Pentecost at Trinity Lime Rock

Pentecost is one of the celebrations of the church year –it’s often called “the birthday of the church”. Very simply, Pentecost is a holiday on which we commemorate the coming of the Holy Spirit on the early followers of Jesus. In the church calendar, it falls 50 days after Easter Sunday. Those with an interest in history will be interested to know that Pentecost used to be called “Whitsunday”.

Because our parish birthday, Trinity Sunday, is the Sunday that follows Pentecost in the liturgical year, we don’t make quite the gala celebration out of this Sunday that many churches do.

We are making a bit of an exception in 2024 in honor of the 150th birthday of Trinity Lime Rock. At both Sunday services we will be using the 1871 version of the Book of Common Prayer, the version of the liturgy the founders of the parish used.

We try to emphasize the joyous nature of the day, and the extent to which the original Pentecost represented the beginning of a whole new time. Accordingly, this is the Sunday for experimentation in expressions of the Holy Spirit — as the photos below will show:

Pentecost 2016

The procession — this was Youth Sunday, so the young people filled most roles in the service

The Gospel Procession

No doves this year, so we had some paper airplanes standing in for them. If you look at the top photo in this set you can see one airborne above the choir

Pentecost 2015

The red streamers were back!

The choir — there is always special music for this holy day

The advance party awaits the procession at the recessional

Pentecost 2014

The choir carried flames this year! (Well, not really flames, but the effect was quite remarkable.)

The young people had the red streamers out

The red streamers were popular this year!

Pentecost 2013

This year marked the final year of a three year cycle of holding this service at various local churches. It was the year when we had four congregations join ours for the celebration.