Special Christmas Services

Christmas Eve Readings and Carols

Families cherish their Christmas traditions. Year after year, they decorate the tree with the same ornaments, play the same music, bake the same Christmas cookies. Without asking, family members know when they will open presents. If you try to change your family’s Christmas traditions, you might be in trouble! When it comes to family Christmases, people generally don’t like things to change. Because our celebration of Christmas has so many unchanging traditions, we might miss the fact that the birth of Christ the Savior meant radical change for the world. Would the change be an improvement or another step in decline? The angels answer the question. They don’t sing “Watch out for impending doom!” They sing “glory” and “peace,” praising God with alleluias!

All are invited to our special Christmas Eve Readings and Carols Service at 6:30 pm. In our service we will read through God’s plan of bringing about his special gift, his Son Jesus Christ. As we listen we will also sing both well known and some unfamiliar Christmas carols to rejoice and give thanks for this gift.

Christmas Day

From eternity, Jesus has been God, holy and majestic. When we look tenderly at the holy infant, we are looking at the same God who once told the prophet Moses, “No one may see me and live.” Yet, Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds all saw their holy God and survived. How? God became human, hiding his glory within flesh, so that he could come to us without instilling fear or dread. A famous theologian once said, “We are to think of the Lord’s birth, where the Word became flesh, not as a past event which we recall, but as a present reality on which we gaze.” It’s not that Christ the Savior was born. It’s that Christ the Savior is born.

SOTL holds a Christmas Day service at 10:30 am. On this day we take a closer look at exactly who this gift of God really is and understand all the more just how special this gift really is.