A couple years ago I decided to bring back mid-week Advent services. I don’t remember ever doing them at LOG myself, but I think one of my predecessors may have. Either way, I didn’t want to do them for years because I didn’t want to just add “one more thing to do in December” to the church calendar. We all have busy lives shopping, going to Christmas parties, end of the school year plays, and end of the year reports and such. Who needs one more thing.
But then someone referred me to a progressive Christian web site called sanctifiedart.com that offered creative and interactive ideas for services. I dug around, and found Advent healing services there. It intrigued me, what if the mid-week services could be not another thing to do, but a chance to not do: to sit, to just be, to relax, to reflect, to contemplate, to be still and let God be God and just soak in God’s presence? And what if we could broadcast these online, so people at home could follow along and find some rest and peace, and connect with Lord of Grace? I was hooked.
So we did the services last year, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Our prayer team came through with individual places to pray with prayer team members. We had some interactive art things, hands-on prayer stations, some cool videos of paintings being made to guided meditations. It took a lot of work, but I had many people tell me how it hit the spot.
It made me grateful, because I spent most of the services obsessing about getting the livestreaming technology to work, which it did most of the time.
During the last service, the Longest Night service, the one that deals with grief and loss, we got to a point where 5 minutes of meditation was planned. The old iMac computer decided to lock up at that exact time, and wouldn’t shut down or restart with any speed, so it became a 15 minute meditation time. I was freaking out, but the music kept playing, people kept praying, and we just handed out bulletins for the rest of the time.
More than one person told me they loved the long meditation. I guess I need to remember the value I had in making the service: to just be, and not do.
For this year I decided to do it all again – the exact same services, with the same liturgies. Instead of having something to rush to do in Advent, we now have four services to have no rush, but just to really be, especially at this time of year when the Christmas cheer can bring up all sorts of painful memories if you’ve lost a loved one who you won’t be celebrating with, or someone died around this time, or the holidays somehow remind you of some bad memory. With the world filled with cheer and wassailing, we’re providing space to let out, name, and be with God IN the struggle. It’s not meant to take away from the cheer, but to better experience it without it being fake.
And I won’t lie that I have a certain bias towards doing hands-on things in worship. It doesn’t always work out well, can take a lot of time and planning, and isn’t for everyone. But for those of us who learn and process in ways other than hearing words spoken and reciting words, who learn with our hands by making and creating and exploring and writing, these services can be super-powerful. And, especially if you’re distracted, stressed, have ADHD, or some difficulty sitting for long periods of time, prayer stations and interactive worship provides a way for you to put your whole self into it.
So I’m looking forward to another Advent of taking time to heal. In fact, I thought the topic was so relevant, especially coming off all the emotional damage we all suffered through with covid, covid isolation, covid fights about protocols, separation from loved ones, loss of loved ones – all of it. We need to take time to heal. And not just one year, but probably for many years to come. Because of that, I’m also doing my sermons on the topic of healing, looking at different facets of healing our whole selves. So we’ll talk about healing the body, the mind, the soul, and the family. I don’t believe you can really be at peace and healthy if these are off, and one being broken can make the others broken too. It’s time for churches to spend less time debating atheists about the predictability of miracle medical cures, and more time talking about wellness, whole-self healing, and being at peace with God.
The Schedule will be so: November 30th, 7th, 14th will be the healing services. Same liturgy each week. The 21st will be the longest night service, that will focus on grief and loss.
Then we will celebrate, as we always do, the birth of our Lord and Saviour on December 24th with our usual 6pm contemporary and 8pm traditional services. Christmas Day will be a rest day, even though it’s a Sunday, and we’ll worship again as a church on New Year’s Day (also a Sunday) with a combined service of lessons and carols at 9am.
We’ve had a good year of rebuilding in 2022. We’ve restarted many things, gotten back together, and are not looking at a new mission statement, vision, and strategic goals for our congregation. We’re leaning into the future, not letting covid stop us. But we’re also not moving forward without acknowledging the pain of the past, and providing time to work through the wounds we all go through in our lives. Our God is great, and loving, and caring, and wants us to know that love in the grief of loss and in the joy of a newborn’s birth. It’s all part of life, and all part of life with God.
Peace,
Pastor Lars