Holy Week Services

IN the small town I was in (preceding my current church), we had daytime (12 noon-12:45) holy week services the week leading up to Easter. They were done quite well. Several things worked for us:

• Almost everyone worked within 15 minutes of this small town. Thus, attendance was good. Were we to do it where I am now, only our senior adults who live close to the church would come. Where you are located, and when you have them, is critical.
• The ministers avoided points of contention. They stuck to the Biblical account of the last week of Christ's life.

I'd be way against doing joint services with a heretical group (JW's, Mormons, Amway salesmen, etc.). In our town, with our churches (none were heretical), it worked fine, and God was honored. I do realize that some folks define "heretical" as "they don't believe exactly like me on every single point of Scripture." There's not much you can do for that crowd anyway.

"Ecumenical," just about a curseword for some, never appears in Scripture (KJV or any other translation I checked). Just thought I'd throw that in for free.

 

Our ministerial alliance holds 2 services a year. One on Thanksgiving and one on Good Friday. I am not a real big fan of these services. In fact perhaps a good saying for these services to me would be "pish tosh."

 

We have a ministerial alliance that has a Thanksgiving community service, but our church doesnt participate. There is a church included that has questionable theology so we opt out.

In my home association, we had joint Thanksgiving and Easter sunrise services, but the Pentecostals seemed to dominate. (Once when I was interpreting (for the deaf) at one, the Pentecostals started speaking in tongues and one man started hollering at demons to get away from him, running down the aisle. How in the world do ya interpret that!?!? lol)

So generally, we dont participate, but sometimes at Christmas we join with the Methodist church, an interdenomination church and another Baptist church to do a cantata. Those are such a blessing.

 

We are not participating with another church this year, but we will be having a Tenebrae service at our Maundy Thursday service.
We will also have a Sunrise Service, and Communion Sunday.

 

Our church participates in a community Thanksgiving service that includes a number of denominations including a Jewish congregation. For about a dozen years, along with the other congregations in our neighborhood (Episcopal and Jewish), we've also been sponsoring a 5K race on Thanksgiving morning. The proceeds benefit organizations that serve the homeless.

When I was in college (a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away), I was a member of a small Baptist church where my advisor was the supply preacher. Each year they participated in a community revival with two other churches (Methodist and EUB). They rotated responsibility for the preacher. And, all three ministers were down front during the invitation. I have to admit that, at the time, it reminded me a little of "Let's Make a Deal". I wondered if anyone ever got confused and joined the wrong church.

These experiences along with a few others have shown me the sincerity of people with beliefs different from my own. It has made it more difficult for me to cnsider these people to be misguided or wrong in their beliefs. It has caused me to strong consideration to the limits of human knowledge. I think that we don't know near as much as we would like to think we do. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says that our knowledge is partial in two different verses. I don't think we emphasize that enough. If we did, we might not have the kinds or levels of disagreements that we do.

This past weekend the three churches involved in the Thanksgiving day race finished building a Habitat for Humanity house for a Kurdish family that is Muslim. We started the build with a Friday evening service at the synagogue in which our interim pastor and the Episcopal rector spoke, and the daughter of the family read a very moving account of their experience moving through the Habitat process toward their new house. (We found out later that a group from a local Church of Christ was in attendance to observe the Jewish service. Boy, did they get more than they bargained for!) Sunday, at lunch I listened as one of the Jewish women told Bayar, the father, to contact her after they got settled so that she could come by for a visit. We want to do the same. This is a very small step toward overcoming the barriers that separate these several groups of people divided by religion and culture. But it is a step, and it can lead to more if we will let it.

Tim Reynolds

 

"Pish Tosh" is always a good saying. :thumbs:

 

pish tosh just has a nice ring to it... I used it the other day in church...