Before We Gather – December 2025

Trailview Alliance - December 5, 2025

You are receiving this because you play a key part in Trailview’s worship gatherings. You may be:

a worship leader or team member (singer or instrumentalist), who leads us in glorious worship of King Jesus,
a service host who makes us feel welcome and lets us know what’s happening in the church,
a speaker who crafts engaging messages that reveal the heart of God to us,
a Missions Committee member who plans our Outreach Moments to remind us of the mission God invites us to join him in,
a staff member who organizes, schedules and administers all of the details and tasks necessary to host our weekly worship gatherings,
an elder who shepherds and sets the direction of our church,
a prayer warrior who contends for our worship gatherings and participants,

Thank you for your part! Thank you for being a part of leading our church family in worship of our glorious Lord each week. I believe that when our Heavenly Father looks at how you serve His church, He gets a big grin on his face and claps his hands in delight as he watches you use the gifts, talents and resources he has given you.

As you can see from the list above, many people are involved in putting together our worship gathering each week. Over the coming months, we will be experimenting with different ways to enhance the communication and collaboration that takes place between the various teams involved behind the scenes and on stage on Sunday morning. By doing this, we hope to enhance our worship services and create an environment where spiritual formation occurs, everyone encounters Jesus, and they are inspired to join Jesus on mission each week.

One of the ways we want to augment the communication and collaboration that is already occurring is through a newsletter that outlines the themes, scripture, teaching series and other details of what is being planned for our worship services. We hope that this newsletter will help you as:

Worship leaders choose songs that fit with the scripture and teaching series.
As a mission committee member, to build on the theme of the service in our Outreach Moments by sharing the stories of what God is doing that may relate to or demonstrate that day’s theme.
As service hosts, we hope it will help you prepare for the service you are hosting.
As elders and prayer warriors, may it guide your prayer for the church; please pray that everyone would hear God’s voice through the songs, the hosting, the outreach moments and the sermon and respond to him.

Typically, this newsletter (which we are calling “Before We Gather”) will focus on the next month (e.g., December’s newsletter covers January); however, since we are just starting, below you will find information on December and January.

December
This December, we will be talking about Holy Moments in our services. Each week, we’ll be looking at the stories of people who experienced Holy Moments, moments when they encountered God, and everything changed. From their story, we will discover how to have a Holy Moment with God. The big idea of this series is that God wants to have a Holy Moment with you. Here’s what we’ll be talking about each week:

December 7 – Zechariah’s Moment (Luke 1:5-25) – Together we’ll discover that experiencing a Holy Moment involves your posture, position and perseverance.
December 14 – Mary’s Moment (Luke 1:26-45) – Through Mary’s story, we’ll consider what happens in a Holy Moment. We’ll discover that in Holy Moments God reveals his heart, his mind and his hands.
December 21 – Joseph’s Moment (Matthew 1:18-25) – In Joseph’s story, we will discover that Holy Moments don’t have to be one-off experiences, that you can experience a life full of Holy Moments when you choose to submit to the Spirit’s leading.
December 28 – Simeon & Anna’s Moment (Luke 2:22-40) – Through Simeon & Anna’s story, we’ll continue to explore what Holy Moments are and how we can experience them today as we persevere.

Our December services will begin with the service host welcoming our church family and guests, and then for the Dec 7, 14 and 21 services, the host will invite our Advent Readers to read a call to worship and light the Advent Candles. Throughout December, our Outreach moments will take place in the first 20 minutes of the service. Our service hosts will also take some time during the offering moments to talk about what God is doing and what he has placed on our hearts for 2026; they will then invite people to help us finish the year strong by giving to Trailview’s Ministry Fund. Our service will end with the Announcements and Benediction given by the Service Host (Service Hosts watch for a document called “Host-It Notes,” which will be sent to you and includes details on announcements, the offering talk, and other aspects of the service).

January

In January, we will invite our church family to join us in a month of prayer and fasting. We will be publishing a video each week to guide people through this experience. We will also have a prayer guide built around our mission statement: Encounter Jesus, Live Authentically and Share His Love that will guide people each day.

On Sunday mornings, we’ll be engaging people in a teaching series called “Fresh Start.” The big idea for the series is that whatever happens next starts with prayer. Each week, we’ll look at the prayer lives of Jesus and his disciples to discover how we can live as Jesus envisions in 2026, both as individuals and as a church. Here is what the series looks like:

January 4 – What’s Next? (Mark 1:29-34) – We’ll discover that the best way to start something new is with prayer, because in prayer, we find out what God wants next for us and those around us.
January 11 – An Invitation to Be (Mark 3:13-19) – All that Jesus does flows out of the relationship he has with His heavenly Father; by being with the Father, he discovers what the Father wants him to do. The invitation to Be always precedes the invitation to Do. As disciples of Jesus, we are called to Be with Jesus and let our Doing for Jesus flow out of that. Prayer is how we respond to the invitation to Be with Jesus.
January 18 – A Different Trail (John 17:13-26) – In this sermon, we will look at Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer and his desire for us to be united as He and the Father and Spirit are one. We’ll consider what it takes to be united and how, in prayer, we find a new way forward in relationships. We will invite our church family to consider whether forgiveness needs to be sought and given in their relationships so that we can be united in Jesus.
January 25 – Looking for a Miracle (Acts 3:1-10) – In this passage, we’ll look at a short one-sentence prayer that Peter spoke over a man who needed healing. This week, we’ll discover that through prayer, anything is possible because miracles happen when we pray. We’ll be inviting the church to be part of the mission of God through prayers like Peter spoke.

We are also in the very early stages of discussion about planning an evening of worship and prayer in January as part of our month of prayer and fasting. If you’d like to be part of putting this together, please contact me.

Thanks again for being part of the team that leads our church in worship. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Also, please feel free to pass this email on to your worship team, prayer team, or anyone else you can think of that may benefit from reading this.

May the peace of Christ dwell richly within you today,

Pastor Kirk