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Watch Night welcomes new year
New Year’s Eve church services provide time to reflect on past, present and future.
While some people will indulge in liquid spirits at New Year’s Eve celebrations, others will opt to be filled by a spirit of another kind.
A tradition in the black community is the New Year’s Eve service sometimes called Watch Night or Freedom’s Eve.
“It’s starting the new year and a new day with a positive attitude. A closer relationship to God is the goal,” said the Rev. Lee T. Rucker Jr., pastor of Pilgrim Baptist Church in Struthers.
At the beginning of the service he offers a brief historical perspective. Contemporary services may be traced to Dec. 31, 1862, when blacks gathered at churches and homes to wait for the news that the Emancipation Proclamation had become law on Jan. 1, 1863. The document freed all slaves in the Confederate States of America.
The Rev. Mr. Rucker said the history is meaningful but the service also has evolved into group and personal reflections on the past, present and future.
Mr. Rucker said the service he conducts is divided into three parts.
“A time to remember focuses on the present and reflecting on what is happening,” he said. A hymn, “I Will Trust in the Lord,” will complement this segment, which will be augmented with personal testimonies of those who wish to share.
“It’s a time to forgive and forget,” he said. “We want to leave the past behind ... we all have personal issues,” he said.
Mr. Rucker he said he will use a section of the Letter of Paul to the Philippians 3:13-14: “Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it on my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
He said that’s about freeing ourselves of the past and “making progress in the new year.”
Mr. Rucker said the third part is a time to begin anew. For this, he will discuss Isaiah 43:9-19. Verses 18 and 19, which tie in the ideas of forgetting and starting anew, say, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing ...”
Mr. Rucker said he hopes the theme of the service helps people “to become more Christ-like in how they treat one another and live our lives.”
Mr. Rucker said at about five minutes to midnight, the emphasis is on personal prayer, and that’s how those attending greet the New Year.
He said the service usually attracts “people from the neighborhood” and church members. “Families with visitors sometimes come, and the attendance is multiracial.”
“What we hope is that people have a closer relationship with God and go into the new year with a positive attitude,” Mr. Rucker said. “It’s not about worldly values but Christian values,” he said.
At Holy Trinity Missionary Baptist Church in Youngstown, the Rev. Lewis W. Macklin II, pastor, also said the service is linked to the Emancipation Proclamation. “It’s about looking forward to freedom and liberty in the new year,” he said. He said the service has been a tradition in the black community.
At Holy Trinity, the Rev. Mr. Macklin said the lights will be turned off at about six minutes to midnight and back on shortly after midnight. “It’s about coming out of the darkness into the light,” Mr. Macklin said, referring to coming out of slavery to freedom, from problems of the old year to the promise of a new year and “to the light of the world ... Jesus.”
“It’s a phenomenal thing,” he said of attendance, noting that some people leave parties to attend. “They show their hearts.”
He recalled people were especially interested in attending these services Dec. 31, 1999, when rumors of various calamities abounded and nothing happened.
Mr. Macklin said the Watch Night service gives people the opportunity to “start the new year in the presence of God.”
linonis@vindy.com