outside is better

Contemporary Communion in Advent

This Christmas Eve we are having communion together in my congregation. I pastor and lead the contemporary service at my church and over the last few months we have used the more formal Great Thanksgiving liturgy in the United Methodist Hymnal. Due to both time and the fact I we have been pretty high church lately, I decided to use a less formal approach to communion for Christmas Eve.

The tension revolves in the sacramental conviction I have as a Methodist pastor to keep communion in line with the greater tradition of the Church. Specific words do not matter, but the greater story does. I wanted to find something brief but strong and would fit well within our service.

This Advent, my secret weapon for a few special services as been the A Christmas Sourcebook. I found this while in seminary and it has proven its worth several times over. It has plenty small bits that work well in Advent and Christmas services. It is a must buy for worship designers.

Below is what I am using to tell the story of Christ during our communion time. You can find it on pg. 23 of the sourcebook.

The grace of God has appeared, ordering salvation to all men and women. It trains us to reject the godless ways and worldly desires and live temperately, justly and devoutly in this age as we await our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of the great God and of our Savior Christ Jesus. It was he who sacrificed himself for us, to redeem us from all unrighteousness and to cleanse for himself a people of his own, eager to do what is right.

I wanted to share this great resource with you. Buy it and be ready for next Advent season.

Worship as Narrative Resistance

My message from this past weekends Christmas Carol service

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In the last few weeks Time magazine has announced their “person of the year”. Past folks who have held this title have been John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, Both George Bushes, many other presidents and Mark Zuckerburg, the founder of facebook.com. A few years ago it was even “you” with a mirror like cover showing the face of the person looking at it.

This year, they did something rarely done to announce the person of the year. They selected a grouping of people, who they felt made 2011 a monumentous year. The person of the year is The Protestor. From the sands of North Africa to the concrete streets of the United States, this has been a year marked by protest.

You might wonder why I am talking about protest during a Christmas Carol service. But what I wanted to share with you was the reason we sing. The image of the protestor is perfect for understanding the power of Christian singing in the face of a world filled with death.

In songs, we are agreeing together on the foundational principles of Christian faith. If we were to try to explain such complicated theological concepts in sermons, or casual conversations I think many of us would quickly change the subject. But the words of these songs matter very much.

When we sing these Christmas songs, we are declaring to the world that Christ has come. The Son of God has descended from heaven, came to earth through the womb of a young woman and is here to cause light to overcome darkness. The prophets were true...they told the world to prepare, because the kingdom of God has come.

While these songs give us great memories, warm feelings and are fun to sing together during the season, we need to remember that they contain very dangerous words. These songs and the message the contain, and from our belief, shake the foundations of hell. They mark the time when the light that was before all men, Jesus Christ, came and overcame darkness.

In worship, we make an outpost of the Kingdom. These songs show we are not allowing the world to write our story, but we are part of Gods story. We are rehearsing the great narrative of Christ and his Triumph of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling amongst us.  We declare that this space does not belong to the world...but belongs to a heavenly kingdom where Christ sits on the throne.   In this room, tonight, we are retelling a story of the greatest act of resistance that has ever and will ever take place. When God himself came to this world to bring his people back to him. Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

 

 

Advent Voices: Joshua Toepper

My good friend Joshua has a great Advent post up. Joshua really hits home the idea that in Advent we are celebrating the fact that God walks among us. In Advent, the Godman has arrived. As Joshua puts it "If your God is so Great, why doesn't he speak my language?"!

Josh then gives an extensive quote from Timothy Tennent about the power of Bible translation into indigenous languages. The incarnation radically changes our lives and Christianity must always be functioning within the theological concept of "God with Us"!

Check out the rest of the post here.

The Advent Highway

I'm Expecting

My use of this phrase might sound odd. Usually, it is reserved for the fairer sex to announce the anticipation of a new child. It can be made plural, as in “we are expecting” as well, with the same connotation. But for me, a male, to say “I’m Expecting”...you probably think I have lost my mind.

But expectation is the best way to think about the Advent season. Expectation (in the pregnant sense) entails a season of hope, anticipation and preparation. A body of emotions is wrapped up and fulfilled in a specific event. At that point, everything will render unimportant as the birth comes. The season of hope will be fulfilled in the joy that comes. The anticipation is finished and any anxiety or nervousness has past. The preparation is finished, because it has to be. The time has now come and “all hands on deck” is the order of the day.   

We are ready for the coming of the Son of God. We celebrate hope and the promises of God. We an- ticipate the season and the change it makes in our hearts. We have also prepared ourselves for it by recognizing both our own individual sin and the sins of humanity as a whole. The ancient liturgical prayer called the Rorate Coeli (based on Isaiah 45:8) expresses the hope, anticipation and expectation of the prophets and priests of the Old Testament and becomes part of our prayers;

We have gone astray; in the multitude of our sins we have been made unclean. Fallen, fallen, stricken as leaves of autumn. The storm wind carries us away, the tempest of our evil deeds. You have turned us from the face of your mercy, and our iniquity has crushed us like a potter's vessel. O Lord our God, look upon your people in their affliction; be mindful of your promises. Send us the lamb who will set up his dominion from the rock of the wilderness to Zion, enthroned on her mountain. There is no other whose power can break our chains and set us free.

 As somber as this might seem, as Christians we understand the hope and glory contained in the glorious thing called The Incarnation. Christ and his passion brings us to a new place. Isaiah 40:1-5 (NLT) gives words to that sense of expectation;

    “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and her sins are pardoned. Yes, the LORD has punished her twice over for all her sins.” Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting, “Clear the way through the wilderness for the LORD! Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God! Fill in the valleys, and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves, and smooth out the rough places. Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all people will see it together. The LORD has spoken!”

This is a highway of expectation. It is a highway that leads us home. Christ, in his life, death and resurrection leads us along the straight path into the loving arms of the Father. Advent is an active celebration of the church. Let us prayerfully go through the range of emotions which are part of expecting. On Christmas day, we can welcome our savior in the fullest way, because our hearts have hoped, anticipated and prepared for him to come!

Come Lord Jesus!

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This was my article in our Churches Advent Devotion. If you want to see the entire piece, cruise over to our Issuu page and read it.

Reading Scripture in Advent

Earlier today, my good friend Jonathan mentioned he is reading through both the New Testament and St. Athanasius's "On the Incarnation " this advent season and was looking for others interested. I had read through the prophets in the last month before Advent and had been thinking of how I would be reading scripture this season and was really excited to see Jonathan's reading plan. It is ordered a bit different from the standard cover to cover, so I am happy to see a little change.

You can see Jonathan's reading schedule here. We are also reading through a marvelous work by a Church Father, Athanasius. I am excited about spending this season reflecting on the radical idea that Jesus Christ is truly Emmanuel. He is God with Us!

 

There are a handful of us reading along this season. If you want to jump in let me know. You can get "On the Incarnation" free online through the CCEL.

So far our list is: @chaddbrooks, @bamahank, @jonboy017 and @aaronmansfield2

Advent Resources: Christian Reflection Journal

On of my favorite journal publications is Christian Reflections, published by Baylor University. A topical journal, I look forward to every issue. What is really rad though.. it is a free subscription. They even post each entire journal online!

Last year I mentioned journal #37 Advent Ethics. This quarter is titled "Christmas and Epiphany." You might be wondering why I am pointing you toward a resources for Advent that is seemingly not about Advent. But the newest issue is written in tandem with last year and focuses on the "original trajectories of Christmastide and Epiphany, so we can celebrate them faithfully and winsomely today."

If our congregations struggle to really understand Advent apart from Christmas, it is up to leaders to show the differences and mark the time changes. Our worship cycle tolls the bell for when our posture changes. Advent should be Advent. But Christmas should be Christmas.

Christian Reflection #41 jumps into these issues. Read, pray and talk about the difference and how we can be leading congregations to a better pattern of worship during the Church year.

Advent 2011 Readings

Advent is my favorite season to design worship for.  Every year I combine different Advent resources I find and try to share them. Today, I was putting all of the lectionary readings into a document for my design team and I figured I would share them with you. I have a few additional thoughts in there as well. You can download this booklet Download Advent 2011 or just use it through scribd.com. Feel free to share this with others. Have a great season of worship.

 

If you are looking for even more Advent resources, check out the entire category.

 

Advent 2011

Long Live The Children's Choir

There are parts of 20th century evangelical church that I think do not need to be thrown away (youth camp and VBS). I want to add the children's choir to that list.  Today at church our handful of kids got up to sing two songs; Away in a Manger and We Wish You a Merry Christmas.  Are these the best Advent songs for following the worship calender...? Probably not, but it was definitely worth it.

Through singing, those kids embedded a sense of Christian memory in their heads as they learned those two songs, especially Away in a Manger.  I remember a children's program when I was a child that taught us many of the great hymns of Christian Faith.  I still know almost every verse of A Mighty Fortress is our God because of that program. I also grew up around the type of pageantry that gets overwhelming, but I learned so much about faith through the songs I was taught as a child.  Yes, it is possible to just parade around kids in their parents bathrobes and utterly miss the Christian story, but it is also possible to teach them the deep hymns of faith.  These are the things that stay alive in the back of our mind.  When Meredith and I first started going to Nicholasville Baptist years ago, I remember all of the revival hymns that we sang because I had sung them as a child.

So lets not forget the children's choir.  Instead of badly recorded backing tracks of Chris Tomlin songs lets teach them old hymns, especially around Christmas and Easter.  It plants the story of God and salvation history (or Heilsgeschichte to show off a word I learned last night) in these very impressionable minds.  It helps us to teach kids that they belong to something much bigger than themselves. 

 

Advent Voices: Jeffrey Rudy

Jeffrey Rudy is a Phd student focused on Wesley Studies. We run in the same network, but I don't think we have actually met, although just joined a small group with him!!  This Advent Jeffrey is going through Charles Wesley's Hymns for the nativity of our Lord This is a great collection of hymns and it would be good addition to your devotion time this month. Jeffrey is posting his thoughts on his blog Anglo-Methodist as well as at Levite Camp. 

Advent Voices: Eric Crisp

Eric is a former co-worker at the pastor at Key Mar Wesleyan Church.  Eric is a person that I really miss seeing everyday.  This Advent he and his wife Erin put together an Advent reader for their community.  It is hosted here on his blog.