Last Sunday we had an "Interactive Christmas Pageant" at church. It was so much fun and was such as success that we have decided that it is our new tradition!
So what did we do that made it so successful?
We took the stress out of it! Instead of practicing for weeks and stressing everyone out about learning lines and making it to practice, we embraced our need for flexibility and said to everyone, if you can be here on Sunday for the pageant, great! Bring a soup to share and let's spend time together.
And that's just what we did. I found a script that I tweaked for our church and we ran through it a couple of times with the kids during Sunday School, but we didn't ask anyone to learn lines, and no one was required to do/say/wear anything special.
We arrived early and got out all of our props.. fabric, a baby doll, some angel wings and some left over costume parts from a local elementary!
Yes, we really were that rag tag.
Here are Kylie and Kai... Mary and Joseph. They were absolutely adorable.
We had different youth read various parts of the script that outlined the story of Jesus' birth.
For the ending, the kids sang "Happy Birthday, Jesus."
Then we had our soup supper!
We had a lot of varieties!
This event was a lot of fun and I really think a huge part of it was the fact that families weren't stressed about it for weeks. It was also great to watch different people get up to be a part of the service that don't usually volunteer.
So will First Presbyterian Church, Stephenville do this again? Absolutely! I'm already making a list of props I want to get for next year! And Doug will be making a larger batch of his chicken and dumplings!
So what did we do that made it so successful?
We took the stress out of it! Instead of practicing for weeks and stressing everyone out about learning lines and making it to practice, we embraced our need for flexibility and said to everyone, if you can be here on Sunday for the pageant, great! Bring a soup to share and let's spend time together.
And that's just what we did. I found a script that I tweaked for our church and we ran through it a couple of times with the kids during Sunday School, but we didn't ask anyone to learn lines, and no one was required to do/say/wear anything special.
We arrived early and got out all of our props.. fabric, a baby doll, some angel wings and some left over costume parts from a local elementary!
Yes, we really were that rag tag.
Here are Kylie and Kai... Mary and Joseph. They were absolutely adorable.
We had different youth read various parts of the script that outlined the story of Jesus' birth.
But those are the normal things... what made this pageant special was we invited the adults to join the pageant as the "extras" and during each song (the congregation sang the songs to set the scene such as "Go Tell it on the Mountain" and "Infant Holy, Infant Lowly"), different adults would come to the back and we would dress them as animals, shepherds, angels, wise people and so forth!
Below is a picture of the "animals."
And as angels. Those little wings were hilarious on the adults!
and as Shepherds.
For the ending, the kids sang "Happy Birthday, Jesus."
Then we had our soup supper!
We had a lot of varieties!
This event was a lot of fun and I really think a huge part of it was the fact that families weren't stressed about it for weeks. It was also great to watch different people get up to be a part of the service that don't usually volunteer.
So will First Presbyterian Church, Stephenville do this again? Absolutely! I'm already making a list of props I want to get for next year! And Doug will be making a larger batch of his chicken and dumplings!
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