The students of Lubbock Junior Academy are performing the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. This English tradition was first held on Christmas Eve 1918. It was planned by Eric Milner-White, who at the age of thirty-four had just been appointed Dean of King’s College , in England, after experience as an army chaplain. He was convinced that the Church of England needed a more imaginative way of worship. Hence, the beginning of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.

Almost immediately other churches adapted the service for their own use. A wider audience began to grow when the service was first broadcast in 1928 and, with the exception of 1930, it has been broadcast annually.

Wherever the service is heard and however it is adapted, the pattern and strength of the service, as Dean Milner-White pointed out, derive from the lesson. The main theme of our program today is the loving purposes of God as seen through the windows and words of the Holy Word.

May you be blessed and comforted by our program today.