Week 1 [activities] discussion questions p. 1
Advent reading p. 2
· Also read Luke 1:1-80
Week 2 [Advent] discussion questions p. 16
O Come Let Us Adore Him p. 17
· Also read Luke 2:1-20 and Matthew 1:18 – 2:12
Week 3 [Worship] discussion questions p. 18
St. Nicholas: What can I say, he was a beast p. 19
The Christmas Conundrum p. 21
Blessed are the Entitiled? p. 28
Week 4 [Secular v. Religious Christmas] discussion questions p. 30
Mary, the Mother of God p. 31
Week 5 [Celebrating Christ’s birth all year round] p. 34
discussion questions
Week 1
ACTIVITIES
Opening question: Share your name and tell the group about one of your favorite Christmas traditions
Discussion:
What extra activities to you do in the season leading up to and surrounding Christmas? (as your group discusses this, jot down all the things you do)
Take a look at your list. Circle the things you REALLY enjoy. Put a square around the things you really DO NOT enjoy. Share these discoveries with your group.
How can you do more of what you enjoy?
Can you cut some things out completely?
Discuss ways to do more of what you love and less of what you don’t. Ask… is there a way to transform the things you do so that you enjoy them more (for instance, I have found that taking time to pray for every person on my extensive Christmas card list as I address the envelopes has turned a tedious task I used to do in front of the television into a time to be grateful for friends and family and to lift them up before God)
What would you like your Christmas season to be? How would you like to feel? (think of several words, such as joyful, praise-filled, wonder-filled, family focused, etc.) Put a star next to the activities on your list that meet that criteria.
Are there things you’d like to be doing that you aren’t doing? Write them down.
Change is scary. It’s hard to break habits and family traditions. What do you think will be most difficult to change? What will you resist the most? What will your family resist the most?
Think and pray about this list over the time of this study. Talk with your family and friends about the traditions you want to keep, the changes you want to make, the things you want to consider scrapping altogether. Add things to the list as you learn and explore.
For next week: Read Luke 1:1-80 and the series on Advent by Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markdroberts/series/introduction-to-advent/
What is Advent? An Introduction to Advent
What is Advent?
Introduction to Advent
How Can Advent Make A Difference in Your Relationship with God?
by Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts
Copyright © 2011 by Mark D. Roberts and Patheos.com
Discovering Advent:
How to Experience the Power of Waiting on God at Christmastime
My e-book on Advent is now available:
Kindle edition – $2.99
Nook edition – $2.99
My writing on Advent, fully refreshed, with new stories, illustrations, and applications. Includes an Advent Devotional Guide using an Advent wreath.
The Advent of Advent
This coming Sunday is the first day of Advent. If you’ve been reading my blog for more than a year, you know that I generally make a big deal out of Advent. If you’re new to my blog, however, you may wonder why I bother. My goal in this post is to explain what Advent is. My next post in this series will make the case for taking Advent seriously.
When is Advent?
Advent is a season in the Christian year that lasts for about four weeks. It begins four Sundays before Christmas and ends on Christmas Eve, thus there is some variation in its length. If you’re unfamiliar with the idea of Christian seasons, you might find helpful a series I’ve written called: Introduction to the Christian Year. I should mention that Eastern Orthodox Christians do not recognize Advent per se, but have a longer season that is rather like Advent. Their Nativity Fast begins in the middle of November and is a season for repentance and abstinence.
In our secular American celebration of Christmas, the Christmas season (or holiday season, ugh) begins in the weeks prior to Christmas Day. Generally, this season starts in early December, though retailers have a bad habit of beginning Christmas in November (or even October). In my rule book, you shouldn’t listen to Christmas music or turn on Christmas lights until after you’ve finished the Thanksgiving turkey . . . at the earliest. Of course outside of my immediate family, nobody follows my rules . . . especially retailers.
So Advent overlaps with what is usually thought of in American culture as the Christmas season. But its beginning and ending are well defined, and its themes are quite a bit different from what is commonly associated with secular Christmas celebrations.
What is Advent?
The Christian season of Christmas actually begins on Christmas Eve and lasts for twelve days, ending on January 6. (No, the twelve-day season of Christmas did not start with the song. It was the other way around.) The time before Christmas is Advent, a season of preparation for Christmas. Christians prepare for celebrating the birth of Jesus by remembering the longing of the Jews for a Messiah. In Advent, we’re reminded of how much we ourselves also need a Savior, and we look forward to our Savior’s second coming even as we prepare to celebrate his first coming at Christmas. The word “Advent” comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “coming” or “visit.” In the season with this name, we keep in mind both “advents” of Christ, the first in Bethlehem and the second yet to come.
If you’re unfamiliar with Advent, I expect it might feel odd to think of the weeks before Christmas as something more than Christmastime. For most of my life, Advent played very little role in my pre-Christmas consciousness. As a child, I did have Advent calendars: sturdy, decorative paper displays with 25 little “windows,” one of which I would open each day of December leading up to Christmas. Sometimes Advent calendars are made of wood and feature twenty-five little boxes, each containing some little treasure (see photo). My Advent calendar was a way to whet my appetite for Christmas, not that I needed much help to get ready for my favorite day of the year, mind you.
I loved Christmas when I was young, partly because it celebrated the birth of Jesus, but mostly because it was a giant party in which I received lots of presents. In a sense, the Christian observance is a bit like my boyhood Advent calendars, though it has a much more serious purpose. It’s meant to get us ready, not for a present-opening party, but for a transformational celebration of the birth of Jesus.
What Colors Are Used in Advent? [ed note: Lutherans use the color blue]
My Advent wreath at home, after the fourth Sunday of Advent and before Christmas. This Advent wreath combines purple and pink candles for Advent, with a white candle for Christmas, with the greenery we associate with secular Christmas celebrations.
There are a few other things about Advent, besides its themes, that you might find odd if you’re unfamiliar with the season. The strangest might be the Advent color scheme. We associate Christmas and the weeks leading up to it with typical Christmas colors: red, green, white, silver, and gold. Advent, on the other hand, features purple (or dark blue) and pink. The purple/blue color signifies seriousness, repentance, and royalty. Pink points to the minor theme of Advent, which is joy. For many observers of Advent, the first, second, and fourth Sundays of Advent are “purple/blue” Sundays. Only the third is a “pink” Sunday. The pink, joyful color reminds us that, even as Advent helps us get in touch with our sober yearning for God to come to us, we know that he did in fact come in the person of Jesus.
Thus, our major-theme of waiting has a grace note of joy mixed in. If you’ve seen a traditionally-colored Advent wreath will recognize the purple and pink colors of this season (with the central, white, Christ-candle for Christmas Eve/Day). But if you’re unfamiliar with Advent and happen to attend a church service in early December in a church that recognizes Advent, you might be startled to see lots of purple, a bit of pink, and no red or green. (Many churches combine the colors of Advent and Christmas, however, so visitors won’t be completely perplexed. Advent purists don’t approve of such a mix, but I think we need to be gracious in our response to the Advent traditions of others. )
Advent’s Growing Popularity
Advent doesn’t get much attention compared to Christmas, though interest in Advent is growing steadily in many churches and in many Christian homes. That’s not to say everybody is an “Adventophile,” a lover of Advent, however. Some Protestants ignore Advent because it isn’t taught in Scripture and because they associate it with Roman Catholicism. Secular culture ignores Advent because there isn’t much money to be made here. I suppose you might be able to make a few bucks selling purple and pink candles, but this isn’t going to thrill most retailers.
I think, however, there are lots of good reasons to pay more attention to Advent, however. I’ll begin to explore these in my next post in this series.
Advent Devotional Guide: Preparing for the Coming of Christ
I have written a devotional guide for Advent. It is based on Scripture, and is meant to be used with an Advent wreath. This devotional is simple and can be used in families with young children. It can also be adapted for other uses, such as Advent-themed worship services or personal devotions. You are welcome to download the Advent Devotional Guide and use it as you see fit.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markdroberts/series/advent-devotional-guide-preparing-for-the-coming-of-christ/
How I First Learned About Advent
In yesterday’s post, I explained the timing and purpose of Advent, as well as its unexpected color scheme. I closed by noting that Advent is growing in popularity, especially among Protestant Christians who, in many cases, did not grow up with much awareness of Advent. Liturgically sophisticated Protestants, such as Lutherans and Episcopalians, generally are familiar with Advent, but many have just the slightest understanding of this season. For most of my life, I fell into that category. Though, as I noted in my last post, I enjoyed paper Advent calendars in my youth, I did not think of Advent as a season of the Christian year. In fact, I had no idea that Christians even had a year with special seasons. At the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood where I grew up, we celebrated Christmas and Easter, and that was about it. The weeks of December prior to Christmas were Christmastime, not Advent.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
When I was a teenager, Lloyd Ogilvie came as Senior Pastor of Hollywood Pres. He brought with him the tradition of using an Advent wreath in worship services prior to Christmas. Though we continued to sing Christmas carols and decorate the sanctuary with Christmas colors, Dr. Ogilvie did, however, speak of Advent as a season of preparation for Christmas. Still, I thought of Advent mostly as Christmas-lite, and not as a distinct season with distinct emphases.
While I was preparing for ordination in the Presbyterian Church, I took a course in “polity” (church order) at Fuller Theological Seminary. The professor, Dr. Gary Demarest, lectured on a section of the PC(USA) Book of Order that focused on worship. In this lecture, he spoke with zeal about the “Church Year” and its various seasons. These included: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost. Dr. Demarest talked excitedly about how the seasons of the Church Year could enrich the worship of a church as well as one’s private devotions. I had never heard anything like this. I was intrigued, but didn’t do much with what I learned at that time. I was serving on the staff at Hollywood Pres, where we continued to use an Advent wreath in our pre-Christmas worship services, but otherwise didn’t do much with Advent.
My first full exposure to Advent came when I began as Senior Pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in 1991. It started with a complaint, of all things. Funny how that happens in church! Sometime in November, a member of the church came to me to let me know how unhappy she was that “Loren doesn’t let us sing Christmas carols until Christmas Eve.” I asked why Loren, our worship director at the time, had this peculiar proscription. “Because he’s into Advent,” the woman explained. “He wants to sing only Advent songs during Advent.”
What I heard about Loren seemed odd to me for many reasons, partly because I could only think of two Advent hymns: “Come, Though Long Expected Jesus” and “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” It was hard to imagine four weeks of nothing but these songs, as wonderful as they might be.
When I talked with Loren, I learned that the complaint I had heard was only partly true. Apparently, in years past, Loren had virtually outlawed Christmas music during Advent. He had reserved the beloved carols for Christmas Eve and the twelve-day season of Christmas that ended on January 6. But when many people in the congregation let Loren know how much they missed singing Christmas carols prior to Christmas, he relented. Now his plan was to start Advent with music that was Advent-themed, and slowly include Christmas carols in the Sundays prior to Christmas. A few carols, however, like “Joy to the World,” were reserved for Christmas Eve and thereafter. (This was ironic, because “Joy to the World” was not actually written as a Christmas carol!)