‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever’ Is the One Where Everyone Is Involved
“We all thought the pageant was about Jesus, but that was only part of it. It was about a new baby, and his mother and father who were in a whole lot of trouble—no money, no place to go, no doctor, nobody they knew.”
-Beth Bradley, the narrator of ‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.’
Over the last few months, our children, youth and a handful of adults have been preparing to tell a story. It’s a familiar tale, of course, for many of us. But to the majority of our cast, the story of Jesus’ birth is new territory. And that’s not all that’s new to our collection of young thespians. Many of them are very new to stage acting, as well!
The story that we have been preparing to tell is a story within a story. It’s about a church—not unlike our own—who is trying to put on their annual children’s Christmas Pageant. But things take an unusual twist when the cast becomes populated with the neighborhood bullies, who are perfectly horrible.
Throughout the play, statements emerge that could have come straight from our own church: A parent remarks: “Do I really have to go and see the play?” A child protests: “I don’t want to be in the play!” A church member is aghast at the casts’ behavior: “Can you believe what that child just did?!” The director can’t get through a rehearsal without the play falling apart and the pastor—trying to keep the peace—wonders aloud: “Shouldn’t we just cancel the pageant?”
There’s no strain or difficulty when we read the Christmas story, ourselves, or hear it read to us in a worship service. But simply reading the story is not enough to grasp the meaning and power of God’s love in a specific instance and point in history. To truly understand what happened, we must see the story, we must feel the tension, we must put ourselves in the place of the shepherds, the young couple, and the travel-wearied Magi. And to do that, we must find a way to tell the story together.
Telling the Christmas story together, as in a play or production, is infinitely harder than simply reading the 67 verses that describe the event in scripture. And yet, telling the story together is what God asks of us. We are the Body of Christ, and we have been charged with the responsibility of telling the story together—all of us.
What’s remarkable, of course, is that the production proves what we all know to be true, but often fail to remember. The story of God’s love in the birth of Jesus changes us. When we place ourselves in the cramped stable with Mary and Joseph, and are able to see the Christ child lying in a manger, we are changed by a God who would do the unthinkable to love the forgotten and the unlovable.
These last few weeks, in particular, have reminded me of the power of God’s love as it works through people. Coming on board our production have been parents, other adults, advocates alike, who have eagerly agreed to help and assist us backstage and with an encouraging word. As many of us all very aware, a Christmas production with children is an, “All hands on deck!,” kind of moment. And it should be, shouldn’t it? We have an extraordinary story to tell and it requires all of us to help tell it.
The name of our production is, ‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,’ and it will be presented this Friday evening, December 16th, at 7:00 PM in our sanctuary.
I believe that the production will live up to its namesake—especially if everyone shows up to be a part of the storytelling.
Please join us on Friday night. We even have a reception planned to foster fellowship and laughter. Because that’s part of our story as well.
Gender Reveal Potluck for Caleb and Elise Parham!
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever!
Our children’s production of the ‘Best Christmas Pageant Ever’ will be on Friday evening, December 16 @ 7:00 PM with a church-wide Christmas Party and reception to follow in the Mission and Fellowship Center.
Help Needed - Moving Pews
We need some extra hands to help move pews from the Chapel to storage!! If you are available to help, please meet at the church on Saturday, the 17th at 8:30 AM. Your help is appreciated!
Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Tracking
"At Linda's I shared that I had put tracking labels that I got online on several of our Shoeboxes.
After church today I went online, put in the code, it came back that those boxes shipped December 5th from Charlotte heading to Togo in West Central Africa.
Tonight I just came across the photo below on Facebook....taken by a volunteer this week at the OCC Charlotte Distribution Center...the tally board... if you enlarge you can see boxes shipped to Togo on Dec. 5th.
Thought you'd like to share with the group.
Have a blessed week!"
- Teresa Deitz Manring
BALL Club Christmas Celebration
B.A.L.L. Club Christmas Celebration!
The date for the trip to Granny's Kitchen has been moved to Dec. 15th! We will be leaving the church at 10:45 am. If you would like to join us, please contact the church office to RSVP!
Doing Peace Means Practicing Grace
Ironic, isn’t it; that the week of Advent where we acknowledge God’s peace just happens to be one of the most stressful and anxiety-inducing times of our entire year?
The Church that crafted our Advent season wasn’t trying to be comical. Emmanuel, God with Us, does in fact yield peace.
This is how:
God’s decision to become flesh and to live among us is rooted in God’s desire to extend grace to you and me. Although undeserved, God chose to come into our world in the person of Jesus Christ to save us from our sins. In Jesus, God taught us about the depth of his love, the extent of our need for a savior, and the promise of eternal life with God. We experience God’s peace when we choose to accept God’s grace in Jesus. Grace begets peace—peace for us and peace for our world. Christ’s life, ministry and sacrifice give us shalom (the Hebrew word for peace) which means wholeness.
In giving us Jesus, God gives us grace and we taste the peace that comes with God’s favor. Yet, we are not called to simply be consumers of God’s grace. We are to become active participants with God in extending grace and peace to others.
Put more succinctly, God’s peace is not a commodity. God’s peace is a call to action.
That’s right, in addition to ‘doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God,’ God expects us to ‘do peace,’ just as God has modeled for us. Doing peace means practicing grace.
Practicing grace means seeing the best in people when we’d rather let them have it.
Practicing grace means finding ways to be thankful rather than arguing for what you want and are rightfully owed.
Practicing grace means giving someone the benefit of the doubt, even when you are over-flowing with doubt.
Practicing grace means seeing the big picture when it’s more desirable to focus on the weeds.
Practicing grace means reminding yourself that at some level, everyone is hurting and is genuinely trying to do good.
Practicing grace is not a sickly sweet, southern-styled, kill-them-with-kindness, passive aggressiveness. Practicing grace genuinely means giving someone a break when they don’t deserve it.
Practicing grace is what peace looks like.
But here’s the honest truth. We tend to be least gracious when we are anxious, stressed, or afraid. When we ourselves are not well, we have little capacity to provide grace to one another. Instead, our own ill-tempered dispositions, impatience, irritations and exasperations bear a bitter fruit that can sour our encounters and poison our relationships.
So what are we well-intentioned, on-edge people to do?
We must receive God’s grace in order to extend God’s grace. We must acknowledge that we, ourselves, make mistakes, botch things up and say things that we shouldn’t. Once we’ve come clean about our own reality, we must accept God’s grace to us even though we don’t deserve it.
At the beginning of each worship service, we have a segment that we call, ‘Passing the Peace.’ We extend it—“May the Peace of Christ be with you!”—and we receive it back, hearing: “And also with you!”
These are good words, but we cannot be content with these scripted statements. These good words, like the Word, must become real.
Christmas Cantata
The Sanctuary Choir of the First Baptist Church of Sylva will present a varied program of Christmas anthems during the 10:30 worship hour on Sunday, December 11. Directed by Dr. Robert Holquist since 1983, the choir has maintained a tradition of annual music presentations during this joyous time of year. The choir will be accompanied by Lorie Meservey, organist, and Linda Stewart, pianist. Additionally, those in attendance will hear flute and electric bass accompaniment by Sabrina Kumar, and percussion instruments played by Dean Kool and Michael Nichols. Soloists featured during the program will be Rebecca Mathis in "The Jesus Gift" and Holquist in "Come Unto Me." Other selections include "Awake, Shepherds, Awake!" "Calypso Noel," and "Do You Hear What I Hear?" You won't want to miss this year's Christmas story in song!
Mission Moment from Cambodia
Our Church is pleased to support CBF Global Missions in moments like these where unity and love are modeled and shared.
At church in Cambodia, the music leader often gets a phone call right in the middle of a song, steps outside to answer, and everybody else just keeps singing. A minute later, he will step back in and keep singing like nothing happened. As it turns out, the doors on the ground floor of the church have to be locked for security reasons. The music leader is the person you call to get in if you arrive after the doors have been locked. At first, I thought the action was a bit rude. However, it is an act of welcoming. Every call means that one more person has made the journey and the sacrifice to participate as part of the body of Christ that week.
- David Bass, CBF field personnel, Phnom Penh, Cambodia