a covid Christmas

I was really planning to write something this month that didn’t have anything to do with COVID. In fact, my intention was to focus entirely on God’s gift to the world: His Son, Jesus Christ.

But COVID keeps getting in the way of even the best laid plans. Still, nothing gets in the way of the amazing, unconditional, unbounded saving grace of God in Christ. Not the masks. Not the social distancing. Not even the overflowing hospitals and the growing business at the funeral homes.

Not even death itself can separate us from the love of God in Jesus, and no pandemic can steal the hope and the joy we experience when Jesus comes into our world, into our homes, and into our hearts.
So we will have our Christmas. Carefully and as safely as possible. But we are having Christmas, because we’ve all tested positive for Christ. He’s in our blood. He’s part of us.
 
Barring any extreme shut-down orders, we will return to in-person worship on Christmas Eve, 
according to plan:

9:30 a.m. - Traditional
3:00 p.m. - REACH/Blended
5:30 p.m. - REACH/Blended
8:00 p.m. – Traditional
  
There’s one condition to in-person worship on Christmas Eve: you need to register in advance.  That’s what Joseph did in Luke 2: “Everyone went to his own town to register.” The reason is that we are capping attendance at 200 for each service, and we’d rather not turn people away at the door.

You can register in any one of three ways:

1. Through our website – shepherdhills.org
2. Via email – [email protected]
3. Call the Office – 920-757-5722

 
You’ll need to tell us which service you plan to attend and how many in your family are attending. Registration opens November 29 and closes December 14. In the event that we get a massive response, we will plan to add an additional service or two to accommodate the crowd. Registration only applies to Christmas Eve at this point.

This is not the way we wanted our first Christmas in our new Worship Center to go. This is not the way we wanted our 2020 to go. But the devil tried to use Herod to stop the first Christmas, and he failed. Now he’s using COVID for the same purpose. He will fail again.

Christmas belongs to Christ, and to Christians. Amen?

Pastor Steve Kline