Advent Resource Launch Party!

Are you looking for some new resources for your church this Advent and Christmas?

I have some great ones to introduce to you. I have been working hard developing four, family-friendly resources for your church to use this Advent, and I’d like to show them to you at our upcoming Advent Resource Launch Party on Wednesday, October 21, 2020 at 7 pm.

First of all I want to show you this year’s annual Advent Devotional booklet entitled On the Way to Bethlehem. Inside this little resource your church will discover daily bible readings along with accompanying theme reflections and prayers, all guiding them on their journey to Bethlehem. This resource can be used by all ages as the readings/stories are provided both by scripture text and from the Spark Story Bible for our families with younger children. The devotional will be available for download after the Launch Party for churches to freely photocopy, and distribute.

This year might be the perfect year to encourage your households to make their own Advent wreath for use at home. With a wreath at home, families could light the candles each week along with their online church worship service, or perhaps light the Advent candles each day as they do devotions from the devotional booklet. If your church would like to share simple instructions for how to make an Advent wreath with fresh greens then you’ll appreciate this video demonstration. The video would also work well with a church’s virtual Advent Event. By boxing up all of the necessary supplies into individual packages and dropping them off in advance at participating homes and showing the video during your Advent Event, everyone could make their wreaths together over a Zoom platform. You’ll want to check out this resource in later October and imagine how you might be able to use it at your church.

What more can our churches participate in during Advent? How about a weekly Interactive Google Living Room you can link or upload to your church’s website that invites them into a beautifully decorated Christmas living room packed with lots of things to see and do. Each week users can click on the Advent wreath to see and hear the bible story being told by a great storyteller, they can discover a new song to sing along with one of our church’s talented musicians, they can cook up a Christmas treat with themed recipes from Crieff Hills Community Centre, make a craft from simple materials they already have at home, and even head out for an outdoor adventure in the crisp cold days of winter. Using Google classroom I’ve been having great fun designing a weekly interactive Christmas resource filled with these activities and many more.

Finally, this year presents some challenges for annual Christmas pageants and Christmas Eve services. The final resource I want to show you is a Zoom and video-friendly script for a Lessons and Carols service that involves your church members’ participation from their homes. Worship leaders will get to ‘dress up’ and do a little acting as they unfold the most wondrous story of all. I hope you’ll enjoy this opportunity for a delightfully new way of living into our nativity story.

These four resources are just about ready to be launched. All of them will be made available for free through the synod website in late October for you and your church to use as they wish. You can use them all, or just the one or two that suit your congregation’s needs. But, I’m excited to share them with you first. That’s why I think an Advent Resource Launch Party is in order. It’s going to happen on Wednesday, October 21 at 7 pm over Zoom. Bring something to drink and maybe a Christmas nibble or two (chocolate anyone), and join in to hear about and see each of these resources and get to know the important details about each of them. I’ll answer questions about how each can be used, and/or adapted to your context and help you think of ways you could bring our Advent stories to life this season.

To sign up for our Advent Resource Launch Party, just email me at torismit@gmail.com and I’ll send you a Zoom invite right away. I can’t wait to see you there!

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