My Christmas shopping list is getting shorter every year. Years ago, when we lived in the Midwest, I would take day trips to Chicago to shop on the Magnificent Mile, looking for the perfect gift that would catch my eye and make me think of a particular loved one or another. I would spend an afternoon inside Marshall Fields looking for the one thing that would express my appreciation to my parents or roommates. Even as a child, I have fond memories of heading out in December with my mother to consider how I would spend my hard-earned babysitting money on a gift for my brother or my best friend.
Most of my shopping happens online anymore, and our family has decided that being together for the holidays is more important than buying one thing or another that, at the end of the day, none of us really need. Though we look back on Christmases past and mountains of presents stacked under the tree with a sense of nostalgia, we repeat again and again how little we really need these days and how we want to do Christmas well without all the presents.
So, this means purchasing alternative gifts for one another as a way to give without adding to the clutter.
The thing that I appreciate so much about the opportunity to give my alternative gifts through the Advent Giving to Mission at BMPC is that these gifts represent more than just a charitable act – they represent relationships.
That is what I valued in those past years of shopping – because they represented time I took to express my appreciation for the relationship between me and my intended recipient. That is what I don’t want to lose.
Every single partner and gift included in the BMPC AGM catalog represents a relationship: volunteer relationships, giving relationships, Presbytery relationships, co-working relationships, caring relationships, teaching relationships, mentoring relationships, and even advocacy relationships.
These are the organizations that our congregation has chosen to partner with every other day of the year in mission and ministry. Through the AGM, you are invited to help us celebrate and support those relationships during the holiday season.
This is our chance, through acts of giving, to both recognize and value our personal relationships through gifts that support the important mission relationships we value in our church family.
I hope that you will join us this Sunday, November 23, in Congregational Hall following our 10:00 a.m. worship service, where you will have a chance not just to purchase gifts through AGM, but also to meet the people whose relationships we value as a congregation. Spend time in the market talking to committee and council members about their work and relationships, and then invest in those relationships to celebrate the season. And as always, you can shop AGM online today and pick up your insert cards at church this week.