Dear Church Family,
Our Holy Week experience for 2020 will be unlike any other. It already was planned to be different, as we shared devotions and worship services with our sister churches Starling Avenue Baptist and Chatham Heights Baptist, but with physical distancing in place, it’s even more new and creative! This year’s Online Holy Week plan and guide can be found on our website: Click here for Online Holy Week explanation and guide. The guide has two versions – one that prints on large paper and folds and one that can be viewed or printed page by page.
Please use the Online Holy Week Guide as a plan for your Holy Week worship and devotional experience. We will have online/phone opportunities to learn together and worship together with our sister churches Monday through Friday. You’ll also find in the guide daily devotions you can read that were written by our three churches’ pastors.
We hope you will all take this time of quietness of spirit as an opportunity to give focus to your devotion and worship this holiest of weeks for all of Christianity.
FBC will also be providing our own Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday service bulletins. Click here for our Palm Sunday web post with a copy of the bulletin – and eventual location of our recorded worship service (or you can just join us on Facebook Sunday morning, where all of this will be linked!). We also will continue to send the Sunday morning virtual church email with direct links to service information, as well as daily links to the services/devotionals. Watch your email for reminders!
It’s different in form, but it’s not different in content. The God whose son came as a servant-king, gave up his life, and overcame death will still come among us as we gather virtually. We will celebrate a triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, devote ourselves to reading the scriptures together on Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, and Holy Wednesday. We will join Christ for a communion meal on Maundy Thursday, and we will experience together the mourning and death on Good Friday.
Then, after the quiet stillness of Holy Saturday, we will join together on Easter Sunday morning for a joyous celebration of the resurrection!
My prayer is that this season’s meaning is not eclipsed at all by our need for physical distance. My hope is that our intentional communication by phone, email, video chat, cards, and letters will draw us together in deeper ways. When we gather again in person, and offer hugs and handshakes again, we will be a renewed people, trusting more in our God and God’s love than ever before.
May your Holy Week be a blessing, my friends!
Libby