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This year, the 4th<\/sup> Sunday of Advent is also Christmas Eve.\u00a0 At House of Hope in New Hope, Minnesota, we know that a morning worship service is important so that those who come home for the holidays or routinely come on Sunday morning have a place to be during this usual time. \u00a0We also want to honor that it is a busy day for us as pastors\/church staff and that most of our people will already be in the Christmas Eve mood.\u00a0 With this in mind, we hope to have a light-hearted time of gathering to mark this last day of Advent and begin to move into Christmas together as a community.<\/p>\n So, to bridge between Advent and Christmas, we have created a service that starts in Advent and ends in Christmas.\u00a0 Our service begins in the darkness of Advent with the lighting of the Advent wreath, singing Advent hymns \u201cCome Thou Long Expected Jesus\u201d and \u201cPrepare the Royal Highway,\u201d and reading the Gospel for the Day (Luke 1:26-38) which tells the story of the Angel Gabriel coming to Mary.\u00a0 The Gospel is a perfect bridge to our well-known Christmas story.\u00a0 We will sing \u201cThe Angel Gabriel\u201d after the Gospel (skipping the sermon time) and transition to the Christmas portion of our service.\u00a0 This second half of the service will include a statement of faith crafted from Psalm 98*, Christmas hymns \u201cJoy to the World\u201d and \u201cGo Tell It on the Mountain,\u201d and, in a nod to the traditions of the season, we will bless Christmas ornaments* and gifts* and sing \u201cDeck the Halls.\u201d\u00a0 We hope that this shortened service will send our people out into the day, centered on Christ and ready to celebrate together this blessed time of Christmas!<\/p>\n We hope that each part of the service will help our congregation to celebrate this joyful day and to connect rites that are done at home with the welcoming of God into the world that we celebrate at Christmas time in the Church.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *Liturgy for the Statement of Faith from Psalm 98, the Blessing of the Christmas Tree, and the Blessing of Gifts come from Sundays and Seasons<\/em> in the Seasonal Rites for Christmas for Year B, 2018.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s post is by\u00a0Gretchen Rode, Associate Pastor at House of Hope in New Hope, MN.\u00a0This is the first of two posts on how congregations will be worshipping on the 4th Sunday of Advent\/Christmas Eve. This year, the 4th Sunday of Advent is also Christmas Eve.\u00a0 At House of Hope in New Hope, Minnesota, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/elcablogs.fairnorthdigital.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/60\/2017\/12\/AdventHoH-e1512618036563-300x241.jpg\")
We will be using liturgy from Sundays and Seasons<\/em> for quite a few parts of this service.\u00a0 We love the \u201cCall to Worship from Psalm 98\u201d and will be using it as our statement of faith: \u201cJustice for everyone, everything fair! Sing to God something brand new!\u00a0 For God has done wonderful things!\u201d\u00a0 For the blessing of Christmas ornaments, we will invite congregation members to bring an ornament from home (and we will have some on hand to give out as well).\u00a0 This blessing will be a slightly altered \u201cBlessing of the Christmas Tree,\u201d* adding to the last line \u201cMay we who stand in its light eagerly welcome the true Light that never fades, a<\/em>nd as we carry these ornaments home may we remember that your light goes with us wherever we go<\/em>. All glory be yours now and forever. Amen.\u201d\u00a0 We envision that everyone will hold their ornament as they sit in the pew and saying this blessing together.\u00a0 If there are many children at this service, I might invite them up during this time to help lead the blessing from the front. \u00a0We intend to incorporate the Blessing of the Gifts Rite during the Benediction as a sending.<\/p>\n