It’s rapidly approaching Christmas with all the usual hustle and bustle. We decided that we would have an ‘angel’ theme for this year so angels will be appearing in different activities and services around the church for the next few weeks. The angels play an important role in the Christmas story because they were the ones that announced the good news to the different people involved. On the 30th November the Christmas lights will be switched on in Prestwick and there are lots of things planned around the town for that day. Shops will be open and there will be music and hot chocolate, sweets and mince pies. As part of that celebration we at MPN got together with Prestwick Business Association to hold a competition. There are ten angels who have managed to get lost in a shop in Prestwick and each one has a piece of a Christmas Monkton and Prestwick North Parish Church of Scotland
message. If you can find them and make the words into a Christmas message then you have a chance of winning a large Christmas hamper to share with your family and friends. Some people will come to church this year because they ‘always go at Christmas and Easter’ and it’s good that they make the effort but this competition allows us to engage in a different way with people who might never even think about coming to church. We need to find new ways to engage with our community and this is one way of getting people talking about the true meaning of Christmas. It’s not that the story is boring: angels announce to a young girl that she is going to have God’s baby; her fiancé is told the same, and that he should still marry her; shepherds were told when it happened; and, travellers from the East Scottish Charity Number SC004271