Our Christmas gathering takes a different form with music and story throughout. Taking a step back, we start a full year before Jesus' birth to walk through all the annunciations--announcements of the impossible that figure hugely in the birth narratives of the gospels.
Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, shepherds and magi, Simeon and Anna, all were visited with announcements they could accept only if their hearts were prepared.
This is the fundamental question of Christmas: whether we are prepared to see the true significance of a poor, helpless infant that most others miss. Whether we are we prepared not to miss our own annunciations of the impossible when they come at any moment of our lives.
A faith community and recovery ministry, theeffect is a community of imperfect people working together to find the physical and emotional recovery and spiritual transformation that is theeffect of God’s love by unlearning limiting perceptions, beliefs, and compulsions, and engaging a first century Jesus in a non-religious and transforming way.