Is There Any Room?
Advent has always been one of my favorite times of the year. Decorating for Christmas may take time, and you may dread taking your decorations out of the closet or attic where you have to store the decorations. When preparing to put the decorations out, you must put away your usual decorations, which takes time. When you finally take out the Christmas decorations, you realize the beauty in your Christmas ornaments. The nativity you have so carefully stored away from last Christmas is so beautiful. You take the Christmas tree out of the box and fluff the branches. Your family decorates the Christmas tree with ornaments from years past like your children’s first Christmas artwork. You forgot how beautiful the ornaments you find in the boxes are. Now, you realize all your frustrations of putting out Christmas was for nothing; the house is beautiful.
As we decorate our church for Christmas, find the beauty and remember the reason for the season of Advent, which is to prepare the way for Jesus. Prepare your heart for the Christmas season.
This Advent season, our Worship Series will be Is There Any Room? We will discuss how we find room for God and Jesus in our lives even in the busiest time of year. I hope to see you on Sunday!
Blessings,
Aanika Gillett
Worship at FCC El Reno
Sunday Mornings at 10:45am
Visiting a new church community can be an overwhelming experience. To help put you at ease, we’ve provided some general information below about what you can expect on any given Sunday.
Church Online
Since 2014, we have streamed our services live through YouTube. While we love gathering in-person, we also affirm that worshipping online is another way to make the body of Christ real, felt, and Known.
If you are worshipping via live-stream, you may wish to gather a few items to make that experience feel more like worship. Those items might be a candle to welcome the light of Christ, a Bible (book-bound or app), and elements to participate in the Lord’s Supper.
What to Expect:
Welcome
We welcome you! We don’t pretend to be perfect, but we try hard to be faithful followers of Jesus. We’re a friendly bunch and we offer you the same welcome that God has extended to every one of us.
Duration
Our worship services tend to last 75 minutes.
Baptism
The beginning of Christian life is baptism, where it “represents the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it symbolizes the death and burial of the old self of the repentant believer, and the joyous birth of a brand new being in Christ.” (from Word to the Church on Baptism.)
Dress
We do not care what you wear! We have it all every Sunday, and we love it all. Really!
Music
There aren’t many places where you’ll hear a pipe organ and drums in the same service, but we like being eclectic. We sing old Gospel favorites, standard hymns, contemporary Christian music, and even a few mainstream songs with extraordinary meanings. Our music is led by our equally talented Chancel Choir and Praise Band.
The Lord’s Supper
As is the case in most Disciples of Christ churches, we participate in the Lord’s Supper each week. Every individual has a different understanding of what happens at the table, but at the very least we remember Jesus together. One of our distinctives is that we have an “open table”: all are welcome to participate. “As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord’s Table as God has welcomed us.” (from The Identity Statement of the Disciples of Christ.)
Preaching
The preaching is mostly done by Pastor Colton Lott. His sermons can be found on our podcast to hear anytime. In his words, “I try to incorporate storytelling, a deep love for the scriptural text, and an awareness of how the tradition we have received still speaks to our daily lives and to current events so that we can pursue God’s love and justice in the world today.” Colton’s sermons are of varying lengths, but generally last 15-20 minutes.
Liturgy
We typically design our Sunday worship around series that last for several weeks. These series help guide the songs we sing, sermon content, and even the way the sanctuary looks. We observe the “liturgical year” - the cycle that takes us from Advent, to Christmas, to Epiphany, to Lent, to Easter, to Pentecost, to Ordinary Time and repeat - and use traditional colors to mark the changing of these seasons. Our pastors wear “preaching robes” from Advent (four Sundays before Christmas) through Pentecost (seven weeks after Easter). This is to remove the distraction of our pastors’ fashion choices and focus worship on the story of Jesus.