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Christmas at Cornerstone – 2022

Christmas at Cornerstone – 2022

Christmas is a special time of year at Cornerstone. We have numerous ways for you to both worship and serve as we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Here is a list of all our Christmas activities. We invite you to join us!

Our Christmas sermon Series

Join us on December 11th as we start a new sermon series leading up to Christmas. As we learn from the Christmas story about the wise men honoring the new King, we will study the three gifts from the magi, detailing how each represent a different aspect of Jesus’s life and ministry. 

  • December 11th – Gold – Jesus as our King
  • December 18th – Frankincense – Jesus as our High Priest
  • December 25h – Myrhh – Jesus as our Sacrifice – Our Christmas Day Service!! Our Cornerstone Kids will join us for the service. We will have only one service at 11am and we will livestream on our website, and on Facebook and YouTube.

Christmas Eve Communion Service

Cornerstone will be open on Christmas Eve from 6-8pm for your family to come and share communion together. We will have interactive stations set up to walk through the life of Christ. You can stop in at any time and go through the stations at your own pace. An elder will be present at the church the entire time if you need any help. This year, we will use once again use Center 2:42 for this service.

Cornerstone’s Season of Giving

This year we have numerous ways for you to get involved and make a difference in our community. Here is an overview of all the ways you can give of your time and resources to serve.

Our Cornerstone Christmas Offering

We are excited about our 2022 Offering! Each year, those who attend Cornerstone Community Church have made it our mission to honor the gift God gave us in the birth of Jesus by beginning our gift-giving at Christmas with a gift to Him. This simple idea has become what is known as our annual Christmas Offering. In the past, we have used this offering to support local ministries, to help us purchase our building, and to establish our Engage Fund which we use for missions throughout the year.

Since 2011, we have collected over $215,000 through our Christmas Offering!!!! Our normal missions giving as part of our budget has been over $330,000 in that same time period. That’s over half a million dollars that Cornerstone has used in our community. Cornerstone is a generous church that believes in giving back and making a difference in our community.

We have several focus areas for our Christmas offering this year

Focus Area 1: Elisha’s House

We have partnered with several other local churches, ministries, and agencies to open a new warming shelter for the homeless. We have served 11 different people through only three weeks of operation. One of our needs is a new large capacity, high-quality, washer and dryer for Center 2:42 so we can wash towels, sheets, and blankets that are being used. This is a high priority so we want to order this as soon as possible.

Focus area 2: Freedom Firm

The mission of the Freedom Firm is to end child sex trafficking in India through rescue, restoration and justice. We have a strong connection with this ministry. In June of 2017, we sent a mission team from Cornerstone to help the Freedom Firm run a camp for girls who had been rescued from trafficking. The Hencks, who currently attend Cornerstone, actually lived in India and worked for the Freedom Firm, and Leah is the current President for Freedom Firm USA.

We want to give at least $6000 to the Freedom Firm to help them rescue girls caught in sex trafficking. They rescue an average of 33 girls each year from this terrible tragedy. Freedom Firm believes the best way to end sex trafficking is ​to identify underage girls in prostitution​, rescue girls and hold the perpetrators accountable ​through work in the courts supporting victims​. For the last 14 years, Freedom Firm has proven that sustained, persistent work in multiple cities and states across India makes a huge impact on the entire system of trafficking. It takes an average of $6000 to rescue one girl, and we want to make that happen.

Focus area 3: Our Engage Fund

We want to take any additional funds that we raise beyond our first two focus areas to support our Engage Fund.

Cornerstone annually budgets over 10% of our budget towards mission work in our community and around the world. But we often have requests that need immediate attention. That’s why Cornerstone has created our Engage Fund that we use to meet special needs in our community. This goes to help meet needs.

In 2022, we used this fund for many different needs

  • For our community block parties
  • For funding to start Elisha’s House – The Galax Area Warming Shelter
  • For helping other churches provide a new mobile home for a local widow
  • For ministry needs in Ukraine
  • For additional help with Thanksgiving Food Boxes
  • For additional funding for benevolence after we exhausted our normal budget for the year
  • For resources for local foster families
  • For Christmas food packages in Nicaragua
  • And a lot more !!!

We want to support special projects and needs of local ministries who are doing a great job reaching people, and we want to be able to respond to needs as we have them, so our Engage Fund is a vital part of our ministry here at Cornerstone.

We’ll be sharing more at church each week about this offering.

We invite you to give above and beyond your typical tithe to support this year’s Christmas Offering. You can give in-person, give online, or by sending a check to Cornerstone at PO Box 757, Galax, VA 24333. Be sure to choose the Christmas Offering fund online, or to designate on your check using the memo field.