November 15, 2023 Weekly Update
Last Sunday was a powerful and celebratory time of worship. We reflected on the ministry, mission, and purpose of our church over the last year – from January to the present! We offered God our resources for the coming year and asked for God’s blessings as the Spirit guides us to grow and serve as disciples of Jesus.
As our Leadership Board met on Monday night, Ann shared a pledge update, which you can see below. Our Board expressed gratitude for your response on Consecration Sunday. They also expressed gratitude for all the ways you give of yourself, your time, your gifts, and your energy to make Columbia Falls UMC such a special faith community. We truly ‘live our gratitude’ here by the way we treat and love one another and our wider community.
Our Board finished our devotional study of Dorothy Day this week. We noted that the final chapter title, “A Place Where Love Can Grow” is a great description of our congregation. Dorothy wrote, “We are communities in time and in a lace, I know, but we are communities in faith as well – and sometimes time can stop shadowing us. Our lives are touched by those who lived centuries ago, and we hope that our lives will mean something to people who won’t be alive until centuries from now. It’s a great “chain of being,” someone once told me, and I think our job is to do the best we can to hold up our small segment of the chain. That’s once kind of localism, I guess, and one kind of politics- doing your utmost to keep that chain connected, unbroken, Our arms are linked – we try to be neighbors of God’s, and to speak up for God’s principles. That’s a lifetime job.”
Thank you for being part of that great chain here at Columbia Falls UMC. If we haven’t seen you in person in a while, plan a visit soon. We miss you, and we know that the great diversity and gifts in our church community make it a wonderful “place where love can grow.”