Christmas plans

FundNoMore

Active member
Elect
Joined
Jan 7, 2018
Messages
108
Reaction score
38
Points
28
Location
Midwest - close to St Louis, MO
My wife was saved as a teenager and prior to that had been raised in a strong Catholic home. One issue that comes up every year is the difference in Catholics and Baptists in preparing for Christmas. If you are familiar with advent calendars, specific biblical occurences surrounding the birth of our Savior are recounted/celebrated throughout the month of December up until Christmas. She tells me that as a child it really helped her appreciate the specialness of the holiday, but in Baptist churches, little to nothing is done until the Christmas service and then it is over. We have talked about trying to include an advent like calendar in our personal preparation for the holiday, but I wonder if there are churches that schedule weekly messages along the same lines, i.e. every Sunday prior to Christmas a Bible message pointing to Jesus's birth is preached. We feel like some similar could be done as we prepare for Easter.

Is anyone doing this kind of spiritual preparation for the 2 greatest Christian/world events?
 
Jesus was born in September.
 
For two Decembers I was a pastor of an American Baptist (in name only) church that pretty much had a United Brethren membership of folks that came over when they got upset at their UB church. Through attrition the church had combined the distinctives of the two denominations including advent.

The Sunday morning after Thanksgiving a few people took the advent candle out of storage and set it up. I had that "deer in the head lights" look. Never heard about this in Church Ed at HAC but said I would look into it. I forget the order but for the advent season I would preach a sermon but during between songs/announcements/prayer requests I would bring a short devotion and prayer concerning the aspects of advent - Love, Joy, Peace, Hope and include a hymn, not necessarily Christmas song on the respective topic, then light a new candle each week,

Not through my preaching, but more over the administration issues of the church I resigned after being there for a year and a half. I rank learning about the advent season as one of my top take aways from that pastorate.

I would encourage any church or home to add this to their Christmas worship. I mean we have ranted and raved about keeping Christ in Christmas. that is what Advent does.
 
We have talked about trying to include an advent like calendar in our personal preparation for the holiday, but I wonder if there are churches that schedule weekly messages along the same lines, i.e. every Sunday prior to Christmas a Bible message pointing to Jesus's birth is preached.
As long as I have attended my present church (22+ years), they've acknowledged the Advent season with a sermon series, typically on some aspects of the Christmas story, the prophecies of the Messiah, or events in Old Testament history that anticipated his birth. (In other words, nothing unconventional.)

In recent years (probably no more than the last 5 or so), we've also included the lighting of Advent candles and related readings--something I always appreciated during the Christmas seasons of my childhood, when my family attended a mainline church. I suspect I know which pastor was responsible for (re-)introducing that tradition, not that it matters.
 
Top