From The Pastor

Brothers and sisters,

It’s hard to believe, but we are nearly three weeks into January! It feels like Christmas was a week ago! Regardless, I wanted us to start out the new year with a new sermon series—one that asks a simple question. Now, you may see the title of this article and think, “Shouldn’t the pastor already know the answer to that question?” And, yes, I do know who Jesus is! But I wanted us to take some time here at the beginning of the year to look at passages from early on in Jesus’ ministry. These moments, mostly from Luke’s gospel, are keys to understanding the overarching point of Jesus’ ministry. They set up Jesus’ identity and give us some insight into how he viewed his own mission.

In many ways, this will be a “back-to-the-basics” type of series, but I think it’s good from time to time to reexamine those basics, to understand the principles so much of our faith is built on. I’m re- minded of when I was in middle school and high school math classes. I was fortunate enough to have math teachers that would take the time to break down why certain formulas or equations worked. So, we did exercises where we broke down why the area of a triangle is ½ base times height or why the Pythagorean Theorem works. Because those teachers took the time to break those things down, we had a much better understanding of why the math was working out, how the math was working out, and how we could use it in creative ways to solve problems.

By reexamining some of the basics of Jesus’ ministry, my hope is that we can come to a better understanding of why he did the things he did, how his ministry was able to build others up, why it is still relevant to us today, and how we can apply the principles of his ministry to our everyday lives. I’m looking forward to going through these passages together and seeing what we can discover!

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

Brothers and sisters,

By the time y’all read this, 2024 will be a thing of the past! I know this is cliché to say, but, depending on when you ask me, Thanksgiving feels like it was either just yesterday or six months ago! In a similar way, as I sit here writing this on Tuesday, there is a part of me that thinks, “Wait—2024 is already over?!” and there is a part of me that thinks, “Oh, thank goodness! 2024 has lasted forever!” Regardless, we’ve done a lot over the last year, so I want to take this space in the Illuminator to recap some of the stuff we’ve done together.
Throughout this year, we have taken on a bunch of different missions projects, doing our best to live out the call God has placed on us as a church—to be the hands and feet of Jesus. This year, we’ve participated in Operation Inasmuch—cleaning yards, making goodie bags for teachers, and supply bags for our homeless neighbors. We’ve collected new and gently used clothing items for the clothes closet over at Parkwood Elementary. We’ve partnered with Scarlette Jasper and Olive Branch Ministries to help provide Christmas to poor children in rural Appalachia. And we’ve collected money, winter clothes, and other basic supplies for folks out west devastated by Hurricane Helene, including putting together 16 Disaster Relief Cleanup Buckets.

We’ve also reached out to our local community this year to remind them that we see them, we love them, and God loves them too. We put on our annual Easter Egg Hunt and Crafting Fair, inviting local families to come and learn more about the resurrection of Jesus and the depths of God’s love for them. We had another summer of Super Saturday Adventures, teaching local kids about the parables of Jesus, showing them how church comes together as a community, and helping them participate in missions projects to help people here in Durham. We had our annual Fall Festival with Trunk-or-Treat, another reminder to our community that we love them, but also a reminder that our God is a joyful God—that means we ought to celebrate whenever we can!

We’ve also had wonderful times of fellowship this year. February saw our Souper Bowl of Caring, when we all brought pots of chili and/or fixings and/or desserts to raise money for the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC. We had our Summer Send-Off Ice Cream Social this year around Labor Day. And, more recently, we had our Advent/Christmas Craft Workshop where folks were able to come and make crafts for themselves and others in our community.

Finally, we had special services throughout the year. Leena Levanya came and spoke to our church about her ministry in India. World Relief Durham came and told us more about the work they do with refugees here in the Triangle. We had our Hanging of the Greens and “The Candles of Christmas” during Advent, in addition to our Christmas Eve service. Best of all, we celebrated three baptisms this year—Gary and Victoria Finch, and Ron Parker.
Believe it or not, that is not all we did—I just ran out of space! 2024 has been a busy year, but a very good year too. May we enter 2025 with as much passion for God’s call on our church. May we seek God faithfully as a church family.

Happy New Year,
Pastor Ben

Earlier this year, I admitted one of my shortcomings to you all—I do not get poetry. I have tried and tried. I’ve tried simple stuff. I’ve tried classics. My friends who are English teachers have tried to help me and have given up in the process!

That being said, every now and then a poem comes along that I get. It’s a snapshot of a moment or a feeling that makes sense to me. At this time last year, I left you all with a poem in the Illuminator and I figured I’d do that again. I love the way that Ted Kooser captures the connection between our Christmas celebrations today and the original Christmas two thousand years ago, seeing it through the eyes of a mail carrier. Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Christmas Mail
By Ted Kooser
Cards in each mailbox,
angel, manger, star and lamb,
as the rural carrier,
driving the snowy roads,
hears from her bundles
the plaintive bleating of sheep,
the shuffle of sandals,
the clopping of camels.
At stop after stop,
she opens the little tin door
and places deep in the shadows
the shepherds and wise men,
the donkeys lank and weary,
the cow who chews and muses.
And from her Styrofoam cup,
white as a star and perched
on the dashboard, leading her
ever into the distance,
there is a hint of hazelnut,
and then a touch of myrrh.

Accessed via https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55886/christmas-mail, on December 11, 2024.

Brothers and sisters,

I wanted to write to you all this week and give you a quick run-down of everything happening at our church during the Advent season—cause there’s a lot!

First, on Sunday, December 1st, we will be having our usual Hanging of the Greens service during morning worship. The Hanging of the Greens is a traditional service that acts as the official beginning of Advent. During the service, we will reflect on what the symbols of Advent mean and how they connect to the story of Jesus’ birth. This is always a beautiful service with lots of participation from the congregation, so come and bring in the Advent season with us!

Then, on December 7th, from 3:00-5:00, Frances Smith and others will be leading an Advent Craft Workshop. There is an announcement with more details in this newsletter, so be sure to read through it. If you have any questions, be sure to contact Frances. Everyone is invited to come and participate in this event! Come on out and make something for Christmas!

On December 8th, we will have our usual Sunday morning worship, but we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper this Sunday.

Next, on December 15th during morning worship, we will have our Christmas musical service, “The Candles of Christmas”, with a reception in the Fellowship Hall after-ward. If you have not been to one of these musical services in the past, I highly recommend you come! The music is beautiful, the readings are inspiring, and the food is delicious! Do yourself a favor and mark your calendar for this one!

Finally, we will have our Christmas Eve Communion and Candlelight Service on Tuesday, December 24th at 5:00 PM in the sanctuary. After all the hustle and bustle that comes with the Christmas season, this service always serves as a time of respite. At this service, we will celebrate the birth of Jesus, remember his sacrifice, and ponder the great mystery of Immanuel, “God with us.” This service always ends with us singing “Silent Night” by the light of candles—a perfect way to finish the season of Advent.

I look forward to seeing you all at each of these events!

Grace and peace,

Pastor Ben

Brothers and sisters,
November is a unique time of the year—in my opinion. It’s a month that so often gets overshadowed by its neighbors. October dominates the beginning of fall with fairs and football and, of course, Halloween. December then dominates the end of the year with, obviously, Christ-mas taking up a tremendous amount of our attention before ceding some ground to New Year’s Eve. November does have Thanksgiving, but if you put Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas in a popularity contest—I couldn’t tell you who’d win first, but I could tell you who’d win third.

That being said, November offers this interesting opportunity for us all to rest. It feels almost like taking a deep breath. The mischief and mayhem of Halloween has passed. The joyful busyness of Christmas has yet to set in. And in between those two is this month where the temperatures begin to drop more consistently, the sun goes down earlier, and we’re all encouraged to begin settling in for a cozy, comfy winter. I like the change of pace November offers.

A couple of Illuminators ago, I argued that part of the reason we were putting on something like the Fall Festival was because God exists in a state of joy and celebration. I believe that. But I also believe that God recognizes the limitations we human beings have. We cannot constantly celebrate. We cannot constantly go from party to party. Nor can we constantly go from mission to mission to mission. Instead, we have to take time to rest, to be with the people who fill us up, to do the things that give us life. There’s scripture to back that.

Remember that in Mark’s gospel, Jesus sent his disciples out two by two in order to spread the good news of the gospel. He gave them authority that they might heal the people they met. After that ministry came to an end, the disciples gathered around Jesus and began to tell them all about what they’d done. Jesus, hearing it all, says this to the disciples, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile” (Mark 6:31). Jesus recognized that the disciples needed a moment to catch their breath, to recharge their batteries. They needed time to just be together.

So, this November, do the things that bring you life. Meet up with the people that fill you up. Take some time to rest and enjoy this time of the year. The temperatures will be pleasant. The leaves will be beautiful. The football will be good. And in all of it, give thanks to God.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

Brothers and sisters,

The month of October has been a busy month here at Hope Valley Baptist Church, hasn’t it? Between missions projects, church events, and the day-to-day life of church, we’ve done a lot over the last month. So for this week’s article, I just wanted to run through some of what we’ve done.

While it technically started in September, our commitment to Scarlette Jasper’s Christmas Box ministry in Kentucky and other parts of Appalachia has been a constant theme here at HVBC. The Missions Team initially set a goal of 40 boxes and you all quickly passed that goal, prompting the team to add 5 more boxes to the mix. All in all, our church will be sending 45 boxes to Scarlette and to the folks in her community, allowing them to have Christ-mas and remember how much God loves them.

Kentucky was not the only part of Appalachia our church has helped this month. In the wake of Hurricane Helene, I kept getting questions from folks, asking, “What are we going to do to help those folks? How can we address this disaster?” We decided to do two things: create disaster relief buckets through CBF and send funds to the Baptists on Mission. On short notice, you all contributed over $3,200, allowing us to send 16 disaster relief buckets out west and nearly $2,000 to Baptists on Mission.

But we weren’t done there. Shortly thereafter, Jonathan Herring reached out and asked us to partner with some of his friends in Clyde, NC. Colder temperatures have already become a regular thing in the mountains, so Jonathan asked us to bring coats, mittens, sweaters, and other warm things to help the people and you all responded. When he and Toby Bowen pulled out of HVBC for Clyde, the bed of Jonathan’s truck was full of your donations.

But we weren’t done there either! Jonathan had found a partnership with a factory out of Thomasville that was willing to send bed pads out west for every sleeping bag we collected. And so we sent out the word for donations of sleeping bags and other things to help fight the cold—space heaters being particularly important. Again, you all responded, filling several boxes full of supplies for the folks in western North Carolina.

As if that wasn’t enough going on, we also came together to put on our annual Fall Festival, with games and candy and prizes and food. We were able to reach out to our community here in Durham and remind them that there is a group of Christians who love them and wish them nothing but joy. In the midst of challenging times, it can be an act of holy resistance to say, “We will carve out space for joy and celebration.” Because of that, 56 people were able to come and have a great time!

Finally, through all of this, each Sunday we took the time to examine spooky passages in the scriptures and ask ourselves good, faithful questions. How do I want to spend my life? How do I want to treat the people around me? What does it mean to seek and abide in God’s presence? And, of course, our handbells came through with beautiful music this past Sunday to uplift us and focus our eyes on the beauty of God. It has been a busy month here at HVBC; it has been a good month here at HVBC.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

Brothers and sisters,

As I’m writing this article, we are just ten days away from our church’s annual Fall Festival on Saturday, October 26th from 4:30-6:30 pm! This year promises to be another wonderful opportunity to reach out to our neighborhood and remind them how much God loves them and how deeply we love them too.

This year, we are going to have several different areas for local children and parents to engage with. We will have our usual area for Trunk-or-Treat, with church members decorating the trunks of their cars and passing out candy to children. Trunks are always fun to do be-cause you get to interact with the kids and parents as they are coming through. And man do kids love to show off their costumes! In addition to that, we will be having our usual Best Trunk competition, as voted on by our guests—so if you sign up, be sure to bring your A game!

In addition to the trunks, we will have an area dedicated specifically to crafts. Frances Smith has a bunch of unique fall-related crafts for the kids to make, with all of them reminding the kids that God loves them very much and/or that we have so much to be thankful for! There will also be small pumpkins for the kids to decorate using markers if they’d like to!
Beyond that, we are going to have several carnival-style games set up for kids to play—ring toss, mini putt-putt, and more! Kids will win tickets that they can then bring over to our Prize Table and trade in for all kinds of prizes (or even more candy). The prize table can get hectic, but it can be fun to haggle with a kid, i.e., “Ok. You’ve got 12 tickets left. Let’s think about our options here.” Here again, you get to interact with the kids and see their personalities shine.

Finally, we are providing a meal for anyone who comes through. It’s a simple meal, but so many parents told us last year that it was perfect. They were able to come out, have a good time with their family, and not have to worry about supper that night. And after every-thing was said and done, several volunteers told me last year, “It was nice to work really hard together and then end the night sharing a meal as a church family.”

For all these things, we need volunteers. We need folks to decorate their trunks. We need folks to help Frances with crafts. We need folks to run games and work the prize table. If you can help that night, please sign up on the Volunteer Sign-Up Sheet in the vestibule this Sunday, October 20th. If you’re not going to be here this Sunday, but you would like to volunteer at Fall Festival, shoot me an email ([email protected]) and let me know. If there’s a specific area you’d like to help in, let me know.

In my mind, events like this one are important for two main reasons. The first is simply to remind the community of our presence and of our love for them. The second is something C. S. Lewis alludes to throughout his Narnia series—that God is always looking for moments to celebrate. The church, then, is called to be an institution that is looking for any reason to be joyful. Events like Fall Festival are moments like that. In a world of constant worry and tension, we can be a place that says, “Come away from all that and spend some time with us, celebrating!”

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

Brothers and sisters,
I’m excited about our upcoming sermon series. I love this time of the year. College football is back. The State Fair is coming up. Our church’s Fall Festival is quickly approaching. And, of course, we end the month with Halloween, one of my favorite holidays of the year. In the spirit of Halloween and all the interesting ideas it raises, I thought we could do a sermon series on a few passages within the scriptures that are not your typical passages.

You all know that I value and appreciate the lectionary—the three-year cycle of scripture passages that most preachers preach from and/or draw Calls to Worship from—but the lectionary definitely has some blind spots. In particular, the lectionary does not typically pick up on passages that are a little, shall we say, spookier. It tends to avoid passages where ghosts or demons or witches are mentioned. While I understand why it does this—these are not always the easiest pas-sages to preach on—I think that we miss out on some really interesting lessons when we avoid those stories.

I want to take the month of October to talk about four passages where something supernatural happens. I want to take a look at the ways in which the people respond to the crazy things they’re seeing. And I want to look at how God is found in each of those moments. So, we’ll start with a classic—Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones. We’ll move on to the story that gives us the phrase “the writing’s on the wall.” We’ll also spend a Sunday talking about some wannabe exorcists in the book of Acts. And the Sunday before Halloween, we’ll take a look at Saul and the witch of Endor.

I’m excited for this series because these passages have the ability to push us in ways we may not necessarily be used to. They will ask us hard questions about what our faith should look like and how we should express it. They will ask us how deeply we truly believe. But this series will end on November 3rd with a familiar passage from the Gospel that reminds us that in everything, spooky or not, God is with us. Happy Spooky Season, y’all!

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

P.S. When I told the church council about this series months ago, I prefaced the discussion by saying, “I think y’all know this already, but I love Halloween.” I’d barely gotten the sentence out of my mouth before someone on the council chuckled and said, “We know.” When I paused to look at them, they said, “I mean, you went to Salem the weekend before Halloween. Who does that unless they love Halloween!” And, you know, they weren’t wrong!

Brothers and sisters,

In some ways, I feel like I write some version of this same article at least once a year. Regardless, I’m going to write it again. Two weekends ago, I rode down to Goldsboro to see my dad and my brother. Dad and I had bought tickets to one of the last home games for the Down East Wood Ducks, the minor league baseball team in nearby Kinston, for Friday night.

Because the weather was so nice, Dad and I decided to take his convertible, put the top down, and drive to Kinston using backroads, meaning we drove by lots and lots of fields. Now, they may not seem like much to look at—after all, a field is just flat ground—but to someone born and raised in Eastern NC, the fields were beautiful. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but deep greens and vibrant yellows. The trees lining the backroads to Kinston frame everything so perfectly that you get these picturesque scenes of fields and farmhouses and barns and sky. It’s wonderful!

I say all that not just to convince you to go for a drive sometime when it’s pretty out, but just to remind you that there is such beauty in God’s creation that is all around us. This is the time of year to go eat supper on the porch. It’s the time to pack a picnic and have lunch in Duke Gardens. One of my favorites—and it will only get better as the leaves turn—is UNC’s campus, particularly the Arboretum and the quad between Franklin Street and the Old Well.

Days like these are reminders, to me at least, of the special care that God took in making the earth. It is a place that can provide us with such tender beauty. It is a place where we can feel at peace, knowing that we belong here. God’s creation can speak to us in ways that can be familiar, but can also stir something deep within our souls. The fields of Eastern NC are not just pretty; they connect me to a place that feels like home, to a God that deeply loves me and all of Creation.

So, again, I feel like I write this article a lot, but go have supper on the porch tonight or go for a walk around the neighborhood and breathe in God’s love and creativity.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

Brothers and sisters,

In a little over a week, we will be having another Deacon Ordination service here at Hope Valley Baptist Church. Marie Bush was elected as one of our new members on the diaconate — her first time serving! Because of that, we get to come alongside her as her brothers and sisters in Christ and affirm the call God has placed on her.

The office of deacon can be traced back to various passages within the scriptures. Within the Old Testament, an argument can be made that the judges Moses appointed to help him settle disputes were similar to deacons. Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, saw how Moses was exhausting himself in his efforts to help the people. He gave Moses great advice, telling him that if he continued this way, he would wear out himself and the people. He told Moses to appoint good honest folks to help him care for God’s people. Moses did that and the judges came alongside him and helped him. In the same way, deacons are called to come alongside the pastor of their church and help him/her care for the people God has entrusted to them.

In the New Testament, you can read about some of the earliest deacons within the church in Acts 6:1-6. There was a dispute within the early church about whose widows were being cared for and whose weren’t. The twelve apostles then called the church together and appointed seven people “full of the Spirit and of wisdom” to care for the widows. Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus were chosen. The twelve apostles prayed over them and laid their hands on them. The first deacons had been ordained!

Paul also constantly lists deacons that helped him throughout his own ministry, with one of the most famous deacons mentioned being Phoebe in Rome. Paul says of her, “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchrae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord, as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well” (Romans 16:1-2). Paul understood that the work of God’s kingdom is never limited to one person. It takes a community of people to serve the Lord.

On September 15th, we will come together as a community to honor the work that Marie has been called to. We will pray over her and lay hands on her, the same way the apostles did in Acts. She will serve alongside myself and the other deacons as we do our best to care for the people here at Hope Valley. And she will contribute to the work of God’s kingdom here on earth.

I’m looking forward to the 15th!

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben