January 2024 Newsletter



Sunday School

9:15 AM

Sunday Worship

10 AM

Sunday Fellowship

11 AM


Worship services will continue to be live streamed on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. You can either use the Facebook Link or the YouTube Link to see the live feed, or even worship a little later if you need to. Use the buttons below to choose which link fits your needs best. 

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Worship Series

BREAD, BATH & BEYOND


So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old

has passed away; see, everything has become new! — 2Corinthians 5:17


The new year always brings opportunity to move beyond our

limitations…to find new beginnings and be better than we were before. We use this cultural word-play in our series title to remember that the most basic transforming experiences of our faith — communion and baptism — are the starting points for life “beyond” our limitations. Let’s make this year one of amazing transformations — for our lives, for our community, for our world!

January 7

Bread

Revelation 21:1-6a



January 14

Bath

Acts 19:1-7


January 21

Beyond Belief

John 1:43-51


January 28

Beyond the Horizon

Mark 1:14-20


February 4

Beyond the Boundaries

Mark 1:21-28


February 11

Beyond the Fear

Mark 9:2-9

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Worship Volunteer Schedule

Pastor's Ponderings

I had an article all prepared for the January newsletter in which I would express my gratitude to you all for another year walking alongside you in ministry and my hopes for all the work we will do on behalf of the gospel in 2024. However, yesterday’s events in Perry, IA call for a different kind of article. 


The school shooting in Perry has consumed most of my waking attention, just as it has consumed the attention of the media – all the media: news, opinion, social, etc. The voices of so many people exploring, yet again, such a massive range of topics are overwhelming. Add into the mix that the Iowa Caucuses are right around the corner and it simply compounds the cacophony of voices. To say that this is a conversation, in any more ways than the past iterations of our national ‘dialogue’ on violence and mass shootings, would stretch the word conversation (and dialogue for that matter) beyond any useful meaning. Conversation assumes that we listen to one another and we try to understand what the other person or people are trying to say, rather than seek to twist words or even change them altogether.


To be sure, the problem is complex. It balances freedoms and restrictions and stigmas and safety and emotion and…well the list could go on. It is a mixture of subjects including guns, mental health, individual responsibility, corporate responsibility, movies and TV, video games, and the way these types of incidents are reported by the news. To assume that any sort of solution to the complex problem will have one dimension is foolhardy in the extreme. To assume that the “blame” for something like this atrocity lies in any one area fails to see the problem as complex. There is plenty of “blame”, if you want to call it that, to go around – if it were as simple as saying that all the blame belongs to the one who picked up the gun and killed all of those people, then the conversation would be over already, there would really be no problem to solve. But, that it happened and that it keeps happening is a problem.


Violence is not a new thing. Indeed, even the story we have just shared and celebrated at Christmas: the birth of the Prince of Peace, shifts to the story of “The slaughter of the innocents” (see Matthew 2:16-18).  


One of the thrusts of the story we celebrate at Christmas is that Jesus comes, and he is not so unthreatening to us as we would like to keep him: wrapped up in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. He comes to change us. He comes to challenge us. He comes to show us a different way of life. Herod knows! Herod relies on the method of protection and safety that he knows: violence. If Jesus is eliminated he would no longer be a threat to Herod. If Jesus is killed as a child he is no longer a threat to the powers and principalities of the world. If Jesus dies helpless and vulnerable he can no longer be a threat to the ways we choose to do things.


The way of violence stands in sharp contrast to the way of God. It has from the very beginning and remains so. In Genesis 6 violence is the thing that has so blotted creation that God seeks to make an end to all flesh. It has corrupted that which God called so very good in Genesis 1 so much that God wants to start over (Genesis 6:11-13). It is also, finally, the very thing that God gives up at the end of that narrative. In Genesis 9 God sets “His bow in the clouds” – God hangs up the weapons of war and makes a covenant with Noah and all creation that no longer will God make war on the creature; God won’t wipe us out and start again. It is almost as if God has learned something about violence itself.


To suggest that we are a culture that glorifies violence is beyond argument, though we all would point our fingers away from ourselves and the things we do toward something else. But, our culture as a whole glorifies it. We use it for entertainment: playing violent games, going to movies, watching television shows that all have as their driving force, that which keeps them exciting and engaging and, well, entertaining, violence. I remember a line from the movie “Clueless” where the main character makes the point ironically but succinctly, “Until mankind is peaceful enough not to have violence on the news, there's no point in taking it out of shows that need it for entertainment value.” That is not even to mention the violent entertainment we crave in sports. And I have to confess I’m right there in it with everyone else – I love Bond movies. I have seen Lethal Weapons 1, 2 and yes, I even sat through 3 and 4 for crying out loud!  


Further, and probably more antithetical to the gospel, is that we as a culture dare to suggest that violence will save us; that a righteous person or group of people using just the right amount of deadly force can protect us from evil. It can save and protect what we have, our property, our family, and our way of life (sound familiar?).  

The problem is that we as people of faith, as Christians have given ourselves to rely on something else to save us. We proclaim that God – not violence (or anything else for that matter) – but God saves us!


Jesus does not remain a baby in a manger; he is not done in by Herod. Instead, he grows up. He becomes a Jewish prophet calling us to do such things as turn the other cheek, and love the enemy, and “put away your sword.” He proclaims that the Kingdom of God is not something brought in with weapons. And he exposes our violence. When confronted with the Kingdom of God, we cry out “No!” and we enact violence on God by placing Jesus on a cross. When confronted with our violence, however, God turns the tables on us. In our fundamental act of violence on God, God takes the consequences of that violence, of that rejection: death into the divine life and renders those consequences empty of their power in Christ’s resurrection.  


There is the way of God and there is the way of violence. May we find the strength, the vision, the light, and the hope in these dark and difficult days to seek the way of God.


Shalom,

Pastor Owen


Thank You.png

Thank you from the Church Staff for our wonderful Christmas Gifts! We very much appreciated them and want to thank the entire congregation for everything you do to help make this church awesome!


Owen, Kasey, Nathan, Georgene, Lori, Angela, Cindy


CHAOS and Mayhem will resume January 14th.png

Puppets

Once a month during the Children's Moment, there is a time for puppets. To be able to continue this ministry, someone is needed to coordinate putting together the scripts and asking people to be puppeteers. If you feel called to help with this task, please call Karen Fausch at 515-556-1483. Thank you.

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Missions Committee

Each month, the Mission Committee identifies a recipient of monetary donations or hands-on actions to support a specific cause in the community or larger world. The deadline to donate to the Central Iowa

Shelter is Sunday Jan. 14, 2024.


In 2023, over $14,000 was donated through the Missions committee to benefit the following: Week of Compassion, Ankeny Service Center (following a large apartment fire), Easter Offering, Christian Conference Center (per suggestions from the center and volunteers), Ankeny Love Lunches (in cooperation with other local churches requiring both financial and volunteer assistance to provide free lunch to children during the summer), Williamson Branch (music family performance), Meals From the

Heartland ($ and volunteers packaging meals to fight world hunger), Food Bowl (vote for your favorite college football team by donating money- no prize for winning, but $ benefits Ankeny Service Center food program), Shoe Hike (children collect donations in their shoes, proceeds for gifts as we thank the childcare employees during the Holiday season), Silent Auction (benefits personal needs within the congregation), Giving Tree (Holiday collection of funds and items for local causes, 2023 donations to

Central Iowa Shelter), and Disciple Missions Fund (global activities of Disciples organization).


Additional donations are determined by the Missions Committee and funded as an ACC budget item. This guides the work of the Missions Committee. If you encounter additional needs or projects, you are encouraged to share them with the committee or pastor to perhaps to be incorporated into the schedule or addressed immediately if necessary. There is no emphasis for January. Pray that ACC’s “Positive People doing God’s Work” will continue to prosper and love in 2024.

Tone Chimes


Rehearsals: January 7, 14, 21, 28

Office Update

Please send any photos you may take while out and about at Church events either on the facebook pages or to the office, ankenyccdoc@gmail.com. We would really like to showcase what we are doing as a faith community on our website as well!


Vouchers have been updated for 2024

January Birthdays



1/6 Kara Duffy


1/7 Susie Bentley


1/9 Sue Jansen


1/13 Casey McIlrath


1/14 Shelby Skinner


1/16 Marshall Moellers

Madison Narwold


1/17 Ken Johnson

Sherry Mann


1/20 Sydney Neitzel


1/21 Georgene Raver


1/23 Trinity Smith



1/25 John Harris


1/26 Judi DeMoss

Kathryn Kalvig


1/27 Fran Honderd

Emma Wehofer


1/30 Clint Fischer


1/31 Lori Leach

January Anniversaries


1/4 Tim & Kathryn Kalvig


If you would like to continue (or begin) to contribute to the work of the church financially, you can mail in a check to 2506 SW 3rd Street Ankeny, Iowa 50023 or you can give online by clicking the link below.  There you can set up one time or recurring donations. 

Online Giving

Do you have a prayer request?


Send your request to Laura Dolley


dolley0808@gmail.com

Current Office Staff:


Pastor Owen Cayton, Senior Minister

pastorocayton@gmail.com


Nathan Green, Music Director

nategreenaccdoc@gmail.com


Kasey Romano, Office Manager

ankenyccdoc@gmail.com

Looking for Grief Support? Click on the button to be taken to a document with options.

Grief Support

Ankeny Christian Church

2506 SW 3rd Street

Ankeny, Iowa 50023

515-964-1083

ankenyccdoc@gmail.com

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