It’s January! As we welcome in the new year and anticipate the amazing things the Lord has in store for Resilient Church and Vermillion, I want to pause and give God praise for what an awesome end to 2023 we had. Here’s everything Resilient Church was up to this past advent season!

Standstill Parade of Lights

This is the second year in a row Resilient got to participate in Vermillion’s Standstill Parade of Lights! It’s pretty much a Hallmark Christmas movie come to life. Multiple businesses and organizations from Vermillion set up “floats” that standstill, and civilians walk up and down main street to view them all. The parade features special musical performances from various groups in town, and to top it all off, Santa Claus shows up on a big, red Firetruck, and pulls down a lever to light the gargantuan Christmas tree downtown.

It’s magical, to say the least.

This year, Resilient passed out over 300 cookies to civilians and passersby for the event. It was a great way to serve our community and be a part of this amazing annual tradition!

The Resilient Christmas Party

Resilient Church is unique. Typically, churches see a spike in attendance for Christmas services, especially for Christmas Eve. Since we’re in a college town, the vast majority of our people leave for Christmas Eve, resulting in the opposite of what a church would expect!

This year, we decided to celebrate Christmas early with all our people while they were still in town, and hosted our first ever Resilient Christmas Party!

We catered food, decorated cookies, drank hot chocolate, colored Christmas pages, and of course, wore as many ugly Christmas sweaters we could. It was a joyous time, and anticipate this being a lifelong tradition!

Sunday Services

Sunday services continue to go strong! We see a regular outpouring of new guests, and people come expectant of what the Lord is going to do. Our advent series was inspired by our mother church, called “Christmas Party,” where we look at the Christmas story from Heaven’s perspective, in that heaven throws a party every time a sinner turns to Jesus and receives salvation.

If you’re interested in listening to any sermons from our previous series, you can check em out here at the Resilient Church podcast!

Lastly, at the end of December, we got to make our students a bunch of Exam Cram Packs, filled with goodies and encouragement notes to give them that extra “boost” as they crammed for their final exams!

December Generosity Partnership: The Vermillion School District Angel Fund

Every month, we’re giving away $1000 to a different charity that makes Vermillion a better place. For December, we were thrilled to contribute to the Vermillion School District Angel Fund! This is a special fund that provides under-resourced youth in our school district with a number of resources and supplies. Our donation in particular is able to fund an entire month of free and reduced lunches to kids in need!

To learn more about the angel fund and how our donation will be put to use in our community, watch the video above!

A Cold Start To 2024

Lastly, January has been off to a slow and cold start! Many of our people were still traveling for the holidays and Christmas vacation at the start of January, and with the crazy wind chills and arctic temperatures, we decided to cancel a our January 14 service just to encourage everyone to stay home and be cozy.

What that allowed us to do is create our first ever livestream service! I have it linked above for you to check out. Our approach is to not livestream services, as we want to encourage our people to gather in person, while we upload the sermon to youtube and our podcast the week after. However, this was the perfect opportunity for us to create something special for our people to still worship, despite the harsh weather!

With that said, we are so ready to get back into the swing of things with the Spring semester, to see all our people back in one place, and continue to lean in to what God is doing!

Prayer Requests

Pray for the start of this semester, as all of our students get back into the swing of things
Our Missions Trip Team leaves to build a home for a family in need in Juarez, Mexico, in a month and a half! Continue praying for this team, to prepare their hearts for the work God is going to do in them and through them, and that all the funds necessary to go on this trip will be raised.
Continue to join me in prayer for the revival of our churches and community here in Vermillion. This has been a core prayer of mine for quite some time already. Pray that God will unleash his Spirit in a fresh way, awaken our hearts to his calling, and transform us with his salvation. Pray that we may be willing to respond in whatever way he calls us.

That’s everything for this month! As always, thank you so much for your continued prayers, support, and investment into this ministry. We could not do this without you, and what we do is better because of the Spirit’s anointing and your belief in what we do!

– Pastor Jake