Emmanuel Reformed Church of the United Church of Christ

Yes, it’s still our 200th Anniversary.  No, we will not be able to celebrate Homecoming as normal in 2020.  Yes, God is good all the time.

Dear Friends and Members of Emmanuel Church,

First off, we are open!  Worship tomorrow for Father’s Day with masks and social distancing.  We are on the third of a five week series on the Book of Job.  Tomorrow’s worship will deal with Job and his imagination and understanding of God.

Wow!  This has been some sort of spring/summer.  I’m shaking my head with all the crazy things that have happened due to COVID-19 and our time away from one another.
To cut to the chase, we have postponed our big celebration of our 200^th Anniversary, with hope.  We lost time to sell tickets, clear schedules, etc in order to have our big celebration in June 2020.  So, we are looking forward to the last Saturday in June 2021.  This has not been an easy decision to make but seems to be the only one that makes any sense to the church staff and Consistory.
In addition, we are still moving ahead with a 200^th Anniversary Themed “Spooky Stroll” 2020 on October 24, 2020.  Who knows what surprises we have in store about the 200 years of our amazing history?
A few of the things that we are working on in the future:

• We will continue to stream our services.  You can visit worship every Sunday live on Facebook at www.facebook.com/hillschurchexport/ .
• If you wish to watch at a later date, you will be able to access the videos on the Facebook page or at hills-church.org.
• Our Transformation Task Force has finished its course of work.  We ended, unfortunately, with a whimper.  We were not able to look at the last few things we hoped to regarding where God is calling us.  But, in the end, this may be a good thing, because this last step is about sharing this with the whole congregation.  So, the work of the Task Force is to get the Bible, Prayer, and the current context of our lives into your hands!  The work of the Task Force is no longer the work of the Task Force but it is yours (and mine) now.  We will be encouraging the congregation to get together to pray for God’s Spirit in Prayer Triplets from now to the end of 2020.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Joseph

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash