Holidays Revisited: The Cornerstone Baptist Drive-Through Nativity

Packed away for another season are the sets, props and costumes for the drive-through nativity that gave the congregants of the Cornertsone Baptist Church a means for bearing witness to the reason for the season.

So comes the assessment of Barbara Foster, who each year works diligently on the effort, alongside the talents and passion of long-term church member Helen Mulrennan Young, whose family is the namesake of Mulrennan Middle School in Valrico.

"We consider this to be a great witness for our Lord," Foster said, out and about the nativity showcase in December. "It's just a good witness for this time of the year."

(For more, visit the  Brandon Patch posting, which includes video clips of the church choir singing Christmas carols.)

Pastor Dave Ungar was busy handing out pamphlets to motorists as they left the drive-through entranceway to the church north of Brandon Boulevard, and just north of the Emergency Care Help Organization (ECHO) on Parsons Avenue.

"This may be a holiday season for some people, but for those who love Christ, it's Christmas, and there's 'Christ' in 'Christmas,' " said Ungar, pastor at Cornerstone Baptist Church. "It's to give the real reason for the season and that's what ministry is all about."

The ministry involves about 150 people who erect the sets, build the scenes, portray the costumed characters, sing in the church choir and greet people as they leave with information about the birth of Christ.

"It brings camaraderie to our church," Ungar said about the all-out effort, for which the planning each year begins months in advance.

For Ungar, it's another chapter in his lifelong passion to serve.

He said he was called to the pulpit in 1994, "when I was in Korea, when I was in the military."

As he put it: "I felt God called me full time to teach the Word."