Jared Ball and Kelly Nupson join Pastor Walton this week to discuss their work on Festival of Lights 2025, which is coming up December 6 and 7 from 6-9 pm.
Download the Festival of Lights 2025 Harvest Time
Episode Transcript
Chris Harper: Welcome to Harvest Time. My name is Chris Harper, and our host on this program is Pastor Gary Walton, the lead pastor of Harvest Baptist Church. Every week, we spend these twenty five minutes together telling the stories of our church by interviewing our members and other friends of the ministry. We have two services at Harvest every week, the first at 08:45AM, the second at 10:45AM on Sunday. We have Japanese and Korean translation during that 10:45AM service, and that’s also when we livestream at hbcguam.org.
Hbcguam.org. We hope you can join us this week. Let’s begin today’s Harvest Time by welcoming Pastor Gary Walton. Hi, pastor.
Gary Walton: Hey. Hafa adai, Chris. Christmas season is special world round, but we think we have a really awesome, you know, Christmas December, you know, schedule and just opportunities at Harvest. Chris just mentioned the Sunday services. This Sunday, it it kicks off a weekend of Christmas for us that really leads through up until Christmas services, and we would love to have you come.
You might be listening, you know, in your car or another device here today, and you don’t have a church home, you live on Guam, you want to be someplace for Christmas, I really, am confident that if you came and visited Harvest for one of those services, you’d find people that are just passionate about God and His Word and a welcoming place, and so we’d like to invite you to come and join us, for any of the services. We’re going to talk about that in a minute, some of the special things going on in December, but, we’d love to have you join us. Well, we’ve got two of the masterminds, with us behind Festival of Lights. This is an annual celebration that kicks off the Christmas season here at Harvest and really, in some ways kicks off the Christmas season for, for our whole island. But, with us today are, Jared Ball and Kelly Nupson.
Maybe for listeners that don’t know you both, give us a quick intro. What’s what’s your role here at Harvest, and then what’s your role in kind of bringing the Festival of Lights to life? Jared, why don’t we start with you?
Jared Ball: Yeah. I have an official role here at Harvest besides Festival of Lights, but during this season, I mean, Festival of Lights is the hat that I’m wearing.
Gary Walton: It’s the thing.
Jared Ball: But during the rest of the year, I’m communications coordinator, head of the communications department. I get to work with some of our most creative, most fun people here on campus. Shout out to my crew there. We do a lot of the
Gary Walton: They’re okay.
Jared Ball: They’re okay. They’re alright. I mean, I don’t want to butter them up too much.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Jared Ball: But we do the, like, the written stuff that you see in documents, pamphlets, stuff like that, all the visual stuff, the art around campus, the videos as well, social media, photography, stuff like that. So I get to work with a very creative crew and we have a lot of fun.
Gary Walton: Okay. Awesome. We’ll talk about the Festival of Lights piece here in a minute. Kelly, tell us for your your real job. You know?
Actually, Kelly’s involved in all kinds of stuff, but the job first, and then we’ll talk about your role.
Kelly Nupson: Sure. My job here at Harvest is I’m a teacher. I teach seventh grade English and twelfth grade British literature, and then I coach the competitive speech team and direct the school plays. So I am involved in a lot of the drama sides of our of our school, and then that kind of translates into what I do for Festival of Lights, which is I, write and direct the nativity story that happens in the auditorium each year, which is one of our highlight pieces. That’s really one of the things we want you to come and see is the Christmas story and just encourage you with some truth from the word of God.
Gary Walton: Yeah. I mean, really everything gears towards that. It leads to that. There’ll be all kinds of other things happening, but, that’s sort of like the culmination point
Kelly Nupson: Mhmm.
Gary Walton: To be able to be there. I’ll ask you some questions about that here in a little bit. Kelly, how long have you been at Harvest?
Kelly Nupson: This is year ten for me.
Gary Walton: Okay, awesome.
Kelly Nupson: A bit.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Really just involved in so many great parts of the ministry, thankful for you and your servant’s heart, and very, very gifted in the creation the orchestration of this drama. We see it in other parts, but it’s really fun to see all that kind of come to fruition, you know, each year with sort of a new, fresh, you know, from Harvest creation, Yeah,
Kelly Nupson: it’s fun to come up with it, fun to work with the actors, and fun to work with just different people involved in our church as we bring this together. It’s just as much about the fellowship and bringing it together and then the outreach aspect as well. So it’s great to be a part of this project. Alright.
Gary Walton: Jared, let’s back up. Tell us about Festival of Lights, for somebody that’s, you know, I think a lot of people on island are familiar now, but maybe somebody’s brand new. Where did this idea come from? What are we talking about?
Jared Ball: Yeah. From the name Festival of Lights, you can tell that we’ve got a lot of lights on campus.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Jared Ball: But really, the festival term has gotten a lot more play over the past few years, where before it was a lot of lights set up on campus and people would come and see the lights. You know, that was the big thing. But now as we’ve leaned a little bit more into the festival side of things, we’ve brought a lot of the island onto campus with, food trucks that we set up in the center of campus, which is a great way for us to interact with a lot of our loved businesses here on island. And then we’ve introduced some children’s games on the lower portion of campus, ornament decorating, you know, sorts of stuff that would be more prominent at a festival sort of event, kind of like a big family friendly party here on campus. And then we introduced recently our Living Bethlehem, which is a huge portion of the campus.
It’s the parking lot between two of our big buildings, and we have that completely decked out to look like Bethlehem looked back when Jesus was born. And so you can tell that we still have a ton of lights here on campus, and that’s a big part of what we do here on campus, but we’ve introduced a lot more elements that make this a really well rounded night to spend here on campus with us and kick off the Christmas season. And of course then, it all culminates when you enter into the Christmas Theater, which is our auditorium, and you see the birth of Christ, the nativity story told in a new creative way every year, and then it ends with the Christmas message, which you present at the very end, which it I mean, you can’t find a more well rounded, full way to kick off your Christmas season than what has become Festival of Lights. And that’s what it is. It’s a huge love letter from Harvest to the island during the Christmas season, and it’s a great way to kick off the Christmas season with your family.
Gary Walton: Yeah. And one of the things that, you know, we feel so passionate about is with your family, right from the very beginning, there’s a lot of fun things happening on campus, but to be able to get to the real meaning of what we’re doing. So we’re starting the season off, not about the gifts, not about, you know, the Christmas trees, all of that. That’s part of what’s happening here, but to for you and your family to be reminded, hey, this is the reason that we’re doing this, the the true centerpiece is the birth of Jesus, and there’s there’s a meaning and a reason behind all of this. Let’s get the big invite out there.
We’ll come back to it at the end. But what do people need to know about this year’s Festival of Lights? Date, times, theme? Yeah. Why should they be planning to come?
Jared Ball: Oh, yeah. I’ll keep this as concise as I can because I don’t wanna confuse people with all the numbers and stuff like that. Very simply, it is December 6-7 from 6 to 9PM on Harvest Campus. That’s the basic stuff. That’s all you really need to know.
Yeah. But the rest of
Gary Walton: You can come anytime between Oh, yeah. Six to
Jared Ball: Yeah. It’s it’s and there’s no appointment. You don’t have to be here at the beginning. You don’t have to be here at a specific time, but those are the times that we’re going to be doing it, six to nine P.M.
And we do have an official entrance where you’ll come through and you’ll get a welcome packet, it’s got a bunch of stuff in there. You have a gold ticket, which is an entrance to our gift card giveaway, which we love doing every year. You’ll get a map of the campus too, so you’ll know what you can do, where you can go, all the different spots here on campus. But it’s it’s Festival of Lights during our fiftieth year.
Gary Walton: Mhmm.
Jared Ball: So that’s what the decorations are all about this year. That’s what the whole theming is. It’s Festival of Lights in our fiftieth year. So it’s really a big deal for us to bring a bunch of people onto campus and say, hey, this is our fiftieth anniversary and it’s Festival of Lights. It’s compounded celebration, so you really don’t wanna miss it this year.
It’s a it’s a big to do for us.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Okay. Great. Kelly, we already talked about this. You’re the creative mind, behind the live drama.
It is the centerpiece, I think, of the whole, experience. Can you tell us how the story, came together this year? What makes this drama different than maybe other years?
Kelly Nupson: Sure. So every year, I try to take a slightly different take on the nativity story. The the foundation of the story is the biblical story. So we’re trying to, you know, hit what are the things that happen in the bible story, but then looking at some of the different themes and some of the lessons that we can learn out of that story. This year, I focused I began my focus by looking at Joseph and what this whole experience may have been like for him.
And through that, God really brought out the theme of his faithfulness to us in all of our circumstances, in each moment of our life, whether we are living for him and doing what he says or in the moments when we are failing and struggling, in those times, God’s faithful no matter what, and he has been since the beginning. And so that theme really came to my mind as I was doing this story, and I set a few scenes apart that highlight God’s faithfulness for Mary and Joseph as they were headed to Bethlehem, as they’re finding out, where do we stay, where do we go, that God is faithful in all of it. And then I have some, narration that comes through and also highlights that theme and the theme of salvation and how, God throughout time has been faithful. And in the story of the nativity is one of the moments where we most see God fulfilling his promises in bringing the Messiah, in bringing salvation to his people, to us, even when we don’t deserve it. So, God’s faithfulness is really what I’m highlighting this year through the story.
Gary Walton: This may be kind of like the inside story of this, and maybe it’s just, you know, four of us here talking about it, but, I really love the fact that over the years, the way that the Festival of Lights has developed Mhmm. I don’t think anybody, you know, Brian Lenartz was kind of the mastermind for a number of years. Lots of different people had some, you know, a big part in in it, you know, coming to what it is today. I don’t know that, at least as far as I know, nobody really had, like, this very intentional idea that in the end, the full centerpiece of this whole thing would be drawing people to the birth of Jesus. I mean, the literal birth of Jesus.
I mean, I guess not the literal birth, the enactment of the literal birth of Jesus. But truly, that’s what it has become. You know? So, you know, the the, food trucks, the snowball fight, decorations, the lights, you know, all of that, it’s it’s a big part of it. We wanna celebrate it.
But it really is drawing people to Bethlehem, and Bethlehem is drawing people into the auditorium. Into the auditorium is, a drama of some of the themes that you talked about, and then the whole thing is Jesus was born, and we’re gonna be able to see that. It’s like and I don’t know that anybody planned it, but it’s really what it has become. This is the spotlight of the whole thing, and I love that.
Jared Ball: You can even tell too, if you were to look at the map that we put out for Festival of Lights, we’ve got a map for volunteers that kind of helps them see where they’re supposed to go and all that. But we also have a map that we hand out to the guests that come in. And if you were to look at it, maybe with some of this insider info, you’d be able to tell that everything, kind of all roads lead to the Christmas theater where you’re going see the Nativity.
Gary Walton: Bethlehem,
Jared Ball: exactly. And when I was working on Festival, I think it was maybe two or three years ago, when I was looking at it, trying to come up with kind of a what’s a purpose statement, a mission statement for this, I realized that there’s two for us. The one mission statement, purpose statement that we have is for everybody that comes onto campus to have a great time with their families.
Gary Walton: Absolutely.
Jared Ball: To have a great fun time during Christmas, kicking off their Christmas season. But the second and kind of the ultimate purpose is to direct people’s vision at the beginning of their Christmas season to Christ specifically. And you’ve helped me shape this vision too as we’ve worked on every year after we finish Festival of Lights. The first meeting for the next Festival of Lights happens either the next day or the day after. So when we’re planning, we’ve always been talking about how do we make sure that we’re accomplishing those two purposes?
And with the map, like what I was talking about, when you look at it, you see there’s the children’s area, lower portion of campus, there’s ornament decorating, the snowball fight, the ice trikes, and all that stuff, and that’s fun. You know, you’re hanging out a lower portion of campus, and the food area is nearby, and the eating area, that’s nearby. So it’s like all this stuff, you’re having a lot of fun down there. But as you move your way up through Festival of Lights, you hit the entrance to Bethlehem. And we’ve got a divider now down the middle of Bethlehem so that you are specifically hitting areas as we’ve planned them out.
To have the best experience, you’re gonna go to the chickens first, and then after that, you’re gonna go to the armorer. And you’re gonna have these conversations this year. Kelly has written out some scripts and some specific things for the people in Bethlehem to be talking about. So these citizens of Bethlehem are actually going to feel a lot more real, like you’re actually walking through and talking to people who have lived here and, oh, the census is happening. How do they feel about that?
There’s this murmur going on about this lady that’s come into town on this donkey with her husband. All this stuff is planned specifically, you’re going through Bethlehem, getting closer to the Christmas theater where the production’s about to happen, and you’re starting to think more and more about this story about the birth of Christ as you’re moving through. And it’s becoming much more intentional, and then you hit the doors, the production starts, and the whole time you’ve walked through Bethlehem and your mind is going and you’re being reminded and you’re you’re thinking and you’re stirring on this. And hopefully, that has prepared you to receive the message of the production inside the Christmas theater. And then at the very end, the mission is accomplished.
We have communicated the story of Christmas, the reason for Christmas. So hopefully, you’ve had a great time with your family. You’ve really enjoyed the kickoff to the Christmas season, and your heart’s been set in the right position. That’s
Gary Walton: Love it.
Jared Ball: That’s the mission.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Love it. Yeah. And I I I don’t wanna embarrass, Kelly on this, but really each year, Kelly and and actually as as these dramas have unfolded Mhmm. You know, year after year, I walk away from them just really remarkable, feeling remarkable about God’s gift for you, because they are creative, and they they tell a different story.
It’s the same story, but it’s different every time, a different angle, funny, engaging, but ultimately it does. There is a sense of awe and wonder that the baby is born. So, that’s enough of that, you’ll feel. But really, I’m thankful for the way that God’s gifted you and you will.
Kelly Nupson: Yeah, it’s glory to God in that Absolutely. All of And I’m really just trying to highlight, you know, the Gospel and his story that he has in there, and I’m just telling the story that he told in the Bible.
Gary Walton: Yeah, amen. Jared, you’ve kind of walked around this a little bit, but it’s a big undertaking, a lot of volunteers that are from Harvest. I think it’s good for people to know that. How many volunteers right now? What’s it look Yeah,
Jared Ball: we’re right around 140 volunteers from the Church. And those are specifically kind of staffed, if you will, areas of Festival of Lights. There are many more people that end up helping out as well, but the volunteer sign up list is kind of the key for me as I’m putting together what does Festival of Lights look like, because it allows me to see the names and then put them into the different roles and responsibilities. It takes about 140 people to do it each year, and we always get as many volunteers as we need. And like, I think about Kelly with what she’s doing for the production.
We have a lot of people in the church that have been uniquely gifted by the Lord in many different ways. And as I look at festival each year, I’m always reminded a couple days before and specifically during that even if I wasn’t here, Festival of Lights would do just fine. You know, because I’ve been sick this year and it’s been it’s been a little bit of a more of a hassle to be putting stuff together just because I I felt under the weather. But I was talking to a couple guys last night from the church and I said, I’m reminded, even if I were to get sick and I just could not show up, Festival of Lights would go off just fine because it’s a love letter from the church to the island. And really, it’s the church deciding that they’re going to show up, volunteer, they’re gonna give out the goodness of their heart, they’re gonna sacrifice their time, and they’re gonna have a great time doing it, great attitudes, and it’s really just a bunch of friends here on campus.
You’re walking around the night of thinking, what fires do I need to put out? It’s all being taken care of. You know? Somebody’s over there doing it. Somebody comes up and says, Hey, how can I help?
It’s just a bunch of people from the Church that make it happen. So you plan the best that you can and that helps out, and it really does if you give some directions and stuff like that, but really, it’s just the people making it happen.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah. It’s awesome. Alright. Give us the don’t miss moment.
Yeah. So if someone stays home, what’s the one thing that they’re gonna hear people talking about afterwards and wish that they had been here to experience.
Jared Ball: Am I allowed to say every part of it? Really, everybody has kind of their favorite area, but we have some incredible food trucks that show up here on campus.
Gary Walton: Okay.
Jared Ball: And people talk about that pretty frequently because it’s just delicious everywhere you turn. The hardest part of the night is deciding where you’re gonna go to eat because you can’t eat everywhere, but you gotta choose your spot. But really, we’ve talked about the production a lot. It’s new every year. You can’t miss the production because it’s going to be new again next year.
This is the only year that you get to see it. We’ve got a couple more animals too in the Living Bethlehem this year. We’ve got a couple new stalls as well that have been built. Our woodworker Roy has put together some awesome stuff for us. We’ve dressed out the campus in the fiftieth colors, so the look is a little bit different this year.
You’re going to see things that you hadn’t seen before. We also have an alumni connection point, which is important for me to mention because we have a lot of HCA alumni that come through during Festival of Lights, and we have a specific spot for you this year. We started it last year and it was over at the Harvest House Training Center. This year, it’s in the center of all the stuff going on. So you’re going want to show up to that and make sure that you flex your powers as an HCA alumni and walk into your station and enjoy that, too.
Gary Walton: And the snowball fight. I mean, there like an age limit on that? There
Jared Ball: really isn’t. Oh, I didn’t know. You’ll show up and you’ll see that it’s overrun by the kids, and it’s mainly in the kids’ area. But if there’s a parent that wants to, you know, they wanna get back at their kid for throwing crackers at them earlier in the day, you know, get a snowball, But that is a crowd favorite for the kids for sure. Actually, we’ve got there’s a gentleman in the church, mister Rich.
He does a fantastic job running that area, and that’s really his way to to he makes that part of campus just shine.
Gary Walton: Yes, he does.
Jared Ball: And they ice down the snowballs, so you’re actually you’re getting hit with a cold snowball. Feels like an actual snowball. And so that’s an area that every kid wants to hit. They don’t want to miss that.
Gary Walton: I didn’t prep you for this, Jared. I think we might be able maybe be okay. Beyond Festival of Lights. What else is coming up in December, particularly the Sundays, fifteenth to twenty second, that family should be looking forward to?
Jared Ball: On the Sundays so we have a service. I don’t know if it’s the twenty first. It might be the twenty first. There’s a service that’s outside. That’s a candlelit service that’s done
Gary Walton: with Is Sunday the twenty second? Think it’s the twenty second.
Jared Ball: It’s done with the entire family, everybody shows up, it’s a regular church service, everybody welcome. But it’s a really special one because it’s outside, which is unique. We’ve got the lights up and you know, you’re side by side with the church. It’s just special being in a different spot.
Gary Walton: We call it our sunset communion service. Yeah.
Kelly Nupson: And and it is special time.
Chris Harper: It is the twenty first.
Gary Walton: The twenty first. Okay. Yeah.
Jared Ball: And that one’s special every year because you’re lighting candles. It’s a continuation of the Christmas season right before Christmas, and again, centering back on Christ. We’ve got the three wise men on the jetway. It’s one of our big light displays, and that’s lit up during that service. And it’s just it’s kinda special sitting there with the church family, looking around, And then we do the candle lighting ceremony, and Yeah.
It’s very special. So that’s one thing you don’t wanna miss. We also have an HBBC production.
Gary Walton: Yeah. I wanna make sure we mention that.
Jared Ball: Absolutely. I think
Gary Walton: It’s the fifteenth. Fifteenth. Fifteenth? Twenty first. Of the that
Jared Ball: you get too when you’re here for Festival of Lights is you get a Christmas season invitation. Yeah. So there’s four specific events that we’re inviting you to during the Christmas season here at Harvest. You had mentioned there’s a lot of stuff that goes on during the Christmas season, so you wanna be here on campus to do it. But HBBC’s been putting together their production this year, and it’s got a lot of music in it.
So that’s gonna be really special this go around. I’m excited to hear it. Chris, did you say it was on the fifteenth?
Chris Harper: Fourteenth. Fourteenth. Fourteenth and the twenty first.
Jared Ball: Fourteenth. Yeah. And the twenty first. Yeah. Those Sundays.
Basically all the Sundays after Festival of Lights. Yeah, you’ll want to be here.
Gary Walton: Yeah, actually, maybe that’s what I was trying to stress is that we want you to come to Festival of Lights. It’s been fun talking about it. I’m excited. It’s coming up this weekend, you know, so it’s this weekend. And we hope that you’ll come.
But we also do want to invite you to come and just be a part of Christmas at Harvest. And that would be this Sunday in the middle of Festival of Lights. We’ll have a morning, you know, two morning services. The next Sunday, HBBC drama, that’s our Bible College students from all across Micronesia, and our seniors put on this drama. It’s really a fun part of the morning service and we’ll sing some Christmas carols and it’s a great time.
And then the Sunday before Christmas, that would be the twenty first, we just have a special Christmas service. Lots of singing, lots of carols. We’ll always point ourselves to the scriptures. Anytime you come to Harvest, we’re gonna do that. But we’d like to invite you, to join us for any of these things that are coming on, and I think you’ll find, Christmas is celebrated in the right ways.
And it’ll change your perspective of what, for some people, can just become a busy season, sort of a hectic season. I encourage you to slow down, find the meaning, connect spiritually during this time, and, praying that God will use that to bless you.
Jared Ball: So Mhmm.
Gary Walton: You guys, thank you for all your work. Thank you for your investment in this time. We’re looking forward and praying that, it’ll be a great weekend together.
Jared Ball: Absolutely.
Kelly Nupson: Yeah. Thank you
Jared Ball: so Merry Christmas.
Kelly Nupson: Merry Christmas.
Chris Harper: Well, thank you for listening to this week’s Harvest Time. Of course, at this point in the program, we always wanna invite you to services at Harvest Baptist Church. Another invitation to Festival of Lights, Saturday and Sunday, 6PM to 9PM here on campus as well. The Sunday morning service is at 08:45AM and 10:45AM Sunday morning. We have Japanese and Korean translation during the 10:45AM service, and that’s also when we broadcast live here on 888.1 FM and khmg.org.
We hope to see you this Sunday and maybe Saturday and Sunday night as well. Thanks again for listening to Harvest Time.