Thursday, April 26, 2007

Easter Sunday

This year, Easter was truly inspired! It was, so far, a highlight of worship at the Rochester Church of Christ.

Something that has become a new tradition for us here at Rochester is bringing flowers to place on the crosses during worship. We place two crosses wrapped in chicken wire at the front of the stage. During communion, families and members come forward and place a flower into the cross. It's incredible to see the cross, a symbol of death, be transformed into a symbol of new life! Families take pictures together next to the newly-decorated crosses.

Next, we had a special guest from Jinja, Uganda. Her name is Ida and is a native of Jinja, a leader at the church there, and friends with many of our missionaries who live or used to live there. She and Sara Barton re-read the story of the resurrection from the Gospel of John. But all of the dialog between Jesus, Mary, and the disciples were translated and read in Ida's native language Lusoga. To hear it read in such a way really communicated that the resurrection was a universal event!

And instead of an 8 member praise team, we had 20 member choir. The sound was just awesome! we sang songs like "The Power of the Cross", "For All You've Done", "In Chrsit Alone" and "Worthy Is The Lamb", but they took on a whole new meaning when sung with a choir. It was off the charts!

I thank all who were involved. We couldn't have done it without all who sacrificed and worked to make it such a blessed day. I still get overwhelmingly positive comments about that Sunday! I know that He was blessed!

-chris

2 comments:

Brenda said...

I loved this idea of the cross last year...and I love it this year. Such an awesome symbol and reminder. Ida was at our church a few weeks ago too. What an amazing woman.

Kara Graves said...

you put a ton of hard work into that day and it was amazing how everything turned out!