2022 ANNUAL REPORT

The Annual Report will be updated this week in anticipation of our Annual Meeting on Sunday, April 2, immediately following our worship service. Thanks so much for being a part of Church of the Eternal Hills!

Grace and Peace to you!

What a great weekend at CEH:

• On Friday, the mission team served 180 at the Cranmer Chapel Dinner! Thank you to Louise and Graham Powers for chairing this event and to all who helped.
• Thanks also to our clean-up crew who swept the basement on Saturday morning! Your contributions to Project 2020 help us keep the cost down!

Note: Tour (sneak peek) of lower level project is rescheduled to Jan 31. You MUST sign up for this tour by calling the church office, 887-3603.

Please join us for the 9:15 Fellowship time by calling in to Zoom. Catch up with your CEH family, meet new friends, and plant the word of God in your heart with some scripture. We’ll close with prayer in time for the 10 AM Worship Premiere.

Click HERE for the 10 AM Worship @ Home premier for Jan 17.

Click HERE to join the Zoom Fellowship & Prayer call (passcode CEH).

Our theme through Ash Wednesday (only five more weeks until Lent begins!) is RESET

RESET 

As the Wiseman “Went home by a different way” to assure the safety of the child King after following a mysterious star, we too must seek different ways to continue to build that child’s Kin-dom. 

RESET: The Baptism of Jesus encourages us to consider all the new understandings that the Incarnation revealed. 

RECALL Today’s story from John 1 of Jesus calling his first disciples reminds us that God is with us wherever we are – “who can run from your presence?” as Psalm 139 says.

Still to come . . . Reclaim, Reaffirm, Restore, Reveal.

I pray our sermon and worship series will help you recognize and recommit to listening to the voice eternally calling us to love and serve the Lord in peace.

Peace in Christ,

Rev. Paula

Here is the full Zoom invite in case you need the dial-in numbers:

Topic: January Sundays Online Fellowship

Time: Jan 17, 2021 09:15 AM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

Every week on Sun, until Jan 31, 2021, 3 occurrence(s)

Jan 17, 2021 09:15 AM

Jan 24, 2021 09:15 AM

Jan 31, 2021 09:15 AM

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This post was emailed out on Thursday, Dec 31, but many people mentioned they did not receive it. Please check your spam box and email settings to make sure that our emails are not being sent directly to your trash or spam folder:

Presbyterian Church of the Eternal Hills

10 AM  Worship @ Home 

January 3, 2021

Preparation for Worship:

We don’t typically celebrate “New Year’s Day” together but this year has been different all around. We need a way as a people of God to mark 2020 and move forward together into 2021. We will do this with a very special Worship & Communion @ Home on Sunday, January 3, 2021.

Here is how to connect to the worship:

Join Zoom Meeting

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 Meeting ID: 849 0677 5438

Passcode: CEH

During Worship we will be hearing beautiful scriptures to help us into a new mind set and a new perspective! We will also share Communion. I’ve included a recipe for Beef Stew from a cookbook James and I received as a wedding gift. Sponsored by the Junior League of Wichita, the cookbook has been around as long as I can remember at all of my mother’s friends homes: “The Sunflower Sampler.”

For preparation of your heart, consider these questions for discussion and contemplation:

1. When did you most feel God’s presence through 2020?
2. When did you notice an absence of God (sometimes resulting in an empty feeling, or loss of hope)?
3. 2020 has given us many reasons to grieve over loss — loved ones, honored traditions, etc. What loss has affected you the most?
4. God challenges us to find the light in the darkness: where did you find light during 2020?
5. What is something you would like to treasure from 2020?
6. What are you leaving behind for 2021?
7. What is your goal for your own faith journey in 2021?
8. Take some time to read through these scriptures on Guideposts: Read These Scriptures . Which ones offer you the most hope? Remember just one of these verses to share as you wish on Sunday during worship. If you write it down you can type it into the chat during the service.

New Year’s Stew

Since we are having Communion together and we typically would have had a pot-luck to mark this new beginning, let’s share some New Year’s Stew. This recipe will allow you to use your Communion wine and bread for a special lunch following worship.

For Communion

1 Bottle Red Wine (mostly for cooking)

1 Loaf Crusty Bread (we love the roasted garlic bread you can purchase at City Market)

For the Stew

1/2 C shortening

3 Lbs chuck roast, cut bite size

3 T flour

1 1/2 t salt

1/2 t pepper

1/2 t thyme

1 C beef broth

1 C dry red wine,

1/2 lb mushrooms, sliced

1 yellow onion, cut into chunks

Before Worship: Heat oven to 325 degrees. Brown beef in shortening; add rest of ingredients except mushrooms and onions.

Bake 2 hours (if you stick this in at 9 AM, you can add the final ingredients after worship and the stew will be ready at 12:30 for Sunday Lunch).

During Worship: Share Communion with the bottle of wine you opened for the stew, and share a small portion of the delicious, crusty bread you selected for your dinner).

After Worship: Add your final ingredients (should be onions and mushrooms if you’re following the recipe) and bake for 1 1/2 hour more. James and I made this last week, and added carrots, new potatoes, turnips, parsnips for the final 1 1/2 hour cooking. If you add root vegetables, I recommend adding liquids at the same time. We chose to use an additional 1 C beef broth and 1 C wine, but you may need more or less depending on what you want in your stew.

About 15 minutes before you serve lunch, throw that crusty bread into the oven to warm it up and get it even more crusty and delicious! You won’t even need butter as the delicious stew will be flavorful enough as you soak it up with the bread.

Finally, before you share your dinner, offer a big thank you back to God for all we have; for our church family and a table full of food, for being able to worship through the year and stay in touch as best we could.

Enjoy your first Sunday Lunch of 2021, and let’s hope for a year where we will be able to gather again for fellowship and meals around the tables in our Fellowship Hall!

Peace in Christ, and Hope for the New Year,

Rev. Paula

Liturgical Time of the Year: White for Christmas

As the celebrated season of the Nativity of our Lord, Christmas is a high holy season — which indicates we use WHITE. We have also used white and gold, as we do on Easter. White is the color of divinity and purity, so it is also the perfect color for Christmas! We use white every time we share communion as well. 

Theme: New Year 2021

The Wise men went “Home by a different way” to avoid having to face Herod again. As 2020 came and went, we had to find new ways of doing things and new ways of being the CHURCH.

We have seen the light of Christ and need wait no longer to arise, SHINE! 

Thinking back over our Advent season, and our preparations for Christmas Eve, have we shined? Moving into a New Year, what do we need to do a different way?

IT’s finally Christmas Eve! We have so many fun things happening at CEH to mark this Christmas holiday.

The Nativity Lights Drive-Thru will be tonight from 6-9 in lieu of our traditional service of carols and scriptures. We will also premiere a Christmas Eve @ Home worship service on YouTube at 8 pm if you are safer at home!

If you’ll be walking through the Luminary Forest or driving through the Nativity Lights display, you’ll need to download this audio track to play from your phone on headphones or through your car speaker:

https://soundcloud.com/user-49975035-707486656/christmaseve_podcast

You can also read the scriptures yourself using the drive through/prayer path guide when you stop at the greeter’s table.

Hope these experiences will warm up this cold and dark Christmas, and help us all to remember the joy of gathering together to light some candles and retell the Nativity Story.

Peace in Christ,

Rev. Paula

Sunday, Nov. 1, we pause to celebrate 115 years worshiping in Grand County as a Presbyterian Congregation.

It is also All Saint’s Day by the calendar, so we will pause to honor the lives of the CEH saints who died in 2020: Mark Harrington, Win Watkins, and Steven Sears.

We’ll enjoy peace together in these chaotic, divisive times.


Topic: All Saints Day, Nov. 1, 2020
Time: Nov 1, 2020 09:30 AM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

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Presbyterian Church of the Eternal Hills

10 AM Virtual Worship premiere

June 14, 2020 

follow the worship links at the top of our homepage to view worship and bulletin!

Amazing Acts of the Apostles: The Gift of Courage

Theme Verse: Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. Acts 2:43

Today’s Theme: In chapters six and seven of Acts of the Apostles, we hear about an extraordinary young apostle named Stephen. His faith leads him to preach and teach courageously to the court and he is sentenced to death by stoning. Even with his last breath he prays, “Forgive them, Lord.” Can we let our faith lead us to live courageously and forgive radically?

Stephen’s Courage

We have been looking at the extraordinary gifts bestowed upon the first followers of “The Way.” Last week we heard Peter step up to the plate and speak with such authority, that all the gathered listeners returned home to share the good news with their families — and the gospel on one day left Jerusalem in the hearts of 3,000 families!

This week our message is difficult to hear. Stephen, considered the first Christian Martyr, preached a sermon that summed up the entire history of the Israelites and presented the penultimate conclusion?

Here is it — I wish I could write conclusions like this:

‘You stiff-necked people,
uncircumcised in heart and ears,
you are for ever opposing the Holy Spirit,
just as your ancestors used to do.
Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute?
They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One,
and now you have become his betrayers and murderers.
You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels,
and yet you have not kept it.’
Acts, end of Chap 7, emphasis added

Of course, it did make the religious leaders so angry they stoned him then and there. If it was anything, it was the line about being uncircumcised in heart and ears. Stephen was addressing the most righteous of God’s people — the leaders of the Temple! How dare he call them “uncircumcised?” This language hearkens back to the prophets calling God’s children back into Covenant with sincere worship. Stephen was a remarkable leader, who was raised as a Hellenist Jew (of Greek descent, but Jewish as he was born from a convert mother and circumcised on the eighth day; this was a minority of Jews, but from his sermon we hear a proper education in the Torah). Earlier in Acts we read that he called the Temple leaders out for not caring for the widows and orphans as the Law demanded. The Apostles created the ministry of διάκονος, or what we call Deacons. Stephen was ordained as one of the first! They were called to the task of being servants — we say “the hands and feet of Christ.” It was the passion of the first deacons to care for those who fall through the cracks of the big Temple politics.

Stephen was speaking at a time that was a pivoting point of all history. We use the birth and death of Jesus Christ to divide our known time. This portion of history was known as “Anno Domine” or Year of Our Lord, which definitely shows how everything changed with the Christ event. Now children are taught about the “Common Era,” which doesn’t make it Christo-centric at all (BC, which I learned was history Before Christ, has now become “BCE” or “Before Common Era”).

The change in the way we annotate the era in which we live should be a wake up call that the days of Christendom are over. No longer does the Church (note the capital C on Church, which indicates the Church Universal — the entire Body of Christ) hold the reverence and esteem it once held in communities across the globe. No longer do we depend on people to immediately seek a church for membership when they move from area to area.

But we continue to operate things as if we are living in Christendom. What can we learn from the courage that Stephen showed as he stepped up and shared a stunning sermon? He wanted the leaders to hear that Jesus was the Righteous One who had been promised by the prophets — and they couldn’t hear it. Their hearts were not ready for it.

What message is difficult for us to hear? We too live in a pivotal time in history. Never in our life times has there been a global crisis like Co-Vid, and during this time of isolation and grief (so many things to grieve) we are crying out to “Just go back to the way it used to be.”

I’m sorry to let you know that we will never return to the “Way it used to be.” Nor should we. The Church had gone so far astray from what Christ has demanded of us that we too need a wake up call. Together I believe we can discern and seek out Christ’s Way forward. We may have some teeth-gnashing and our stiff necks may get whiplash, but together, I truly do believe we can find that way forward, when we can honestly pray, “THY kingdom come; THY will be done — on earth as it is in heaven.”

May it be so!

With Love,

Rev. P

Dear Friends,

Our meeting on May 31 is incredibly important! An affirmative vote will allow us to “encumber our property” with debt long enough for our pledges to come in over a three year period of time, when the money will all be spent within a few months (many of you may have used a construction loan to build your own homes until you could secure a mortgage when the construction was finished and the property assessed).  Please recognize that the $600,000 loan total may never be reached, and we know the sustaining debt (if any) will be much more manageable. Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program is fully supportive of our project and actually excited for the good work our congregation is engaged in as we reach out to the community and look to a very exciting future! Sunday’s service celebrates the Pentecost Fire! We look to the ways it has touched me as a pastor in my call to preach the Word, and it looks to the ways the Spirit has moved through this whole project.

Please read this to consider and pray about before worship tomorrow and before we engage in our congregational vote on Sunday, May 31:

Project 2020: Congregational Meeting on May 31

On Sunday May 31, we will hold a very important congregational meeting and vote. Due to a lot of work by many in our congregation and others, we are now ready to start construction and bring our Project 2020 vision and dreams to reality!

At the virtual congregational meeting we will (1) provide an update on Project 2020; (2) provide information and answer questions on the construction bridge loan; and (3) ask for a vote to approve proceeding with the loan.

***This meeting will be held on Sunday May 31 at 11:15 and clicking on [Zoom link].***

Please plan to join this Zoom meeting!

Background

We have been approved and are ready to close on a flexible construction bridge loan of up to $600,000 from the Presbytery Investment Loan Program (PILP). These funds will cover costs during the construction phase of Project 2020. It allows us to pay construction costs while we accumulate pledges and other funding through December 2022. This is a typical approach to funding a construction project. We will start drawing on this loan as construction begins.  The 3.6% interest rate is calculated based on only the amount we need to borrow, and there is no penalty for prepayment.

3. Our intention is to pay the bridge loan back as pledges and other donations are received and convert only a manageable amount to a regular loan. Any remaining loan balance (i.e., residual debt) will convert to a 20-year loan at 3.4% interest. We consider debt service in the range of 5% of our annual budget to be manageable.
4. This bridge loan would encumber our church property (that is, use church property as collateral to secure the loan) and requires a vote of the congregation. We are confident in our ability to use this loan during construction while incurring manageable residual debt. Our goal remains to manage the project to zero debt.
5. There are a number of factors that will impact the residual debt, if any, including the accuracy of the initial cost estimate; actual cost of the project; pledge fulfillment rate; decisions to defer scope; and additional gifts and grants that may be received.
6. Taken together, our pre-campaign gifts, pledges, and grant amount to more than 80% of our original Phase 1 construction estimate.
7. Note also that the Denver Presbytery has given us a grant of $121,500 toward Project 2020 with the possibility of additional grant funding.

Action

At the congregational meeting, you will be asked to vote to approve securing a construction bridge loan in the amount of up to $600,000 from the Presbytery Investment Loan Program (PILP).

Please feel free to contact Pastor Paula, Matt Nixon, Meryl Eddy or Bob Gaskins with questions.

Project 2020: Congregational Meeting on May 31

On Sunday May 31, we will hold a very important congregational meeting and vote. Due to a lot of work by many in our congregation and others, we are now ready to start construction and bring our Project 2020 vision and dreams to reality!

At the virtual congregational meeting we will (1) provide an update on Project 2020; (2) provide information and answer questions on the construction bridge loan; and (3) ask for a vote to approve proceeding with the loan.

***This meeting will be held on Sunday May 31 following the 10 AM virtual service on Zoom. Please contact admin@eternalhills.org to receive an invitation. Attendance will require registration!***

Please plan to join this Zoom meeting!

Background

We have been approved and are ready to close on a flexible construction bridge loan of up to $600,000 from the Presbytery Investment Loan Program (PILP). These funds will cover costs during the construction phase of Project 2020. It allows us to pay construction costs while we accumulate pledges and other funding through December 2022. This is a typical approach to funding a construction project. We will start drawing on this loan as construction begins.  The 3.6% interest rate is calculated based on only the amount we need to borrow, and there is no penalty for prepayment.

3. Our intention is to pay the bridge loan back as pledges and other donations are received and convert only a manageable amount to a regular loan. Any remaining loan balance (i.e., residual debt) will convert to a 20-year loan at 3.4% interest. We consider debt service in the range of 5% of our annual budget to be manageable.
4. This bridge loan would encumber our church property (that is, use church property as collateral to secure the loan) and requires a vote of the congregation. We are confident in our ability to use this loan during construction while incurring manageable residual debt. Our goal remains to manage the project to zero debt.
5. There are a number of factors that will impact the residual debt, if any, including the accuracy of the initial cost estimate; actual cost of the project; pledge fulfillment rate; decisions to defer scope; and additional gifts and grants that may be received.
6. Taken together, our pre-campaign gifts, pledges, and grant amount to more than 80% of our original Phase 1 construction estimate.
7. Note also that the Denver Presbytery has given us a grant of $121,500 toward Project 2020 with the possibility of additional grant funding.

Action

At the congregational meeting, you will be asked to vote to approve securing a construction bridge loan in the amount of up to $600,000 from the Presbytery Investment Loan Program (PILP).

Please feel free to contact Pastor Paula, Matt Nixon, Meryl Eddy or Bob Gaskins with questions.

This week is our final week covering “Resurrection Stories.”  Next week we “Flash back” to when Jesus shared that he was sending the paraclete to be present with us in our work after the resurrection. Of course the disciples didn’t understand at the time, but it was made pretty obvious on the day of Pentecost! This year we celebrate Pentecost on May 31, and it will be the continuing work of the Holy Spirit to keep us united despite our distance!

But for this week, we hear Jesus offer Peter — the ROCK — redemption for his denials on the day of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. And then another gentle reminder to: Follow Me.  What does “Follow Me” and “Feed my Flock” look like in the time of Co-Vid?

Our Opening Hymn and the response to our sermon is a wonderful hymn with lyrics worth thinking about.  The problem is with this hymn: lots of words, and it moves very fast! This week we will be singing different verses in two parts of the service. As an opening hymn, and to invite you into the theme of “follow me,” we hear the voice of God calling us into service:

Opening Hymn Will You Come and Follow Me (The Summons)    Glory to God Hymnal, p 726, vs 1-3

Verse One

“Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown; will you let my name be known;

will you let my life be known in you and you in me?”

“Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?

Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?

Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?

Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?”

“Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?

Will you set the prisoners free and never be the same?

Will you kiss the leper clean, and do such as this unseen,

and admit to what I mean in you and you in me?”

Our sermon focuses on Peter’s guilt and grief, which Jesus addresses with the comfort of food and fellowship in John 21 (a continuation of last week’s reading). Something was holding Peter back. Something was keeping him from serving God in the way Jesus had called him to. Peter had returned to fishing because it was comfortable and he was pretty good at it.  He was not comfortable with becoming a leader, the one to build the Resurrected Body of Christ into the Church; thus Jesus’ gentle reminder to “Cast your nets on the other side of the boat.”Then in a meaningful one-on-on discussion, Jesus asks Peter three times “Do you love me?”  We know the story — we know Peter says “Yes, Lord! You know I love you.”  It’s the same answer we give when Jesus calls to us, “Do you love me?”  But just affirming our adoration and love of Jesus is not enough; Jesus calls for action — “Feed my sheep; tend my flock; feed my lambs.”  Then Jesus simply adds, “Follow Me.”  That’s our dilemma these days. How do we “Follow” in this time of Co-Vid?   We have always been a congregation that loves to worship together; this week we really contemplate that Jesus never once said “Worship me.”  He asked of Peter and the discples, and he asks of us to “Follow me.” CEH has found a new way to use her building and the beautiful space we have been given. You’ll get to see just how this is working out in a new ministry in the footage at the end of our sermon as we have figured out how to “Cast our nets on the other side of the boat.”

Here then, are the lyrics to the fourth and fifth verses of that same hymn — The Summons.  Imagine verse four is Jesus calling you and questioning you; your answer is verse five.

Four

“Will you love the ‘you’ you hide if I but call your name?

Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?

Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around,

through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?”

Five

Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name.

Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.

In your company I’ll go where your love and foot steps show.

Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

I hope slowing these lyrics down and giving you a chance to ponder them prior to worship on YouTube on Sunday will help make the service more meaningful to you. We work very hard to make a theme evident through each worship service, and knowing it in advance perhaps will help that theme “stick” a little more.

I’m getting ready to offer a few more fellowship opportunities via zoom for our adults. These will be based around interests, so stay tuned.  Some thoughts are moving our “Sinners & Skeptics” class to Zoom for engaging and challenging discussion about our doubts and fears and questions.  Other opportunities will be about parenthood support, grief support, etc.  Please let me know what you are interested in by texting, calling, or emailing me personally.  I really miss connecting with each and every one of you each week. I want to support and encourage your during this time, so I pray you will reach out if you are struggling or drowning or even just feeling a little lost.

Peace in Christ,

Rev. Paula