Sunday, December 26
The Lord’s Day
Minute for Mission: Church Growth Ministries
Participating in what God is doing in the world,” an excerpt from our mission statement, is the guiding principle that inspires the community of faith at the Phoenix Project in Lakewood, Ohio. We believe that God continues to be an active and creative presence in this world and that we are called to be a part of that activity.
The Phoenix Project is an emergent new church development of the Presbytery of the Western Reserve. We are located in a storefront in Lakewood, a western suburb of Cleveland. Our building serves not only as a place of worship, prayer, and meetings, but also as a community drop-in center with a library, a computer lab, and homemade soup for all who enter our doors. We have also hosted art shows, open-mic nights, and benefit concerts as we discern the ways in which we can love our neighbors by being participants and supporters in the things God is already doing in our neighborhood.
Our community of faith draws its name from the mythical phoenix, the bird who rises, reborn and transformed, out of her life gone to ashes. We are a community of people who have often dwelt in the ashes of addiction, oppression, and exclusion and yet, in the midst of these ashes, we have found a place where we too can be lifted up from our distress and become a place where God’s love is lived and shared.
In this season, our community lives and celebrates the hope we have been given in God’s many promises—the promise of God’s unfailing love, the promise of God’s presence, the promise of Immanuel. Merry Christmas.
–The Rev. Meredith White-Zeager, pastor, The Phoenix Project
Prayer
Holy and loving God, we are thankful for the promise of your unfailing love. We are thankful that you have established your church as a place where your presence and promise are manifest, even in the midst of this world’s distress. Encourage and empower us through the power of the Holy Spirit as we seek to develop new churches, that we may continue to serve as bearers of your kingdom in our lives, our communities, and our world. Amen.
Sunday Lectionary and Hymns
Isa. 63:7–9
Go, Tell It on the Mountain
PH 29
Ps. 148
Let the Whole Creation Cry
PH 256
Within Thy Temple’s Sacred Courts
HB 438
Heb. 2:10–18
Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light
PH 26
Matt. 2:13–23
The First Nowell
PH 56, HB 156
Daily Lectionary
Ps. 116, 150 and Ps. 119:1–24; 27
Isa. 62:6–7, 10–12
Heb. 2:10–18; Matt. 1:18–25
