covid-19

While we continue to worship online every week, we are excited to welcome all who are able and comfortable to worship in-person in our historic Red Brick Church on Sundays at 10:30 AM. Your safety, health, and wellness are our our top priority. West Jersey Presbytery approved our session’s re-opening plan and our pastor, staff, and teams have worked hard to prepare for your arrival. Following the guidance from the CDC and health officials, we have implemented safety protocols, and designed an approximately thirty-minute worship experience that will be spiritually energizing and safe for you, your family, and other worshippers.

 Dear online worshipping friends: We apologize in advance should our live stream be interrupted (again!) by Facebook. We are working with Facebook and the music publisher to honor our music licenses and resolve these issues. Should you experience an interrupted live stream, please rejoin as soon as we are back online! Thank you for your patience.

This Week’s Worship Preview

We are a star-struck culture. Those that dominate social media and dictate popular styles and attitudes are called stars. Entertainers, performers, You-Tubers, athletes, tech giants, and even everyday heroes inspire us to be our best. Since the pandemic began, more and more people also seek comfort and guidance from the cosmic stars as we consult birth-charts, astrologers, and psychics. We seek light to lead us out of the coronavirus chaos and the isolation and daily constraints, the fear and uncertainty, and COVID-19’s sickness and death. This week, we can focus on the Star, the Bright and Morning Star, the Light of the World, which brings real hope and a future.

This week Christmastide concludes with the last day of the Twelve Days of Christmas. In the season of Light, we call Epiphany, and we travel with the stargazing Magi who followed the Jesus Star. It was a very bright moving star that came to a rest just above the spot where Jesus lay. Their long journey, likely from modern-day Iraq, led to a house in Nazareth, not a manger in Bethlehem as is often depicted on Christmas cards. And when they saw Jesus, they were overjoyed!

What star shines brightest for you on this new year’s horizon? Where does that star lead you? What gifts will you bring into the year? Follow the Jesus star. It is the only one that will take you home in God’s emerging future of hope. It is the only one that will make you a rising star and not a shooting star. Find out how to follow the Jesus Star this week at Cold Spring Church.

This Week’s Music Preview

We will sing the traditional carol, We Three Kings, which will stir our spirits this week. as our worship begins and after the message.  stir our spirits this week, inviting us to join them on their stargazing journey. Despite the well-loved title, the Scripture identifies the gift-bearing visitors as “magi” meaning scholars, not kings. And there were three gifts, but the actual number of scholars is unspecified. Yet, this carol remains our favorite!

The scholars did indeed bring three gifts – gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These gifts are traditionally interpreted to acknowledge Jesus as king, God, and sacrifice, respectively, as depicted in the hymn. Herod slaughtered two-year-olds and younger boys suggesting that Jesus could have been up to two years of age when the gifts were presented to him. Jesus’ family would’ve living in a house by the time the magi arrived. The magi offered their best to Jesus, and we can be inspired to do the same, today.

While we continue to worship online every week, we are excited to welcome all who are able and comfortable to worship in-person in our historic Red Brick Church on Sundays at 10:30 AM. Your safety, health, and wellness are our our top priority. West Jersey Presbytery approved our session’s re-opening plan and our pastor, staff, and teams have worked hard to prepare for your arrival. Following the guidance from the CDC and health officials, we have implemented safety protocols, and designed an approximately thirty-minute worship experience that will be spiritually energizing and safe for you, your family, and other worshippers.

 Dear online worshipping friends: We apologize in advance should our live stream be interrupted (again!) by Facebook. We are working with Facebook and the music publisher to honor our music licenses and resolve these issues. Should you experience an interrupted live stream, please rejoin as soon as we are back online! Thank you for your patience.

This Week’s Worship Preview

What will you be focusing on in the new year? This week, we gather around the Lord’s Table and consider how Jesus is not just the Light of THE World, but the Light of OUR World, illuminating our journey ahead. Let’s focus on Jesus and the light he brings to us!

This Week’s Music Previe

John Wesley Work, Jr., may not have originated the spiritual “Go, Tell It on the Mountain,” but he can take credit for the fact that we still sing it every Christmas. As the son of a church choir director, Work grew up in Nashville loving music. Even though he earned his Master’s in Latin and went on to teach ancient Latin and Greek, his first love continued to be music, and he went on to become the first African-American collector of spirituals rooted in the Black experience. This proved to be a daunting task for Work because they were passed down orally and very few were written down. But Work proved up to the challenge, publishing his first song book six years later. It was in this second volume that “Go, Tell It on the Mountain” first appeared. The original singers of the song fulfilled the same important task the angels gave the shepherds that first Christmas night outside of Bethlehem, proclaiming, “that Jesus Christ is born!”  And thanks to John Wesley Work, so can we. We end our service with our communion favorite, “The Blessing.”

While we continue to worship online every week, we are excited to welcome all who are able and comfortable to worship in-person in our historic Red Brick Church on Sundays at 10:30 AM. Your safety, health, and wellness are our our top priority. West Jersey Presbytery approved our session’s re-opening plan and our pastor, staff, and teams have worked hard to prepare for your arrival. Following the guidance from the CDC and health officials, we have implemented safety protocols, and designed an approximately thirty-minute worship experience that will be spiritually energizing and safe for you, your family, and other worshippers.

Worship Preview

Happy new year! Happy new church year, that is. This week is the first week of Advent as the lectionary and liturgical cycle moves forward! Advent is the time for watching and waiting for the promised Messiah— Jesus. Of course, Jesus has already come. The prophet in our Old Testament reading asks God, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!” (Isaiah 64:1). Well, God has already done that! God has already “rent the heavens” and come down as Jesus “moved into our neighborhood” (John 1:14). But our relationship with Jesus is not historically bound to the past, but is a dynamic relationship to be enjoyed right now, and into the future, too! During Advent we watch and wait for Jesus transforming our world, our lives, continually. We watch and wait as we experience the Good News that God Is Here! How can we experience hope? By watching and waiting, actively engaging and being open to the Spirit of Christ this Advent season.

We begin our ADVENTure journey this week. Pick up your Advent resources (online, in-person, for individuals and a special card deck of family Advent activities) that will help us experience the fantastic story of God’s abundant grace and how we can choose to be a people of gratitude. In our Gospel reading from Mark 13:24-37, Pastor Kevin’s Advent series, God Is Here!, begins with how to participate in God’s restoration project that transforms us and all of creation. We  watch—(What are you watching for during these unprecedented times?)… and wait— (What are you waiting for? Who are you waiting on?). This requires the vigilance of which Mark speaks on the first Sunday of Advent — active waiting and watching.

Music Preview

We begin Advent singing O Come, O Come Emmanuel, a solemn and delicate carol originally written in Latin with a title of ‘Veni, Veni, Emmanuel’ about 1710. The English translation of the Advent carol came about in 1851 when priest and scholar John Mason Neale’s version was featured in the pages of The Hymnal Noted – a key text in the history of hymns collected by hymnal documenter Thomas Helmore. Let’s join in watching and waiting for the promised Messiah, Emmanuel (meaning God is here).

While we continue to worship online every week, we are excited to welcome all who are able and comfortable to worship in-person in our historic Red Brick Church on Sundays at 10:30 AM. Last week about 25 people safely worshipped together. Your safety, health, and wellness are our our top priority. West Jersey Presbytery approved our session’s re-opening plan and our pastor, staff, and teams have worked hard to prepare for your arrival. Following the guidance from the CDC and health officials, we have implemented safety protocols, and designed an approximately thirty-minute worship experience that will be spiritually energizing and safe for you, your family, and other worshippers.

Worship Preview

This will be an unprecedented Thanksgiving holiday. Your friends at Cold Spring Church are prepared to walk with you even as COVID-19 case counts and hospitalizations across the country and county climb. In a year where our use of the word “unprecedented” is in fact, unprecedented, we realize God’s amazing love for us is not unprecedented! From the beginning we have experienced God’s love in Christ that is not bound by our constraints. This week, we can learn How To Have an Unprecedented Thanksgiving in Pastor Kevin’s message from Matthew 25:31-46 about Jesus story of the sheep and the goats. You will want to experience worship with us in-person or online this week on Christ the King Sunday.

Next week: Advent begins!

Music Preview

This week we are providing a longer worship countdown video to enjoy. We hope this provides more time to prepare for our Facebook Live or phone-in experience together. Remember to invite others to join you online by sharing the page with your friends. And during worship, use the Emoji buttons to express your feelings and engagement!

We begin worship with the Apostles Creed set to music. Words are powerful. They have the potential to bring us together and the potential to tear us apart. Since the beginning of time, words have carried an incredible amount of weight. Writers Cass Langton and Ben Fielding, “thought a song that really was reminiscent of the Apostles’ Creed, that covered its main points, would be a beautiful way of calling modern churches to reflect on the foundation of the faith that unifies us.” We hope you enjoy “This I Believe.”