PBPC Announcements

PBPC Family, Here's a poem by Madeleine L'Engle for this Christmas Season. After Annunciation This is the irrational season When love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason There'd have been no room for the child. May God gift you with an irrational faith and love! Grace and Peace, Pastor Calvin Service of Thanksgiving January 1 @ 10am No communion or potluck. We will celebrate both on January 8. Click here to join Zoom Lectionary Readings for January 1 Christmas Offering The Christmas offering, in it's entirety, will go to The Door Ministry, which traditionally has been used to provide groceries, bus passes, hygiene products, and other resources to those who come to the Door of our church. If you would like to contribute to the Christmas Offering, please mark all donations with "Christmas Offering." No Kids Min As a reminder, there is no Kids Ministry this Sunday. We will resume on January 8. 2023 Greeter Schedule The moment you've all b...

PBPC Family, Here's an Advent sonnet by Malcolm Guite - may it bless and encourage you in these final days of Advent. O Emmanuel O come, O come, and be our God-with-us, O long-sought with-ness for a world without, O secret seed, O hidden spring of light. Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name, Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame, O quickened little wick so tightly curled, Be folded with us into time and place, Unfold for us the mystery of grace And make a womb of all this wounded world. O heart of heaven beating in the earth, O tiny hope within our hopelessness, Come to be born, to bear us to our birth, To touch a dying world with new-made hands And make these rags of time our swaddling bands. Grace and Peace, Pastor Calvin Christmas Eve Service December 24 @ 4pm Christmas Day Service December 25 @ 10am Click here to join Zoom Lectionary Readings for December 24 Lectionary Readings for December 25 Christmas Offering The Christmas offering, it it's entirety, will go to T...

PBPC Family, Every year during Advent, I experience a tension between the Christian and cultural celebrations of Christmas. In Christ, we receive the gift of God's presence in the baby Jesus. Culture emphasizes buying things for others. In Christ, joy is found in God's movement towards us, that God will overcome any barrier that stands between us. The cultural narrative of joy is rooted in the opening of presents, getting that "thing" we wanted, or in family time together. In Christ's birth, those you would least expect welcome him - dirty, stinky shepherds, and foreigners, outsiders. The cultural expectation is that you spend time with your family, which can sometimes leave those without immediate family isolated and alone. I don't write these things to say that the cultural celebration of Christmas is somehow wrong or bad. Rather, these tensions heighten for me my need for Jesus. I feel the pull between my current reality and the future in-breaking of God...

PBPC Family, One Advent practice I try to do each year is that of living by the light of the Christmas tree. When darkness falls and I'm tempted to turn on the lights in our living room, I choose to keep all the lights off and only keep the Christmas tree lit. As the Christmas tree radiates a warm glow, it's comforting to sit near the tree and rest after a long day. The Christmas tree is a reminder to me of the warmth, love, and comfort that is found in Jesus. But this practice also comes with its own challenges. To live by the Christmas tree means it is the only light on in the house. This can make navigating other rooms more challenging. When I have to venture to other parts of the house, stumbling through the darkness, my longing and desire for the light increases! I don't want to live in darkness, I want light! Living by the light of the Christmas tree both reminds me of the light that is found in Christ and my great need for God to shine into my darkness. Speaking of...

PBPC Family, Happy Advent! We have officially entered the Advent Season where we are waiting for Christ's coming, both as a child and his second coming, with eager anticipation. I hope you've picked up an Advent Devotional (there are still a few left and HERE's a digital copy if you prefer one). There's one section of the devotional I forgot to explain on Sunday - the Waiting Prayers. These are short simple prayers for you to memorize (if you so choose) and to pray when you find yourself in those situations. The hope of these prayers is two fold. First, that you might come to recognize the myriad of ways that we wait throughout our days. The second is that you might come to see those moments of waiting as invitations to prayer. The prayers offered in the devotional are not exhaustive - they are merely a starting place. In the next few weeks, you may find yourself waiting for something that's not covered in the waiting prayers. If so, write your own prayer! What wo...

PBPC Family, On Sunday, the Christian calendar starts anew. We begin our year with a period of waiting and longing, a season more traditionally known as Advent. As a church, we will lean into the practice and posture of waiting. As we wait for Advent to begin, I invite you to begin to tap into your own waiting and to find ways to enter into waiting, both individually and collectively. For instance, when you come on Sunday, you'll see that our sanctuary is decorated for Christmas ... but not quite. There are trees and garlands and a nativity, but ornaments, bright decorations and nativity figures are missing. This is intentional. For the rest of the world, Christmas begins in October. As the Halloween decorations clear the shelves they are quickly replaced by candy canes and Christmas trees. This begins the Christmas season, which usually ends on Dec 26. This is a time for shopping, browsing the mall, and decorating one's home for the holidays. In the Christian tradition, Chris...

PBPC Family, Thank you to everyone who was able to join us on Saturday for our Day of Discernment. It was a wonderful day filled with meaningful conversation and lively discussions on who we are as a congregation and where God might be calling us into the future. Here are a few highlights from the day. In an exercise on clarifying what we value as a congregation, we had near unanimous agreement. The three main values were Spiritual Growth, Community, and Helping. We will update this with more precise language that fits us in the future. We were reminded that we don't need to be a certain size or have a specific budget to follow God's call. We need only be the congregation God has created and is calling us to be. There is incredible freedom in this. We recognized that one of our strengths as a congregation is our community. We also discerned there is a desire to be more outward facing and more engaged with people outside our immediate congregation. At the tail end of the meeti...