This Sunday will mark the beginning of our Christmas celebration at TSF for 2016 with the program called “Unspeakable Joy.” The next three Sunday mornings will essentially be three parts of one program. The outline of it is available above — click upon where it says “About Unspeakable Joy.”
With the news that dominates the media right now, I think we could use some eternal perspective and a good dose of the joy that is central to the Christmas message.
Christmas Eve will take the twist of speaking about the application of this joyous message, as we talk and act on the theme of “sharing the joy.” A part of the service will be preparing gifts to be taken after the service to several needy families. We will be receiving special collections throughout December toward this project, so please consider a few dollars toward it. Perhaps giving toward it could be a family project you might like to undertake.
Beginning on Monday, there will the first of two weeks, or 10 days, of devotionals to go along with this seasonal theme. Randy will be writing these while Chris is doing some preliminary planning on winter and spring series topics.
Chris will speak on the Sunday after Christmas; Randy on the Sunday after New Year’s — these will be individual, stand-alone topics. There will be no second hour classes those two Sundays.
On January 10th, we will begin a seven-week series on 1st Peter. The last Sunday in February will feature a children’s musical. And then in March we will have a series on the topic of Articulating the Gospel Message. This will include the Easter season. The 1st Peter and Gospel series will certainly include writings in this space.
As I occasionally do, I draw your attention to the growing resource that is this devotional page. This Christmas series is the 18th sermon collection upon which Chris and I have written weekday devotionals. The topics and Scripture passages covered now comprise about 30% of the Bible in 591 postings. You can use the search feature at the top right of the page to put in a Scripture passage (like book and chapter) and it will call up whatever we have written on that.
So I will see you back here on Monday for the first of our 10 Christmas writings.
Seriously 