Celebrations

On April 27th Bulverde United Methodist Church did something it had never done before, we celebrated “The Festival of God’s Creation.” The day was out of the ordinary to say the least. We scrapped our regular three service model for an outside four preaching event, continuous service. Or we hoped it would be continuous. This event was an outgrowth of one of our church goals this year which was to become more visible in the community. We believe we do some great things in our worship, for those who make there way into our facility; but many persons in our community have no idea what authentic worship we have. So the leaders of your church decided to get outside and be visible to more people. We would have liked to moved this event to another location, but few opportunities are available in the Bulverde area for such activities. By joining The Festival with a classic car show we hoped that we would attract persons who were not planning to attend worship that morning.

The Festival of God’s Creation was like no other day in the life of this church. There were many unforeseen challenges and there were challenges to the day we had hoped we would not have to face. As Steve Angle said, “we experienced all four seasons of the year from 6:00am to 1:00pm .” Weather really impacted what we could do outside and who elected to attend. If we had been blessed with the weather of the Saturday before or the Monday after many of our challenges would not have been there. All in all, as we evaluated the first “Festival of God’s Creation,” we believe it achieved most of our objectives.
 As one person said as we moved in doors after trying to start in the rain outdoors, “We passed the test of faith.” And we did.

	●	We wanted to try something different, and Steve Angle and the Celebration team designed a great showcase of our wide variety of musical talent.
	●	We wanted to be seen by the community, and there were a number of persons who dropped by just to see what to commotion was. And they stayed to hear.
	●	We wanted to be outside to celebrate the beauty of God’s creation and for a time when the sun came out and the wind didn’t blow we saw and felt the beauty of God’s creation.
	●	We wanted people to stay longer and mingle with each other and make new friends and I saw a lot of evidence of that happening.
	●	We wanted to showcase our music ministry from children to adults and we did that and they worked very well together.
	●	We wanted our partners to tell their story and bring persons to this event who had not been attending a church and I heard many stories testifying to that happening.
	●	We wanted to focus on evangelical preaching for decision and we had a rededication of faith from a first time visitor who works next door and was invited to come by one of us partners.

So all in all we met many of our expectations and goals, and I believe we learned a lot of how we can make it better next year. I want to celebrate the effort it took to make this happen, it was a church wide effort. I want to celebrate the fact that we stretched ourselves as a congregation out of our status quo. I want to celebrate a selfless spirit that permeated all those who were involved. And finally, I want to celebrate the gifts God gave us as we stepped out of the buildings in faith to spread the Good News.