It's Holy Week!

Well, here we are at last--it's Holy Week!

To me, it's more busy and exciting than getting ready for Christmas. For one thing, we'll be attending church on five days out of the eight including Palm Sunday and Easter, so just making sure everybody knows what they're wearing is a big deal! We need to make sure we get showers in, and some haircuts, and a undoubtedly a shopping trip or two. There is Easter Sunday dinner to think about, and relatives coming to spend the weekend, Easter eggs to dye and Easter baskets to fill and hide.

This year, we have a lot of extra church-related details to attend to as well, with our church so small and the first year we are doing all 7 services (Palm Sunday, Blessing of Oil & Water, Maundy Thursday, Stations of the Cross, Good Friday, Easter Vigil and Easter Day). Nothing new for Father Rooster, I guess--but I am used to just showing up for these! This year, I am coordinating the Easter Vigil and all the readings/readers for the week. I am in a couple of readings and I'm singing in one of the services. I have added some Altar Guild responsibilities as well, and am helping with miscellaneous shopping and organizing tasks. The details are many!

On Saturday, our core team members blitzed their neighborhoods with a nice card-stock invitation to the services, listing all the times and locations. We are especially trying to talk up the Easter Vigil to our friends and neighbors. I think it's going to be a pretty solid first attempt! We are doing three readings with the accompaniment of a percussionist, a friend of one of our members, and those are going to be great. Uncle Rooster is joining our worship team for the weekend, and he'll be singing "He's Alive," the powerful ballad that we just can't imagine an Easter Vigil without. He's also going to do the Passion reading on Good Friday.

We have a reading that will be accompanied by American Sign Language, and a violinist will accompany a couple more. I've arranged the Abraham and Isaac reading for a father and son. I've also arranged a Reader's Theater-style reading for three of our teenage thespians, which I'm coaching them to have fun with. Blondechick is going to sing on the Easter Vigil worship team and sing a solo on Maundy Thursday; Father Rooster will sing the first part of the Easter Vigil liturgy, the Exultet, as he always used to do at Rez. We have an all-day rehearsal on Saturday, including sound checks with our newly-purchased sound system.

And our first Holy Week service, Palm Sunday, went beautifully and worshipfully yesterday. The snow that was forecast never showed, so we were able to have an outdoor procession (forgot to take pics yesterday, but here are some from last year) waving palms and singing hosannas. The Passion reading went well, and folks said that it was a powerful and effective way of transitioning us into the tone of the week. Uncle Rooster sounded great with the new sound system, singing Chris Rice's "Come to Jesus" as an offertory--so moving.

I can't even begin to tell you about all the effort others are putting in to this week, putting together our bulletins, coordinating all the music, musicians and singers, buying flowers and palms, ordering food for those who will be there all day Saturday, coordinating all our plans with the facility that we rent, putting ads in the paper and having our fliers printed up, rehearsing music and readings...but these services would not be happening without the efforts of our partners in ministry, Our Hero and Mrs. A!!!

So, if you're in the area, please consider joining us for any of these services! (Service times and locations are here.) We'd love to have visitors!!