Be the Church, wherever you are
working for the common good of the whole
as faithful followers of Christ
in community with one another and others.
(Community Spirit Church Guidepost)
Worship With Us This Sunday
Community Spirit UCC gathers each Sunday morning for an online worship service via Zoom. Log in between 10:15 and 10:25 AM. Worship begins at 10:30 AM.
All you need is a phone or a computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone AND a weekly email invitation from Pastor Karen with the link to follow. (Reach out to her at revkaren@communityspiritucc.org if you're not receiving these invitations.)
Please check your email inbox on Saturday to make sure you’ve received your worship link for worship the following day. This will give you time to be in touch with Karen if you need help. If you’re running late on Sunday morning and run into trouble, please reach out to a fellow church member who may be able to forward their Zoom link or help you troubleshoot. After 10:15 AM., Karen does not check her email or texts.
Congregational Conversation This Sunday
You are invited to stay after worship this Sunday, December 13th for a brief Congregational Conversation to review and vote on Leadership’s recommendations for 2021. Any questions should be directed to the Leadership Team:
During the month of December, CSC will receive its final UCC special offering of the year.
The Christmas Fund for the Veterans of the Cross and the Emergency Fund has been caring for active and retired clergy and lay employees of the United Church of Christ for over 100 years, providing emergency grants, supplementation of small annuities and health premiums, and Christmas “Thank You” gift checks each December to our lower-income retirees.
Over the past nine months, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the emergency financial needs of many who serve the church have increased dramatically.
In such a time as this, the need for the Christmas Fund is more urgent than ever.
United Church of Christ congregations and members have blessed the Christmas Fund with their generosity for many years. This year, your care and compassion will be especially appreciated by those servants of the church who are facing a time of need.
You can make an online donation at communityspiritucc.org/give or mail a check payable to Community Spirit Church, in care of Kim Floyde, 1516 Barbara Street, Montrose CO 81401.
If you want to drop a check off instead, please call or text first (970-765-6615).
Be sure to include "Christmas Fund" in the memo area to ensure that your donation gets to the right place.
Inreach/Outreach Advent Projects
The Inreach/Outreach Ministry is inviting everyone to participate in their upcoming Christmas projects, which are all COVID-friendly.
Please purchase a Christmas stocking and fill it with socks for men, women and children. In addition, pick up a box of cereal to go with the stocking. When ready, contact one of the members listed below to arrange a social-distant pickup. Your gifts will be delivered to the Sharing Ministries Food Bank and the Lighthouse Home Shelter.
On Christmas Eve afternoon, you are invited to leave Love Wins bumper stickers (with a friendly Christmas note attached) on vehicles in Walmart, City Market and Safeway parking lots. This is safer alternative to singing carols or speaking to people leaving the stores. Further details will be announced in upcoming weeks.
From Your Financial Secretary
Thanks to everyone who has kept up with their pledges and made special gifts to CSC. Our ministries are every bit as needed as they ever were — probably even more! Your generous financial support ensures that we can continue to live into our ministry as our area’s most progressive Christian community. If you're not sure that you are up-to-date on your pledge, please contact me for a year-to-date giving statement.
As 2020 mercifully draws to a close, you are also invited to make a tax-deductible year-end gift to Community Spirit UCC. It must be received by Thursday, December 31 for it to appear on this year's giving statement.
Here are the various ways you can continue your support on a remote basis:
Make an Online Donation
You don't need a PayPal account to make a donation using your checking account, debit or credit card.
Set up a bill payment with your bank
Most banks now offer free online bill payment so you can instruct them to automatically mail a check to us each month.
Mail your check
Your personal check is always welcome! Make it payable to Community Spirit Church and mail it in care of Kim Floyde, 1516 Barbara Street, Montrose CO 81401. (Pre-addressed mailing envelopes are now available... just ask and I'll send you some!)
I'm available to help set up your online giving or answer any of your questions.
Thanks in advance for your continued generosity!
This month, our friends at The Ute are hosting a number of films relating to Native American culture and realities. Go online at historycolorado.org/ute-indian-museum or give them a call for the schedule; most of their offerings are slated for Saturdays. Movies will be shown in the Chipeta Room and social distancing is the order of the day. Films are free but no donations will be turned away!
The Treasures of Darkness: An Advent Journey
Here in the northern hemisphere, Advent unfolds as our days shorten and our nights lengthen. Typically this reality is playing in the background when we gather for Advent worship, and we are probably poorer as a result. This year as we journey through Advent we will bring darkness’ growing presence front and center in the confident hope that this will bless us in new and wonderful ways as we prepare for love to be birthed in our midst.
Below you’ll find the worship themes for the remaining Sundays of Advent, mention of our Christmas Eve Online Service, as well as three additional offerings meant to enrich you during this season of holy waiting.
Please note that Zoom links will be forthcoming for all the worship services mentioned below, including Longest Night. Kindly reach out to Pastor Karen for links to the films; we need a minimum of two households taking part each night.
Sunday Worship
10:30 AM — December 13th Navigating by Starlight
(Matthew 2: 1-12)
10:30 AM — December 20th Dark Sky Revelations
(Luke 2: 8-20)
Christmas Eve Service
6:30 PM — December 24th
A simple celebration of Christ’s coming to us as a humble, holy child.
Western Association Longest Night Service—December 21st
Gathering by Zoom on the Winter Solstice, members and friends of UCC churches along the Western Slope will celebrate “joyful darkness, far beyond our seeing,” (to borrow from a verse of the Brian Wren hymn Bring Many Names. Stay tuned for this service’s start time.
Singing in the Dark — Movies for Advent Sojourners
Our two documentary films celebrate the power of singing together to help see us through the darkest of times. These will be offered via Zoom--provided at least two households RSVP. To receive a Zoom invitation, reach out to Pastor Karen by December 8th and 16th respectively.
6:30 PM — Thursday, December 10th
Defiant Requiem
This feature-length documentary highlights the most dramatic example of intellectual and artistic courage in the Theresienstadt (Terezín) Concentration Camp during World War II: the remarkable story of Rafael Schächter, a brilliant, young Czech conductor who was arrested and sent to Terezín in 1941. He demonstrated moral leadership under the most brutal circumstances, determined to sustain courage and hope for his fellow prisoners by enriching their souls through great music. His most extraordinary act was to recruit 150 prisoners and teach them Verdi’s Requiem by rote in a dank cellar using a single score, over multiple rehearsals, and after grueling days of forced labor. The Requiem was performed on 16 occasions for fellow prisoners. The last, most infamous performance occurred on June 23, 1944 before high-ranking SS officers from Berlin and the International Red Cross to support the charade that the prisoners were treated well and flourishing.
With testimony provided by surviving members of Schächter’s choir, soaring concert footage, cinematic dramatizations, and evocative animation, this unique film explores the singers’ view of the Verdi as a work of defiance and resistance against the Nazis. The text of the Requiem Mass enabled them, as Schächter told the chorus, to “sing to the Nazis what they could not say to them.”
6:30 PM — Thursday, December 17th
The Singing Revolution
Between 1986 and 1991, the people of Estonia protested against their Soviet occupiers in large rallies. Although these protests were fundamentally peaceful, the Estonians used a weapon powerful enough to rattle an empire: song. Patriotic songs, to be precise, which the Soviets had outlawed in Estonia. Thousands upon thousands would assemble to sing in defiance. This documentary unveils the story of a population that stood up against their oppressors with nothing but their voices and their cultural pride, setting in motion events that would eventually lead to the end of the Soviet Union.
Lament and Rejoice This Christmas December 6, 2020
In his 2020 Christmas message, United Church of Christ General Minister and President John C. Dorhauer embraces the joy that Jesus brings to the world—despite the pain of the pandemic that keeps us apart.
Dear Friends in Christ,
As Christmas 2020 approaches, I begin my letter to the church with lament.
So many of the rich traditions that have made this holiday celebration so meaningful to me through the years will have to be abandoned this year. No visit to California to spend some time with my daughter and her spouse. No drive to Chicago to visit with my son, his spouse and our two beautiful grandchildren. The days we spend with both of them are the highlight of our Christmas celebrations.
There will be no candlelight service on Christmas Eve at our home church. I will not hear that powerful soprano voice sing “O, Holy Night.” I will not hold aloft my candle in the dimly lit sanctuary while singing “Silent Night” with my faith family. I will not gather in the fellowship hall for eggnog and cookies before heading home to set out the presents and fill the stockings.
I will sit at our Christmas table with my wife and our son who lives with us, while missing the raucous laughter of cousins and uncles and aunts and nieces and nephews, and Mom.
I lament all of that.
And then I remember another disappointment. In the time of her delivery, Mary birthed Jesus in an animal shelter. There was no room at the inn. The humble maiden wrapped him in swaddling clothes. This was her Christmas. Alone with her husband, the time of her birthing came while on the move from threatening forces. We tend to romanticize that – but it was less than ideal. What gives us license to romanticize it was this: on that night, Jesus came. What followed would make that moment precious to us all.
But we can’t forget his own coming was fraught with vulnerability. His coming was the emblematic representation of simple and humble circumstances.
This Christmas will be a bit like that for all of us. Less than ideal circumstances will challenge us to find the joy in the coming of the Christ child. Like Mary, we will have to do with rejoicing in what we have, forgoing the comforts to which we have grown accustomed, and experiencing the joy of the moment in spite of present challenges.
We can do that which Mary found the courage to do. We can rejoice in Christ’s coming no matter what. Deprive us of time with family; deprive us of the choirs of angels; deprive us of the comforts of certainty and expected health – and yet we will rejoice. There is power in knowing that the incarnation of love not only wasn’t impeded by the circumstances, but thrived in the midst of the pain, sorrow and suffering of humanity.
The Christ child whom we worship this year in albeit less than ideal circumstances will be as ever present to us as he has been in past years when circumstances warranted happier occasions. But our love for Him, and for each other, will not be diminished. It is that love, after all is said and done, that is the cause of our delight.
Let the lament in this time of loss turn to the worship of incarnated love known to us in Jesus and present to us in all circumstances. I may be singing it alone this year rather than with the chorus of believers surrounding me in the sanctuary on Christmas Eve, but with no less enthusiasm will this be my song:
Joyful, Joyful we adore thee,
God of glory, Lord of love
Hearts unfold like flowers before thee,
Opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness,
Drive the dark of doubt away.
Giver of immortal gladness,
Fill us with the light of day.
Happy Christmas,
The Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer
General Minister and President, United Church of Christ
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