Nativity and Decorations
Yesterday we held a coffee morning at church, mainly so that people can enjoy the beautifully decorated church, as well as raising a little money. I was running the cake stall - always a favourite, and had done some baking myself over the past few days as well as doing some preparations for today - of which more in a minute.
Firstly, here are a few pictures of the church - you can see why it make a lovely place to have a cup of coffee, some cake and a chat during the run up to Christmas;
And this shows the peace and quiet before the congregation arrived for today's service -
Today was our annual Nativity Service. Organising this is my job, as the Children's Elder. This year it was a 'pop-up nativity' which was written for the Bible Society. It came complete with a script and a Powerpoint presentation - you would think it didn't need any organising at all really....
I had sent for a copy of 'the book of the story', for every child and parent or grandparent etc. who came, a few weeks ago.
I remembered to print the script and give a copy to the person who does the projection onto the screens for us earlier in the week.
I searched for the 'sheep masks' from an earlier nativity when I was in church (sadly at the funeral of the mother of one of the children who come to Sunday School sometimes), and couldn't find them - so I made a couple of new ones, along with a couple of paper-plate donkey masks.
Then a friend and I got all the nativity costumes down from the store-room mezzanine after the coffee morning, and laid them out in church in separate piles for each role.
So, this morning, everything happened more or less spontaneously :)
It was fun - after the first carol we got anyone who wanted to, to dress up in any of the costumes they wanted - two or three Marys - no problem, half a dozen wise men - great, and so on. Then the narration followed the pattern of much-loved children's book The Bear Hunt, with 'audience participation' with all the 'Oh no! We can't go over it, we can't go under it....' bits.
Marys, Josephs, donkeys, angels, shepherds and so on all processed around the church at their point in the story, not quite avoiding Romans, lack of a bed, sheep poo, Herod and so on. Then, at the end, we gave out the copies of the book to all and sundry.
Finally after a little quiet time, and prayers, when the service ended we persuaded a lot of the people in costume to come and have their picture taken - I think this is about 2/3 of 'the cast'.
All that was left to do was for the same friend (a shepherd), her daughter (one of the angels), and I to put the costumes away until next year.
Firstly, here are a few pictures of the church - you can see why it make a lovely place to have a cup of coffee, some cake and a chat during the run up to Christmas;
And this shows the peace and quiet before the congregation arrived for today's service -
Today was our annual Nativity Service. Organising this is my job, as the Children's Elder. This year it was a 'pop-up nativity' which was written for the Bible Society. It came complete with a script and a Powerpoint presentation - you would think it didn't need any organising at all really....
I had sent for a copy of 'the book of the story', for every child and parent or grandparent etc. who came, a few weeks ago.
I remembered to print the script and give a copy to the person who does the projection onto the screens for us earlier in the week.
I searched for the 'sheep masks' from an earlier nativity when I was in church (sadly at the funeral of the mother of one of the children who come to Sunday School sometimes), and couldn't find them - so I made a couple of new ones, along with a couple of paper-plate donkey masks.
Then a friend and I got all the nativity costumes down from the store-room mezzanine after the coffee morning, and laid them out in church in separate piles for each role.
So, this morning, everything happened more or less spontaneously :)
It was fun - after the first carol we got anyone who wanted to, to dress up in any of the costumes they wanted - two or three Marys - no problem, half a dozen wise men - great, and so on. Then the narration followed the pattern of much-loved children's book The Bear Hunt, with 'audience participation' with all the 'Oh no! We can't go over it, we can't go under it....' bits.
Marys, Josephs, donkeys, angels, shepherds and so on all processed around the church at their point in the story, not quite avoiding Romans, lack of a bed, sheep poo, Herod and so on. Then, at the end, we gave out the copies of the book to all and sundry.
Finally after a little quiet time, and prayers, when the service ended we persuaded a lot of the people in costume to come and have their picture taken - I think this is about 2/3 of 'the cast'.
All that was left to do was for the same friend (a shepherd), her daughter (one of the angels), and I to put the costumes away until next year.