Chair of the Board: the main contact for any issues that arise (from committees or otherwise), hopefully making good use of the committee chairs and ministerial team.  Chairs the board meetings and executive meetings. Roughly 12 hours per month involvement.

Vice-Chair of the Board: backup / assistant for the chair, and will become chair the following year.  Part of the executive.  Roughly 4 hours per month involvement.

Secretary: records the minutes for the board and executive meetings.  After previewing with chair, and approval by board, submits minutes to office for archiving and publication for the congregation.  Part of the executive.  Roughly 8 hours per month involvement.

Presbytery Representative: attends Presbytery meetings and board meetings.  Roughly 4 hours per month involvement.

Pastoral Care Chair: works with the Pastoral Care committee, and represents them at board meetings.  It need not be the same person that runs the Pastoral Care meetings, but the board will view them as responsible for ensuring that the committee is meeting and working effectively.  Roughly 3 hours per month involvement.

Christian Development (CD) Chair: works with CD committee, and represents them at board meetings.  It need not be the same person that runs the CD meetings, but the board will view them as responsible for ensuring that the committee is meeting and working effectively.  Roughly 5 hours per month involvement. The committee is responsible for kids church, youth group, nursery care, and adult education programs.

Kids Church Coordinator: ensures that there are sufficient lay/staff members available to help for each Sunday.  Determines the weekly plans by using curriculum available for each unit; this may involve having other people buy items or read what they will be teaching in advance.  Roughly 4 hours per month involvement, plus 4 more if also teaching at kids church.

Youth Group Coordinator: works with kids church coordinator to ensure that there are sufficient lay/staff members available to help for each Sunday. Also sets a regular time for the youth to meet — for example, every other Sunday evening at 7:00 — and ensure that it has sufficient leadership.  Determines any agenda that might be used at these meetings, probably in coordination with CD chair and ministerial team. Roughly 3 hours per month involvement, plus 4 more if part of the leadership at the youth meetings.

Forest Hill volunteers are needed to help during the day with parking, welcoming, site-management (traffic directing in the building). Sign up on the list posted on the bulletin board, if you can give an hour or two to the task on the 20th, or help with set up on the 19th. Thanks!

(Photo credit: South African masks from here, flag from here.)

Becoming a loving, welcoming, supportive community to each other is something the church does have to work at every now and again. Maybe now, we at Forest Hill, are in one of the “again” times. As we get into the mid-winter blues, and approach our annual congregational meeting, we do need to pray for God’s Spirit to come and bring us revival of purpose, faith and community. We are introducing a new worship song “Spirit Come,” this Sunday. It is a powerful, prayerful song seeking the revival that God’s Holy Spirit brings. I hope that together over the next weeks we can “pray” it with the intensity and enthusiasm of a faith that believes that God’s Spirit among us will come with a power to heal any discontent and revive our congregation to be about the work God intends for us. Also this week in worship we observe the Christian church’s tradition of Candlemas – the blessing of candles to be taken home and used as a reminder of Christ, the Light of the world in these dark days.

May our prayer together, the song, and the candles brighten your spirits and your faith over the coming weeks.

Be blessed!
Murray

We do have to be careful, though. Sometimes the church gets its signals crossed. It seems we come to believe that “sleep in heavenly peace” is an instruction for us. Of course those are words of a Christmas lullaby and while we do want the newborn Christ to rest up for the life ahead of him, we can’t be sleepy headed followers. Lots of times the church does find itself content to rest or sleep in the heavenly peace found within its walls. We have to be careful not to forget that we are called to be the hands and feet, the eyes and ears, the mind and heart of Christ in, for and to, our world today. “Go, tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere” is the direction we need to heed. That is a call to reach outside the walls of the church to share the message of God’s loving and to serve to meet the needs of God’s people everywhere.

So as we head into 2012, let the new baby make a difference in your life. Let’s all pick ourselves up, brush off the  tinsel and glitter, re-examine our commitments to God and the church and step up to take an active role in the life, work and worship and fellowship of Forest Hill. Together we can build a church that brings “heavenly peace” to our community. May your Faith be strong in this New Year!

Blessings!
m&m

(Photo credits: Nativity scene picture from here. Cute baby from here.)

There are many ways our world chooses to prepare and proclaim Jesus’ birth: lights, snowmen and reindeer among them. Like tangled strands of tinsel the sacred and the secular are uniquely interwoven in this season. Maybe that is the way our lives should be: sacred and secular aspects and activities tied together in an inseparable blend. That wouldn’t be so bad, especially if we recognized that there are indeed holy moments sprinkled through all of our waking and sleeping hours each day.

This Advent season, when you see the beauty of the coloured lights, think about the celebration they proclaim: the birth of the “Light of the world”. Look at those pines and the firs and the spruce! Despite all the efforts of those who would have us live a sterile, politically correct, faithless holiday, those trees continue to direct the gaze of our eyes and hearts heavenward, toward God. And maybe those grand inflatable snowmen can remind us all of God’s awesome creativity in nature, and the simple joys a snowfall can bring to children and families when that snow is rolled into balls, stacked one upon another, and adorned with a carrot, buttons, twigs, and an old hat. The reindeer and Santas, perched on rooftops and tied to chimneys, can remind us of the generous spirit of giving that Jesus taught and that we encounter daily in our experience of God-with-us. Many of the world’s secular signs of the season do have sacred roots, and with an imaginative heart and mind we can find the holy this Christmas, right there holding our world with all it political correctness together around its holiday trees.

This Advent – Christmas season, and all through the year—look and see…God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God! May you encounter all God’s intended blessings in the joyful days ahead.

In God’s love,
m&m