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Brothers and sisters,
Our church’s annual Fall Festival is coming up quickly! Well, for today’s article, I wanted to run through the details with you and encourage you to volunteer or contribute! The most effective way to catch you up is just to describe the festival we’ve planned.

First of all, the festival itself will take place from 2:30 – 4:30 PM on Saturday, October 31st. Most everything will be happening in the Family Life Center or right in front of the Family Life Center, so visitors should be able to park in the side parking lot next to the sanctuary. As they come into the festival, we’ll have a Welcome Table set up where the kids can get glow sticks, a coloring book, a bag for candy, and a token to vote for the Best Trunk they see. From there, they will find a face-painting station and a photo-op area.

Our trunks for Trunk-or-Treat will be in front of the Family Life Center this year. Volunteers from the church are transforming their trunks into all kinds of fun things! They’ll pass out candy and the kids can vote on which of the trunks they like the best.

Then, in the Fellowship Hall, they’ll see lots of fall-themed crafts they can do. Things like real pumpkins they can paint/color, masks they can make, and a special craft from our Ceramics ministry! Plus, we’ll be passing out bags of popcorn for kids and parents to snack on while they’re here. There will also (potentially) be a guessing game where families can win a prize if they correctly guess the number of candy corns in a jar.

Finally, in the gym, the kids will see all kinds of games they play. At each game, they’ll have the chance to win tickets which they can bring over to the Prize Table and trade in for
fun prizes (or more candy)! In addition, we’re hoping to have the Cake Walk again this year, where families can win delicious desserts to take home with them. We are also planning to have a “costume parade” for the kids at around 3:15!

We’ve got a wonderful event planned for our community! These are all things we’ve done in the past and I’m sure we can do them again. But we need your help!

First of all, if you can volunteer on that day, be sure to sign up on the volunteer sign-up sheets in the vestibule! We need people in every area I just mentioned: trunks, face-painting, crafts, popcorn, games, cake walk, and prize table. If you can’t come the day of, but you’re free on October 30th, Frances is planning to get a lot of things set up that night and could use help! Let her know if you can help that night!

If you’re not sure you can be there either of those days, you can still help! Trunks typically
bring their own candy to pass out, but we always like to have candy on hand to replenish them if we need to—so you can donate candy anytime! We are also in need of new prizes for the prize table this year—so you can donate prizes (in the past, kids have loved things like rings with fake gemstones, small sports balls, small stuffed animals, etc.). We also need desserts for the Cake Walk—so you can donate a dessert. We ask two things related to that: list any major allergens your dessert may have (nuts, dairy, etc.) and, if you can, pre-package it into more manageable portions (i.e. if you made a couple dozen cookies, put them in Ziploc bags, and give 3-4 cookies per bag).

I’m looking forward to the festival this year! I think it is a wonderful way for us to bring
joy to our community. Be sure to sign up on the sheets in the vestibule!

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

Brothers and sisters,

First of all, don’t worry. I’m not working while I’m on vacation; I wrote this article ahead of time! It would be silly to preach a whole sermon series on taking time to rest and then refusing to rest, wouldn’t it?

More importantly, however, this coming Sunday is World Communion Sunday. This tradition was originally started by Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, PA all the way back in 1933 by Dr. Hugh Thomson Kerr. The Presbyterian Church (USA) adopted it as an annual celebration in 1936 and in 1940 the Federal Council of Churches (now the National Council of Churches) endorsed it and began to promote it to other denominations all over the world. Thus, on the first Sunday of October every year, churches all over the world, across denominational lines gather to celebrate Communion. It serves as this wonderful moment of unity among a church that can sometimes get so caught up in our differences, we forget that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ and are united by our belief in his grace and his gospel.

And while here at Hope Valley Baptist Church, we will celebrate with grape juice and bread, I remember a professor of mine once telling my class at Duke Divinity a story about a unique style of communion she took years ago. She was in Southeast Asia (I don’t remember where exactly, but I believe it was either Indonesia or the Philippines) on a mission trip. She and her group were there to provide services to local communities and connect with some of their Christian brothers and sisters living on the other side of the world. They were there one Sunday and so they went to church with the Christians in the area, singing, praying, and worshiping together.

Toward the end of the service, they took communion—though the communion in that
Southeast Asian community looked a little different than ours. When my professor went
forward, she was presented with a saltine cracker and a glass of milk to dip it in. She gratefully took the cracker, dipped it in the milk, and ate it, but after the service she talked with one of the locals who they’d been staying with. She explained to them that in America, we typically use bread and either grape juice or wine for communion and asked why it was saltines and milk here. The local told her, “The reason we use the saltines and milk
is because those things are precious here. They are not easy to find! So, since we want to offer our best to Jesus, we use the saltines and milk.”

On this Sunday, all over the world, our brothers and sisters in Christ will be taking
communion. Some will use bread and grape juice. Some will use a wafer and a chalice of wine. Some will use saltine crackers and milk. But all of us will be united in our common belief that this table was set by none other than Jesus Christ himself and that anyone who would like to lay down their burdens and take up his goodness may come to it. Eat the bread. Drink the cup. Rejoice with your church family all over the world.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

Brothers and sisters,

Have y’all ever had a musical crush? Now, let me be clear, have y’all ever had a crush on a musical artist cause they themselves are attractive? I mean, have you ever listened to a new artist’s song and thought, “Oh! I need to hear more of their stuff!”? You get a hold of their record, start listening, and realize that there’s just something about their music that makes you want to do nothing but keep listening. They can do no wrong; their music hits you in just the right way. Have y’all ever had that?

Well, of late, I’ve had a musical crush on Olivia Dean. If you’ve listened to any radio station that plays Top 40 songs, you’ve probably heard either her song, “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” or “Man I Need”. Dean sings this wonderful kind of pop-jazz-soul music that is easy to listen to, but I appreciate her lyricism as well. The two songs I just mentioned are fun and flirty, with one of the lines in “So Easy” being, “There’s Heaven in my heart, and we could find you some space.” But there’s one song later in her record, The Art of Loving, with a line that has haunted me (in a good way) since I heard it.

The song is called, “A Couple Minutes,” and it’s this slow, nostalgic song about an encounter the singer has with an ex of hers. She’s surprised by some of his changes at first (“Since when are you smoking now?”), but eventually she and her ex connect over some of their shared memories, the feelings they had for each other, and it becomes clear that while the ex has moved on, the singer has not. She’s trying to, but there is a part of her that he knows and she wishes they could linger in their memories and their shared knowledge (“Back on your sofa/Of course, I still care…And although it’s over/I’ll always be there/Only have a couple minutes, then we’re going back to real life”). But the line that gets me, that prompted this article is buried in the middle of the chorus, “Love’s never wasted/When it’s shared”. The singer, despite the pain the breakup caused, is still able to look at the love the two of them had and see it as a good thing.

As a pastor, I think about that line not in the sense of a breakup, but in the sense of why the church does what it does. Why do we reach out to people and help them, knowing they can never repay us? Cause God calls us to love our neighbors and help those in need as a reflection of God’s love for us. Why do we host events and pursue mission projects even if we don’t achieve “success” as church consultants might define it? Cause God calls us to be joyful people who love others the way God loves us. And so, we reach out. We draw people in. We meet needs. We offer joy. Because God has loved us and has called us to share that love. And love is never wasted when it’s shared. It is always a good thing to love others. I think that’s an idea we could all stand to keep in mind in the days and weeks ahead. Loving our neighbors is never a waste. Loving those who are struggling is never a waste. Loving our enemies is never a waste. Cause God loves us and has never seen it as a waste. Thanks be to God!

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben