PBPC Announcements

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...

PBPC Family, This Saturday is our Day of Discernment from 10-4pm at PBPC (in the Cafe). I hope you can join us for some, if not all of it. Lunch will be provided if that sweetens the deal! I've been thinking about how our gathering on Saturday will be absolutely and incredibly normal! Since the church's inception, Christians have made a practice of gathering together to discern what God is doing. The first "Day of Discernment" in the life of the church is recorded in Acts 15. Some early Christians had presumed that following in the way of Jesus also meant adhering to the Mosaic law, with its customs and ritual observances. As Gentiles came to call on Jesus as Lord and received the gift of the Holy Spirit, there were some leaders in the Church who taught that they must also be circumcised, per the Mosaic Law. There were others in the Church who believed that these non-Jewish followers of Jesus were not bound by Mosaic regulations. So the Church gathered together to di...

PBPC Family, Today, the first day of November, is known as All Saints Day in the Christian Calendar. It is a day to remember the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us in the faith, stretching across the centuries and around the globe. It is a day to remember that following in the way of Jesus may be hard, but we are not alone. Who are the people in your life that modeled a life of faith? Who pointed you to Jesus? I think of my grandparents - Jean and Sode, Mac, Esther, and Marise - who followed in the way of Jesus and modeled for me a life of faith and devotion. I would not be a pastor were it not for them. On All Saints Day, we remember not just the people in our own lives, but the great cloud of witnesses that is Park Boulevard Presbyterian Church. Think of all the people who have committed their lives to Jesus, been baptized, received communion, and worshipped God in our sanctuary. Though many of their names are unknown to us, they are known by God, and their faithfulness...