Rick Warren has asserted that the most important questions for church leaders are around church health, not church growth. In the Covenant, we adopted the idea of being "healthy-missional churches"—"healthy" meaning we're pursuing Christ, and "missional" meaning we're pursuing Christ's priorities in the world. As we launch into a year focused on "Living in Freedom and Community," that's where we'll start on Sunday mornings—looking at what have been called "Ten Healthy Missional Markers" and how they can shape our life as a community. 

The gospel of John opens in an unusual way. The other three gospels basically begin in "real" time and the "real" world, but John begins in a time before there was time, and a world that existed before the universe we live in. It's a stunning portrayal of who the baby born in Bethlehem is. It's also an invitation to think about what it was like for Jesus to come into the world we know very well, but which was new to him. During Advent and Christmas this year, we'll try to get at least a small glimpse of what Jesus' birth meant for him.