Announcements
Today! Parade Drive By to Celebrate Dave Stuntz, 2-4 p.m. | Blacknall Perry St. Entrance
Dave Stuntz, Blacknall’s Director of Music Ministries for 23 years, retires Dec. 31. Share your gratitude by waving, honking, and dropping off cards as you drive by. Celebratory signs encouraged. Line up on Iredell Street and turn right on Perry Street. Please stay in your car; someone will be there to collect cards. Read brief notes of thanks from Paula Rinehart and Lowrie Beacham here.Backyard Worship Groups | View Here
Are you looking for a way to gather this winter? Some Blacknall Backyard Worship groups are continuing to meet during this season.Photos of Life Together
Do you have a photo of worshiping or sharing life together? Please send to Mary Grimm. Above photo of the staff Christmas gathering.
Finance Committee update
Blacknall remains financially strong in these uncertain times. Our budget for this fiscal year (July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021) expands our ongoing support for local, campus, and international ministries. Our session recently approved additional gifts to specific local ministries whose needs have increased during the pandemic. We are grateful for the generosity of our congregation.
Our offerings have fallen behind our expenses a bit more than in previous years. We would like to bring these into balance by the end of the calendar year. We have received $641,000 in offerings from July 1 through Dec 22, and are projecting expenses of $775,000 through December 31. We will need to receive $134,000 in the last ten days to end the calendar year in balance. December has historically been a strong month for us.
There are multiple ways to give to Blacknall:
Cash or check brought to the church office. Gifts received by NOON on Thursday, December 31 will be included in calendar year 2020.
Checks mailed to the church office. Gifts postmarked by December 31 will be included in calendar year 2020.
Automatic bank drafts as a part of bill pay directed to Blacknall using your local bank.
Gifts of stock are welcome. Contact Rick Every (919-489-9733) or Carol Smith (919-286-5586).
Online giving is available from our website (including bank transfer, debit card, and credit card donations). Members can also schedule recurring online gifts when signed on to CCB.
Details on all giving options are available at www.blacknall.org/give.
Questions? Contact Rich Frothingham.
Prayer
Ministry Partners:
Durham—We pray for Pregnancy Support Services (PSS) and for its new Executive Director Cindy Kouhout. Please pray for her as she develops relationships with supporters and church partners in these coming months. She shares this vision for the work PSS does with women facing a crisis pregnancy: “To always love, guide, support, encourage...but not to judge or close the door on someone who makes a choice we don't support. Continuing to pray for those clients, offering post-abortion support and Bible studies to women who have had abortions in the past is how that philosophy comes to life at PSS. Treating women with dignity from the very first phone call they make to us, so they know that our love is unconditional and not based on what decisions they may have made in the past. Isn't that how Jesus sees us? Loving us, even in our mess. Being there for us, even when we've made mistakes. That is how we are called to be with each other - and that is how PSS models itself as an organization.”
International—Please pray for Blacknall missionaries Noé and Bethany Kasali (Beni, DRC) and Bethesda Counseling Center. [Currently in the US, visiting with Bethany’s parents]. Prayer requests: (1) praises for a safe flight to US, a car, and the transport of their household goods to the Congo; (2) love, patience, and understanding, as they live with Bethany’s parents; (3) a safe return flight to Beni in early 2021; (4) peace, stability, and effective governance for the Congo; (5) protection for Bethesda counselors, as they travel to many places to minister to hurting people.
Campus—We pray for Steve and Christie Hinkle and his ministry with InterVarsity. Steve shares, “As others in campus ministry have said, working within the new structures COVID has forced upon us has been difficult for us on many levels. New staff have struggled to raise support without being able to have direct interactions with others. The five staff I supervise who work with international students have found almost no new students arriving on campus. Limitations are abundant. But so are opportunities. Grad chapters on different campuses have been able to hold joint meetings with speakers halfway across the country. Faculty from the Triangle were gathered into an event including 90 Christian and non-Christian faculty to participate in a conversation around science and faith. And communities of prayer have sprung up online. Please pray for focus as we concentrate on "weighing ministry rather than counting it." Pray for continued experiences of God's faithfulness as new staff raise support. And pray for weary and heavy-laden faculty as they come to Christ for rest.”
Grief:
We pray for the family and friends of Don Halderman who died recently.
We pray for Griff and Elizabeth Gatewood on the death of Griff’s Dad this past week.
We pray for Nancy Congleton on the death of her Dad this past week.
We pray for those who have lost loved ones to the coronavirus.
Joys
We give thanks for our Advent season together and for all of our opportunities to worship and celebrate together in this most unusual of years. We give thanks for the Advent devotional that Dave Stuntz shared with us and for all of our opportunities to sing together.
We give thanks for the coronavirus vaccines that offer hope that the pandemic will end.
Concerns
We pray for Taylor Brennan as she recovers from her cancer surgery.
We pray for those in our community who have contracted the coronavirus.
We pray for medical and frontline workers who are caring for those with the virus.
World
We pray for deliverance from the virus as it surges in our nation and around the world.
We thank God for the development of vaccines that promise to help fight this virus. We pray for a speedy and just distribution of these vaccines around the world.
Life Together
We give thanks for Dave Stuntz and for all that God has given to us as a congregation through him. We pray for God’s blessing on him and Ann as he enters into retirement. We pray for us as a congregation as we will miss him dearly.
We pray for the search committee for the Director of Congregational Care (chair, Melissa Hartemink).
About the Music
This is my final edition of bulletin notes; when I started writing them back in 1998, I never imagined I would continue all these years.
There’s no chance that I could express what is in my heart at this point – so I will let a poet and an apostle speak for me.
Sing Me to Heaven
In my heart’s sequestered chambers lie truths stripped of poet’s gloss;
Words alone are vain and vacant, and my heart is mute.
In response to aching silence memory summons half-heard voices,
And my soul finds primal eloquence and wraps me in song…
If you would comfort me, sing me a lullaby;
If you would win my heart, sing me a love song;
If you would mourn me and bring me to God,
Sing me a requiem,
Sing me to heaven.
Touch in me all love and passion, pain and pleasure,
Touch in me grief and comfort, love and passion, pain and pleasure.
Sing me a lullaby, a love song, a requiem;
Love me, comfort me, bring me to God:
Sing me a love song,
Sing me to heaven.
And, from my favorite of Paul’s epistles, the letter to his beloved friends, the Philippians:
I thank my God every time I remember you.
In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy
because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,
being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you
will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
It is right for me to feel this way about all of you,
since I have you in my heart….
Thanks for singing the Savior’s songs to me, over me, with me. It has been my joy and privilege to serve.
With much love and gratitude –
Dave Stuntz