Top 5 @ SPUMC

#1 ALL SAINTS SUNDAY
This past week, we celebrated All Saints Sunday in worship. At all three services, we participated in the reading of the Roll Call of Saints Departed and people stood and came forward to light candles in memory of family members and friends who had died over the past year. Rev. Ron told the story of Australian filmmaker, Adam Elliot, who still loves to work in the somewhat archaic medium of stop-motion Claymation (a la the 1964 version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), where hundreds of thousands of individual images of clay props, complete with fingerprints and cracks, are pieced together to create the appearance of motion and the narrative flow. In an interview with Sarah Birnbaum, Elliot expressed his love for this tedious medium saying, “We’re all a little broken at times. I’m just trying to reflect that in blobs of clay.” Birnbaum concluded the piece with a beautiful line of her own: Blobs of clay with all of their beautiful imperfections. Rev. Ron suggested in his sermon that she could have just as easily been describing Paul’s metaphor in II Corinthians 4:7 of bearing the light of Christ in the midst of our own human frailty, holding “treasure in clay jars.” What a gift to get to celebrate the saints, the ones who let God’s light shine through for us, and to claim our place with them at the Lord’s table.

#2 TREASURE IN CLAY JARS
Treasure in Clay Jars, our worship series for November, began this past Sunday. All month long we’ll be engaging with powerful texts from II Corinthians that celebrate The Light of God Within Us (All Saints Sunday), encourage us to claim The Ministry of Reconciliation (11/10) and invite us to live lives of Passionate & Proportional and Joyful & Grateful Generosity (11/17 & 11/24).

On the Consecration Sunday, November 24, we will also be inviting members and friends of the congregation to make financial commitments for 2025. Your generosity makes all the difference both as we close out this year and begin to imagine what ministry might look like in 2025 here at SPUMC. Thanks in advance for your faithful giving.

#3 WINTER RELIEF IS UNDERWAY
This week, we are hosting 26 guests as part of our Winter Relief mission. We are preparing and serving breakfasts and dinners, doing laundry, providing transportation, making bagged lunches, hanging out with the guests and so much more. It’s not too late to be part of this ministry of compassion and loving our neighbors in simple but profound ways. Contact Carole Parker to see if there are any last minute needs or gaps to be filled.

Please keep all of our guests in your prayers along with our WR Leadership Team and volunteers.

#4 JOINT THANKSGIVING SERVICE
Join us on Tuesday, November 26 at 7pm at Asbury Town Neck UMC (429 Asbury Dr., Severna Park) as we share worship with our UMC neighbors and continue to deepen the partnership between our two churches. You may remember that they joined us here at SPUMC last year and now it’s our turn to visit them! Nicola will be playing, our choir will be singing with their choir, our worship team will be helping to lead music and Rev. Ron will be preaching. We hope you will make plans to join in this joyful celebration and start your Thanksgiving week in a powerful way.

#5 ANNAPOLIS FIELD TRIP
You’re invited to join the Faith & Race Group for a visit to an Annapolis hidden gem: the Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum, on Saturday, November 16 at 10:30am. Admission is free (donations appreciated). The Museum (which is being renamed just this month to include “Tubman”) is part of the African American Civil Rights Network and contains wonderful displays about these 3 key figures in American (and our Maryland/local) history and so much more.

Then you’re invited to stay for lunch at Reynolds Tavern to meet some new folks and discuss the experience. RSVP to Rev. Ron if you plan to join us.