January 2019 Informer
Merry Christmas! (keep celebrating with your January Informer)
Christmas doesn’t end until this Sunday, Epiphany. On Epiphany we celebrate the gift of the magi to Jesus and the revelation to the broader world that this child was something different. On epiphany, we celebrate the revelation that Jesus came into the world as a beacon for us. In the days when Twelfth Night (that is, the night before Epiphany) was a bigger time for celebration than Christmas Day, it also marked the start of a new time in our calendars. Some of you may still have the tradition of holding the magi out of your nativity scenes until Epiphany. Here (among other places, including New Orleans) you may even bake a King Cake in their honor.
This Epiphany, we have another way of celebrating the gifts of the Magi. Our Capital Campaign Committee has designated January 6 as the day to receive our pledges for the capital campaign. Depending on who you are, different parts of this campaign may speak to you. Maybe you think it’s time, after 25 years, to retire our outstanding debt from building the church. Maybe you’ve taken a look at the bathrooms and wondered if there are more efficient ways to use the space and live into our mission. Maybe, in your hours of contemplation while mowing the back yard, you’ve thought if there were ways to reclaim the topsoil carted away when we built the land, to improve drainage, and to increase pollinator activity around our garden. If you’re like me, you miss having recycling and trash bins in predictable places, rather than as makeshift water pails. And maybe you’ve sunk down into a seat in the blue room and wondered if you would ever get out. As the Magi visited Jesus and imagined something new so many years ago, we imagine something (on a much smaller scale) new and possible for the future now. Our gifts help us build the facilities that we can fill with our imaginations and creations to realize God’s vision for us in Ankeny. I’ll have my card. If you’ve already returned yours, thank you! If not, I invite you to join me with yours on Sunday. Our campaign target is $225,000, roughly 1.5x our budget over three years.
Grace and Peace, Pastor Nathan