Teaser: A God who is Immanuel does not look on our struggles from afar. Instead, in Christ God himself has experienced the depths of human suffering. This God knows human life first-hand, and is therefore able to fully identify with and empathize with whatever we go through. But this God can also do something about it.

God does whatever it takes to redeem and reclaim his good work. God cares deeply about the material world, the environment, and daily lives of all of its inhabitants.

A God who is Immanuel is not remote, distant, impersonal. The very character of this God is to do whatever it takes to connect intimately with his human creatures.

The traditional Christian year ends with a celebration of Christ as King. As we join the throngs in John's vision gathered around the conquering Lamb, what does it mean for us to call Christ King in a world where that isn't all that obvious most days.

We serve a Creator Who has made a beautiful world and called it good. Faithfulness to that Creator means faithfully stewarding the Creation He made.

We declare our thanks to God for his faithfulness to this congregation.

We re-write Psalm 136 to declare God's faithfulness in our life together as a congregation.

In worship (as in the best kind of play) we "lose ourselves" in the sheer presence and love of God and of one another. The first invitation our session heard from Jesus' mouth was to renew our shared experience of worship. We praise God that we get to enter his presence together every week.

Teaser: The second invitation of Jesus our session heard was to deeper community. Community isn't just a nice by-product of discipleship, it's the workshop, the lab, the demonstration project that Jesus is alive and real. We give thanks for deep experiences of community in and through NCPC