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Brothers and sisters,

The month of October has been a busy month here at Hope Valley Baptist Church, hasn’t it? Between missions projects, church events, and the day-to-day life of church, we’ve done a lot over the last month. So for this week’s article, I just wanted to run through some of what we’ve done.

While it technically started in September, our commitment to Scarlette Jasper’s Christmas Box ministry in Kentucky and other parts of Appalachia has been a constant theme here at HVBC. The Missions Team initially set a goal of 40 boxes and you all quickly passed that goal, prompting the team to add 5 more boxes to the mix. All in all, our church will be sending 45 boxes to Scarlette and to the folks in her community, allowing them to have Christ-mas and remember how much God loves them.

Kentucky was not the only part of Appalachia our church has helped this month. In the wake of Hurricane Helene, I kept getting questions from folks, asking, “What are we going to do to help those folks? How can we address this disaster?” We decided to do two things: create disaster relief buckets through CBF and send funds to the Baptists on Mission. On short notice, you all contributed over $3,200, allowing us to send 16 disaster relief buckets out west and nearly $2,000 to Baptists on Mission.

But we weren’t done there. Shortly thereafter, Jonathan Herring reached out and asked us to partner with some of his friends in Clyde, NC. Colder temperatures have already become a regular thing in the mountains, so Jonathan asked us to bring coats, mittens, sweaters, and other warm things to help the people and you all responded. When he and Toby Bowen pulled out of HVBC for Clyde, the bed of Jonathan’s truck was full of your donations.

But we weren’t done there either! Jonathan had found a partnership with a factory out of Thomasville that was willing to send bed pads out west for every sleeping bag we collected. And so we sent out the word for donations of sleeping bags and other things to help fight the cold—space heaters being particularly important. Again, you all responded, filling several boxes full of supplies for the folks in western North Carolina.

As if that wasn’t enough going on, we also came together to put on our annual Fall Festival, with games and candy and prizes and food. We were able to reach out to our community here in Durham and remind them that there is a group of Christians who love them and wish them nothing but joy. In the midst of challenging times, it can be an act of holy resistance to say, “We will carve out space for joy and celebration.” Because of that, 56 people were able to come and have a great time!

Finally, through all of this, each Sunday we took the time to examine spooky passages in the scriptures and ask ourselves good, faithful questions. How do I want to spend my life? How do I want to treat the people around me? What does it mean to seek and abide in God’s presence? And, of course, our handbells came through with beautiful music this past Sunday to uplift us and focus our eyes on the beauty of God. It has been a busy month here at HVBC; it has been a good month here at HVBC.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

Brothers and sisters,

As I’m writing this article, we are just ten days away from our church’s annual Fall Festival on Saturday, October 26th from 4:30-6:30 pm! This year promises to be another wonderful opportunity to reach out to our neighborhood and remind them how much God loves them and how deeply we love them too.

This year, we are going to have several different areas for local children and parents to engage with. We will have our usual area for Trunk-or-Treat, with church members decorating the trunks of their cars and passing out candy to children. Trunks are always fun to do be-cause you get to interact with the kids and parents as they are coming through. And man do kids love to show off their costumes! In addition to that, we will be having our usual Best Trunk competition, as voted on by our guests—so if you sign up, be sure to bring your A game!

In addition to the trunks, we will have an area dedicated specifically to crafts. Frances Smith has a bunch of unique fall-related crafts for the kids to make, with all of them reminding the kids that God loves them very much and/or that we have so much to be thankful for! There will also be small pumpkins for the kids to decorate using markers if they’d like to!
Beyond that, we are going to have several carnival-style games set up for kids to play—ring toss, mini putt-putt, and more! Kids will win tickets that they can then bring over to our Prize Table and trade in for all kinds of prizes (or even more candy). The prize table can get hectic, but it can be fun to haggle with a kid, i.e., “Ok. You’ve got 12 tickets left. Let’s think about our options here.” Here again, you get to interact with the kids and see their personalities shine.

Finally, we are providing a meal for anyone who comes through. It’s a simple meal, but so many parents told us last year that it was perfect. They were able to come out, have a good time with their family, and not have to worry about supper that night. And after every-thing was said and done, several volunteers told me last year, “It was nice to work really hard together and then end the night sharing a meal as a church family.”

For all these things, we need volunteers. We need folks to decorate their trunks. We need folks to help Frances with crafts. We need folks to run games and work the prize table. If you can help that night, please sign up on the Volunteer Sign-Up Sheet in the vestibule this Sunday, October 20th. If you’re not going to be here this Sunday, but you would like to volunteer at Fall Festival, shoot me an email ([email protected]) and let me know. If there’s a specific area you’d like to help in, let me know.

In my mind, events like this one are important for two main reasons. The first is simply to remind the community of our presence and of our love for them. The second is something C. S. Lewis alludes to throughout his Narnia series—that God is always looking for moments to celebrate. The church, then, is called to be an institution that is looking for any reason to be joyful. Events like Fall Festival are moments like that. In a world of constant worry and tension, we can be a place that says, “Come away from all that and spend some time with us, celebrating!”

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

Brothers and sisters,
I’m excited about our upcoming sermon series. I love this time of the year. College football is back. The State Fair is coming up. Our church’s Fall Festival is quickly approaching. And, of course, we end the month with Halloween, one of my favorite holidays of the year. In the spirit of Halloween and all the interesting ideas it raises, I thought we could do a sermon series on a few passages within the scriptures that are not your typical passages.

You all know that I value and appreciate the lectionary—the three-year cycle of scripture passages that most preachers preach from and/or draw Calls to Worship from—but the lectionary definitely has some blind spots. In particular, the lectionary does not typically pick up on passages that are a little, shall we say, spookier. It tends to avoid passages where ghosts or demons or witches are mentioned. While I understand why it does this—these are not always the easiest pas-sages to preach on—I think that we miss out on some really interesting lessons when we avoid those stories.

I want to take the month of October to talk about four passages where something supernatural happens. I want to take a look at the ways in which the people respond to the crazy things they’re seeing. And I want to look at how God is found in each of those moments. So, we’ll start with a classic—Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones. We’ll move on to the story that gives us the phrase “the writing’s on the wall.” We’ll also spend a Sunday talking about some wannabe exorcists in the book of Acts. And the Sunday before Halloween, we’ll take a look at Saul and the witch of Endor.

I’m excited for this series because these passages have the ability to push us in ways we may not necessarily be used to. They will ask us hard questions about what our faith should look like and how we should express it. They will ask us how deeply we truly believe. But this series will end on November 3rd with a familiar passage from the Gospel that reminds us that in everything, spooky or not, God is with us. Happy Spooky Season, y’all!

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

P.S. When I told the church council about this series months ago, I prefaced the discussion by saying, “I think y’all know this already, but I love Halloween.” I’d barely gotten the sentence out of my mouth before someone on the council chuckled and said, “We know.” When I paused to look at them, they said, “I mean, you went to Salem the weekend before Halloween. Who does that unless they love Halloween!” And, you know, they weren’t wrong!