Advent begins! Sunday, December 2, is the first Sunday of the season of Advent. Following worship we will deck the halls and sing carols! 

 

Sunday, December 16, following worship we will have a potluck brunch and the young people will share the Christmas story with us in their own inimitable style!

 

Sunday, December 23, following worship we make sandwiches for A-SPAN; that evening at 5:45 we serve the bag meals.

 

Monday, December 24, at 7:30 we gather for our annual Christmas Eve service of lights and carols.

 

To add a calendar item, contact Mary in the office via e-mail at ClarendonPresbyinfo@gmail.com 

Advent marks the beginning of the church year, and we're beginning the year with a vibrancy that each of you has helped to create during the past year. We begin the year with the hope and expectation that Christ is coming into our lives anew and afresh, and the live of our congregation assures us of the sure foundation of our hope! We have much to be grateful for, and much remains before us on which to focus our energy, imagination and love.

With that in mind, we begin the year in promise. We'll make some promises and pledges during worship Sunday morning. Some of these will be financial, as we receive and bless the pledges that many of us will make to the 2013 CPC operating budget. Some of our pledges will be deeply personal, and some will concern the way we intend to spend our time. All of these pledges and promises are vital to our common life, and we will ask God's blessing on them all in acts of worship that begin the new liturgical year.

There's so much joyous, fun, fascinating stuff going on at CPC during this season of Advent, and we'll start it all with the joy of decorating our space for the season following worship Sunday morning. Please plan to stick around, bring some coffee and cookies up to the sanctuary, sing some songs of the season and deck the halls!
We decorate to give a joyous, visible reminder of our hope and the promises we make as we live into that hope.

Peace,
David 

PS: as most of you know, I'm on vacation this week, down on the Crooked Road with Martin shooting more film. We have met some remarkable folks along the road, and look forward to sharing some stories with you along the way. Be sure to ask Martin about fording a creek in the Fusion!

The church year begins in hope and expectation as we journey together through the season of Advent. Advent begins Sunday, Dec. 2, and our worship that morning will be filled with acts of worship, promises and pledges that we will make together and as individuals as we consider what God is calling us to in the next season of our lives. It will be a joyous, highly interactive celebration of worship.

Also on Dec. 2, we will deck the halls and sing the carols of the season during coffee time. So plan to hang out a bit and enjoy some seasonal cheer to begin the month and the new church year!

We are sharing liturgy with our sister congregations Church of the Covenant and Arlington Presbyterian this year, and for the second and third Sundays of Advent we're going to have a clergy round-robin. All three congregations will hear new voices as our pastors lead worship in different settings.

Beth Goss, pastor at Covenant, will be at CPC on Dec. 9, and Sharon Core, pastor at Arlington Pres., will be with us on Dec. 16. I'll be at Arlington Pres. on the 9th and at Covenant on the 16th.

Worship on each Sunday in Advent will be filled with wonder, joy, excitement and challenge, and you won't want to miss any of it!

It will be richer and deeper if you are a part of it, too! So, please let me know which of those Sundays (and Christmas Eve, too) that you would like to lead a part of the liturgy. We will need lots of leaders during December worship, so please volunteer if you are able.

Following worship on Sunday, Dec. 16, we'll share a potluck brunch downstairs in Wilson Hall, and this time the brunch will feature live entertainment!

If you've been part of the CPC community for more than a couple of years you know that our young people have a storied history of telling the Christmas story in creative, distinctive, joyous and, well, unusual ways! They're cooking up another version right now, and will be sharing that with us over brunch on the 16th. This is one Christmas story you don't want to miss! 

You've asked for it repeatedly, and you've waited patiently for it! Here it is!

Clarendon is now accepting donations on line through our web site. You can get to the donations page under the "Donate" tab in the top line menu, or go directly to that page through this link.

 

Everything you enter there is encrypted with 256-bit SSL, and any credit card information necessary for recurring transactions is stored using AES-256 "cypher-block-chaining mode" encryption. Clover Donations is a PCI Compliant service provider, which means they have been certified using rules created by the credit card industry to ensure security.

 

While this service does cost the church a little, members have been asking for it for quite a while and we believe that the ease and convenience for you are worth the cost to the church. We also believe that, in line with the experience of most nonprofits that use on-line giving, your generosity will more than offset the fees the church pays for the service.

 

On-line giving works differently for every donor, and you can pick and choose among many options for the timing and payment on your giving. Choose whatever works best for you. (From the church's end, the least expensive option is bank transfer direct from your account. The most expensive is your credit card. Debit cards fall somewhere in the middle of a fee structure that ranges from a bit more than one percent to a bit more than four percent per transaction depending upon both the source and the amount.)

We hope that you find this new financial service simple to use and helpful in your practice of faithful stewardship.

While the metro area was spared the brunt of Sandy this week, our neighbors up the coast were hit incredibly hard by the storm.

There are lots of ways to respond in support of the communities who have been so greatly damaged. Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is coordinating response for Presbyterians in the aftermath. You can learn more about PDA's response here and about how you can contribute to it through their web site.