Thank you to all who had a part in our annual Service of Lessons and Carols last Sunday!
For Morning Worship on the fourth Sunday of Advent, the Sanctuary Choir will be singing Christmas Madrigal by Jon Paige. In our Covenant Christmas celebration on Sunday evening, they will be singing Sleigh Ride, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and Do You Hear What I Hear. The Covenant Kids will sing This Little Boy by Ruth Elaine Schram. Several other members of the church family from kids through adults will be performing. The Natica Bahar Handbells will start off the celebration with a medley of familiar Christmas tunes, and later everyone will have a chance to join in on some well-known family Christmas songs. Don’t miss our Covenant Family Christmas party!

Glinda

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Violist Karen Eastman will present the opening voluntary for worship this Fourth Sunday of Advent. She will be playing the Ralph Vaughan Williams “Fantasia on Greensleeves” arranged for viola and piano by Watson Forbes. Greensleeves is a traditional English ballad that has been the setting for many different texts. The Presbyterian Hymnal associates it with the William Chatterton Dix text “What Child Is This.”

The offertory is the Austrian carol “Still , Still, Still,” PH 47, arranged by Douglas E. Wagner for two octaves of handbells and keyboard. Ringers are Madeleine Hill and Gail Hasson; keyboard accompanist is Glinda Blackshear.

The closing voluntary is “Fanfare on ‘Hark! the Herald Angels Sing’” by Gordon Young. This hymn, PH 31, was written by Charles Wesley and first published in 1739 with the opening lines, “Hark, how all the welkin rings, Glory to the King of kings.” Wesley altered his original text five years later and over the years it has been changed by others as well. The tune is MENDELSSOHN an adaptation of a composition by Felix Mendelssohn that was published with Wesley’s text in 1857.

Gail