Save the date: Our Learning Event will be February 16-17, 2017 (Thursday 1:00 pm - Friday 3:00 pm) followed by the Winter Rendezvous (Conference committee meetings) on February 17-18, 2017 (Friday evening - Saturday afternoon). The Learning Event will focus on Creating New Places for New People and Nurturing Vital Congregations with Rev. Dr. Bill Gibson and Rev. Steve Ross as our main resource people. We will have more information next week but just wanted you to mark your calendars.

To coordinate the Abundant Health initiative in the Alaska Conference, the Leadership Team has asked Sandra Woods of the UMC of Chugiak to serve as volunteer Conference Ambassador.  Sandra will be our lead person for the initiative and will be our liaison to the Global Health Unit.  Sandra has extensive experience in public health.  She is a registered nurse and is really passionate about health ministries, especially for the poor and needy.  She currently works as the Nurse Manager for Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center, an agency that provides primary care for Anchorage's poor and underinsured population.  Sandra will be contacting your pastors and churches soon.

We are still needing VIM Teams for 2017 for several of our churches.  If you know mission-minded people in your home conference, or even your VIM coordinator, please check with them about the potential for bringing a team next summer. At this point, teams are needed in Juneau and Fairbanks.  In Fairbanks, we especially need teams that only consist of 18+ year old participants.  If your church is still interested in hosting a VIM team for next summer, or if you are aware of a team that might be available, please contact Conference VIM Coordinator, Daniel Wilcox at danielpwilcox@gmail.com, or 907.414.7078.

Dear Friends in Christ,

It is Advent, the season of expectation, preparation, and new birth. This Advent season seems more poignant this year than in years past in the midst of beginning the work with the Commission on a Way Forward.
 
The church is in a high state of expectation, similar to the time of John the Baptist when expectant people flocked to the Jordan for John's message of repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sin (Matthew 3). Expectant people experienced in the strange and unusual presence and message of John what they perceived as a divine intersection. They listened as John bore witness to the light and life that was in the midst of them, but not yet fully known. He told them that the movement they were experiencing was not about him or about them, but about someone coming after him that would baptize them with the Spirit and with fire. This judgment was not so much about what they had done right or wrong, as God's desire to get them into alignment with the coming of Jesus. This baptism would lead to new life and they needed to be ready.

People are expectantly waiting, preparing for the new thing, the new life that God will bring through the church today. The external cleansing and the inner fire come together to wash and purge us of our self-righteousness and cynicism, prejudice and apathy. Again, in this season, we need to prepare, and to be expectantly ready for God's movement, Christ's new birth in our hearts and in the life of the church in this time and within our global context.

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The United Methodist Church is taking to the streets of nine major U.S. cities to offer the gift of hospitality this Christmas with a warm invitation and a hot cup of cocoa.

As commuters, holiday shoppers and eventgoers crowd the most trafficked areas of Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Portland (Ore.), Philadelphia, Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., United Methodists will be amongst them -- hoping to warm their stomachs and warm their hearts.

Street teams will be wearing what look like bright red jetpacks, but they're actually bearing gifts - tasty cups of hot cocoa served from state-of-the-art backpack drink dispensers. The paper goblets filled with chocolate-y goodness exhort cocoa drinkers to "Rethink Church" and point them to a website - rethinkchurch.org/find-a-church  - where they can find a local church in their area.

Mobile billboards cruising the streets will do the same. National advertising is also running on digital media and cable television.

"We think that church can happen anywhere where people experience the spirit of Christmas," said Dan Krause, chief executive of United Methodist Communications. "We want to carry a message of hospitality out into our communities and welcome everyone to attend a United Methodist place of worship as Christmas nears."

The unique outreach program from the United Methodist Church, which takes place December 8-11 and December 15-18 , comes at a time of the year when many people are particularly lonely or feeling that something is missing from their lives.

In fact, research shows that twice the number of U.S. adults say they are lonely compared to 10 years ago. That's despite being continually connected more than ever before through texting, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.

"We're offering an invitation to come into our community where we continue to explore the true meaning of Christmas," said Krause.

This month, book readers can make an economic impact in alleviating the refugee hardship by choosing to purchase the book Refuge by Anne Booth and Sam Usher through Cokesbury.com in the month of December. From now through December 31, 2016, Cokesbury will donate $3 from the sale of each book sold to the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), a non-profit organization dedicated to alleviating human suffering that coordinates thousands of relief programs in the U.S. and across the Globe. The book's publisher Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, will also donate $1 to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

  Read more about the Christmas Campaign

It is an emotional and spiritual tightrope that many families walk between letting their children enjoy the magic of Santa and making sure they know that Jesus is the reason for Christmas. Kathy L. Gilbert shares how Santa can help youngsters better understand grace.

  Read the rest of the article here