Dear Glen Mar,

Merry Christmas! As you may know, Christmas is not just one day, it’s a whole season (hence the song “12 Days of Christmas) that starts on Christmas Day and runs through Epiphany on Jan. 6. My prayer for you is that this Christmastide can be full of meaning and peace and health and joy. I’m so grateful for the celebrations of Christmas Eve, and for the ways that Christmas was NOT canceled this year!

Glen Mar Church, the building, has been technically “closed” to meetings and gatherings for a long time now, but for the period 12/25-1/1, we will be really closed, as staff take a well-deserved break for Christmas in a time when there is usually not much activity at the church. If you need help during that time, the best thing to do is page the pastor on call, who can be reached by dialing 410-748-1320, keying in your phone number and hanging up. You’ll get a return call right away.

Also, we will be worshipping online only on 12/27, using a worship service that the District Superintendents of the Baltimore Washington Conference of the UMC have put together for local churches to use. In this way, we can benefit from their gifts, and our worship and tech team can have a bit of a break as well. And… we added a few Glen Mar folks into the service as well (quite a few if you count all the Dans).

For the month of January, we will be asking folks to worship “online only” as well, because of the anticipated post-Christmas COVID surge. We will still livestream our service from the Spirit Center, so your experience from home will not change. While we feel confident in our procedures to keep people safe in worship, we also want to be prudent and care for one another well. We’ll re-evaluate at the end of January.

Worship in January is going to be amazing. Jan. 3 we will celebrate Epiphany Sunday with the familiar visit of the magi to the baby Jesus. On Jan. 10, we’ll start a new sermon series called “Overcome: Hope and Healing in the New Year” that I hope will be a blessing to you.

Thank you for all you have done to help Glen Mar continue to “Be the Church” in a challenging year. Glen Mar is exactly the sort of faithful, flexible, committed collection of Jesus Followers that the world needs right now. I’m so proud to be one of your pastors.

See you “in Church”,
Pastor Mandy

PS On a personal note, thank you for the cards and gifts and expressions of the season! I’m often in a state of busy-ness in this time that makes Christmas cards an impossibility and sometimes even thank-you’s fall through the cracks. So please, accept this as my expression of thanks for all your generosity and love.