The Vision of the ECC:International is to make relevant the teachings of Jesus the Christ: the Word of God, within a modern world; and promote the healing, joy, and beauty of a Christian life within current generations and beyond. We are a contemporary body of Christ's faithful holding fast to early Christianity. We are a part of The One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. The Ecumenical Catholic Church International and the Ecumenical Catholic Communities of Christ UK have a contemporary ethos, but within a universal catholic tradition that reaches back to the teachings of Jesus and the first century Church. As we come from so many mainstream denominational backgrounds from Roman Catholic and Reform to Pentecostal, we proclaim our Ecumenical status.
Blessed and Joyous Christmas from us to you!
Some of us get tired of the corruption of Christmas. Some of us have no desire to wander off into that sparkly, tinselly, canned music
over-kill. Many of us don’t mind having some sort of saturnalia, after all, some of it is pleasant and fun,
but lately, hearing Christmas carols and seasonal songs rewritten to send us
out into an orgy of buying anything from cars to clothing leaves us cold. What
does that have to do with the birth of Jesus who was most likely born in the
spring anyway? What happened to homemade Christmas cards and gifts? singing
real Christmas Carols with friends? or Midnight Mass complete with the Nativity
scene, evergreens, Christmas hymns, and fellowship with eggnog afterward?
Modern Christmas has lost even the reason for its existence. We have heard several priests and ministers state they do not want to preach on the Incarnation.
Many people wonder what is this about babies and God in the middle of shopping
season? Why did God become man? What is all that about?
Well, we can take Christmas and its joy back. For starters,
here is a gift for you from us. It is a nativity story, though it does not seem
so at first.
Blessed and joyous Christmas from us to you!
It was a bitterly cold New England Christmas Eve night. It
was the kind of night that the weatherman announced as a weather danger and warned of bringing
animals in to avoid a freezing death. A
minister sat in his den working on his Christmas sermon. He was agonizing over
it and nothing came forth. He had a sophisticated congregation. How could he
convey something he did not fully understand himself? He paced, pulled out the
Bible and reference books, stared out the picture window, started a fire in the
fire place, and plopped himself back
down at the desk.
After making several false starts he became aware of a
thudding, thumping sound behind him. He made another false start; thwap! He
turned around just to see a dying bird slide down the picture window! To his
horror he realized that there was another heading toward the picture window and
sure enough; thud! Another bird hit the window.
He became frantic to find a way to keep the birds from
killing themselves! He raced and got sheets off the bed and tacked them up, but
they only covered a small bit and the birds flew around them. He stood there at
the window waving his arms to no avail. The birds, trying to save themselves
from freezing were flying toward what they took to be the salvation of a fire’s
warmth. The minister dressed and ran to the barn, turned on the heater, and
began to try to get the birds to go in there. Well, one or two figured it out
but most continued to hurl their little bodies into the glass and death.
By this time the priest, weeping, threw his arms up in agony, lifted his face to
the heavens and cried out in anguish,
“Oh, God, If only I could be a bird, I
could tell them!” . . .