One of the most wonderful things about our Fulltime Traveler status is getting to make new friends wherever we go. Today we joined the congregation of the Faith Presbyterian Church in Brownsville Texas to celebrate Christmas. I have never been hugged and welcomed so warmly in all of my life. I personally think that without this wonderful Christmas service I would have spent the next couple weeks wondering what happened to Christmas this year.

Now since nearly half of our readership is our church family, I want this to be a special blog for them. The rest of you can follow along as you please.

The Faith Presbyterian Church in Brownsville Texas is lead by Pastor Scott Luckey. I called Pastor Luckey on Friday and he described their service as “blended.” A mix of traditional and contemporary worship. After the service one of the older parishioners summed it up nicely. “We ain’t no chiseled in stone Presbyterians.”

We rode Path to church. It is across town and a five mile ride, so we got started an hour early. This was an unusual weekend so they had cancelled Sunday school. When we arrived we were still half an hour early for the 10:45 start of worship. There were three cars in the parking lot of a church about the size of our own church. Soon Pastor Scott came out and greeted us. We were setting Path up to rest against a picnic table at the side of the church. Pastor Scott suggested that he could be in danger there, and opened an unused classroom and invited us to store the bicycle there.

As soon as we entered the building we were greeted by each of the several people there. As more folks arrived they were individually brought over and introduced. The 10:45 time for the start of service came and went and even though it looked like all were in attendance, everyone was greeting and hugging each other and catching up on the gossip. We were introduced and hugged even more. One gentleman introduced himself and rattled off a string of Hispanic sounding names that had my head in a spin. Somewhere in the middle of the name was “Clem Kediddlehopper,” and I began to get the idea that I was getting my leg pulled just a little.

Finally around 11:05 the nine or ten song leaders moved to the microphones and the two instrumentalists started a rousing prelude. During introductions we were introduced like guests of honor as well as some of the congregation who were home for the holidays. We announced that we were bringing greetings from Plymouth Presbyterian Church in St. Helens Oregon, and we were instructed to return the greetings of the Faith Presbyterian Church back to our congregation. They have a family of the week that they all pray for and then they announce birthdays and anniversaries. We then sang happy birthday to Jesus.

After a reading from Isaiah the music service began. The words played on the wall using a video projector and a computer station. This service was a forty five minute medley of contemporary songs mixed with traditional Christmas hymns. Some of the hymns were even inserted between verses of the contemporary songs. The accompaniment was by two instrumentalists on three synthesizers. They both had mics and sang with the vocalists.

There was a reading from John and an inspirational sermon. All of the traditional elements that we have in the services at home were there. The huge emphasis on music and the laid-back start were the only real differences. A couple weeks ago we worshiped with a very large church in Austin Texas. (First Presbyterian Church is a congregation of nearly 700 members compared to 116 for the Faith Congregation and 88 for Plymouth Congregation.) Their service was very inspirational with their 40 member choir and their million dollar pipe organ. As newcomers, we were treated to a mug full of candy and literature that helped us feel welcome. But I felt like I was being welcomed home today.

After the service everyone wanted to see our strange bicycle. The next half an hour was spent showing off Path and loading one youngster after another on his seats. A couple of these enthusiastic future bicyclists had to be pried off one finger at a time.

If there is a lesson here, it must be about how important it is to make every single visitor feel like they are really special. The other message I would pass on is, don’t be afraid to get out the rock hammers and chip away at the granite a little.
Once again we close with love for all of our friends and relations. We hope you are enjoying a very special Christmas with your families.

Gary and Judy