Between illnesses, canceled services due to weather, attempted times of revisioning retreat, etc., I haven’t sent a Sunday Morning Update out in a month!  It’s bizarre how strange it feels not to have done something for a month that you’ve done every week for the past 15 years...

Many were out with illness, including our beloved Pastor Kevin. If you were one of them, you were missed! Sunday school converted from our typical interactive growth-provoking teaching to be a time of sharing followed by intimate group prayer. It seemed a Lord-ordained beginning to a memorable and moving Sunday morning service…

Everybody’s got to stop falling down…

The people of First Covenant Church have had something of a hard week this week…

It’s an absolute joy to have my children finally home from school this week for ISU’s Christmas break!  There’s nothing in the world that I love more than snuggling with my family and my dog, so I’m pretty much in Heaven right about now…

Apparently, we’ve exhausted the winter weather here in Central Illinois.  Either that, or the East Coast has stolen all of it.  But as I write this Update, it’s almost balmy outside, and that ain’t right…

I loves me the Advent season!  Not only do we decorate our church facility very nicely (which some of our FCCers look forward to all year), and not only do we sing some of my favorite music (which other FCCers look forward to all year), but we focus on one of the most crucial moments in the history of humanity -- the Incarnation…

We had a wonderful day here at First Covenant this Sunday, enjoying our annual potato bar and Christmas decorating party to get ready for the Advent season -- and yet still getting out of the building and back home before the hard weather kicked in!  We even had some familiar faces popping in from out of town, so it was nice to welcome some “classic FCCers” back home…

I’m loving the snow -- and I’m amazed at the people who are hating it on principle.  I mean, it’s covering the grass and dusting every limb, but not sticking to the pavement, so what’s not to love about it?  All of the beauty, and none of the shoveling -- that’s pretty much Winter Heaven, isn’t it?

Before I forget, let me make sure that I begin this Update by thanking all those who have put on a uniform and stood in the gap for our freedom:  Happy Veterans Day!

Okay, our Youth Group took judging our 4th, Annual Chili Cook-Off this weekend far more seriously (and less seriously) than we ever would have dreamed.  I mean, they carefully tasted every one of the 14 pots of chili that people brought in, filled out judging forms and explained their criteria, and took an extended time doing it…

What a fun day at First Covenant Church we had this week! First off, we finished off our Adult Sunday School class on Paul’s letter to the Philippians (the studies are all online through our website), and it was a wonderfully uplifting experience to go through the book together.  I’d tell you what we’re starting next week, but where’s the fun in that?

Thank you to all of you who have been in prayer for our church family members who were going through so much, particularly over this past week.

This was a week of all kinds of emotional ups and downs here at First Covenant Church.  On the one hand, we showed the commercial for our annual Chili Cook-Off coming up on November 4, complete with cowboy music, whip-crack sounds, and a rogues’ gallery of Youth kids to serve as judges for the event…

As I looked out at the sea of people in our service on Sunday morning, I noticed that there seemed to be two kinds of people most prevalent amongst our FCCers this week -- those who were excited and enthusiastic and greeting one another with warm hugs and huge smiles, and those who looked like they hadn’t slept since the Carter administration…