News & Events

For Christmas this year we are giving you and your family a copy of the book Surprise the World.  It is a small gift that can have a big impact in your life and in the life of Harrisburg UMC.  This short, powerful book will guide our shared ministry at Harrisburg UMC in 2019. You can pick up your copy of the book at the church on Dec. 23rd, at all three Christmas Eve services, and on Sunday, Dec. 30th.

The subtitle of Surprise the World is “The Five Habits of Highly Missional People”. Those 5 habits (Bless – Eat – Listen – Learn – Sent) will guide us as we seek to be faithful to the mission God has called each of us to in the coming year. Throughout 2019, we will discover how God works in and through us in simple and powerful ways as we engage together in these five habits:

• Through several sermon series digging into what it means to lead questionable lives as Christian by blessing, eating, listening, learning, and being sent into the world for the sake of God’s mission.
• Through small groups that explore the five habits with other committed disciples.
• Through devotional practices that allow us to see the numerous opportunities, we have every day to join in what God is already doing in our world.
• Through fellowship opportunities that seek to expand the table, so that folks who are strangers might become friends and fellow followers of Jesus.

Be sure to pick up your copy of Surprise the World and feel free to go ahead and start reading (you can even skip to chapter 3 if you want to cut to the chase)! Underline good stuff, take notes in the margins, dog ear a bunch of pages – we want you to get comfortable with your book as we engage with the mission that God is calling us to in the new year!

Christmas Eve Worship – He is Here! Luke 2:1-20

5:00 pm Worship  — Around the Manger, a service for families with young children

7:00 pm Traditional Candlelight Service, childcare provided

11:00 pm Traditional Candlelight Service, no childcare

Christmas time is not always a time when we feel joy.  Blue Christmas Worship is a service where those who are missing someone or going through a hard time can bring their struggle to God who comes near to offer us comfort and peace this season.

December 20th 7:00 pm in the Sanctuary at Harrisburg UMC.

A little girl named Ivey changed my life. I met her in Kindergarten; she was 5, I was 30. I had volunteered to be a mentor through Communities in School in my county and was assigned to be Ivey’s tutor. I remember meeting this precious girl with wispy blond curls and a sweet, shy face. The first year we spent together she didn’t talk much, in fact many days when I arrived I was told she was out sick again. By the end of Kindergarten, I came to understand that constant ear infections and poor health care meant she had trouble hearing and thus trouble reading. We hung in there together and by the end of the year she managed some small smiles when I came to see her.

The regularly scheduled Tuesday Bible Study will suspend June-August. In lieu of the weekly study a Summer Book Club has been formed.