Holy Week

Holy Week is the week leading up to Easter from Palm Sunday until Easter Sunday.  At FUMC the week is full of impactful events to enrich your experience leading up to Easter Sunday. Each year, we start the week with a palm processional by our childern & youth at both services on Palm Sunday! It's great to see the young people of our church remembering and celebrating Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem! This year the children will also be singing on Palm Sunday! Wednesday, you are invited to a  Service of Prayer & Healing. This will be a special time for prayer and anointing with oil as we seek healing and wholeness approaching Easter. Thursday we will have our Maundy Thursday Service as we remember Jesus' time with the disciples in the upper room as he washed their feet and broke bread with them. Then on Friday we will have our Tenebrae service. This is a solemn and powerful service. The gradual extinguishing of candles symbolizes the approaching darkness of Jesus' death and the hopelessness in the world without God. The service concludes in darkness. We leave in silence to ponder the impact of Christ's death and await the Resurrection. Saturday is our Easter Extranza Family Event. It has always been important to this church to provide an Easter event for children that focuses on Jesus and the true meaning of Easter. Then comes Easter Sunday! He is risen, we proclaim as we celebrate and rejoice in the resurrection! 

Too often most of our culture wants to go from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, and they don't want to encounter the pain and suffering that Christ went through in order for us to get to where we are today. The difficult days leading up to Easter Sunday are so very important. Yes it’s dark, but the days like Good Friday are there to remind us of our brokenness, our humanness, and our need to encounter the cross today. Experiencing all the days of Holy Week really helps us to understand and feel the immense joy of Easter Morning! For this reason, we encourage you to try to attend as many of these events as you can.

This Easter, let’s consider the wonder of God's power and His love for us. He made the ultimate selfless sacrifice for us that we may live forever. He did this because He loves us. He knows us. He knows what we have done. He knows what we are going to do. But He loves us regardless. God doesn't need our praise or our service to Him; He desires it. It’s not what we do for God that gets us into heaven and gives us a right relationship with Him. It is only by faith in Jesus Christ that we are able to experience these things.