Update from the President

Home Office Maintenance and Upgrades

On Monday morning at our home office staff meeting, we were given a wonderful explanation by Peter Eddington and Richard Kennebeck about upgrades coming to our home office facility. It has been 14 years since we moved in and, as with any building, paint and carpet and other things need to be upgraded or replaced.

Earlier this year, we were able to replace the carpet and repaint much of the first floor. And now we are planning to re-carpet and paint much of the second floor. And, with our plans to add a new video recording studio to our building in the near future, some much-needed office space will be freed up by repurposing the existing video studio. So, it will be a good time to freshen up much of our existing space and do some maintenance.

A letter is being mailed to our U.S. membership this week regarding the proposed video recording studio and the fund created to help finance it. The plan is to add a new section to the home office facility in the form of a "sound stage" area at least 75' x 50' in size that will also contain a control room, equipment room and meet other needs. The costs involved are one-time building construction and equipment expenses. Within the new building we will design a brand new, state-of-the-art set that will house the latest in studio lighting, 4K camera equipment, audio equipment, digital editing software and production tools.

If you would like to support the construction and equipping of the video recording studio, please note on your contribution that it is for the "Video Recording Studio." Donations are tax-deductible in the United States. (If you would like your donation to appear on your 2016 donation receipt for tax purposes, please make sure it is postmarked by Dec. 31.)

Lewis and Lena VanAusdle On the Way to Africa

Much of today and Friday, Lewis and Lena VanAusdle will be en route to Johannesburg, South Africa. There, they will help out with Family and Youth Camp along with four Youth Corps volunteers. Two are from the United States and two are from Australia. More about this Good Works project is covered on the Good Works website at http://goodworks.ucg.org/project/summer-family-camp-south-africa.

Afterwards, they will fly north to Lilongwe, Malawi, where Mr. VanAusdle will pastor the Lilongwe congregation. They were in the home office Monday through Wednesday, where we spent considerable time discussing the details of the assignment. We wish them all the best as we pray for them and the people that they will be serving. I interviewed them on our latest podcast that has just been posted at https://www.ucg.org/members/united-news/inside-united/inside-united-podcast-episode-072.

Aaron and Michelle Dean are also traveling to Malawi, leaving on Sunday to help the VanAusdles get situated.

Also on the way to a Youth Corps assignment is Jorge de Campos to camp in Brazil. Read more about this camp at http://goodworks.ucg.org/project/summer-camp-maloca-de-moscou-brazil-2016.

And, finally, Lisa Fenchel and Jonathan Magee are going to Guatemala with the others in Youth Corps to the Eagle's Nest orphanage. They will be joined by Guatemalan young adults in this project. Read more about it at http://goodworks.ucg.org/project/eagles-nest-orphanage-2016.

There is a lot of activity going on, not to mention that Winter Family Weekend starting tomorrow, here.

Here's a post I wrote for our website that I'd like share with you, as well.

An Open Letter to Those Who Want to Worship Christ this Season

Here we are again surrounded by a marathon of holiday music coming from our radios and speakers in shopping malls and businesses. You can't get away from it.

In the neighborhood where we live, families are clearly trying to outdo one another with spectacular Christmas displays. Common talk is of travel plans, reunions and gift-giving. But, at this time, many of us also hear of acts of kindness, of selfless giving and nostalgia of what we imagined was once in our families. To many outside of the Church, thoughts turn to the Christ child in a manger, seemingly radiating pure love and joy. Those thoughts often lead to a desire to renew traditions, to worship Christ as perhaps the three kings of the Orient did some 2,000 years ago.

As members worshiping our Savior in the United Church of God, we hold a strong commitment to live by every Word of God (Matthew 4:4, Deuteronomy 8:3). In the past, some of us once bought those gifts, hung those decorations, and showed up for Christmas Eve Mass or afternoon services on Christmas Day. For those of us who did those things in the past, we thought at the time that we were doing the right thing. After all, seemingly everyone around us was doing the same. It must be right. So right.

But, then we found precious truth that lay before us in plain sight, openly portrayed in the very Bible that we thought we held our Christmas traditions. We saw and learned of a different account, a true biblical story. When I was in high school, years ago, God helped me see the disconnect between Truth and practice.

What's it all about? What happens when family members and friends disapprovingly ask us about our boycott of the greatest event of the year?

That's what this open letter is all about. For those outside our fellowship who represent family or friends of our members, here's an important question for you: can you truly worship the true living Christ during this season with all the trappings that surround the celebration of His birth?

To those of us who are part of the United Church of God, the answer is an important part of who we are. To those who have not yet looked past the layers and layers of tradition and the mind-numbing commercialization of retail sales, this might be something altogether new. If you fall in the latter category, I ask you to please have an open mind.

Where am I going with this?

First, the Christmas season is a misnomer. At best, it is artificially and loosely connected to the biblical narrative. Ironically, among certain major churches in England and America a number of generations ago, it was outright banned.

Back in the late 1980s, the London Telegraph gave English legendary author Charles Dickens a new title: The Man Who Invented Christmas. In the mid-1800s, Dickens actually resurrected the Christmas celebration through the popular book "A Christmas Carol." Prior to that, particularly in England, Christmas had fallen out of favor.

Why? The late historian William Manchester, writing in his last book A World Lit Only by Fire, summed it up. As can be easily confirmed from any encyclopedia, when Jesus Christ didn't return, as many expected, more and more Christians began looking for answers. To uphold Christian standards was often a tough task, particularly in the Roman Empire. About three hundred years after Christ's resurrection, the largest church group didn't look much like what the early church did.

As Manchester pointed out, "Pagan holidays still enjoyed wide popularity; therefore the Church expropriated them...the feast of the purification of [the Egyptian god] Isis and the Roman Lupercalia were transformed into the Feast of the Nativity."

He continues: "The Saturnalia, when even slaves enjoyed great liberty, became Christmas."

Manchester's main point? "Christianity was in turn infiltrated, and to a considerable extent subverted, by the paganism it was supposed to destroy" (emphasis added). We in the United Church of God understand this well.

As many sources will authoritatively reveal (including the Roman historian Tacitus), the modern-day celebration of Christmas represents a mixture of many traditions and pagan festivals from almost every stripe. If you want to do even just a little research, you can find out independently how Christian leaders in the 2nd and 3rd century (and later) embraced the popular raucous festivals of Saturnalia, Dies Invicti Solis (the Day of the Invincible Sun), the Bacchanalia, the Yule traditions and more.

Many of these pagan festivals were well-known opportunities for drunkenness, sexual abandon, destructive partying and the like. Even though a seemingly good-faith effort had been made to artificially supplant the December 25th parties and orgies with another artificial Christian holiday, it didn't work.

It was offensive, and rightly so. And it got worse, particularly in Europe and England in the 16th and 17th centuries. "Christmas" celebrations had nasty consequences. So it was forbidden by many.

That is, until Charles Dickens. And later, commercial operations saw a good thing with the previously modest (non-biblical) gift-giving, so that was mercilessly exploited as we vividly see now. It might surprise you to know that the modern-day Santa Claus is largely an invention of the Coca-Cola Company. As Coke's official history notes: "many people are surprised to learn that prior to 1931, Santa was depicted as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf. He has donned a bishop's robe and a Norse huntsman's animal skin." In the 1930s, following the devastation of the Great Depression, Coca-Cola started running ads in the Saturday Evening Post that defined the basic current look of Santa Claus. They then hired a large national advertising agency to further the image, drawing heavily on Clement Clark Moore's 1822 poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (commonly called "Twas the Night Before Christmas"). It worked.

So, if you want to worship Christ this season, you can't put Him back into Christmas. Why? Because He was never there. And if you're wondering why our members don't seem to be in the "Christmas spirit," ask them. They can tell you of an amazing, truly biblical plan for all of humanity that God has laid out for all of us. It is a plan that far transcends the current season. Some can live with the syncretism of blending paganism with the birth of our Savior. I can't.