I’m a little later than I hoped to be with getting this post out for Shavuot/Pentecost, especially considering that many who celebrate have already celebrated it this year due to calendar differences. But we are celebrating tonight/tomorrow, and I decided it’s best to get it up while I’m thinking about it and preparing for it, and then it will be here and ready for future years.

Just as we discussed in my post about the timing of the Feast of Firstfruits, there are a number of differing opinions on when to celebrate Shavuot/Pentecost. Here’s a good summary of the three predominant views among Jews and Messianic believers if you’re interested. Our family follows the Karaite tradition on this one because it’s the only way we can see for Shavuot to always fall on the day after the seventh Shabbat as it says it should in Leviticus. There is also, of course, the Christian tradition of celebrating it seven weeks after Resurrection Sunday. If you fall into a different camp than us on this one, I think you will still be able to use this script – you may just have to make a few minor adjustments at the beginning when I talk about the timing.

In my post about Passover, I didn’t go into what foods to prepare and what elements I had included in the script, but since Shavuot is less common, I will share just a bit about what we do. In Leviticus 23, it says that the people were to bring two loaves of bread with yeast from their homes to be waved before YHWH along with a number of animal sacrifices. Since there is no earthly Tabernacle or Temple, we obviously cannot observe these parts, but we do like to include two loaves of bread with yeast in our Shavuot meal because of their significance and because it sets it apart from Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Shavuot Pentecost chocolate fondue fountain

Our family has another tradition we enjoy at Shavuot, and I have included it in the script because it has become such a beloved part of our celebration. It is important to me to make the Feasts something that my children look forward to each year with great expectation, so every year for Shavuot, we have a chocolate fondue fountain to symbolize the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We have a variety of different things to dip in the fondue to symbolize that the gift of the Spirit has been offered to everyone — Jew and Gentile alike — people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

Shavuot Pentecost chocolate fondue fountain with strawberries and marshmallows

There are crunchy cookies (sometimes we use tablet-shaped cookie cutters if we have time to make homemade cookies; other times, we’ve used store-bought shortbread) to represent the tablets of stone on which YHWH inscribed the Torah and soft marshmallows to represent the softness of our hearts now that YHWH has replaced our hearts of stone. We always include lots of fruit and talk about the fruit of the Spirit, and we like to include strawberries because they look like tongues of fire (and they taste good in chocolate fondue!)

This is, of course, just a tradition, so feel free to use the editable script and take that section out if you don’t want to do it.

Shavuot Pentecost Script and Playlist

I’ve included a Host, a Hostess, and Readers 1-16 in this script. Feel free to divvy those out however it works best for you. If you have more than sixteen people, two can share a reader role. If you have less, one person can do more than one part. Something unique in this one is that we like to read John 3:16 in as many languages as we are able to. I’ve included some that we’ve been able to do based on who celebrates with us, but feel free to pick and choose the ones you can handle, to take some out and add languages your family can do, or to find videos on YouTube of this verse being read in various languages.

I’ve also included in the script a time to watch a video I made a few years ago when I taught a class at our homeschool co-op called Missions and Languages Around the World. In it, the kids and I learned and sang a condensed version of I John 4:10 in about 20 languages. “God loved us and sent His Son” is the Gospel in a very, very small nutshell. I made this video of our class singing this verse in several of the languages with pictures of children who speak that language holding their country’s flag. I find this a powerful reminder that God sent His Son for each of the children in these pictures and for everyone who speaks their language, and it reminds me to pray for them. We enjoy watching this video at Shavuot to remember Acts 2 when the disciples proclaimed the Good News in many languages. I hope you enjoy it and are similarly encouraged to pray.

I’ve also included some songs to sing throughout the script, including my original song written specifically for Shavuot, You’ve Always Longed to Dwell with Men, in which I highlight the God-patterns fulfilled in this Feast. Here’s a YouTube playlist of lyric videos with all the songs included in the script to make it easy for you to find them. As always, feel free to make it your own and change the songs or the wording or anything else you want. This is to serve you, not something for you to serve!

Here are three versions of the script.

Editable Word Doc

Editable Pages File

Non-editable PDF File

As with my scripts for Seudah Maphsehket, Passover, and the Feast of Firstfruits,  I make no promises that the Word and Pages files will hold the formatting, so to see how I intended it to look, check the PDF file. I print them double-sided with the short-edge binding setting and then fold them in half. As with the others, I’ve included a coloring sheet for the cover.

I hope this is all helpful for you, and I’d love to hear if you do anything in your family to celebrate the Feast of Shavuot! Shalom!