Fall Back Saturday Night!
After Trick or Treatin’ on Saturday night, make sure to set your clocks back one hour (and get an extra hour of sleep before church)!
All Saints’ Day, the day following All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween), falls on a Sunday this year. Join us for worship as Fr Chris will preach a kid-oriented All Saints’ sermon, and after the service, we have a few festivities planned…
Chili Cook-Off
After the service (around 11:30), we will keep the feast downstairs in the Parish Hall with a chili cook-off! Come hungry, and if you want, bring your best chili, and we’ll have a panel of judges to award a prize to the best-tasting chili.
Bounce House and Games!
Y’all, All Saints’ is a big feast day. Directly following morning worship, we will have a giant bounce house and yard games outside, along with our usual selection of indoor board games and entertainment.
What is All Saints?
Our opening prayer for our All Saints’ worship service is the best place to begin to understand this Holy Day (that’s what “holiday” means!).
“Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical Body of your Son: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.”
2019 Book of Common Prayer, p. 633
This prayer accurately and beautifully articulates the heart behind this Principal Feast Day. By celebrating All Saints’ Day, we remember the faithful witness of saints past and present, who inspire us to godly living today.
We are not worshiping or idolizing the dead. We are remembering the lives of fellow Christians whose steadfastness in faith has pointed us to our Lord Jesus Christ. We remember loved ones, Early Church Fathers, the apostles, and many other faithful gospel witnesses.
What’s up with Halloween?
Christians have a funny relationship to the night before All Saints’ Day, All Hallows’ Eve (…Hallow-een!).
Ashley Tumlin Wallace is a great help…
“Halloween is almost here! I doubt this is news to you. The stores have been filled with hanging witches and zombies for weeks, and nowhere is Halloween on fuller display than in neighborhood yards. Driving through my mom’s neighborhood yesterday, I passed by ghosts hanging from trees and gravestones placed in the grass. There was even a yard with two life-size skeletons lowering a corpse into a coffin. It was wild! It’s hard not to believe that Halloween is an embrace of the pagan, the occult, or the demonic.
Sadly, many of us don’t know the real meaning of Halloween, especially Christians. Halloween is, in reality, a beautiful Christian celebration that, like other holidays, has been hijacked by our culture. Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, is actually the eve of the Feast of All Hallows’ Day, which is another name for All Saints’ Day. This is a beautiful feast day where we lovingly remember martyrs and saints who faithfully served the Lord.”