This year, Harvest is hosting a Christ-Centered Passover feast through our small groups.  This will be an incredible opportunity to experience with fresh eyes the kind of food and tradition that the disciples experienced the night Jesus was betrayed and crucified.  Each small group will be provided with key elements that are more unique or harder to find (a lamb bone and unleavened bread, for example) and will be given a gift card to purchase readily available or perishable ingredients so they can prepare for the feast.

We will be providing a detailed, step-by-step guide to small group leaders to understand the process of leading the evening with their group.  Additionally, handouts will be made for everyone attending to be able to recite traditional sayings as well as read specific Scriptures that Jews celebrating Passover have been reading for over 3,000 years.  

Everything a small group leaders needs to run the event will be boxed up and available for pick up on March 10th at the Small Group Leader Training event.  Can’t make the event?  We’ll have it ready for you to pick up on Sunday, March 11th or March 18th as well.  When you pick up the box, you will find:

1. A folder with all of the papers needed to execute the event*
2. The ingredients we are buying ahead of time for you
3. The gift card
4. Additional papers containing recipes for a couple items that need to be made ahead of time (suggestion: assign to a small group member!)
5. Instructions about the symbolic plate containing specific foods/drinks that are taken in a certain order commemorating God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt**
6. Instructions and ingredients for a traditional meal (traditionally including very simple foods like chicken, vegetables, fruit, potatoes, and sponge cake)

*Some small revisions to the format are being made for clarity.

**We’ve simplified certain aspects of the symbolic plate with the goal of greater clarity and understanding.

Our desire in celebrating this Christ-centered Passover meal is to develop in each of us a deeper understanding of what Jesus and the disciples did in the Upper Room on the night Jesus was betrayed and crucified.  Jesus is our Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7) and he has provided for us the greater Deliverance that each of us needed:  deliverance from bondage to sin and death and the promise of new life in his name.  And, after celebrating Passover, we get to gather just days later as a church to celebrate his completed work and his resurrection!