While not all of these occur every year,  these traditions through the year are part of the fabric of our common life.

Advent – We hold a Longest Night Service of Healing and Wholeness to express our longings and pray for healing for ourselves and the world.

Christmas – Children & adults participate in dramatizing the nativity story.  The Bell Choir rings, the choir sings, candles, carols…
Our special Christmas Offering supports church workers and their families and Presbyterian-related schools and colleges equipping communities of color.

Ash Wednesday  begins the season of Lent with the imposition of ashes and Holy Communion.

Fat Fish – Our children collect offerings for the less fortunate using fat colorful fish, their contribution to the One Great Hour of Sharing.

Lenten Quiet Nights – A beautiful time in our chapel led by members offering thematic reflections punctuated by a generous amount of silence.  Followed by a light soup supper and fellowship.

Palm Sunday preparations – While a group prepares the sanctuary, another group gets together, folding & twisting little strips of palm leaves to make palm crosses.  Underlying the fellowship is a prayerful consideration of the people who will receive the crosses.

Maundy Thursday pays solemn remembrance to the last hours of our Lord Jesus Christ as he celebrates a last supper with his disciples, goes to Gethsemane to pray, is betrayed, arrested, tried, and put to death.  This deeply moving and profoundly spiritual service brings us closer to God and reminds us that we cannot arrive at Easter without first traveling through Maundy Thursday.

Easter Saturday – members bring backyard flowers and gifted designers lead them to transform them into beautiful floral arrangements for a glorious sanctuary Easter display.

 

 

Easter butterfly cookies – We’re big on butterflies.  It’s a new life thing.  So, an abundance of butterfly cookies gather for Easter morning fellowship hour.

 

Pentecost is a colorful celebration, often youth-focused, with many folks wearing colors of flame (red, orange, yellow).  We release doves to remember the presence of the Spirit. We also gather a special Pentecost offering which supports local youth, as well as children-at-risk, youth, and young adults through ministries of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.

Our summer worship often finds us in the Fellowship Hall instead of the sanctuary, as a change of surroundings, an energy savings with a smaller space to air condition, and a reminder that the church is not any building, but the people.

As fall takes us back to school, we turn our minds and offerings Peace and Global Witness.

Reformation – Loud & joyful with bagpipes – everyone is Scottish for a day from wearing plaid to eating shortbread cookies.

 

 

We are active in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), receiving all 4 special offerings during the year joining in the efforts of Presbyterians around the corner and around the world to share God’s grace and endless love:
One Great Hour of Sharing,
Pentecost,
Peace & Global Witness,
Christmas Joy

We are an Earth Care Congregation, managing our worship, education, facilities, and outreach to be responsible steward of the earth and all of God’s creation.