First Presbyterian Church of Middlesboro
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Worship With Us

COVID-19 UPDATE as of 3/22/21
​

First Presbyterian Church of Middlesboro will resume in-person worship beginning this Sunday, March 28 (Palm Sunday). Worship begins at 11 a.m.

Our normal Sunday morning habits will be altered due to COVID-19 concerns. Please note the following guidelines for proceeding with in-person worship at FPC Middlesboro during this time:

--Please do not attend worship if you are feeling sick and/or have a fever. We will be broadcasting the worship via Zoom for those who cannot attend in-person.
--Masks are encouraged.
--Please remember 6-foot social distancing recommendations as you come into the church, and refrain from hugging, shaking hands, etc.
--All high traffic areas, such as faucet handles, doorknobs, etc., will be sanitized prior to worship and again after worship.
--Hand sanitizers, wipes and Kleenexes will be in plain sight throughout the sanctuary should you need any of these items.
--Please sit only with those that are in your household.
--Bulletins will be spread out among the pews so that no one has to pick a bulletin up out of a pile that has been touched by others.
--There will be no congregational or choral singing. Additional readings or instrumental only hymns may be used in these places instead.
--We will not pass the offering plate. Instead, an offering plate will be placed in the front and the rear of the sanctuary. Please drop your offering into the plate as you enter or exit.
--We have removed all hymnbooks, Bibles, pencils and papers from the sanctuary to eliminate as many items that could cause cross-contamination as possible. Prayer requests can continue to be emailed to fpc4me@yahoo.com or mentioned during prayer time during worship. If you may need a Bible, pen, etc., during worship, please bring your own.
--There will be no refreshments after church. Instead we recommend that once worship has concluded everyone go ahead and leave the church building and return home.
--Children’s Sunday School lesson packets will be spread out among the pews for the kids to pick up and look at during the service. To be added to our email list to receive Zoom links, the weekly bulletin, the weekly prayer request list, or children's Sunday School materials, please email fpc4me@yahoo.com.

If you would like to contribute an offering to the church, it can be mailed to the church at PO Box 1796, Middlesboro, KY, 40965. The Presbytery also has a means to take online offering payments and distribute them to the designated church. The link is https://transypby.org/paypal/. If you choose to use this link, you will need to click the "other" button and then type in First Presbyterian Church of Middlesboro so the Presbytery knows which church to send the funds to.

Please visit our Facebook page for the most current worship updates.

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First Presbyterian Church has been a vital part of Middlesboro, Kentucky, for more than 100 years.
We invite you to worship with us!

Our Typical Sunday Schedule (currently suspended due to Covid-19):

Choir Rehearsal: 10:15 a.m.
Worship: 11:00 a.m. 
Children's Sunday School: 11:15 a.m. 

Join us for a time of refreshments and fellowship after worship each Sunday!

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February 2018 Pastor's Letter

2/1/2018

 
"You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf." - John 5:39 NRSV

In 1986 I was privileged to participate in a mission partnership between the Kentucky Baptist Convention and the Baptist convention of Kenya, East Africa. The mission involved several opportunities to share the gospel - street preaching, individual witnessing and worship in the native churches.

One special experience occurred during a special assembly of Kenyan students at a mission high school in Mombasa. After I gave my testimony the headmaster opened the floor for questions. A question that I remember vividly was from a student who wanted to know how he could know the real Jesus when he returned from heaven. The student explained that, in their country, they had experienced so called "messiahs" in the villages who did seemingly miraculous things that led people down the wrong path. My response was to recall that Jesus warned about imposters in Luke 17:20-37. He cautioned the disciples not to be led astray by people who claimed to know when and where the Lord would appear. Then, to press his point Jesus said, "For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day." (Luke 17:24) indicating that when He returned there would be no doubt it was him. Basically I urged the students to read and study their Bibles to find the presence of Christ in their lives.

I thought of that experience as a read a recent interview with Tim Chester about his new book, Bible Matters: Making Sense of Scripture (InterVarsity Press, 2017) on www.biblegatewayblog.com.  Dr. Chester is the pastor of Grace Church Boroughbridge in North Yorkshire, UK. His book encourages Christians to read the Bible believing they will encounter God in its pages. During the interview he said 

"God spoke through the Bible 2,000-plus years ago. But God continues to speak through the Bible . . . It’s a relational Bible through which God speaks—present tense—to us. And it’s the Holy Spirit who makes it living and personal to us today . . .

 The Bible is not just a repository of information. It’s one of the means God uses to relate to us. He speaks and we listen... It becomes a place of intimacy. . .

One of the reasons people are so obsessed with prophecies and words of knowledge is that we have not rightly emphasized the intimate, relational nature of the Bible. People long to hear a personal message from God that’s specific to them, when in fact that’s what they’re hearing every day as they read their Bibles and every week as they hear it preached.

I believe Dr. Chester has his finger on what is missing in our faith today. We have possessed and enjoyed the Bible for so long that our familiarity has led us to be complacent about its authority and its wonder. We need to recover the truth that God reveals His heart and hopes for us and feeds our relationship with Him in the Bible and every day is an opportunity to experience a little bit of heaven on earth.

Dr. Phil

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