A Christian harvest thanksgiving in the valley of Emmental cheese

Thanksgiving is celebrated on a grand scale in the United States every year. There it takes place on the fourth Thursday in November. In Switzerland, Thanksgiving is celebrated rather timidly. Not so at the Hope & Life Church.

An interview with Andrea Blaser.

Question. How did you as church come to include this festival in the calendar?

Answer. In America, Thanksgiving is an important family celebration that is celebrated on a large scale and nationwide. Here in Germany, this is still mainly celebrated in country churches with a rural character. However, it is not an official, nationwide holiday. Some churches celebrate on the first Sunday in October, others on the last Sunday in September. We chose the first Sunday in October because it's easy to remember.

I came up with the idea last year when I came across the feasts of God's people in the Bible. In Deuteronomy 5, I read how God asks his people to thank him for his practical blessings throughout the year: ‘Then celebrate the feast of harvest in honour of the Lord your God. Offer him a freewill offering according to how richly he has blessed you.’ (Deuteronomy chapter 16, verse 10)

It suddenly occurred to me that this would also fit extremely well with our church. We experience so many of God’s blessings as individuals, but also as a whole church.

Year after year, God has given us a variety of growth, successfully guided us as a church through the Coronavirus period and allowed his blessing to flow into so many areas that we have countless reasons to give thanks.

When we celebrated the Harvest Thankfullness Festival for the first time last year, it was a trial. We didn’t know whether people would join in, whether such a celebration would be well received. On the day itself, so many gifts were collected that the gift table made the hearts of young and old beat faster.

We were pleasantly surprised. People wanted to thank God and the gifts were so creative and varied that we were amazed. There were vouchers for dinners, help with mobile phone problems, home-brewed beer, vegetables, fruit, nuts, baked goods, flowers, homemade items, beautiful handicrafts and, last but not least, lunch was funded by an anonymous donor.

Q. Is it a coincidence that it is an Emmental free church that has organised a large harvest thankfulness festival? After all, the awareness of the blessing of tending the fields is perhaps even more pronounced in this rural region...

A. The Emmental really is one of the most beautiful agricultural regions imaginable. We value our farms, the hard work of our farmers and the products they produce.

Without God’s blessing, agriculture would be doomed to failure - he determines the weather, knows the future and is the best counsellor. Of course, this also applies to all our other work, endeavours and income. Thanksgiving is a celebration for the whole church - everyone has reasons to give thanks to God.

Q. How exactly will your feast work?

A. As always, we celebrate a normal morning service at 10.30 am. People have registered their gifts beforehand via the website or bring them spontaneously and hand them over to the team in the parlour. After the service, you can write your thanks on a glass wall or go straight down to the restaurant, where you can enjoy a delicious autumn lunch. The gift tables are ready and everyone can help themselves to the generous presents.

Q. In the invitation to this event, you write: “We feel so richly blessed that we would also like to put God at the centre of this thanksgiving celebration”. How do you express this blessing, what are you experiencing as a congregation at the moment?

A. We experience time and again that God is one step ahead of us, prepares us for situations and doesn’t let us down. One example of this was the livestream: a year before the coronavirus pandemic, we already had the feeling that we should set up a livestream.

This required a lot of money and resources, and we had no concrete reason why we should invest in this area. We followed this impulse anyway. A year later, Covid came and changed our daily lives. Miraculously, we were prepared and could only thank God.

In the same way, he keeps giving us new ideas that take courage and may not make sense at the moment but will bear abundant fruit over time. We experience this again and again as a church, both on a small and large scale. He does the same for each and every one of us.

God wants to bless all people - not only spiritually, but also mentally, physically and very practically in material areas. Our God is a generous God, and that will never change.

This interview was first published by Livenet.ch and translated with permission.