Reverend Jonathan Kern
Just when you stop to take a few breaths from the packed Christmas season, February comes knocking at your door! (For a great poem on this very thing, check out page 9!) Ash Wednesday is quickly approaching, and you can find everything you need to know about the season of Lent in 2020 on page 11.
But before we get to Lent, we have a photo directory we want to complete, and it won’t be complete without you! If you haven’t signed up for a photo session, PLEASE CALL 303-400-6023! I can’t stress this enough. Even if you have no interest in ordering photos, this is an opportunity for the church to have an updated photo of you for our records at no cost. This would be a tremendous help for us and our membership records moving forward. Bettinger Photography has also made it clear that they will only provide directories to people who had their photos taken. If you would like a directory, please sign up. And this isn’t just for members! If you regularly attend service at Immanuel and participate in our community life, we want you to be in this directory!
Thank you again to everyone who participated in our annual Deaf and Blind Christmas ministry! This was an incredible opportunity for us to invite our neighbors to dinner and bless them, and what an amazing blessing that was for us. Please know that the seeds we have been sowing in that relationship the last few years are starting to bear fruit, and I look forward to seeing how God continues to position us to be faithful witnesses of the Gospel to that community.
Pikes Peak Academy officially opened its doors on our campus on January 13, and it has been a delight to see our school building buzzing with students, teachers, and even the old school bell! Each week has been an opportunity for them to learn how to operate in the space, but they are incredibly thankful for this new season for their school. They are already at full capacity!
Earlier this week, we hosted a neighborhood meeting with the team developing the land just to the west of our property. It was a great opportunity to meet some of our neighbors and hear the types of concerns that they had; not just for this project (two high-end apartment buildings), but also for the neighborhood in general. It was a tremendous blessing to see the faces of our neighborhood, and I knew instantly that I wanted to see more of them.
In 2019, I started the year with the goal of wanting to meet the neighbors and learn more about the neighborhood. While we might not have met some of those goals as I had envisioned them, I am thankful for the opportunities that God brought to us that didn’t see coming. We did new things with new people around us, and I look forward to the opportunities the Lord has for us to do the same in 2020. Please pray for our neighborhood and for greater connections with our neighbors, as we seek to love them and show them Jesus. The Lord be with you all!
Pastor Kern
