attitudes when giving and receiving gifts. To conclude our study, the students filled snack-sized baggies of “gorp” (peanuts, M&Ms, and raisin mixture) this week and stapled a message of Christmas greeting onto the bag. The students were then given the freedom to go out into the church parking lot, where they placed the goodie bags on car windshields.

Even in our giving, one problem occurred–we ran out of goodie bags before we ran out of cars! (Woops!) So, to remedy this situation we first took the goodie bags off of the pastors’ cars (since they are always showing us an example of servanthood). When that still wasn’t enough, the teens agreed to take the goodie bags off of their own family’s cars. A true sacrifice that wasn’t in the originial teaching plan.

When the class came back together to look at the story of the Three Wise Men, I took it a step further and talked about God’s gift–and sacrifice–in sending his son into the world to save us.

The students had fun, and there was not even a hint of a bad attitude. What a great Christmas gift for me and my assistant–watching the class learn and work together for God’s glory!

Tell us something special your church did during the Christmas season–events, programs, ministries, anything. You can use this form or send an email.

19 Dec Anchor Holds Christmas Party at Homeless Shelter

Residents of Charis House with Santa.

The Christmas party was held in the dining hall at Charis House.

Anchor Community Church usually holds an all-church Christmas party at the church, complete with lots of food and a visit from Santa.

This year, Anchor held this event at Charis House, a 78-bed facility for homeless mothers and their children. Residents of Charis House joined people from Anchor on Friday, December 16, for two hours of food, music, fellowship, and pictures with Santa. Anchor brought along a lot of supplies and materials which Charis House needs.

Tim Bauman, lead guitarist/singer for the Anchor worship team, played the role of Santa, as he does each year. Throughout the evening, parents and children got their pictures taken with Santa. Meanwhile, two guitarists from the worship team sang Christmas songs for the gathering.

A lot of photos from the event have been posted on Anchor’s Facebook page.

Tell us about the special events and activities your church is doing over the Christmas season. Use this form or send an email to news@ub.org.

16 Dec Church Openings in Ohio and Michigan

Greenfield, Ohio. Good Shepherd Church is seeking a senior pastor. The current pastor, Mike Anderson, came in June 2010, taking on the role while continuing fulltime at his local ministry with New Directions. He is resigning from the church so he can transition back to that ministry exclusively. He will perform interim pastoral duties while the church begins the process of searching for a pastor.

Grandville, Mich. Also in transition is Homefront Church. Tim Flickinger had been appointed interim pastor, but is returning to the Lansing Restart project on a fulltime basis. The church is preparing their profile to begin the pastor search process.

14 Dec Dreams Come True for Fountain UB Teen

Sara Powell dancing as Alice with the East Pointe Ballet Company.

Here’s an inspiring story involving Sara Powell, an 8th grader from Fountain UB church in Keyser, W. Va. The information comes from an article in the online NewsTribune.

In March 2011, Sara, who has cystic fibrosis, had a successful double-lung transplant. Before that surgery, she made two wishes:

• To visit DisneyWorld on her 13th birthday.
• To dance the role of Alice in “Alice in Wonderland” with East Pointe Ballet Company in Keyser. That story has always been her favorite.

On June 5, a cystic fibrosis nurse from Pittsburgh’s Children’s Hospital, where the surgery was performed, helped provide a benefit concert for Sara. There, she was surprised with a trip to Florida. She and her family spent a week in Orlando beginning September 30, visiting Universal Studios, Epcot, and DisneyWorld, where she met Disney’s own Alice.

Then, on November 8, her second wish came true when she danced as Alice for her hometown’s East Pointe Ballet Company.

Sara stays very active–taking dancing lessons through East Pointe Ballet, participating in Fountain UB’s bell choir and youth choir, and teaching in the children’s church program.

08 Dec UB Worship Leader Puts Out Christmas Album

Bethany Solyntjes, worship leader at Renew Communities, has recorded her first album. Renew is a UB church plant in Middleburg Heights, Ohio.

Pastor Andy Sikora (right) writes, “It’s a Christmas EP called ‘Hope Renewed.’ It’s got an indie-folk feel to it and has some really cool re-workings of some of her favorite carols as well as one original. In my opinion it’s really good!

“Bethany and Chris (her husband) are like most church planters in that they are raising their salaries for the first few years of our church’s life. This record is one way that they are hoping to supplement their income. They are giving 10% of each sale to a church planting project of our church (yeah, our church is less than a year old and we’re working on planting one church locally and one internationally).”

You can read more about Bethany on the Renew website. You can listen to the six tracks and buy the digital or physical album for $10 on Bethany’s Bandcamp page.

07 Dec Findlay First’s Prison Ministry Leads to a Baptism

As a result of jail ministry of Findlay First UB Church (Findlay, Ohio), a prisoner gave his life to the Lord and wanted to be baptized during a Thursday night service. Because Pastor Darwin Dunten was not available that night, Pastor Robert Cochran of the First Lutheran Church of Findlay was able to perform the service.

Every Thursday night, a jail ministry team from First UB goes to the Hancock county jail to present a worship service/discipleship program for the inmates. Some of the inmates have started attending worship services and discipleship programs at the church. This particular inmate will not be attending worship services at Findlay First for about 6 years.

05 Dec 750 Nativity Sets

Dean Hoobler, a longtime member of Kilburne Avenue UB (Rockford, Ill.), has a collection of about 750 nativity sets collected over the past 30 years. This year, as in some past years, the church hosted a public display of the nativity sets.

05 Dec Growing on Wednesday Night in Findlay, Ohio

Wednesday night attenders at Findlay First UB Church

Polly Dunten (left) with her class.

Last week, Findlay First UB Church (Findlay, Ohio) had the largest Wednesday night attendance in 12 years, with 57 participants. The elementary class had 27 children, and the adult prayer meeting is running out of room.

Pastor Darwin Dunten (right) writes, “Adults from our church are picking up these children and bringing them to church in their personal cars. Some cars are stuffed with children sitting on laps. Most of these children do not come from Christian homes. One girl stated, ‘What’s a Bible verse? Then she said, What’s a sanctuary? Another girl wanted us to pray for her mother and her boyfriend who are fighting, and for her father and his girlfriend who are not getting along. It breaks your heart, but what an opportunity.”

05 Dec Simulation Helps People Understand Life in Poverty

Hillsdale UB church (Hillsdale, Mich.) hosted a poverty simulation on November 18 to help people better understand what it’s like to live in poverty. The workshop was conducted by the Poverty Reduction Initiative, a Kalamazoo-based group that runs these workshops across the state of Michigan.

The simulation mainly drew members of Hillsdale County service organizations. Some attendees were assigned to family roles (schoolchildren, parents, teens, senior citizens), while others were given non-family roles (mortgage lender, business owner, etc.). Then the various persons interacted.

Through the simulation, participants were made more aware of specific problems poor people face, such as transportation, time constraints, quality of family life, difficulties in dealing with social agencies, the stigma of asking for help, and the importance of education in landing a job. They saw how parents, putting all their energy into just struggling to survive, had little left for family time. Sometimes children who ended up in juvenile centers were left there, because parents knew they would have food, shelter, and safety.

The purpose of the event was to help people think of ways to work together to help persons in need.