by Pastor Jeff
Each year, our participation in the Niles neighborhood flea market and antiques fair brings in a substantial amount of money while offering great bargains to our neighbors and heart-felt fellowship to the people who prepare for the big weekend and who work those days. Of course, our participation in the flea market also gets in the way of our typical gathering for worship. For the past few years, we’ve held an online only worship service at our usual time. This year, we’re going to try something a little different.
10 miles up Lake Chelan and 15 miles beyond that, up a winding dirt road into the North Cascades Mountains in Washington State, there’s a Lutheran retreat center called Holden Village. At one level, it is a reclaimed copper mining village. At another level, at least for people like me, it is holy ground. One of the practices at Holden Village is to have a vespers service each evening. Vespers is a simple and old prayer liturgy of the Christian church.
A little over three decades ago, one of my favorite contemporary hymn writers, Marty Haugen, took this simple prayer service and set it to music, calling it Holden Evening Prayer. It has become a tradition to sing this setting of the service once a week (I forget if it’s Friday or Saturday night) at Holden Village.
On Sunday, August 25, at 7:30 p.m., after the flea market is over and cleaned up and people are feeling tired, we’re going to have a simple Vespers service on Zoom (so people don’t have to get back in the car and come back to the church) using Holden Evening Prayer. Because this is a new piece of music to our church, we’re going to have some practices on Thursday nights, August 15 and 22, 7:30 p.m., in the sanctuary, to familiarize ourselves with the music and service.
Action needed by July 6
What I need to know before I leave on vacation, is how many copies of the music I need to order. I’ve borrowed a dozen copies from a friend, but I want us to have enough copies and I hope more of you will want to participate than a dozen. Please go to https://bit.ly/HEPsignup to sign up to reserve a copy of the music to borrow.
Niles Discovery Church News 