Hanging of the Green

I don't know about you, but i've never been a part of a church that did a "Hanging of the Green" Service.  For those who don't know what this is, this is the service where we decorate the church for the Advent/Christmas season.  This has been a very important service in our church, involving a lot of people, as we hang wreaths, place poinsettias, put the nativity on the manger, etc.  this year, I took on the task of writing our service.  In doing so, I found that there just aren't very many resources out there for designing this particular service.  Therefore, I've decided to make ours available for anyone else that might find it helpful.  You can find it by clicking here.  It is themed around some of the names of Christ - emphasizing an answer to the question: Who is this baby in the manger that we celebrate?  I am also trying to get the script we used last year, which was written by one of our members and was based on the theme of the marriage supper of the Lamb.  It was very powerful!  Hopefully, I'll be able to post that in a future link.

Less Events, More Relationships

Our pastor has been doing a series on Sunday mornings called "More or Less" in which he is talking about what our church should be about.  The four parts are:

1. Less Events, More Relationships

2. Less Ya'll Come, More We All Go

3. Less Law, More Grace

4. Less Meetings, More Ministry

As we kicked off this series, we focused on the importance of relationships and on busting the myth that "A busy church is a healthy church."

One of the ways that we tried to highlight this was through the order of worship (the bulletin).  We are a more traditional church that uses a bulletin every week chocked full of announcements, a calendar of events, prayer list, etc.  When people came in to the worship service on this particular Sunday, they got what looked like a normal bulletin, but when they opened it up, there was a list of all the names of everyone who is on the membership role at our church.  Instead of placing the focus on the events of the week, we wanted people to see the persons that make up our congregation.  We wanted to focus on, what is now becoming a little cliche, the fact that we are human beings, not human doings.

For a number of people, they didn't realize how many "members" had not come in a long time and had fallen through the cracks.  For new people, they knew folks on that list and didn't realize they had ever come to this church (or any church for that matter).  All in all, it gave our congregation an opportunity to put aside the "busyness" for a little while and focus on the meaningful depth of what it means to be the body of Christ.  

Then we canceled our normal Sunday evening worship in favor of encouraging everyone to get together with some other church member to fellowship together (sharing dinner, going over to one another's home, etc.).  All in all, it was a very good Sunday, worth the extra effort!