By Andrée Tomlinson

BETHLEHEM WALK is a celebration of God’s love, which the members of Parksville Fellowship Baptist Church look forward to giving to their community every Christmas. This season, they are celebrating the 15th anniversary of this event.

Upwards of 9,000 visitors come through the Walk each year, with many traveling from locations all over Vancouver Island and the mainland.  

Bethlehem Walk has grown and changed over the years, but the basic format has always remained the same. Members of the church dress in period costume, engage in and demonstrate many forgotten domestic arts, and keep shops in an elaborately constructed set of the ancient town of Bethlehem.

There’s a butcher, a baker – with a working oven preparing the locally famous Dead Sea Rolls, which are even better with ‘camel spit’ (honey) on them – and a candle maker.

Other booths present a blacksmith (with a real working forge), an olive press, a synagogue, a fish market, an apothecary and a jail manned by Roman centurions.

There are many live animals in pens throughout the village (sheep, goats, chickens, and rabbits) and there is also the gloriously fabricated and human-powered Camille the Camel to entertain the visitors to Bethlehem as well.  

The biggest focal point of the event is, without a doubt, the manger scene. Every year a family from the church with a new baby take on the roles of Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, to help tell the Nativity story to many who may never have heard the tale.

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In this secular culture, some may be inclined to believe it is only a myth from long ago. Putting this story of God’s gift to mankind in the historical context of where it actually occurred helps people understand the story is true.

Once through the village, visitors are treated to hot chocolate, cookies, Christmas carols – and free New Testaments, courtesy of the Gideon Society.

And just as the Magi came bearing gifts to the real Christ child centuries ago, so do visitors to Bethlehem Walk also bring gifts. Donations have never been asked for, but visitors have always come bearing gifts of money and food.

Since Bethlehem Walk was first celebrated, more than $150,000 has been donated to the Society of Organized Services, and truckloads of food have been donated to the Salvation Army Food Bank.

For all Bethlehem Walk gives to the community, church members will tell you the greatest gift is the one the event gives to the church itself. Each year, it takes hundreds of volunteer hours of planning, preparation and construction.

Those hours have helped to define Parksville Fellowship as a congregation. Uniting for a common purpose has nourished a very strong sense of community, and given the membership a heart for serving in many ways.

The 15th Bethlehem Walk takes place December 15 –18, from 6:30 to 8:30 pm.

December 2007