Another Pandemic Advent Edition

Months ago, I had promised that there would be another potluck. There would be some thing here in your inbox to fuel your worship planning beyond the weekly pandemic prayers you might remember to find each week on my blog.

Let’s just say that life got in the way. A lot has happened including moving across the ocean to a land where Christmas markets will soon open. (It is hoped that they will actually open this year and that our digital Covpass will allow us to wander through the wonder of Christmas in Germany.) Here the shelves in the supermarket are already stocked with gingerbread. There is no need to fill that space with Halloween candy or canned pumpkin. Those are not part of any celebration here. They leap from August to Christmas comfort.

I didn’t expect to work while we were overseas even though my vocational longing has been deep. It was a complete surprise to me when I was asked to be one of the new co-editors of Season of the Spirit. It’s a curricula I’ve used and loved and I’m excited to imagine its future with Julie Higbee, an amazing woman I’m thrilled to know from when we were wee clergy in the Young Clergy Women Project that now has another name but I’m too old to remember. (It’s Young Clergy Women International but I had to Google it to remember.)

An opportunity also arose for something more official in my so-called ministry. That’s one way of putting it. Another is to say that the church is still trying to figure out what to do with we who don’t serve congregations in the “usual way.” In a few weeks, I’ll be called to Old First United Church of Christ in Philadelphia, PA as a Missionary Minister of Arts and Nurture. Fun new title, right? It’s a bizarre story but a good one. You can read about it here. What this means is really that I get to bounce ideas off a brilliant mentor of mine and share in helping make worship dynamic and engaging while still sharing all of those gifts on the pages of my blog.

So this occasional potluck became very occasional as I’ve found ways to say “yes” to where God might be leading. I’m humbled by all that has happened and thrilled to share what dreams might come even if I can’t believe that we are in another pandemic Advent. I really can’t but here we are and so I updated my kitchen with resources that I’ve created over the past year for your congregational use.

As the pandemic drags on, we still need to space to share in our grief and loss. There is still so much that is unknown even as a new church year has dawned. Huddled around candles in our own homes, this unedited resource from last year stubbornly waits for a new day to dawn. When the Night Has Already Been Too Long is full of scripture, song and prayer for the longest of longest nights. Purchase this liturgy here.

As the birth of Christ becomes more and more real, what if light grew and grew to welcome the Light of the World? Shadows and Light emerges from the shadows of Advent to welcome the Light of Love with song, scripture and poetry. Purchase this liturgy here.

These are old and haven’t been edited since their first release last year. I had hoped that I would have something new to share with you and have been working toward that end with the talented Jo Owens at Vibrant Church Communications — but the pandemic strikes again. We imagined something wonderful and bigger than we had first imagined and it just won't be ready for the beginning of Advent so it will be something wonderful to look forward to next year when it is finally released. And while it’s not for Advent, I do have something in the works that you’ll find at the very end of this little potluck.

I’m really surprised by how few free stock photos there are for Advent. I am also surprised that I appear to have no pictures of the Advent wreaths of the churches I’ve been blessed to serve. This year, again, this might be what a wreath looks like at home.

Advent Wreaths and Prayers

While we were all home last year, many of you became seasoned experts in creating blessing bags for families to share at home. That might be something you opt to continue as you find ways to nurture ritual practice at home. These kit ideas from Building Faith might inspire your creativity.

Last year, I wrote this Advent Invocation that feels like it might still work for the longing hope of this year. I might repeat this element each week in Advent with different voices — young and old — as it will sound different with each voice. That might be too much to find readers and lighters of the candles so that you might want to use these collection of antiphons to begin your worship. My inspiration came from the O Antiphons that Maren Tirabassi shares from her own prayers.

I recently stumbled upon Slats Toole's Liturgies of the Lonely and want to savor every last word. They are gorgeous and available for free. I commend to you this Advent liturgy as well as these prayers for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. Slats invites donations by Venmo at @callmeslats.

As the good people at Old First are looking for some more interactive elements for their Zoom worship, I also created this Pandemic Lighting of the Advent Wreath. It’s written for authentic sharing of how those familiar themes of Advent have become real and tangible within the lives of those with whom you worship each week. It involves some advance planning more than the usual but there are some hints to help with that in the post too.

Advent Devotions

The talented people at the SALT Project have compiled all their wonders into one Advent Roundup. (Note: it’s not just devotions.) I’m particularly excited about their new Advent Unbound to pair with Padraig O’Tuama’s beautiful podcast. I have ordered the personal use version because it’s just me but there are congregation sizes too.

I also could not resist this advent devotional by the brilliant Sandhya Rani Jha. I pre-ordered it the second I heard about it and I eagerly await its arrival so that I can thumb through the pages in giddy anticipation of how I might travel with the ancestors. Chalice Press is brilliant for selecting wonderful talent like this Advent devotional by Carol Howard Merritt I enjoyed several years ago.

Advent Worship Bundles

Like being bundled up by the fire, worship packages — of which there are now so many — offer a true gift to the weary pandemic preacher. You may well have heard of all of these gifts and wonders when they released last month. There are a lot to choose from but these were the ones that particularly caught my eye.

After spending so much time at home this past year, Sanctified Art invites the worshipping body to relish a bit more in the four walls of our hearts in Close to Home. Their materials following the Revised Common Lectionary play on the phrase in the big wonder about the ‘already and not yet’ that is at the very heart of this season. Their bundles vary by congregation size and include a whole slew of goodies from devotionals to planning guides to stuff for children and families.

Barn Geese Worship invites the faithful into a series on endings and beginnings in My Heart Shall Sing. In a time when we haven’t sung very much, these materials including sermon starters, weekly prayers and suggested hymns encourage us to sing with the global church. They’re a newcomer to this good work and I really love what this Lutheran team is doing together. Oh, and it’s free under the Creative Commons License but with such abundant gifts we should offer our deepest thanks.

There are more. There are lots of more from SALT Project, Brim Project and Illustrated Ministry and many others. I would love to hear what you’ve chosen to guide this season of wonder and light.

Christmastide Planning

The first hint of Christmas comes when I turn on carols (which happens way before Advent begins for me) and I’m still not tired of these familiar songs when the twelve days begin. I shared these recorded free carols last year on my blog and want to be sure that you know they exist for all the many reasons that you might need them. The prayer I always struggled to write on Christmas Eve was the big one that said all of the things. I created one that I’ve used and edited for years but I really like this one from the SALT Project.

There are two Sundays of Christmas this year before Epiphany is celebrated. Maybe on that first Sunday worship is centered on telling the story again with song and story in this Lessons and Carols in Coronatide service from last year. As it is likely to be a low attendance Sunday anyway, it might be fun to play on the fact that no one wants to get out of their pajamas and step away from the fire. In this era, they don’t have to because church can be in their living room and so maybe that service is more of a Fireside Chat. I created such an opportunity for worship in this Pandemic Fireside Prayers for Christmas.

And then, I got to thinking about how we fooled ourselves into thinking that when the calendar page turned from 2020 to 2021, our troubles would ease. New Year Epiphanies is what I’m calling it because we need more than one in this new year. I’m still writing this worship service but will look forward to sharing it with you soon in the hopes that it might be something you can use in those first few weeks of January.