This Advent marks our fifth year working from the Revised Common lectionary, which means we have a large inventory of creative resources for Advent & Christmas. To save you time (and the hassle of searching your way through older resources in our shop), we thought we’d organize all we have to offer. Get your scrolling & clicking finger ready, because there’s a lot in here!
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Music touches our souls in a unique way, especially around the holidays. And in this strange, isolating season, we’ll be turning to music more than usual, even if we can’t go caroling together or stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the pews on Christmas Eve as we sing “Silent Night.” Here we’ve collected hymns and songs that work well with our Those Who Dream Advent—Epiphany resources based on the Year B texts of the Revised Common Lectionary. We hope these lists inspire you to dream as you’re planning meaningful worship services in this season.
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This Advent, I’ve been practicing viewing art in community with the college ministry I work for. Each week, we’ve spent some time before worship with one of the visuals from the What Can’t Wait? Advent collection and engaged in the practice of visio divina. The experience of seeing together provided a richer, deeper view of each image than I could imagine for myself. Unencumbered by the “correct” interpretation, the students found meaning in places I had glanced over. And this beautiful collage of different ideas and interpretations has only opened up my interactions with the images, inviting me to fall into them again and again.
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The Advent season is a musically rich time. Between Lessons & Carols services and the Christmas songs pumping through every car and store, music fills December. But if you’re trying hard to save the Christmas carols for Christmas as you lean into Advent, this post is for you. Here we’ve collected hymns and songs that work well with our “What Can’t Wait?” Advent theme based on the Year A texts of the Revised Common Lectionary. We hope these lists help you as you’re planning meaningful worship services that encourage action as we await the coming of Christ.
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This Advent marks our fourth year working from the Revised Common lectionary, which means we have a large inventory of creative resources for Advent & Christmas. To save you time (and the hassle of searching your way through older resources in our shop), we thought we’d organize all we have to offer. Get your scrolling & clicking finger ready, because there’s a lot in here!
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The feeling was visceral—people gasped when they walked through the double doors to worship that first Sunday of Advent. I (Lisle Gwynn Garrity) worked with a small team at Black Mountain Presbyterian Church to blow up our Advent banner designs to 30' and suspend them above the congregation, allowing the light above to pour through the shapes cut away. The result was breath-taking, transcendent, majestic. Our Advent theme, "Let There Be Light" became known and felt beyond simply cerebral conviction.
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We hiked a mountain at 5 am, in cold rain, and nearly froze to death for the sake of the art. The introverted among us needed breaks. The organized among us needed a plan, and the late among us, well, ran late. We worked through meals, neglected sleep and every ounce of self care, due to poor communication. We carried our egos too closely to the surface, grappled with disappointment, failed to see the hurt on one another’s faces, and had to find the strength within us to say,
“Stop, I need to talk.”Read More