Harvest Fest

The Harvest Festival at Twig Town Hall was wonderfully attended and a really fun time for the church family as we interacted with the local community. The hot air balloon was grounded because of brisk winds, but everything else was pulled off as planned. Treasure hunts, art projects, Belgian horse-drawn hayrides, and that most appreciated gift of sunshine over the whole morning. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

The service at eleven was a special event in the middle of the festival, with some of the best singing from our church family quintet, opening with "Heaven On My Mind." There were lots of photos taken which will no doubt be shared soon.

We shared in the singing of some great songs and then Brad read a passage from the Psalms and led us in prayer. The sermon was brief but pointed and delivered from the heart.

Missing Ingredients

Pastor Brad began by stating that his new fall sermon theme would be about Missing Ingredients. He noted that he enjoys watching masterful chefs at work, and cited that "look" a chef gets when he's taken a taste of whatever he's stewing up and is trying to determine what ingredient is missing that would make it a perfect concoction.

Today's sermon was about purpose. And his starting point was the book of Ecclesiastes, written by a man who had done everything he could think of to find satisfaction. He successfully pursued money, power, pleasure and everything else under the sun that he could think of... but concluded that all was vanity. We were made for more.

One form of torturing prisoners is to make them dig holes and move dirt and then make them move it back again, turning their labors into futility and pointlessness. This kind of purposeless labor is emotionally devastating.

Brad told how he sometimes gets the wheels turning in peoples' head by drawing a circle and asking "Do you look inside or outside yourself when seeking purpose?" It's natural to look inside oneself, he noted, but not smart.

Brad talked about how purposeful God is. We live in a broken world, a self-evident truth when we look at all the poverty, oppression, injustice, pain, war, etc. God has His hand stretched out to each of us to partner with him to redeem, mend, heal, restore this broken world.

The pastor read Acts 13:36 for us about David serving God's purpose in his generation, and noted that we are called to partner with God's purposes in our own generation. We've been designed to live with purpose. God's appeal to us is, "I'll work on that with you if you are willing to participate with Me."

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If you joined us for the Harvest Festival we hope it was a very special time. The pictures here only tell part of the story. Click to enlarge.