Many thanks to all who came to the Advent‐Epiphany Brainstorming Party on Sunday, October 27th, after worship. It was a deeply productive session resulting in many great ideas for planning worship this Advent and Christmas season. With twenty‐one such creative and thoughtful folks in the room, it couldn’t have been otherwise!
We began the workshop by exploring how planning worship together is also a way of reflecting on, and lovingly holding, the Christian community we already are and that we hope to become. Picking up the Advent scripture theme of ʺBuilding the House of Godʺ from Isaiah, we talked about how bringing our ideas and gifts to designing worship together is one of many ways we can build our House of God this year. Indeed, already your ideas, creativity, time, energy, and commitment are the bricks and mortar for a potentially very exciting Advent worship season.
We remembered the world in which we live through Douglas Ha sharing his experience and memorable conversion of their family in the refuge camp in Vietnam where missionaries learned their language and lived as they did… Many thanks to Naomi as she enthusiastically led us through brainstorming of how to enrich the worship service to be more meaningful through various media as we enter Advent and Christmas. — Jin and Jane Chin
An unexpected computer virus interrupted my hope of introducing Marcia McFeeʹs ʺWorship Design Studioʺ online platform as a possible tool for helping to organize a worship team. However, if anyone has questions about it, or would like to learn more, please feel free to let your pastoral team know. Some churches find it helpful because it allows worship teams to do creative work without having to attend yet another meeting, but each church finds what works best for them and their particular needs.
We broke into four small groups to brainstorm ideas for each of the Sundays in Advent, and then came together at the end to share our thoughts. Some of the ideas that got us most excited included finding ways of integrating the youth more fully into worship, and incorporating multi‐sensory activities to enrich our Advent and Christmas Eve services. Folks came up with many specific ideas on how to do this that we will incorporate. More details to follow! In the meantime, if any of you have poems, readings, music, visual art, or other ideas youʹd like to contribute to our worship planning for Advent/Christmas, please pass them along to Rick, Tripp, Doug or me and weʹll add them to the creative pot weʹre stirring. Thanks again for all your support and input! It sure was fun, and we look forward to doing it again.
In peace and passion,
Naomi Schultz, Intern
