have come out to greet the monks with flowers and provisions. In every town, the police have provided safe ​escort and support, and every community has welcomed and offered unique means of care. Thousands of people have been a blessing to them and have in turn, been blessed. 

​Grandpa Harold was a “Christian truck-driving John Wayne”. It didn’t matter that he probably stood 5’ 6” or that he only had an eighth-grade education. He was going to make it to wherever he was heading in his truck, or “don’t come after me because you’ll never get as far as I got!” Oh, did I mention that he loved to tell stories?! The more colorful and filled with embellishments, the better, and he never met a stranger he wasn’t willing to share them with.
 
But most important, in his view, was that he was a Christian. His moral compass was firmly set on the principles of the Gospel, and he was intent on letting the Holy Spirit be his co-pilot as the miles sped by. Ever looking for ways to occupy the time, he often prayed. During one prayer time, he asked God if he could have a “calling” on his life. He was thinking of the story of how God called Billy Graham to ministry. He heard a quiet response, “Use what you have in your hands.” It seemed odd because he was driving a truck, but he tucked the thought away and kept driving.
 
It wasn’t long before the new church he was helping to build, First Assembly of God in Spokane, Washington, was more than an architect’s dream. Once the building was up and completed, they announced from the pulpit the need for volunteers. One position was for the Sunday school bus driver. That quiet nudge to use his hands on a steering wheel quickly became a reality. My grandma, Velma, walked miles of neighborhoods signing up young children to attend, and my grandpa picked them up and dropped them off … for 41 years!  41! Not just 41 years of Sundays, but choir trips, youth group outings, and even senior trips.
 
Ministry can be that simple. It’s just being willing to say “yes” to whatever way God wants to use even the smallest of talents — and then glorifying Him through them. Grandpa Harold picked up kids in a bus … but there wasn’t a single child or adult that climbed his stairs that didn’t get a personal welcome by name, a funny tease, or a word of encouragement, and many of those kids, and then their kids, were introduced to their Faith because he said “yes” to using his driving skills.
 
So, this young pastor stood in a pulpit 60 years later and told the story of Grandpa Harold, the bus driver who brought his dad to church as a young man, that in turn enabled him to grow up in a Christian home and to receive the kind of direction and encouragement he needed to find his calling as a pastor.
 
Let’s practice saying “yes!” You never know where or how God will bless your efforts.
 
In His Name, Dana

snatch one of the babies. In the end, the leopard wandered off still hungry and with a few souvenir quills as the four porcupines huddled close together, safe and sound. The interaction between these animals was like a dance and fight mixed into one. It was as if everyone knew their part and understood that any deviation from the plan would result in fatal consequences.

This short video reminded me of the power of a family. We are all too familiar with the pain of family these days. Broken promises and broken hearts are scattered all over our world. It seems like most people agree that families are a source of strength and the bedrock of a healthy society, and yet many of us have lost trust in our own families. The result is many broken-hearted people and lots of fat leopards.

In any culture, there are evil forces that seek out easy prey for their own needs. Scammers who prey on the elderly. Title and payday loan places that prey on the desperate. Corrupt leaders who prey on their people for power. Human traffickers who prey on the vulnerable. “Noble” causes that sow hate and prey on the disillusioned. Too many things to list that prey on innocent children. It seems we can’t even go to the local store without some leopard hiding in the aisle.
 
These little porcupines inspired me once again to value the power of a family. I understand all too well the hurt that surrounds the word family. Yet, I have also known the beauty and strength of having a good family. My family is a diverse mixture of relatives and friends. Many therapists call this a support system. I have had to learn over the years how to depend on the right family members when leopards are on the move. In a fight, I want to be working as a team with those I trust.
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So, how do we begin to find those who are ready to be a family and work together? Here are a few suggestions from my few years on this earth. 

​All of these suggestions take time and sacrifice, but the results are amazing. Take a chance on finding your porcupine family, and when leopards come to steal away your joy and life, you will find you are not alone and that the leopard is the one who has to flee. 

In His Name, Bonnie
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“Do not be anxious about anything”. Did you catch that part? Right. Ok. No problem. I’ll just relax about everything now. Thanks, Jesus. Glad we cleared that up. 

I suppose you could accuse me of overreacting to Jesus’ message about anxiety here, but I also don’t think that Jesus was joking around. In the midst of everything happening in our daily lives and around the world, which today we unfortunately know everything about at every ongoing moment, we are somehow supposed to remember to take a deep breath, chill, and be thankful for the good stuff. Stay focused on that which is praiseworthy as Jesus sees it. Even when you’re facing down a seemingly nonstop firehose of bad news and scary things and stress and stories and experiences that seem to pull you down against your own will or control. “Do not be anxious about anything.”

It makes sense when you think about it. But that’s Jesus for you, always stunning us with His fog-clearing wisdom amidst our constant worldly befuddlement. 

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis put it this way through the voice of Screwtape, the senior demon advising Wormwood, the underling demon-in-training (if you're unfamiliar with this book, remedy that first of all, but in the meantime, “the Enemy” here is God — the enemy from Screwtape’s perspective):

As many of you know, Jenny and I, along with our kids, Clark and Skye, performed 15 Christmas cabaret shows this past December at the resort downtown alongside our trusty bandmates, Eric and Craig, from our worship band. Our show was an hour of cherished Christmas songs mixed with narrated stories from Coeur d’Alene’s Christmas past. Preparing for this cabaret took most of the year and was very taxing in many ways on our family. We had to coerce the kids into practicing their music and stories when it was still warm outside, and they just wanted to play — we had to rehearse Christmas music in the heat of July, for crying out loud! As the show grew closer, the prospect of sufficient ticket sales to even meet our budget began to weigh on our minds, too. Was our show actually any good? We thought so, but would anyone else think so? Would this all be a huge waste of time and effort? And perhaps above all things to worry about, to be anxious about, was maintaining our health throughout the run of the performances. For any of us to fall sick between Thanksgiving and Christmas would have posed a very serious problem indeed. 

Often, Jenny was awake at 3:00 am on account of these things, feeling anxious. I was anxious too at times, just thankfully not at 3:00 am. But Jenny was. I would feel a general “downness” for hours almost every day before a performance. The kids sometimes moaned and groaned, “Aww… do we hafta do another show tonight?!?” 

But then we’d perform the show. We’d get through it, sometimes with a flub or two, sometimes feeling a lack of connection with the audience, sometimes disappointed by a lower number of audience members than we had hoped. And don’t get me wrong — sometimes it was great and exhilarating without flaws and great energy from the audience. But it was still taxing. And we’d get through it. And every single night, all 15 performances without exception, there would be unexpected expressions of gratitude from a handful of audience members to blow away in an instant all of the fog clouding my mind with anxiety or otherwise. I was constantly surprised by people approaching with tears in their eyes to tell me how special it was to hear that song or how meaningful it was to be reminded of happy times from their childhood here in Coeur d’Alene. Or, quite often, to see the joy in my face while watching my own family perform! Several times, I was reminded by a misty-eyed parent just how blessed I was to have such a family. I would hear about how much joy they would receive by simply observing my gratitude live and on-stage for my own family as they performed. I was essentially unaware of my apparent display of gratitude in the moment, least of all because I wasn’t focused on the feeling, but it was certainly a reality for me — I just didn’t consider that it was obvious to other people. ​
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I’m writing this blog post for myself as much as for anyone else’s benefit. My point in all this is that it’s all too easy to overlook the good stuff, even when it is right in front of your face. Even when it is on your face. Jesus reminds us to focus on His good blessings in our lives. There was so very much to be anxious about during our run of performances. There is so very much to be anxious about in our daily lives, in the world around us. Even as people reminded me each night of the very positive impact we were having on them and even as they reminded me of the wealth of blessings for which I could be grateful as a father in this family of performers, I was still tempted to gaze upon the plains of anxiety about … whatever. Screwtape doesn’t care so long as we gaze there and not upon God’s blessings. 

Each night, God sent people to remind me of the true value of our performances. And ultimately, all we were doing was celebrating Jesus’ birth and bringing some Christmas joy into the hearts of those who were present. This is something our “enemy” (the real one) wants to derail in any way possible. Anxiety is a very potent weapon in his diabolical arsenal. 

It’s worth noting that Jesus doesn’t give a formula for avoiding anxiety. Instead, He tries to refocus our attention in the midst of our natural anxiety towards all that is right and true and good, and in doing so, we can find peace in Him. His peace was present in the eyes and words of the grateful people who reminded me each night of the blessings present in my own life and in our family. He doesn’t tell us we can’t be anxious, just that we should try to look past it, to nullify it, to make it useless, to make it wither away in the overwhelming light of His blessings. All we have to do is look for them and focus on them - they are certainly there. And they are there for you, always. 
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Easier said than done, for sure. But the instructions are clear. And with practice, easier. Just keep practicing. Anxiety is pointless.

(Trying to be) In His peace,
Dalton

celebration of Christ’s birth, with candlelight services, was a beautiful way to serve our congregation. The Deacons were honored to assist with both services, and I am happy to report that all the candles were lit without problems. There were 545 attendees at the 4:00 pm service, a new record! In 2025, 1st Pres continued to grow. The difference in attendance on Sundays today as compared to a year ago is significant. The pews are consistently filled, and we are now offering overflow seating in Krueger Hall. This provides comfortable seating and a big screen TV to view the service, with easy access to coffee and donuts. We continue to welcome new families and children, while staying steadfast in our commitment to serve our community. We have also met our Capital Campaign Goal, ahead of schedule. The future for 1st Pres looks very bright. We are blessed to have Pastor McLane as our leader.

Personally, 2025 was an interesting and challenging year for me. I continued to be very involved with church service and, as a Deacon, helped organize the Spring and Fall Kick-off Potlucks, as well as the much-anticipated Christmas Potluck and Chili Cook-off. Our winner this year was fellow Deacon Karen Grace! The challenging part was that I managed to seriously injure my right shoulder, overdoing landscaping work on our property. As it turned out, I needed to have a complete shoulder replacement in September and am still continuing to recover from that. Hopefully, I have learned my lesson this time.
 
One other challenge for me was to help train my youngest son’s new puppy, Cooper. Spencer and his wife, Jordan, live with me, and the puppy was a bit of a surprise. Especially since they had an out-of-town trip planned shortly after Cooper came home. He is an adorable 10-week-old black Labrador that Spencer plans to use for duck hunting. Like Pastor McLane, this is his favorite type of outdoor sport. Five days of watching Cooper continually was exhausting. Trying to encourage him to sleep at night, ask to go out when needed, and remember that furniture is not edible are all skills we are still working on.
 
I am looking forward to whatever 2026 holds, and I hope you feel the same. We are very blessed to have a Savior who loves our Church and all of us.

​In His Name, Ellen
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everyone, my life is busy. I have a lot going on. But this year, knowing that my immediate household would be home, I decided to take two weeks off (minus a few days as a cashier at Tim’s Special Cut Meats, which could be a blog in and of itself), and be present for those who put up with me day-to-day. Next year, they may all prefer that I NOT do that, but I’ll keep you posted. As for the moment, it was totally worth the effort and simply fun. Resolutions, goals, values. All are important for determining who you are and what defines you, but in the end, what’s the action item? Are these the standards by which we should measure our lives?

I don’t typically make New Year’s resolutions. Are resolutions important? Yes! It’s a fresh start. A new beginning. A second chance. My not enjoying resolutions might come as a surprise, as I’m very competitive. I love a good game night. I love for my team to win. I am a go-getter, and I remember on one of my very first teaching jobs, one of the negatives in my evaluation was that I “was a go-getter and unhappy with leaving things status quo”. I look back at that and still roll my eyes, as if that was a bad thing. I believe in culture and tradition, but not at the expense of learning and forward progress. I impact a lot of lives every week, and if I can find a way to make that positive, I do it at any cost (one that is usually picked up by Steve — lol!)

Obviously, as you now know, I’m competitive. Making a resolution and not achieving it is highly unsatisfying. I don’t like that. Goals? Yes. I usually make seasonal goals. Last summer, I was determined to lose 30 pounds by walking up and down the hill that we live on. By July, the whole neighborhood was involved in my 8 miles a day and my fairly impressive tan (unless you’re a dermatologist, in which case the word "impressive" is not appropriate, as I learned in August!).

Did I achieve the goal? No. And I was disappointed. Maybe next summer. Every school year, we’re required to write down our goals, and I always come up with something. This year, the goal is for all of my 5th graders to read and locate every note on the treble clef staff from Middle C to high G on a keyboard. In terms of goals, I feel like I’ve made it in life. I love my jobs. I love where I live. If Safeway has the fruit on sale that I like to add to my Cheerios — I’m happy. And I love it. It's hard for me to come up with significant life goals right now.

I’ve been involved in several things that have forced me to identify my values. It was hard for me to nail them down, and I had to think a long time about it. I finally recognized my top three core values as honesty, generosity (in terms of time, attention, and, when possible, financial support), and gratitude. There is no doubt that most things I undertake turn out successful because of the team of people behind me, making it happen, including those who are visible and those who are not. When you see the band, the choir, and the kids on stage all at the same time, it’s because two of the three groups are entirely self-sufficient. And because Deborah’s head and eyes are doing as much work as her hands over there on the piano. And I am grateful for all of them.

The sermon on resolutions and being transformed by God, where we’re at, resonated with me on several levels. It’s easy to define yourself by your latest benchmark, whether it's a new resolution, a definition of your values, or a goal. But it’s not always the simplest task to take a few steps back and realize the impact of your actions on your life path and the lives of others. The fact that my perspective affects those with whom I have relationships has taken YEARS for me to understand fully. But it’s SO TRUE. Your resolutions, goals, and values may help you determine who you are and who you want to be, but in the end, it’s your connections with others that determine your happiness factor. Be happy. Engage with others. Be on a team. (I lean toward joining a choir, but you know — wherever you feel like your strength is … ) :-)

Joyfully yours, Renee

tree, then suddenly it was decorated and full of light. Wrapping paper and parties sprang out of nowhere! If I happened to be living somewhere where it snowed, and it snowed, my heart and soul were transported to Bedford Falls. 
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Growing up, Christmas was more about the Season than a Savior. I knew people celebrated Christmas because it marked the birth of Jesus 2000 years earlier. For me, that event was very much in the past and had little to do with my present celebrations. 

My first two Christmases as a young married woman still held that wonder of the season feeling. Everything felt magical, even though I was broke and we had about five ornaments for a 7-foot tree, which I was confident would fit in our tiny house. My hubby and I spent our entire paycheck, all $300 of it, buying gifts for each other!  I laughed when my baby daughter ate the paper, and I was thrilled to have two households to visit. The gifts were not the main event; it was still the cookies and movies and now a growing family. 

In July of 1996, my husband and I moved to Minnesota. We had no family or friends there, which was unheard of in both of our families. Why we would choose to move to a place where we knew no one at all was beyond their thinking. As December drew near that year, I was confused that the wonder of the season was not sweeping me off of my feet. We even had snow, and lots of it! I was at a loss as to why this Christmas felt so flat and unmagical. 
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We dragged home a tree and set it up, no feels. I bought a million pounds of butter ready to make cookies, not a blip on the feeling meter. I looked around my little apartment, and saw my 18-month-old daughter playing on the floor. The realization hit me like a truck. If there was to be that wonder of the season feeling, I, as the mom, had to create it. 

I am pretty sure I sobbed myself to sleep that night. My childhood was officially over; the full weight of adulthood had fallen on me. I laugh about it now, considering that marriage and motherhood had not brought on the same weight as that moment. Up until that day, I still lived between the world of girlhood and womanhood. I was faced with the choice to create wonder for my children or not to. So, the next morning I woke up, got out the butter, and put on some Christmas music.

About two batches in, I realized my mom’s cookie recipes were not producing the numerous cookie tins of my childhood. I was trying to create wonder, but “good lord, did it really cost this much to make cookies?” I found that I hated every 10-12 minutes of the cookie timer. I asked myself, “What the heck am I doing?” That’s when the truck backed up and hit me again. 

The whole story of Christmas flooded my mind. I saw a young couple desperately looking for a room, and being rejected over and over! A shabby stable and two parents trying to figure out what to do with this Child called Emmanuel, God with Us. Shepherds running into town to find this baby they were told about, and see if it was all true. A star shining out in the darkness over some backwater town long ago. I was faced with a choice again. I could go on creating small batches of wonder with my pricey butter, or I could sit in awe of something truly wonderful. 

I glanced over at my little girl eating a cookie, and all of the emotion of the Story flooded my heart. Everything changed in that moment. My celebration had real meaning, and I wanted to share that wonder with my daughter. I looked at my meager batches of cookies that would be eaten and gone. My sparsely decorated tree would soon be taken to the dumpster, and the small box of baubles would be stuffed in the back of the closet. Those were temporary and things I had to create. The reason for the celebration was not dependent on me for creation; all I needed to do was soak it all in.

It is all too easy to get caught up in the rush of creating wonder around our holidays. The price of butter may rise and fall, and the movies get cheesier every year. For me, it's the Christmas of 1996 that sits in my mind as the most difficult and the most beautiful Christmas I have experienced. The season had finally become secondary, and the wonder of a Savior became the celebration. 
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In His Name, Bonnie

As many of you know, this poem from T.S. Eliot is one of my favorites. It has become a tradition to share it with you each Advent season, and I see no reason why this year should be any different.

Every Advent, we return to familiar images: soft starlight over Bethlehem, shepherds in quiet fields, and wise travelers journeying from afar. We picture the Magi with their gifts, their camels, their noble procession coming to worship the newborn Jesus. But Eliot refuses to let us keep the story in the realm of comfort and nostalgia. His poem is gritty, disorienting, and unsettling—because genuine encounters with Christ often are.

Eliot imagines the Magi looking back on their journey years later. What they remember is not a picturesque nativity scene but difficulty:

“A cold coming we had of it… the very dead of winter… the camels galled… the towns unfriendly… the cities hostile.”

Nothing about this pilgrimage was easy. They left behind comfort, predictability, and the symbols of their old way of life (“summer palaces… silken girls bringing sherbet”). They traded ease for uncertainty, luxury for cold nights, and social status for a journey that others ridiculed as folly.

Yet they kept going—drawn by something they could not fully name.

When they finally arrived at the place where the Christ child was, Eliot refuses to romanticize the moment. The Magi found what they were looking for—“it was (you might say) satisfactory”—but the encounter left them changed in a way they did not expect.

That’s the turning point of the poem.

Birth or Death?
Looking back, the Magus asks one of the most haunting questions in all of Eliot’s writing:
“Were we led all that way for Birth or Death?”

Of course, there was a birth—Jesus, the long-awaited King. But this birth brought about the end of the Magi’s old world. They “returned to their places” but found they were “no longer at ease… in the old dispensation.” They no longer fit in the world they once inhabited so confidently. The coming of Christ meant the death of their former way of being.

And that is the paradox of Christian faith:
To find the One who is Life is also to experience the death of everything that cannot coexist with His kingdom.

Advent is not simply preparation for a sweet manger scene; it is a season of holy disruption. It asks us what must end in us so that Christ may be born anew.

When Christ Comes, Something Always Changes
The Magi’s experience mirrors our own faith journeys. We begin with longing—sometimes even with excitement—but following Christ will eventually lead us into unfamiliar, uncomfortable territory. It may ask us to leave behind habits, priorities, or identities that once felt like home.

Sometimes faith feels like traveling through “the very dead of winter.”
Sometimes following Jesus means admitting that old securities no longer fit.
Sometimes it means recognizing that the world around us clutches its own small gods—and so do we.

But the promise is this: Christ meets us at the end of that road. And every encounter with Him brings both a birth and a death—new life emerging even as old patterns fall away.

A Journey Worth Taking Again
Near the end, the Magus says,
“All this was a long time ago… and I would do it again.”

Despite the hardship, he would take the journey again. Because once Christ has been found—truly found—there is no going back to life as it was. There is only moving forward into the new world God is bringing.

As a church family this Advent, perhaps we are being invited to take the Magi’s journey ourselves—to leave the familiar, follow God’s leading even when it feels like “folly,” and allow Christ to unsettle and reshape us.

May we, like the Magi, be courageous enough to follow the star.
May we be honest enough to name what must die in us for Christ to be born anew.
And may we find, on the other side of the journey, that the One we seek has been seeking us all along.

Blessings on your journey,
Pastor McLane

​Whenever I need deep, philosophical questions answered, I take them to my experts: the 1st Pres PreK-K Sunday School Class. But this one was tricky for even these wise, young sages. Not entirely surprising, they approached this concept from the back door, from their 4-to-6-year lifelong experiences, the opposite side of ‘Yes’: “What does it mean to reply ‘No’?”
 
It seemed that pondering ‘Yes’ caused them to think about answering requests of their parents and what it might mean if they replied in the negative, rather than the affirmative. That’s sort of where our ‘Jesus loves us, Sunday school discussion’ felt a bit anxious (at least for this Oma): responding to a parent’s request with ‘no’ makes parents “get mad”, children “get in trouble”, and this trouble has outcomes, like “having to do push-ups”. (That made me wish my parents had adopted push-ups as the consequence for disobedience — thinking of how much better my health would be today!) As I processed what happened in this flipped-over conversation, I came to realize that, as usual, their wisdom continued to be spot on.
 
I’ll return to their innocent, yet insightful, roundabout processing of ‘yes’ as I close my thoughts. First though, I want to share my reflections on the “Yes” of God; “Yes” as the heart of Advent; and “Yes” as the central feature of our Love First mission. So, let’s start at the beginning.
 
In the beginning … God spoke “Yes” to all of creation, all of life, and all of love.
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​When I searched ‘Creation is God’s’ “Yes”, the following summary was provided. It is exactly what I’d like to share, so it is simply copied, pasted, and notated:

God’s “Yes” of creation was only the beginning of Love. God desires connection and relationship with all of creation and set in place the perfect plan for Love to continually expand. His grace and ultimate “Yes” are provided in the fulfillment of all His promises through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ: 
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​Yet our Creator is not a puppeteer forcing actions onto His creations. Instead, we have a Lord who is a loving parent — a tender Mother, a generous Father — who desires we freely and joyfully offer to reflect the love shone on us by acting in faithful, trusting, and fearless obedience. The most beloved human example of how this life-lived attitude is expressed is the one who offers the “Yes” as the heart of Advent. The mother of Jesus. Mary’s “Yes” is the intersection, the pivot point, of the life of Jesus Christ.
 
The birth of the Savior was reliant on Mary, an engaged, young, and uneducated woman who experienced an angelic visit and was given a seemingly impossible message. Mary is told she has found favor with God, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, she will conceive and bear the Son of God. Yet, for this miracle to come to pass, she must give consent.
 
Mary could have allowed the frightfulness of this supernatural event, or the considerations of the dangerous cultural consequences of choosing to become pregnant, or not knowing what the future would look like, to simply respond, “No”. Yet Mary has lived a faithful life of loving and trusting God for what she needs. God has prepared and encouraged her heart. So, she chooses instead to offer her “Yes” and step forward into this unimaginable role to bear our Lord.
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​Though this “Yes” was the most profound for her (and certainly all of humanity), she had a lifelong list of decisions that she needed to continue to choose, affirm, and offer her “Yes”. That’s how it is for all children of God and followers of Jesus Christ.
 
So, I will return to the start of this narrative, to the ponderings of my mind-bending preschoolers, to share how their thoughts should inspire our Love 1st actions. In their valiant attempt to process my question to them, “What does ‘Yes’ mean?”, they naturally turned to an area of greater experience: “What does ‘No’ mean?”. The nugget they ingeniously seemed to be mining was the concept of ‘obedience’. Saying “Yes” requires the trust and practice of being obedient. They simply defined that from the other side, “What happens when we choose disobedience?” It just took my aged and stiff mind a bit more thinking time to follow the indirect path of their resourceful brainwaves.
 
The Love 1st mission: We love God, others, and our community because God first loved us.

This response to God’s love is an act of obedience to the reciprocal nature of love.
 
In this season of Advent as we consider the gifting of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, may we be obedient to offering our unique “Yes” in the way Jesus Christ has prepared us. Like Mary, may we find ways to ‘bear our Lord’ in love, before the world. Even if it is only to be open to interruptions of seemingly insignificant opportunities to offer care, kindness, and connection.
 
Peace, Yvette

At 1st Pres, we have the blessing of being an intergenerational church — a community where every age and stage brings something sacred. Children remind us how to marvel. Teens ask brave questions that keep faith honest and growing. Adults carry the everyday challenges and joys that shape our prayers. Older generations offer wisdom rooted in years of walking with God’s faithfulness. Together, we embody the truth at the heart of Advent: God was with us then, and God is with us now.

Advent orients us around four anchors — hope, peace, joy, and love — each wrapped in God’s grace and inviting us into a posture of gratitude.

Hope breaks into our world like the first candle piercing the darkness. It is not optimism or wishful thinking; it is the grace-filled assurance that God’s light is stronger than any shadow. We give thanks for the ways we see that hope in one another — in a child’s wonder, a volunteer’s kindness, or a simple act of showing up.

Peace meets us in the quiet moments and the crowded ones alike. It’s the unearned grace that settles our spirits when life feels chaotic. We learn peace from each other as we worship, pray, and share life across generations. And for this shared peace, we give deep gratitude.

Joy bursts forth in music, laughter, and the beautifully unpredictable life of community. Joy is a gift — pure grace — not dependent on circumstances but rooted in Emmanuel, God-with-us. We are grateful for the joy we experience when we gather, messy and marvelous, to celebrate God’s presence.

Love is the very heartbeat of Advent. Love is why God came near. Love is why we open our doors, care for one another, and extend welcome to anyone searching for connection. Love is grace in action — and gratitude is our response.

This Advent season, we encourage no one to travel alone. Whether you arrive feeling full or fragile, hopeful or worn thin, there is space for you here. Lean into the wonder. Receive grace freely. Let gratitude shape your days. Allow this community to hold you, remind you, and walk beside you.

We hope you’ll join us for one of our most cherished traditions: our single worship service at 9:00 am on Sunday, December 14th, when we gather as one church family for the beloved UnPageant. This joyful, spontaneous retelling of the Christmas story is a living picture of grace, gratitude, and the love that unites us across generations.

Advent is better together. Come experience the hope, peace, joy, and love that anchor us — and the God who still chooses to dwell with us.

In His Name, Kierstie