Christmas is a season of happiness and joy, but it can also bring sadness to families that have lost a loved one. This Sunday, December 15th at 6 pm, The Crossing Church, 215 South 1st Street in Monmouth, will be hosting a Blue Christmas worship service, shares Pastor Casey Grant:
“At Christmas time, everybody is happy, everybody talks about the joy and the fun, which is great and all true, but we also want to recognize that there are people that struggle sometimes this time of the year. Whether they have lost somebody recently or even if it has been a while and are struggling and grieving with that; they think of the kitchen and the dinner table at Christmas and they think of the empty chair and not necessarily all the people that are going to be there. So what we wanted to do was create a service that was geared specifically for people who might be grieving this year. It is going to be a worship experience, so we will have a live worship, we will have live teachings and preaching from me, some prayer moments, and we will have some prayer teams available to pray with and over people if that is something they are interested in. Then when the service is over, we will have some refreshments available so people can hang out and we will also have resources available to try and connect people maybe with a grief group or maybe some counseling, whatever we can do to try and help support and love on the people who might be struggling this time of the year.”
The Crossing Church will be having two Christmas Eve services with the first one Sunday, December 22nd at 5 pm and the second on Tuesday, December 24th at 5 pm.
