Chili Supper and more

Tomorrow night, Wednesday March 4th, will be our annual Chili Supper Fundraiser. We need all high school students to be at church by 4:15 (or as early as possible) to help. High schoolers will be done at 7:00, while middle schoolers will start helping clean-up at 7:00. HS, we need your Chili by 4:15 and MS, we need your cheese by 4:15 as well (if you need to deliver it earlier you can place it in either fridge). The dinner itself will start at 5:00 and run until 7:00. Beginning at 5:30 everyone will get the chance to taste 9 different chilis that have been entered in our cook-off. Awards will be at 6:45. Invite some friends and see you there!

I had the awesome opportunity last night to attend Oostburg's Top 10 Banquet. Part of what was so awesome was the number of students from our ministry honored as academic letter winners. Eight of our students carry a A- or higher grade point average, which is really impressive, so congrats to all of you on your hard work. I got to be there last night because Andrea was honored as the most influential teacher of one of the Top 10 seniors, which is a big honor. I am so proud of the amazing work she is doing making a differences on so many students' lives in her classroom.

Sunday night we had a powerful message on communion. While we do communion quite frequently I don't think we always get what it's all about. We talked about how communion is about being with other Christians on common ground and letting the Spirit of Christ in. We all know that old adage, "you are what you eat," well it's that way with communion. When we eat we let Christ in. Are we getting that, and subsequently living like it? Then we said that communion is a remembrance of what Jesus did for us. Jesus got the tar kicked out of him for all of us. His bones broken, shards of metal and glass into his back, his blood all over, just nasty stuff. And Jesus CHOSE to go through all of that for us, so that we can have the Hope of eternal life. This isn't the I HOPE the Cubs will when the World Series kind of hope, but the kind that is full proof and certain. Communion reminds us that because of Christ being broken and dying on that cross we WILL have eternal life. We then had our own version of communion, breaking cookies over and over to symbolize Christ being broken for all our sins.