Family. What pictures come to mind when you hear that word? For some, the word awakens warm memories of holiday meals shared around a big table. For others it evokes feelings of joy as the mind recalls holding a newborn baby. Yet for others, family is a safe place where you can be yourself — where you find acceptance.

Curwensville Alliance is a family. When you are here, you see the variety of people God has called together to celebrate his love on Susquehanna Avenue.

As a family we are united around our mission to know God through Christ and worship Him, bringing His love and His word to all peoples in a culturally relevant way, leading them into a close relationship with Him.

These days God is teaching us about family. He is teaching us the responsibility of loving one another deeply, as brothers and sisters in Christ. He is showing us the importance of tenderly caring for those who are new in the faith, as babes in Christ. And he is showing us the joy of expressing love and respect to those who are older.

It has long been our desire to be a multi-generational church — a church where all ages feel at home. This dream is becoming a reality. Interaction between various ages gives us the wisdom of age, the enthusiasm of youth, the innocence of childhood, and the balance of a healthy family. Beyond these blessings, being part of a multi-generational church helps "the fatherless and the widow" to have a place — to have real family. Widows, widowers, single adults, teens, and children experience the love of God’s family with parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, all in God’s community — the Church at Curwensville Alliance.

Along with other key concepts, such as God using small groups to bring about change in people, God is showing all of us that families grow best together. In a society that seems to separate and stereotype people into divisions and boxes, we desire to connect people to one another as we connect them to God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Services and ministries at Curwensville Alliance are structured to be friendly to the entire family as well as the individual. While it is necessary, practically speaking, to work with people at different age levels, we intentionally make opportunities for families to be together. The annual picnic, the trips to amusement parks, the Christmas candlelight service, and a variety of other ministries provide a time when families can fellowship and worship together. Because families grow best together.

It is our hope that everyone who comes to Curwensville Alliance can experience the joy of being part of a family and that each of us will give and receive as God leads in this unique community.

Under God's Grace,
Pastor Steve