Thanksgiving can easily get crowded out by the jump from Halloween to Christmas, plan a community worship service for a time to pause, stop, and give thanks to God.

Free graphics to assist your team in planning are in the downloadable zip file below.  Graphics include: four background stills for tailoring to your worship setting and portions of the scriptures. There is even more great information if you have a Premium Subscription, links follow. Want even more free content?
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"In addition to the Christian temporal and sanctoral cycles, there are days in the civil calendars that are marked by services in many Christian churches. Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s are the two days in the civil calendar that are widely enough celebrated with church services in North America to have been included in the common calendar. New Year’s is included in the common calendar as part of the Christmas Season, but Thanksgiving is included with the special days.

In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, which can occur between November 22 and 28 inclusive. It has a decidedly religious cast to it, but its religious character is broad enough to include not only Christians but Jews and others as well. Some have called it the chief annual celebration of American civil religion. It is the chief occasion in the year when significant numbers of communities hold interreligious worship services that include both Jewish and Christian congregations. The widespread custom of family Thanksgiving dinner, which may bring together a family reunion and be for many persons their biggest meal of the year, is often marked by a table blessing or other expression of thanks to God for the blessings of the year. While the secular ritual of football has made considerable inroads on more traditional observances, no realistic calendar of the American Christian Year can ignore Thanksgiving services, even if they are often moved back to Thanksgiving Eve or the Sunday before Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving Sunday).

Because most Thanksgiving (or Thanksgiving Eve or Thanksgiving Sunday) services are held by a single congregation or a group of Christian congregations, the majority of such services are Christian worship services. Many of them, especially when held by a single congregation, include Holy Communion."
—from The New Handbook of the Christian Year by Hoyt L. Hickman, Don E. Saliers, Laurence Hull Stookey, James White (©Abingdon Press)

 

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For Premium Library Subscribers:

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
commentary from The New Interpreter's Bible

Psalm 100
commentary from The New Interpreter's Bible

Philippians 4:4-9
commentary from The New Interpreter's Bible

John 6:25-35
commentary from The New Interpreter's Bible

More free content: Be sure to check the Thanksgiving bin here.