The First in a Series of Posts
about the Least Understood
Season of the Church Year
Come December, we will once again anticipate the joyous birth of our Savior by rolling out the traditions so well-known to Christians.
We’ll get our Advent devotionals and four-session Bible studies in place, we’ll buy the kiddies paper calendars, and our choirs will start practicing Christmas anthems. For worship, we’ll roll out the pre-Civil War classic Advent hymns.
We have to know we are paddling upstream. Just as the rest of the world is anticipating Christmas with happy songs, we feel the need to look ahead to the passion‚ as if we won’t be celebrating this in its own right in just a few weeks.
Those of us raised in the traditions of the Church will protest the critics of these traditions.
The chronic complainers aren’t particularly loud or noticeable. But they are many.
Mostly, they just stay home until Christmas Eve. Now that they understand!
As for us Christians, we’ll stick to our traditions, thank you very much.
Truth be told, the traditions of Advent are beautiful and deeply meaningful to the few of us who understand them. The problem we have is in communicating them to the vast majority of the world that doesn’t understand them or feel a need to bother.
The church is left with three choices.
- Keep on keeping on. Proudly defend the heritage of Advent and hope someone is listening while the rest of us are still standing.
- Abandon the past and cater to the modern mindset.
- Find a way to communicate what is so important to us.
Choices one and two require less work and are the most popular — with predictable results.
Choice three might actually make a difference. But how?
We’ll explore possibilities during this pre-Advent season.
If you have ideas . . . please share them.