November 27th Weekly Word | |
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Worship This Week
Please join us
in the Sanctuary
or online at 10am for the
First Sunday of Advent
with Communion
Coffee hour will be held
after the service
in Hadley Hall
The service will be live streamed
on Facebook Live here
or on 3CX here
Reader: Rick Little
Coffee Hour: Carolyn Currier & Jill Gauthier
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Welcome to HCC's New Members
This past Sunday we welcomed three new members to our HCC family.
Please join us in giving them all a warm welcome.
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Rob & Joanne Reeves
Rob & Joanne moved to Hampstead to be closer to family after retiring to the Wilmington, NC area in 2015. Rob Worked for the YMCA for 35 years and Joanne worked as an Administrative Assistant at various companies. They have two daughters, Courtney and Victoria and two grandchildren, Frankie (21 months old) and Millie (12 days old). They both love volunteering for HCC. As Joanne says, "The warm welcome we received and the people at HCC and the Lord are what drew us here."
Thomas "T.J." Siwacki Arndt
T.J. is husband to Allison and father to Jasmine, Joey, Elios, David, Tessa and many, many pets. He is originally from Florida and moved to New England from work. They started coming to HCC because Allison came here as a child, and they fell in love with it. An Epidemiologist by trade, T.J. also enjoys lectoring.
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Stewardship Update
Imagine Together our collective abundance and what we can do in the changing of lives for those less fortunate. As stewards of the abundance God has given each of us, we can choose how we can make a difference in our financial support to our church, its missions and its many ministries. A pledge is a structured way for our church to plan how it utilizes our money to carry out those missions.
While many of us returned a pledge card on Stewardship Sunday, we are hopeful there will be additional intentions to pledge. Pledge cards were mailed to members and friends last month before Stewardship Sunday.
If you need another pledge card, one can be requested from the church office or one can be found on information tables at the church.
God Bless.
Your Stewardship Team
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Looking for Donations for
Attic Treasures Table
We are asking for donations of new or gently used items to be sold at our Attic Treasures table at the Christmas Craft Fair on December 7th. If you have anything, please contact Barbara Wallack at bsw91@comcast.net or bring it to the office.
This is a great way to donate things and clean out your garage or attic!
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Need 2025 Offering Envelopes?
If you would like Offering Envelopes for 2025, please let Maria know in the office by either calling 603-329-6985 or email at HCC1752@gmail.com.
Please specify if you would like weekly or monthly envelopes, or something else. We can print to order.
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Christmas Greens Workshop
Join us on Tuesday, December 3rd at 5pm in Hadley Hall to help create beautiful creations to be sold at the Christmas Craft Fair. Bring scissors, clippers/pruners for the greens.
We will be decorating wreaths and making swags and centerpieces out of greens. Kari will be leading, teaching and directing, so even if you have never done anything like this before, join us. We always have so much fun!
If you have any pine, hemlock, spruce, holly, or any other kind of evergreen in your yard that you could cut and bring in, please bring it in ahead of time. We can store it in the basement. Collect pinecones, birch branches, winterberry and any other interesting natural finds that could be used as well. Kari will be providing ornaments, ribbons etc. for decorating.
All the products we create will be for sale at the Christmas Craft Fair.
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Hampstead's Annual Thanksgiving Service was held on Sunday, 11/24 at the Old Meeting House. Our own Rev. Paige gave a warm message to all. | |
Rev Paige's Corner: Advent Yearnings
I learned to drive on a standard transmission with clutch and gear shift. In the early days, there was often a bit of an issue getting the clutch fully down to shift gears smoothly. I will confess that moving from Thanksgiving to Advent on the same weekend often feels a bit of a jolt. I don't know why, really. Stores have been playing Christmas music since October. Christmas ads have been on TV through November. Every night I drive home, more and more lights are up in people's yards. It feels especiallty early to me this year, but I appreciate the yearning to get to Christmas.
One year during worship on the second Sunday of Advent, I received a text message from a cranky member in the pew. "Why aren't we singing Christmas carols? I don't know any of these crazy Advent hymns you picked." Coffee hour included a chat about the season of Advent and the 12 days of Christmas on the church calendar.
It isn't my intention to torture congregationas by making them wait to sing Christmas song, but I also don't want to skip Advent entirely. Advent, it seems to me, is about some of our deep yearnings for this broken world.
There is a Christmas song called "Grown up Christmas List" where the singer is addressing Santa: " No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts
And everyone would have a friend
And right would always win
And love would never end, no
This is my grown up Christmas list"
It has always struck me that the singer has addressed the song to the wrong person. These are not the sort of things Santa can do with the help of elves in the workshop. No, this is God's work through Christ and with us. These are Advent yearings. And this is the time to make space for them and to consider how the birth of a baby in a manger over 2000 years ago moves us in that direction.
I hope you will join us in unwrapping Advent Gifts in these days!
Blessings and peace to you all.
Rev Paige Besse-Rankin
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Transition Talk - December 1 following worship
An Exploratory Team with members from our church and the Atkinson Congregational Church has been exploring the possibility of “yoking” our two churches. A Yoked relationship is not a merger! Each church maintains its own independence, building, team structure, budget, etc. In a yoked relationship, the churches share a pastor. Some yoked churches explore others ways to collaborate in programs, mission, staffing, fundraising, and more. Although we have talked about this in broad terms, we are now looking at more details and specifics in preparation for each congregation’s annual meeting. Join us after worship on December 1 for lunch, presentation and conversation!
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Book Group Advent Study Continues Next Week!
Our Thursday Morning Book group continues to meet with warm beverages and warmer conversation from 10 - 11:30 am. All are welcome to join us - even if it can only be occasionally.
We have begun our Advent Study with Amy-Jill Levine and her book "Light of the World".
In Light of the World: A Beginner’s Guide to Advent, author, professor, and biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine explores the biblical texts surrounding the story of the birth of Jesus. Join her as she traces the Christmas narrative through the stories of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary, the journey to Bethlehem, and the visit from the Magi. These stories open conversations around connections of the Gospel stories to the Old Testament, the role of women in first-century Jewish culture, the importance of Mary’s visitation and the revolutionary implications of Mary’s Magnificat, the census and the stable, and the star of Bethlehem and the flight to Egypt.
AJ describes herself as an unorthodox member of an Orthodox synagogue and a Yankee Jewish feminist who until 2021 taught New Testament in a Christian divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt. Our study will include companion videos with her presentations.
New and used copies of the book will be available for those who want it. It is also available digitally on Amazon. The schedule for our Advent Study will be:
December 5 - Promise of Potential - (The angel with Joseph and Mary)
December 12 - Journey to Joy - (The journey to the manger)
December 19 - Gifts of Gentiles - (The Magi)
This is a "come as you are able" program - so even if you miss a week, it is fine to join us!
Finally, for those who would like it, we do have copies of the "Living Compass" devotional for Advent which is themes on "Practicing Peace".
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Volunteers Needed for Christmas Craft Fair
Our annual Christmas Craft Fair is scheduled for Saturday, December 7th. This fundraiser is one of our most successful events and is essential to our bottom line. Though it is work intensive, it is also a fun time and great community event. To continue this tradition, we need your help. Please consider volunteering.
Thursday December 5th
5pm – Clear out Classrooms
Saturday December 7th (day of the fair)
9am – 11am Man tables
11am – 1pm Man tables
1pm-3pm Man tables
3pm Clean-up and return classrooms to original order.
Sign-up sheets will be available at Hadley Hall by October 20th. You can also contact HCC at 603-329-6985, or text Barbara Wallack at bsw91@comcast.net to sign up or with questions.
We greatly appreciate any help you can offer.
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Peace & Justice
An article from the UNH Casey School of Public Policy reported that in 2023 the cost of childcare in New Hampshire for an infant and a 4-year-old surpassed $32,000 per year. That is equivalent to 28% of the median income for families with children under 5. The Department of Health and Human Services has a 7% standard for affordability. For the 7% standard to be met, a family would need an annual income of more than $455,000.
This imbalance impacts young families by forcing difficult decisions. Some families are forced into poverty because of not being able to work when affordable child care is not available. This is especially true for the single parent household. Others have used less than ideal situations for child care in order to work.
The New Hampshire Child Care Scholarship is available for families that earn less than 85% of the median income, or $113,000 annually. But that scholarship does not pay a full tuition burden leaving many families in a very difficult budget situation.
Full article
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Music Corner by Herb Tardiff
Handel’s Messiah: The drama of redemption
It may be surprising, then, that Handel didn’t write the work for Christmas, but for Easter. Messiah premiered in Dublin in the spring of 1742, making its way to London a year later. And although Handel wrote the music, the production was the brainchild of Charles Jennens, a wealthy arts patron who had provided the text for a number of Handel’s works.
A devout Christian, Jennens pitched the idea to Handel of setting the greatest of all stories to music. Jennens drew his text exclusively from Scripture, but Messiah isn’t just a random string of Bible verses. It follows a narrative structure that traces the drama of redemption from the Old Testament to the New, from messianic prophecies to Jesus’ birth, passion, resurrection and eternal reign.
For those with ears to hear, Messiah is more than simply great music or a slice of holiday ambiance. It’s a widescreen adaptation of God’s epic narrative of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration. And nowhere else is one likely to encounter memorable, dramatic settings of Haggai and Malachi and other rarely visited corners of Scripture.
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New AMAZON Wish List for
Saint Anne's Food Pantry
St. Anne's Food Pantry will be preparing over 110 food baskets to be distributed to their Food Pantry recipients for both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.
They are in need of certain foods for these baskets, and we are collecting stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce through December 16 to assist in filling these baskets.
Thank you in advance for any donations.
Please no expired items and non-perishable items only please.
Drop off in the foyer of Hadley Hall.
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New Hampshire Conference UCC
Weekly News
We thought you might enjoy reading the NH Conference UCC weekly newsletter. You can read it with this link.
11/26/2024 Newsletter
Each week, we will update this section of our Weekly Word with the new link
for the current newsletter.
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Are you on Facebook? Do you follow Hampstead Congregational Church? Please like our page to know about all the great events in the church. Liking also supports our church when people check us out. If you are already connected, share our good news!
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Help Us Continue Our Mission at HCC | |
Want to get the word out about what’s happening at HCC? If you want to publicize your event or remind the congregation about something, please email the office (hcc1752@gmail.com) by Wednesday at noon so that your information can be included in that week’s Weekly Word. Feel free to send in information up to three weeks in advance of an upcoming event. We want all of the congregation (not just the Team leaders) to be empowered to get the word out about all the activities that are happening at Hampstead Congregational Church!
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Our Mailing address:
61 Main Street
Hampstead, NH 03841
Church Office hours: Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday 9:00am to 2 pm
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Hampstead Congregational Church Website
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