Carol Service?

Had a really great time with David (vicar), thinking about our Christmas services.
I have been feeling a little uncomfortable about the idea of having a ‘Contemporary Christmas Service’ again this year.
We normally try and do something that is creative, thought provoking and has a few carols thrown in as well (sound familiar?). Many people are invited Via our Christmas card - a flyer that goes to every home in the parish – and personal invitations to friends and family.
Our desire is always to try and facilitate a connection with God and maybe provoke people in to considering – wait for the cliché – ‘the real meaning of Christmas’. We have often thought that these services were good as A. church members told us it was good! And B. very often lots of people came.
However in my experience we very rarely got any where near what our real desire for the service was.

We spent a good long while once again grappling with many of the big questions – how do we effectively communicate the Good news, why don’t non-churchy people seem to get what we are on about! – and then we started getting somewhere, having drawn very few conclusions to our ‘big questions’.

We have decided that we will have an open air vigil, praying for peace, both in the world and in our community. It will probably take place in an open space in the middle of an estate in which we have many friends and contacts. We will post candles through peoples doors with an invitation to come outside and take part in the evening, light their candle and pray for peace. This will be accompanied by music, visuals of news stories from the past year and hopefully a big fire (cos we like fires!).

Much more excited by this than the idea of doing another carol service. No invitations to come inside, no pressure to 'put on a good show' just people joining together to pray and reflect.

Comments

[Pete Brierley]

Sounds fun, i'm jealous. Sadly I am having to organise the usual!! How frustrating.

[Ian]

Ben, I was incredibly excited to read about this as an approach to the Christmas thing! You and your vicar must have more of your "ask the big questions" meetings ..... and post the results!