From The Workshop

We have three Sundays to go before Easter. That day, April 20, the church will be filled with members, families, and guests from the community. In the meantime, we have quiet preparation. Through the liturgies of the season, we will walk the steps with Jesus leading to Holy Week. 
 
Pastors’ Class has been working with young people on our basic beliefs — God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, baptism, communion, confession, & community. Jenna, Jerry Black, and I have alternated preparing the class each week. 
 
Palm Sunday the children and youth will lead us into worship as we celebrate Jesus entering Jerusalem. During the invitation, the youth who have prepared and sense the call to follow Jesus will make their confessions of faith. In this sacred moment we will respond with a congregational liturgy of welcome.
 
Maundy Thursday continues the steps of Jesus during Passion Week. Our Thursday service remembers our Lord’s last supper with all of his disciples including his betrayer.  After supper, we will move into the Tenebrae, the service of shadows. Scriptures of descent will be heard as the seven candles are extinguished culminating in Jesus’ death. We then depart the sanctuary in silence. 
 
Easter Sunday we regroup with an all-church breakfast (inviting the community) and Easter egg hunt with a special guest. Then we transition to worship and celebrate New Life beginning with baptisms in the power of the Word:
Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:3-4)

 
 
See you Sunday,

Pastor Tom