Jane Tiemersma Vogel

Easter sometimes falls during spring break, when many families travel. This piece is not so much for worship planners as for families in your congregations who may be away from their home church; you may wish to consider using it in your church newsletter.

We presented service plans for the three Old Testament fall festivals in Reformed Worship 61 (Sept. 2001). The three springtime Old Testament “religious festivals” are

[Family of four—Mom, Dad, two kids aged 8-12—enters the sanctuary. They are dressed for a summer outing and carry things for a picnic: lawn chairs, blanket, picnic basket. They also have Bibles.]

Child 2: [running ahead] Hey, everybody! I think this is the place.

< strong >Child 1: I don't think so. I think it’s further south.

Throughout the Old Testament, God commands his people to observe special holidays. Chief among them are three fall and three spring festivals. The fall festivals were all celebrated in the same Jewish month of Tishri; the equivalent of our September/October:

This piece is an excerpt from one of the weekly e-mail newsletters she sends to all college students away from their home church. (http://www.mcs.com/-w crc/)

I'm a front-row kind of person—always have been. Rut on Pentecost Sunday morning, when we arrived at the outdoor joint service/potluck with Vietnamese New Hope Christian Reformed Church, the lawn chairs were already spilling down the hillside, so we settled in.

We planned this service as part of an evening series on the book of Nehemiah. It focuses on the feast of booths or tabernacles (sukkot). With a little bit of tweaking, it could be an interesting service either for the time of sukkot or else possibly a service for the first Sunday of Advent.

If you’ve ever suffered through trying to organize an unfocused group of teenagers into a cohesive team of worship leaders, you may have asked yourself, “Why are we doing this?” That’s the way we felt when we started working with our church youth group eight years ago. It took us a while to figure out how the youth service we had inherited fit in with the rest of the youth ministry program. Were we only going through the motions each year because “We’ve always done it that way”?