Note from Pastor Jana I don’t know about you all, but the week before Christmas did not go how I had planned. We knew Charlie would be on break and thought a little bit of work with some fun breaks would be thrown in. I had thought the last minute Christmas items would get done. Deep cleaning on the house, finish wrapping gifts, Christmas Cantata, Christmas lights at Creekmore Park, get the Christmas cards out, and probably more. Plans got derailed. Covid hit our household. (Are we not done with that silly thing yet?) Some hit harder than others. We have appreciated so many checking in on us. We are healing and will be weary for a little bit. (Covid takes your energy in a lot of ways). Our plans often get changed. Whether for good or bad. We may feel weary because of it. We might be carrying our weariness yet wanting to celebrate. Our Advent series has been “How Does A Weary World Rejoice?” We have discovered all the ways that we can rejoice in spite of our weariness. The end of the year is upon us. We might be feeling weary for the state of our church. The United Methodist Church has had a weary year. 1/4 of the churches in our denomination left. Leaving heartache and weariness behind. We are still weary from all the repercussions of Covid. It was a difficult setback with churches. We still want more people in our pews. Yet, we still have some rejoicing to do. In 2023, we did a lot, church. • We joined with Goddard and Cavanaugh UMCs for a night of trivia and fellowship. • Together, we wrote Lenten Devotions with Cavanaugh UMC. We also got to connect again with our fellow friends in the Lenten Community Worship Series. • We did lots of building upkeep along with new floors in the fellowship hall! • It’s hard to keep track of how many bags we passed out during the school year to 4 elementary schools. Estimated to be around 2200 bags for 9 months. That’s a lot of kids being fed. • United Methodist Men hosted a great golf outing in May. • The summer Farmer’s Market Ministry returned. Being successful yet again. • We hosted Cooking Matter classes with 10 people from outside of our church. • We celebrated 60 years! It was quite the celebration with over 150 people in attendance. • Spring Street band held a concert here and we had a great time. • We celebrate that we paid our past due apportionments to the conference a little over $5,000. There’s more that could be mentioned, these are just some highlights. No wonder we are weary, we have been busy. We end this year financially stable. That is no small feat for a smaller congregation. Well done! We continue to dream big and have goals (new missions, outreach and more!). Shouldn’t we be rejoicing? Maybe the questions is How Does a Weary Church Rejoice? We ask God for miracles and we expect the miracles to happen. We love deeply. We keep turning outwards to the community. We celebrate everything. My hope for us in 2024 is that we continue being the light of Christ in Fort Smith. We bring others in on the journey trusting God to do the rest. In Christ, Pastor Jana
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