Advent

A 5-week worship and children resource for advent and Christmas

The General Commission on Religion and Race offers these resources to help pastors, preachers, Christian educators, and worship leaders lead your congregation through the season of reflection, lamentation, anticipation, and renewal that is the gift of Advent. You will find the following to go along with the Lectionary texts of each week:

1. Notes and ideas for shaping sermons.

2. Suggested hymns and songs.

3. Prayer and litany (or suggested video to show during worship).

4. A mini-sermon and hands-on activities for children’s church or church school.

Created by the Rev. Dr. B. Yuki Schwartz, these worship resources enable a local church pastor and laity to design an Advent according to an unaccustomed understanding of Jesus as the scion of a poor and disempowered family, born in his father’s homeland, which had been occupied by imperial Rome. Here, Jesus is a Brown child, born in Palestine, whose family has to flee their homeland because his very identity as the child of God challenges the majority-Roman authority.

The resource includes a reflection entitled, “A Colonized Christmas,” by Rev. Dr. Miguel de la Torre.