Well, here we are again. I don’t know if very many of you do a Thanksgiving Eve or Thanksgiving day service, but to me these services seem to just creep up on me every year. In the back of my head, I know they’re coming, but between our regular weekend services and gearing up for Christmas weekend, it seems that they just sort of appear out of no where. I find myself on the Monday before the service wondering exactly how we’re going to do what we’re supposed to do.

So, here it is, the Monday before our Thanksgiving Eve service, and yes, I’m in that same place. Well, not quite to the extent that it has been in the past, I kind of know what we’re doing, speaking in generalities. I just don’t have all the details nailed down, all the personnel lined up and all the media put together.

So, I thought I’d throw it out there to you and see if you have any ideas that you are using this year for your Thanksgiving services that might be different from the usual that you’re willing to share with the rest of the world.

Comment below!

(By the way, the graphic we are using came from Luis Garcia on creativemyk.com)

Tonight was our annual “Thanksgiving Eve” service. I think it’s a Baptist thing. I’m sure that other churches from other denominations do a thanksgiving eve service, but I had never been a part of one until I worked at a Baptist church.

Anyway, it was a good service. We had a pretty normal turnout and it was a nice relaxed time of worship and giving thanks together.

Because of the relaxed atmosphere, I felt a little more freedom to “go with the flow” than I normally do. I took a little more vocal liberty in my leading, as well as talked a little more than I usually do during the songs.

I accidentally skipped over the responsive reading, but it was no big deal to add it in later. Our special services are the ones where we make sure to work in all the staff that we don’t always use on the weekends, so I wanted to make sure we did the reading so we didn’t miss the opportunity to include one of our staff.

We used several videos, Thankful from Muddy River Media, and Start Small & Thanks Giving from Worship House Media. We used Thankful, to open the service, Thanks Giving to set up the prayer for our “Run for the Hungry” and Start Small we used to give people time to get up and go get and take communion from tables throughout the sanctuary.

Here was our order:

• Thankful
• Pastoral Opening scripture & prayer
• You’re Worthy of my Praise
• How Can I Keep From Singing?
• Thanks Giving
• Prayer for the Run
• Amazing Love (Mike Honholtz)
• You Are My King
• Thanksgiving Prayer
• Devotional
• Communion
• Start Small
• The Wonderful Cross
• Responsive Reading
• Open Sharing
• Leave sharing thanks with one another.

It was a pretty full service, but it only took us about an hour and ten minutes so it went pretty quick. All in all, it was a pretty good service.