This Sunday’s service will be on Zoom only. No service at our brick and mortar location. It will be composed of prayers, joys, concerns, Scripture and a short lesson/discussion.

Installation of Deacons/Elders as well as Communion will be postponed until January 19, 2025.

OPS and NOW Meeting/Congregational Meal

Everyone is invited to gather in the Henry Young Fellowship Hall for homemade soup at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, January 15. Come in out of the cold and sample several delicious soups, enjoy the warmth of fellowship, and stay for continued discussion of our church community and mission.

Our discussions will take place in two committees:

• OPS (Operations) Committee—Guides the work of stewardship and giving, finances, budget, personnel, upkeep of building and grounds.



• NOW Committee—Guides programmatic work of the congregation, including music and worship, Christian formation, earth care, gun violence prevention, garden ministry, outreach to the community, Guatemala partnership and overseas mission.

Even if you are not sure about serving on a “committee,” please join us for the food and a chance to get to know others in our church community.

Readers Theater: Postponed to Sunday,

February 2nd, 2025

The sequel! On Sunday, February 2 from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m., Phil Lloyd-Sidle will host a second “Adult Sunday School” group reading of the sequel to the Nativity morality play “The House by the Stable.” This play, also by Charles Williams, is entitled "Grab and Grace" and features some of the same characters plus two more: "Faith" and “Grace." It is a fun and thought-provoking play about the time following the death of Jesus.

The reading will take place in the Gathering Room. As before, the bonus of coffee, teas, and baked items will be provided.

Charles Williams was a friend and contemporary of T.S Eliot, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others in mid-20th-century England. He was most known as a novelist, but also published poetry, works of literary criticism, theology, drama, history, and biography.

Prayer and Action for Middle East

If you are struggling with your feelings about all that is happening in the Middle East and yearn for shared information, prayers, and other possible responses, please join our small group. Here is our schedule for January.

• Thursday, January 16, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., in-person gathering in the home of Eva Stimson and Jerry Van Marter (address in church directory). Light lunch will be provided.



• Thursday, January 23, 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., Lunch and Learn, with guest speakers Baha Hilo and Marietta Macy, in the fellowship hall at CHPC (see related article).

• Thursday, January 30, 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., on Zoom. Email Soni Castleberry at soni.castleberry@gmail.com to get the Zoom link and to be added to the group email list for regular communication.

Lunch and Learn

January 23, 11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.

Fellowship Hall

CHPC is hosting an educational event with Palestinian educator Baha Hilo and PC(USA) minister Marietta Macy on Thursday, January 23. Baha and Marietta are on a two-month speaking tour sponsored by the Palestine Justice Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). They will discuss "What’s Going On and What You Can Do: An overview of the history and present realities in Palestine and how individuals and groups can help." Join us for lunch at 11:30. (Please RSVP to the church office or to Tricia Lloyd-Sidle at Revtjls@gmail.com so we have enough food.) The presentation will begin at noon.

Baha Hilo was born and raised in Palestine. He has worked with human rights and advocacy groups, including the UN and the Badil Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. Baha runs “To Be There,” an organization dedicated to a better-informed international community on the issues facing Palestine and its people, who are living under one of the world’s longest military occupations of the 20th and 21st centuries (48 years and counting!).

Marietta Macy was first introduced to Palestine while serving as a Youth Advisory Delegate for the PC(USA) General Assembly in 2004 and has stayed connected ever since. She is a graduate of Hanover College and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. A pastor and educator, she has served congregations in Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia.

Chair Yoga has been discontinued at this time.

DID YOU KNOW?

What Presbyterians Believe About Mary (continued)

Reformed theologian Karl Barth wrote extensively in Church Dogmatics about what Mary has to teach us, both about the character of God’s self-revelation to us and the character of our response to God. Barth refers to the birth of Jesus Christ as “the miracle of Christmas.” The miracle is twofold: First, it is an inconceivable thing, from the standpoint of human logic, that God would enter fully into human existence. God did not simply pay us a visit, arriving at Christmastime and staying around for 30-some-odd years. Rather, God revealed to us, in and through God’s birth to Mary, that God has entered fully into the human condition; God is human in Jesus Christ.

The second miracle is precisely that we are included in it. Despite our incapacity to contribute, we are real participants in the work of God in the world. Barth goes so far as to say that we, in and through shared humanity with Jesus Christ, are partners with the God who has claimed us.

Mary shows us what this partnership looks like. It is not a matter of our being equal to God or contributing equal parts to the divine work. It is not a matter of us signing on to a contract or a proposal that God has set before us. Mary did not “sign up” to be the bearer of God, nor was she consulted about the terms of her commitment. Her partnership with God was accomplished by way of faithfulness, by being true to who she was as one named, known, and used by God. In embracing this, Mary did not contribute something to God’s work, but was instead caught up and included in what God was about.

And so it is with us — not that we “do our best,” giving what we can muster up to God and trusting it will be increased and used for some positive outcome. Rather, we recognize that we can do nothing, contribute nothing, and that we also enter fully into what God is up to.

What would our lives look like if we were to live in recognition of our identity as genuine participants in the coming of the Kingdom, bearers of God to a needy world? Our lives would be marked not only by peace and joy, but by profound creativity. As Mary shows us, to be a Christian believer is more than to respond to specific tasks God wishes to assign to us. One of the benefits of God’s grace is that we are made capable of being creative agents in God’s work.

As Mary traveled to Elizabeth, proclaimed the Magnificat, and pondered the circumstances around her, we are free to bear God to the world by being risk-takers, poets, and philosophers. To know Mary as a creative agent, rather than as a passive vessel, makes it impossible to pack her away in a box. She teaches us that Christian service is more than perfunctorily responding to what God would have us to do. We who are called to share Life with the world are first invited to enter in and celebrate it.

Excerpt from an article by Cynthia L. Rigby published in the April 2004 issue of Presbyterians Today.

January Birthdays

Please remember these wonderful folks in prayer and, if possible, reach out to them with a card, phone call, text, email or however you choose to honor them.

To double-check your listing, contact Soni Castleberry at soni.castleberry@gmail.com or phone or text at 502-417-6481.

January 16 - Don Mead

January 23 - Harrie Buecker, Kara Castleberry

Elder of the Week