Church on the Hill to hold open house Sunday

[media-credit id=3 align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]LENOX – The Church on the Hill is laying out the welcome mat this coming Sunday at a special open house at 10:30 a.m., and people of all religions are invited to attend.

Visitors will receive gift bags that include Church on the Hill cookbooks and note cards, among other things.

“We want to show there’s something happening at the Church on the Hill,” the Rev. Natalie Shiras, pastor, said. “This is a place of welcome and of lifting up one’s spirit to something larger. That’s what people who come here experience.”

“Sometimes wonderful things are the best kept secrets,” she added.

Come Sunday, the offerings at Church on the Hill will no longer be secret. The congregation of the United Church of Christ’s Church on the Hill will welcome visitors at the well-planned open house.

Members of an ad hoc committee called The Imagination Project have been hard at work planning every detail of the upcoming event.

“They are members who have sprung up and felt the spirit,” Pastor Shiras said. “In addition, they are members who felt the church needed a more imaginative way to draw more people into the church.”

“We are stepping out of the box,” the pastor said, “and outside of our traditional ways. We are allowing the spirit to move through us and to go out into the community.”

Nowadays, many people may have left traditional churches because organized religion doesn’t have flair, Pastor Shiras said, or for other legitimate reasons.

She said she wants people who come to Church on the Hill to know they will be lifted up.

The fact that the open house is being held on Pentecost Sunday was unintentional but appropriate, the pastor indicated.

Pentecost Sunday is the birthday of the worldwide church, the pastor said. At the beginning, “everybody felt that spirit moving through them. They felt in the zone.”

“When do you feel in the zone?” she asked of potential visitors to the open house. “Come and find out.”

Church members want visitors to “feel Jesus’ message of forgiveness, reconciliation and love and to share the good news,” Pastor Shiras said.

In addition to people of all faiths, doubters and even atheists are also welcome to attend the open house, she said.

The stately and picturesque white Church on the Hill was built in 1805 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Currently, there are 100 members in the church.

In addition to regular worship, the open house will include the gift bags as well as refreshments, some of which were made from recipes in the Church on the Hill cookbook.

Posted by Susan M. Wicker Guerrero on May 16, 2013. Filed under Community Events,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry