Thanksgiving and Preparation
Happy Thanksgiving week, Hillspring family!
This is such an incredible time of year! From Thanksgiving through the season of Advent to Christmas Eve, Christmas Sunday and then the New Year it’s such a full season!
We have some unique ways of celebrating the season at Hillspring.
Quite a few years ago we moved our annual meeting to the Thursday before Thanksgiving. At the annual meeting, church business is conducted, like the nomination of committee officers and the adoption of the annual budget. But really, it’s a celebration of thanksgiving for God’s presence in our church. So we turned it into a Thanksgiving banquet for our whole church family. Last year we moved the meeting to Sunday after worship, and we followed with a meal of thanksgiving. Incorporating the meeting with worship was a great experience. This year we wanted to go further, so we embedded the meeting into our Sunday morning worship, followed with an All Church meal of thanksgiving and celebration. This was meant to follow in the tradition of the Covenant Meals of the Bible. I thought it was a great experience! As I prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving this week I am so thankful for our church family!
This Sunday begins Advent, the season of preparation for Christ’s birth. We’ll begin Sunday morning, but the real kick off is Sunday Night with a candlelight worship we call “Night of 1,000 Candles.” It’s an act of worship that bookends Advent with Christmas Eve: we begin Advent with Night of 1000 Candles, preparing for the light of the world to enter the darkness, then we celebrate the birth of that light on Christmas Eve.
Every day of Advent we will prepare with a video of a Scripture reading and reflection from different members of our church family. You can follow the daily readings on our Web Site; our Youtube channel and on our Facebook page.
One of the biggest ways we prepare for Christmas is the Living Nativity. This is an opportunity for us to share the birth of Christ with the greater community (we usually host over 6,000 people). It takes several hundred volunteers, everything from cookie bakers to camel handlers to parking lot attendants to families who play shepherds watching their flocks by night.
We coordinate the theme of the Living Nativity with Sunday morning worship. In this year’s Nativity, Peter reflects on several different scenes from his journey with Jesus that highlights the tradition advent themes of Hope, Joy, Peace, Love. I’ll reflect on those stories Sunday mornings in our Advent Series, “The Gifts of Christmas.”
It all culminates on Christmas Eve with Candlelight Worship as we celebrate the birth of Jesus. There is nothing better than Christmas Eve Candlelight worship at Hillspring! I really hope you are able to join us in the celebration!
In Christ, your pastor,
Bryan White