We Want To Welcome You To The Family

If you’ve ever read Matthew 1, you know that it contains a long list of names. Some of which will twist your tongue in an untangleable knot.

Most of us skip over it. Yeah, okay. Jesus is related to Abraham. Got it.

Some of us do try to read through it, and end up at the same point. Jesus is related to Abraham. Got it.

A few read it and wonder why it was important enough to include, but fail to follow through on that “why.”

And a few of us are faced with trying to teach it.

That was my case. Thankfully, I happened to see a televised sermon by Jenntzen Franklin of the Kingdom Connection that unpacked the message of Matthew 1 for me. My next obstacle was to take what I’d learned and share it with the members of The River. I didn’t have access to enough people to duplicate his message.

Time to improvise. My husband helped with the construction. I dreamed up and made the other parts, one of which ends up over 50 feet long. We couldn’t set it up in the youth room because of its size. But we knew it was important and we knew we wanted to share it with the whole church.

We were originally supposed to do the installation as part of Lent, but winter storms got in the way. We ended up breaking it into three phases that were carried out on Pentecost Sunday, and on the first and second Sundays after Pentecost.

In the end, I think the Lenten interruption was divine intervention. The timing was perfect, especially Phase III which also fell on a communion Sunday and a message centered on Mark 3 titled “Who Is In the Family?” We’ve made a video showing the installation process over the three Sundays.  I hope you enjoy it!

Special thanks to Pastor David Fugatt for indulging us and finding the perfect message for the final phase, to my husband for being “my” carpenter, to JC Anderson, who helped my husband hang the bloodline for us, and to the members of The River who are the reason for this in the first place.

https://youtu.be/iMhWZWLcIZM