Hey there Powell Church family and friends!
I am writing this article (or more accurately, speaking this article) as I take a beautiful Friday walk around the neighborhood. Even though we are distancing ourselves from one another, I feel the closeness of God‘s presence and love through the beauty of creation, with blooming dogwoods and red buds, flowering trees and singing birds, blooming azaleas and radiant forsythia, all of it around me as I walk through the neighborhood (I may be singing that Fred Rogers song….).
This coming Sunday, Palm Sunday, begins a beautiful week for the Christian faith. It’s a week we call holy week. It was also known as “passion week.” The word “passion” in this context specifically refers to Jesus; it means a love so strong that one is willing to die in order for it to be fully known. That is the passionate love Jesus has for us and this world. I look forward to celebrating passion week with you, beginning this Sunday. It is a week in which we remember and claim the self-denying love of Jesus, love so amazing and so divine, that he was willing to die on a cross for us and this world. But by Easter Sunday, we also learn that it is such an incredibly strong love that even a grave could not contain it, a love so strong that sin could not keep it bound.
I invite you along the passion week journey with us, as we’re in this strange moment of time that has caused us to take a step back. But what would it look like for us to take a step back in such a way that Jesus would increase in our lives? When John the Baptist was told about the number of followers Jesus was gaining early in his ministry, John said that he must decrease, and Jesus must increase (John 3:30). Come along and join us, that we might follow Jesus, beginning with his entrance into Jerusalem, and then to the temple, and at his feet for teaching, and to the table for the purpose of sharing a meal, and then to a garden to pray, to his arrest, to his trial, to his suffering, and then to his death on the cross. May our love for Jesus grow in such a way that he increases in and through our lives, and that we may deny ourselves, take a step back, that we may decrease and follow him.
#TakeAStepBack
Here is a list of worship services and devotions that we invite you to be a part of as we begin our journey alongside Jesus for this holy passion week.
- Sunday 9:30 A.M. Palm Sunday worship
- Monday 9:00 A.M. Facebook Live devotion with Peter Kim
- Tuesday 9:00 A.M. Facebook Live devotion with Jamie Bauknight
- Wednesday 9:00 A.M. Facebook Live devotion with Travis Wills
- Thursday 6:30 P. M. Maundy Thursday worship with Brooke Hartman
- Friday 9:00 A.M. Facebook Live devotion with Brad Hyde
- Friday Sundown P.M. an invitation to observe the Holy Saturday Fast until sunrise on Sunday morning
- Easter Sunday 7:00 A.M. Easter Sunrise Service with Brad & Nicole Hyde
- Easter Sunday 9:30 A.M. Easter Worship followed by Easter jam worship for youth, children, and families
With Love,
Pastor Brad
