Review: A Life-giving Christmas

I will be honest.  I am generally unimpressed by official UMC branded resources, and am committed to being part of the solution (this site is part of it).  When I received the copy of the church-wide series "A Life-giving Christmas"  I was skeptical.  Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised.  

This material is top-notch from start to finish.  It's sermon starters are well written, concise, and incredibly tuned in with built in social media suggestions!  The scripts are polished and the videos could air on any national news broadcast.

That is to say nothing of the stellar content.  Keeping to the traditional advent themes of hope, peace, joy, and love, this refocuses Christmas on more than gift buying AND more than donating!  From AIDS orphans in Africa to a nativity constructed by German POWs from World War II, it will interest and challenge you with stories that break every Advent mold I have seen.  In addition, the RETHINK group provides downloadable companions for children and youth (that I wrote) that have helps for using the material in those settings including discussion questions, action steps, and more.

The only thing you might need to consider, especially if children are in your worship services, is the video that shows a local church member who dresses up like Santa. OK for youth, but may expose the Santa pretend thing and make some parents upset with children present.

This resource is a breath of fresh air for a person who wants to see the UMC producing quality materials that help the church be relevant in a transforming culture.  Way to go UMCOM!

The sermon starters as well as the youth/children guides are free to download from umcom.org/advent.  However, you will definitely want the media bundle which is incredibly inexpensive ($25!)  as it has the scripts, videos, etc (did I mention all sorts of graphics and promotional pieces?). It's not easy to find the purchase link so just go ahead and click here to go to the site to purchase it.

The Great Emergence

I've been reading this book, The Great Emergence, and have been totally blown away by it! The basic gist of it is that every five hundred years or so, the church has what she calls a "rummage sale" and through that ends up spreading and becoming more relevant. Go back five hundred and you find the Protestant Reformation, five hundred before the Reformation you are at the Great Schism, before that Gregory the Great and the plunge into the dark ages, and five hundred before that the Great Transformation (Jesus and the apostles).

Right now we are in the middle of another one of those "rummage sales." This one is being called the Great Emergence. It's happening as our culture enters the post-modern era, and, accoring to Tickle, as the Reformation's motto of sola scriptura, scriptura sola (only scripture, and scrpture only) has been found wanting as an answer to the question of authority. We are asking again: Where now should we place our authority?

That is a loaded question that neither I nor the emergent thinkers have resolved. It is the task of the next twenty to thirty years. There are those who are called to start something new, and those called to reform the old to be relevant in a new culture. I feel called in a strong way to the latter. I look forward to figuring Methodism in a postmodern context, and discovering how God can use our Wesleyan heritage to relate to a radically different world.