MORGANTOWN – At the root of Christmas is the birth of Christ, and you can walk through the story unfolded in the early chapters of Matthew and Luke at the live nativity at Kingdom: A Community Church in Westover.
The church has been offering the live nativity for more than a decade, Pastor Kevin Cain said Friday evening as the Wise Men prepared to part the curtains for this year’s opening night. But it’s grown since those early days.
This year’s is titled The Light of the World.
“We’ve expanded everything over the years and made it more of an immersive experience,” he said. Most things up to the manger scene will be familiar, but at the end they’ve added a series of placards that tell the story of Christ past the manger to his second coming.
And with Sunday marking Kingdom’s 25th anniversary, he said, the bottom of each placard also offers a chapter in the history of the church. Beyond that, there’s a prayer wall where visitors can post prayer requests and pray with church members.
The nativity begins with the Wise Open opening the curtains to a queue tent where Cain explains what will follow. The first area offers four vignettes from the revelation to the priest Zechariah of the conception of John the Baptist, to the angel’s visit to the sleeping Joseph.
The next set of curtains takes you into the shepherds’ field with an angelic choir. Then some Roman soldiers admit you into the gates of Bethlehem, where you walk down the street past market stalls to find out the inn is full. One last gate and you’re at the manger itself, with Mary and Joseph and the newborn Word become human flesh in the cave, and an angel hovering above them.
“It’s not just a visual representation,” Cain said. “We’re telling the story of Christ’s birth. … We did it for the first time last year and it was super effective, and we thought it was just a real blessing for people.”
The Light of the World continues from 6-8 p.m. Saturday and Dec. 9. The church is located at 540 Fairmont Road.
