Monday,
November 22
Christian Get Ready for the Year!
Advent is soon coming and so begins, for many of us, the Christian year.
Actually, the true source of the Christian year is the death and resurrection of Christ. Paul calls it the Christian Passover (I Cor. 5:7). Just as all of Israel's worship and reckoning of time proceeds from the Exodus event, so all Christian worship and marking of time proceeds from the Christ event.
Advent connects the Incarnation with the death and resurrection. In Advent we wait with Israel for the expected Messiah. Worship and preaching draw from Isaiah, John the Baptist, and Mary to prepare the way for Christ's coming.
But the themes of these great figures of Biblical history are more than preaching or worship themes. They are themes that form congregational spirituality.
If you are a pastor or worship leader, your goal is to do more than "Fill a Sunday." Your hope is to form a people into a spiritual community.
By following the Christian year with spiritual intention and purposefulness, you will form a spiritual people shaped by the story of God. For just as every Sunday is a proclamation and enactment of God's saving events in history, so the Christian year is an "elongated Sunday." By calling on the congregation to enter into Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost, you call them into a real participation in Jesus, the one true saving event for creatures and creation!
If you have never formed congregational spirituality through the Christian year, start or at least examine the possibilities now. If you have traveled the journey of the Christian year in the past, then do so again, with more intention placed on the formation of congregational spirituality through an immersed participation in the saving events of Jesus.
Bob Webber
Myers Professor of Ministry
Director of M.A. in Worship and Spirituality
Northern Seminary—www.seminary.edu
(See Northern's M.A. in Worship and Spirituality and D.Min. in Worship by clicking on the website.)
