Whenever I am called upon to summarize our year at Charge Conference, I always struggle a little to remember what we, as a church, have done over the last twelve months. What did we do this past year? Of course, many of the things that we did were things that we simply continued doing, and so it is easy to forget because we feel like we have always done them. That’s the part that I think of as Christ Church being “doggedly persistent.” We continued to support missions by our giving through our monthly noisy can offering, or through the special day offerings, or tossing a little something in a basket to support missions when we have a luncheon (which always add up to be enough to support our missions budget). The United Women in Faith continue to thrive with regular meetings as well as basement sales, soup fundraisers, special community programs, and a great deal of missions giving. We continue to host a community dinner every Tuesday, the Alliance of Churches bread ministry, and many other things that I’m sure that I am forgetting. And we also continue to organize and host half of a Thanksgiving meal outreach that feeds over 1400 people, which represents between five and seven percent of the city of Alliance.

We continued to support our scouts and cubs in Troop and Pack 50, and that support now includes supporting them by buying hamburgers at “our” burger booth at Carnation Days in the Park. Handing off decades of tradition and experience in the burger booth to our scout troop was a difficult decision. But the scouts’ success selling burgers has been so great that it has afforded them opportunities that they haven’t had in many years.

We continued to have Sunday school for our children, even sometimes adding an additional class to support the span in their ages, as well as teaching them and doing crafts during Children’s Church. But, on top of that, this year we have also added occasional youth activities and also fun group activities such as pumpkin carving. This support of our youth led us to hold confirmation classes that we haven’t seen at Christ Church in quite some time and three of those youth who chose to join our church as members. This, in addition to the three adults who joined the church in November after taking our “new member” class with Pastor John this summer.

This past year, Christ Church also partnered with the chaplain at the University of Mount Union with several married couples from our church joining in student led Bible studies on campus. Though the grant that supported that effort did not renew, our members have expressed an interest in finding new ministries on campus and the university chaplain has expressed a similar interest if we can find an appropriate avenue for partnership.

With all that good news, it is still important to remember that not all our news Is positive. Although we brought in six new members, we also remember that death took five of our long-time members away from us. We also note that our attendance trends did not look good over the summer and, although we don’t yet have a firm number that I can report to you, I am certain that our average attendance this year will feel that summer slump. Similarly, while we have brought in six new members, I do not anticipate that there will be a need for another confirmation class any time soon. Further, if we hope to have new member classes in 2027, each of us must be diligent in being invitational. Many of you are year week after week and I hear you tell one another how much you love our church, but we must remember to have those same sorts of conversations with our friends and neighbors and invite them to worship with us.

Once again, although not all our news is positive, I continue to feel that there is every reason to have hope for the future of Christ Church.

Blessings,

Pastor John