Telling Our Story

St. Andrew’s Live Nativity is THE big event for our congregation. It involves most all of the congregation in one way or another. Whether people bake cookies for our many guests, donate food for our working/acting crew, play a Biblical character role, greet guests, or direct parking, there is something for everyone. Everyone understands this and everyone pitches in. We couldn’t run the event over two days and seven hours if everyone wasn’t on board for this ministry.

It seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it? It’s not like we make any money on it; we offer it for FREE. (Hey, they say the best things in life are free, so I guess we’re one of the best things!) So why do we do it? We do it because this is our Christmas gift to our community. We do it because telling the story of the Good News of Jesus’ birth, our Savior come to earth, is how we tell OUR story. You might think “oh, it’s the same story every year,” and while that’s true, it is also amazing to me how every year the story still holds new meaning for all of us, and for our guests. We have many guests who just don’t feel like Christmas is on its way until they visit our Live Nativity, year after year. While we’re telling the Greatest Story Ever Told, we’re also telling OUR story…the story of a community of people that are committed to sharing this story with our neighbors and having a lot of fun together while doing it. It’s got to be fun… because we’re together doing the thing God has called us to do…tell the story.

It’s also great when the newspapers pick up on our fun and help us tell the story. Thank you to the Parsippany Life newspaper for running an article in advance of our Live Nativity, helping to advertise a collection of food for the Parsippany Emergency Food Pantry. Thank you to the Daily Record for visiting our Live Nativity and reporting on the story we are telling.

Check it out: http://parsippany.injersey.com/2010/12/22/st-andrew-luthern-church-stages-live-nativity-event/

Come for Christmas Eve:
4:00 pm Children’s Service (26 minutes)
8:30 & 10:30 pm Traditional Candlelight Services with Holy Communion

St. Andrew Lutheran Church
335 Reynolds Avenue
Parsippany, NJ 07054
(973) 887-6713
For directions: http://www.elcaandy.org/directions.asp