The Kings Avenue Baptist committee had a hard decision to make after a pair of hurricanes battered the community this fall.
Instead of hosting what would have been the 38th annual Walk Thru Bethlehem, they chose to host Rebuild Days in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Typically, volunteers spend the weeks building Walk Thru Bethlehem, a living recreation of what Bethlehem was like during the time of Jesus’ birth. Volunteers portrayed the citizens of Bethlehem and, at the end, a couple left with no where to stay but the barn of an inn.
This year’s first scheduled Build Day was at the end of October. By the end of the initial meeting, the committee decided the community needed something different this year — a group of volunteers to be the hands and feet of God to help the area rebuild after the storm.
Tracy Hoyt, a city director with Walk Thru Bethlehem, said the event has always been for the community, not just the Kings Avenue Baptist congregation.
“We needed to see what the community needed most, and we felt like it would be more important to do that,” Hoyt said.
Each Saturday, a team of around a dozen volunteers have gone out in the community to help three to four families clean up after the storm. They might not be able to fix a roof, but the volunteers have helped cut trees, haul branches and clean up debris left from Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Despite the difficult decision to cancel the Walk Thru Bethlehem, Hoyt said the community’s response has been positive.
“The community has been positively responding to our announcement and understanding why we had to do it, and we appreciate the community’s support of the decision that we made,” she said.
To offer a different community event this year, the church will host a traditional Christmas sing-along at 4 p.m. on Sunday, December 15.
This year’s Bethlehem experience will also look a little different. Each Sunday of December, the church’s pastor will host a sermon series called Into Bethlehem, where attendees will explore the booths that would have been a part of this year’s Walk Thru Bethlehem.
And, Walk Thru Bethlehem will be back in 2025.
“The conversation with … the majority of the congregation and our volunteers is that we personally all miss it very much,” Hoyt said. “But we’re happy to be giving back in a different way.”
For more information on how you can volunteer or the Christmas events at Kings Avenue Baptist, visit https://walkthrubethlehem.com/.
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