Today is the very last day for our annual Souper Bowl of Caring food drive. This year we’re collecting MONETARY DONATIONS ONLY. It was decided this year to support Cy Fair Helping Hands.
Cy-Fair Helping Hands is a non-profit that was founded to help the homeless of Cy-Fair to become self-sufficient. This ministry began about 10 years ago, with a Cy-Fair couple serving soup from the back of a pick-up truck to those living on the streets of northwest Houston. They forged relationships with the homeless, collecting and storing food, clothes and supplies for them in their garage. The couple sold their antique business to fund CFHH.
Since 2010, CFHH has grown to include office space and a Community Food Pantry, enabling it to serve the homeless on the street and the hungry of Cy-Fair—including more than 1,500 homeless kids and youth in CFISD.
CFHH estimates that it costs $10 to feed one person for a day. We encourage you, with this year’s Souper Bowl drive, to help however you can in this mission effort. You can drop cash in our Souper Bowl soup pot (by the door), write a check to Heritage and indicate “Souper Bowl” on the memo line, or use Pay Pal and then follow up with Wendy to let her know what the donation is for. Thank you for your help in feeding our neighbors!
A brief congregational meeting will be held immediately following our worship service today to act on our Nominating Committee’s recommendation to fill a vacancy on our Session. Everyone is invited, welcomed, and encouraged to be there. Please stay and participate!
Ash Wednesday, February 17th, 7:00 PM, Both in-person and via Zoom
Because of social distancing restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the imposition of ashes will not be done as we have in the past; instead, small individual containers of fine dirt will be available for everyone to use to draw a small cross on the back of your hand. We will do this ceremony together to mark ourselves as a community of faith and to remember those ancient words from Genesis: “Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”
Pastor’s dreams for our church: A “Community Center” Church Building
If you drive past most churches between Monday and Saturday, you will most likely find their parking lots empty most of the time. Perhaps church buildings are open for occasional committee meetings or choir practice or a special event. But why not dream for more?
What if we treated our new church home like a community center for the surrounding area? What sorts of activities might put additional cars in our parking lot during the week?
- AA meetings (in our old church home, we used to host two per week)
- Al-Anon meetings (again, we used to host one on Saturday mornings)
- Various 12-step programs
- Girl Scouts and/or Boy Scouts (still a great activity for kids!)
- Nesting a new church development that just needs space to worship
- Voting precinct (great way to open our building to potential visitors!)
- Emergency day shelter (How many hurricanes will hit Houston in the next 20 years? What if our lights were still on?)
- Weddings! (Have you seen some of the outdoor wedding facilities that could be constructed inexpensively on our property?)
One more idea that has been discussed at length is to host home-school activities in our classrooms or our fellowship hall. Parents of home-schooled children are often looking for a location in which to offer music, language, or art lessons. What if we “traded” the use of our spaces for the use of their talents in the life of our church? (Examples: a mural for the nursery, extra music for worship services, various languages spoken on Pentecost services, etc.) With Covid-19 hitting our country during the past year, any church building could have multiple uses for students of all sorts.
And if we did any of these things, picture folks driving past, seeing multiple cars in our parking lot during the week, and wondering to themselves, “What is going on at that church???”
So…what are YOUR dreams?
Property Sales Countdown: We have grante the proposed buyer of our property an extension to the inspection period. This means the current contract now goes through April 7th, so we have 52 days to go (counting from Feb. 14th.) Meanwhile…you haven’t stopped praying, have you?!?!?
Weekly Tithes and Offerings: February 9th deposit: $4081
Thank you for your faithful participation and support of your church !