Carols by Candlelight - 2025

In December, for the first time Carols by Candlelight was held in the Churchill Christian Fellowship (CCF) church grounds. A crowd of around 100 people attended. This number included band and choir members. It was a beautiful, sunny, warm evening and finally one suitable to have Carols outside.

Chairs were set up, the Community Concert Band arranged their seating and instruments and the choir consisting of the Coal Valley Male Choral, together with some ladies from another choir, found their seating. Ian Combridge set up his public address system and all the other items he needed for his role.

Committee ladies were at two entry points with Carols booklet, candles, raffle tickets for the lucky prize draw on the night and words of songs to be sung. Many gave donations as they arrived.

All was in readiness

Proceedings began at 6 pm with the Churchill & District Lions cooking sausages and onions for a gold coin donation. They also had cans of drink and water

Allan Halliwell started the program with his children’s songs. Then Steve McNeilly, pastor of the CCF, opened with prayer. The program then featured the telling of the Bible Christmas story with Carols to tell the story too. There were items from Steve and Sandy, and the choir. Classina from the CCF told how she would have celebrated Christmas in Holland.

Reverend Rebecca Hayman was the guest speaker. Bec is the chaplain at FedUni and is also attached to the Co-Operating Churches in Churchill, Boolarra, Yinnar. This is part of her talk.

‘Now there is a lot of love in trying to get the right present for someone, but we all know, you know, I know, deep down everybody knows that really the best gift anyone could ever give us is good relationships. Good friends, love and trust within families, with our spouse, with our children, with parents. These are the things that we crave more than any toy or gimmick from the shops. God knows it too.

The Bible describes God as our good Father because this is His desire to have that sort of loving trusting relationship with us. He created us not just for relationship with each other, but for relationship with Him. We broke that relationship because we decided we did not want to live the way He told us to. Essentially, like so many toddlers, we did not want to share. Instead, we ate things we were told not to eat, we stole things that did not belong to us, we cut down things, dug up things, destroyed stuff. We broke relationship with each other and with God. We ended up with this world that we have today, that is hurting and broken and polluted.

Christmas is about a gift. It is about God saying, ‘I want relationship back. I want you back in my life.’ He gave us a gift; and that gift is Jesus.

The gift of Jesus is God’s way of saying, ‘This is who I am. I came to earth to live as one of you, so that you can know me again.’ Jesus himself said, ‘If you see me, you see the Father.’ Everything Jesus did, the way he lived, the way he was killed, the way he rose again: all these things teach us about God and are designed to bring us back into relationship with him.

That is why we celebrate Christmas. We celebrate the great gift of God saying, ‘I want you to know me again. I want to heal that relationship that we had because that is what you crave more than anything else.’

Christmas is about the gift of relationship with each other and with our good heavenly Father.

During the evening a collection was taken. This money plus the Lion’s donation from the sausage sizzle was given to the university chaplaincy fund. Bec thanked those gathered for their support of the students.

Father James closed the program with a prayer. Santa arrived on the fire truck to say hello to the children who were few in number.