Some ideas in this sermon came from Timothy Keller's The Trouble with Christianity series.

Radcliff Christian is becoming a place where no one loses hope and no one is left alone
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We had a great time at our first Family Worship lunch last Sunday (at Britt & Michelle's -- check out pictures on RCC Facebook page)!  

I'm thankful for those who were able to attend last week and am excited about our upcoming lunch this Sunday October 15, 12:45 - 2:00pm.

We will have a 15 minute Family Worship "trial run" as part of our get together this Sunday.  By the way, you don't have to attend the 11:00 service and the lunch. You can just come for the lunch because that counts as worship too!

   Gemma's Messy StoryPosted by BRF team on 27 Jul 2017 

I have always felt God’s presence in my life, even as a child. However, I believe that my true path as a Christian, as someone who aspires to be a disciple of Christ, started approximately three years ago.I had attended church on and off before this, but mainly busied myself with my young family. As my children grew older and started attending nursery, I became more integrated into my community. A friend of mine suggested I try an after-school session called MessyChurch. 

After just one session, I felt so inspired. I felt proud that I had exposed my young children to the teaching of Christ and couldn’t believe what a treasure I had found! I actually felt like a winner; I had found one of the best after-school activities, and it was free. I started to tell everyone I could about it, so they too could join in on the fun.

My passion was ignited by the friendliness, generosity and kindness that Messy Church had promoted that day. It had completely shattered my preconceptions about church being a place not suited to young children. The idea that the church was embracing these families and providing fun, food and prayer for nothing in return just astounded me. 

It is very obvious to me that God was working in me that day. I felt confident enough to walk through the door the following Sunday for the service, knowing that I would recognise, and be recognised and kindly received by, the staff I had met in Messy Church that day.

I now help run Messy Church, am a fully integrated member of the church and find nothing more enjoyable than using the creative gifts God gave me to serve at St Matthew’s Fulham. I want to be an example to others in the non-Christian community that even a family with three under-5s and a teenager is welcome at church, that families are just as important as quiet, well-behaved adults, and that it’s not scary. In fact, it is fun and exciting to learn.

Messy Church, in my opinion, is the best way for a church to display its true colours in Christ, the best way to informally invite families back to church. Messy Church set me on a path of conviction and commitment to Christ, and I have witnessed other families who attend MessyChurch be set on that same path. They are becoming regular attendees, learning more about Christ and helping their children to receive the same teaching. This is not just a new project, a new statistic for the church. It’s real and it works!

Messy Church is available to every family in the community and is just the perfect beacon in the dark. It’s available to everyone, just like the gift of God’s son, and creates a way for families to learn more.
Gemma Hill, 36, is married to Martin and is the mother of four children, aged 14, 4, 3 and 7 months.


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RADCLIFF CHRISTIAN -- WHERE GREAT THINGS HAPPEN!


One of the chaplains at Norton Hospital shared the following story with us this week. A great illustration!

Before he retired, LaSalle University basketball coach William (Speedy) Morris received a phone call while shaving one morning. "Sports Illustrated is on the phone," his wife called out.  He got so excited that someone from Sports Illustrated, the most important sports magazine in the country, wanted to talk with him that he hurried his shaving, cutting himself three different places, ran out of the bathroom, lost his balance and tumbled down the stairs. Finally, limping, and with blood and lather on his face, he got to the telephone.
"Sports Illustrated?" he asked.
"Yes, it is," said the voice on the other line, "and for just $1 an issue, you can get a full year's subscription!"
It's tough when the phone call is not quite what we hoped for or when the plays we purposefully diagrammed don't quite turn out like we expect.

We have our ideas of how things should go in our lives. We have a purpose and a plan. We make our decisions and then, life turns out differently than we expected. The job was not quite what we anticipated it to be—the diagnosis was worse than we had hoped—the plan we so carefully devised fell far short of what we projected. We soon learn that despite our fervent efforts and carefully constructed plots, life cannot always be engineered to fit all our intentions.
This is where our faith helps us greatly. A preacher long ago, writing of the intersection of purpose and faith, said:

Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
   don't try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
  God's the one who will keep you on track.
Proverbs 3:5, The Message

Success in life depends on our willingness to find joy, even when our aims fall short of our hopes and purposes. The good news is that God is ahead of us, working for our good in ways we cannot understand or anticipate. We can trust that God cares for us and that we can trust the process of God's mercy and grace. Have the courage to make mistakes and to let the process unfold.

We need to make plans and anticipate needs; we need to have our agendas and diagram our plays. But we also need to recognize that if and when our expectations don't work out, faith can help us "listen for God's voice in everything we do, everywhere we go." May we find the faith to "trust God from the bottom of our hearts."

It's great to be your Pastor!

​Dear RCC family,
 
You’re receiving this “Note from the Family” as part of our celebration of the birth of Christ. It’s an opportunity for you to enjoy a Christmas memory with a member of your RCC family.  Thanks to David Colvin for sharing his warm memory of a childhood Christmas!
  
   I was six years old that Christmas of 1936--my birthday had been just four weeks earlier on November 22. My name is David. I lived with my Mother and Father, three sisters and one brother--Rebecca, Martha, Ruth and James—in my Grandmother’s house. It was a rambling farm-house, cool in the summer, icy cold in winter. And yes, we all had been given biblical names, a fact in which my mother took great pride!
      The Christmas tree had been in place in our living room for a week and, in our eyes, was beautiful. It was a cedar tree, about six feet tall which was decorated with an assortment of ornaments which had been used and added to over the years. The finishing touches were gold and silver colored roping wrapped around the tree and icicles hanging from the individual branches. The tree stand was covered by a white sheet which looked like snow. There were no colorful lights on the tree because electricity had not reached our part of Kentucky yet and would not come for another three years. Illumination was by kerosene lamps.
     Christmas Eve was a happy time of anticipation of what would come on Christmas morning. We placed our presents for each other under the tree and laid out our empty stockings for Santa Claus to fill (mine was one of those long, tan, cotton stockings that all children wore at that time). We usually had some chocolate fudge or hot chocolate as a special treat. Of course, out Daddy would usually come in with a story of how Santa Claus was sick or had been hurt in a collision of his sleigh with a truck, and that he might not be able to come that night, but we knew better!! So off to bed we went.
      I should explain this ritual. Since the only heat in our house was by open fireplaces, the bedrooms were not heated and were cold—very cold. To remedy this situation we would warm a small blanket in front of the fireplace and then make a dash to our bed where we would wrap our feet in the warm blanket and pull the covers—usually five or six blankets or quilts over our heads. Then, literally, “visions of sugar-plums” would dance in our heads.
      On Christmas morning the house was a-buzz with excitement. Each of us tried to be the first one to say “Merry Christmas, Christmas gift”, and we all went into the living room together. It was obvious immediately, Santa Claus HAD been there! There were more beautiful packages under the tree and I could see a slate and a “Big Little” book and a shirt which was for me. My stocking was filled with fruit and candy and nuts. But before we examined our presents my sister, Dorothy Rebecca said she wanted to read us a story, and she did. She opened our family Bible and read us the story of Joseph and Mary and the birth of Jesus, and the star, and the shepherds, and the Kings, and the wise men and the gifts and… And at age six I probably didn’t fully understand the meaning of the story. But now, 80 years later, I understand that God gave us the greatest gift of all—a Savior. Now, when I hear the word “Christmas” warm thoughts of love, family, joy, giving, relationships and God come rushing to my mind.
      I have many other Christmas memories, but this one is special.
 
Merry Christmas!
 
David Colvin

Dear RCC family,

You’re receiving this “Letter from the Family” as part of our celebration of the birth of Christ. It’s an opportunity for you to enjoy a Christmas memory with a member of your RCC family.  Thanks to Louise Eaton for sharing an inspirational and international Christmas moment.

I think I learned the power of an invitation most strongly on Christmas Eve, 1975. I lived in a small village just outside of Paris. I had left home alone by choice and had already been away some seven months, plenty of time to face down homesickness, but, of course, the holiday brought with its sweetness an increased sense of isolation and distance from loved ones. The French scholastic holidays meant I did not even have work to distract me. My method of coping was either trips into Paris or long walks around my village. At 8 p.m. it was already too late for Paris, as all the trains stopped running by midnight, and so bundled against the cold, I set out for a solitary walk.
Around three corners from the small school where I had an apartment, at just about the only significant intersection in town, the small Catholic church sat across from a café and a small shop, across from the little train station. As I approached it, I met several of my students, standing out in the cold, holding the halters of a motley collection of animals, two sheep, a goat, a calf, and one dog as big as a pony. They greeted me:  “Joyeux Noël.” Dragging their animals with them, they came up and shook my hand, the traditional French show of respect for teachers, and began talking to me rapidly in a mix of French and poor English. The gist: they were awaiting their cues to enter the church for their roles in the Christmas pageant—the shepherds’ adulation of the baby born in Bethlehem. 
“Quick,” they told me, “you just have time to sneak into the back before the show starts.” One of the boys, Jean-Yves, handed off his goat to another to hold and took my hand and led me into the small church (smaller than RCC!) and seated me to the left, whispering that I would have the best view of him from there.
I had not dared even to enter this little church before, feeling intrusive, going instead to English-language services or traditional Latin masses in Paris where I was always left alone, lost in a crowd. The entire congregation turned to look at me, and I smiled and nodded. I only knew their children who were in my English classes, but they all knew me. Above the small organ, I heard murmurs of Christmas greetings. They had literally pulled me in off the street. While my French was then barely adequate, the familiar story unfolded before me without any translation needed, accompanied by hymns, many of the familiar too.
Such a small thing, a greeting and an invitation. My clearest memory of that night was walking home an hour or two later, filled with good food from the small buffet in the parish hall after the pageant. It was colder than it had been earlier, I was just as alone as before, and the apartment I entered was still empty, but I felt neither the cold nor the solitude. My entire being was suffused with Christmas spirit, a sense of the blessing of that amazing gift, and of celebrations worldwide as well as at home, sharing the same awe in hundreds of languages.  I was invited in from the cold, not just by my students and the local parish, but by love of God. I hope you feel and share that invitation this year.
Merry Christmas!
Louise