We will conclude our Stewardship series, Together for Joy, by looking ahead to what the church will do in the year ahead. This is why all of us, as a community, ask each other to share our treasure and invest in our mission as a church. Now more than ever, your generosity can and will make an enormous difference. In a time of difficulty and despair for so many, we are a community of light and hope. In a time of injustice and struggle, we are a community of love and justice. In a time of silence and isolation, we are and can be a community of gathering, a community of song, of new songs and new ways of singing, new ways of being God’s church for God’s world, together for joy!

As we resume our Stewardship worship series – Together for Joy, we look at all the ways we have found “new songs” to sing over the last couple of years: online and now hybrid worship, virtual choir, creative ways of continuing to serve the community through our food programs, serving the vulnerable and isolated, speaking out for justice through education and action and so much more. This is who we are, and who we’ll continue to be and become.

Now more than ever, we need to reach out and lift each other up. Now more than ever, we need to find new ways to be “together for joy.” Now more than ever, we need to be the church! The church was made for times such as these: not times of ease and tranquility, but times of difficulty and struggle. Not a stroll along a sunlit ridgeline, but a pilgrimage through the valley of the shadow of death. And not a whimper or a whisper of silence, but a new song sung out loud, in harmony with all creation, as the seas roar and hills sing together for joy!

Join Bethel Congregational UCC for a special Stewardship worship series – Together for Joy.

Psalm 98 tells us to “Sing to God a new song, for God has done marvelous things. Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy.” Staying together through the delights and struggles of life - being “together for joy” - has never been more important. And while change brings financial challenges in its wake, it also brings fresh opportunities to sing to God a new song, for God has done - and will do - marvelous things.

We begin the series remembering the difficulties we have faced over the past couple of years, both globally and locally: the losses, grief, uncertainty, and anxiety. The Bible is filled with examples of how the people of God repeatedly faced difficult, harrowing times - imagine the heartbreak and disorientation, the grief and the doubt, the suffering and loneliness. And yet, God’s Spirit never left them; God guided them and gave comfort in the midst of difficulty and hope in the midst of despair.