Evangelical congregations from Texas to Maine plan outreach events in the path of totality.

The plan in Vallonia, Indiana, involves moon pies.

The sun will start to disappear at 1:49 p.m. The wide blue sky that stretches over the cornfields and soybeans along State Route 135 will grow darker and darker, until, after about an hour and 15 minutes, the small farming community of 379 souls will be cast into night.

The moon—invisible to the human eye except as an empty space—will overshadow everything. For a minute, and then two, and then three, stars will be visible in the sky. The colors of the world will seem all wrong. And Vallonia will pass through eclipse totality.

At Driftwood Christian Church, people will look up at the sky and say, “Wow!” and “Ooo!” and “Look at that!” And they will munch on moon pies decorated with the words of Jesus in John 8:12: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness.”

Pastor Daniel Ison said it was the church’s evangelism committee that came up with the plan. They bought the cookie-and-marshmallow snacks and wrote out the Scripture verse, over and over, hundreds of times.

The Independent Christian Church of about 170 doesn’t know how many visitors they’ll get. But they expect a lot of people will drive out to see the eclipse on Monday, April 8. The celestial phenomenon is a rare thing and there won’t be another one in the contiguous US for another 20 years. So the congregation decided to open up the church, its bathrooms, and the field around their building to welcome out-of-town visitors to a celebration of creation.

“That God created something like this for us to enjoy—God’s just like, Enjoy my creation, on an epic scale!—I think you just have to ...

Continue reading...

Continue ...