Christmas Eve: Christmas Eve service will be at 4:00 December 24th. It will be a service of lessons and carols.
Christmas morning: Service will be at 10:30 and will be using the same structure of incorporating Godly play at we did for the weeks of Advent (keep reading if you want to know more details about that.)
Advent: For the 4 weeks of Advent (November 27th-December 18) and Christmas morning we are going to doing something different in our Sunday worship and will be using the worship structure of Godly Play. Godly Play is a children’s curriculum that through the telling of the story, the wondering, the prayers, the silence, and the response, issues the invitation to come and play with God. Godly play makes space to wonder and allows for mystery and big questions. So we are going to enter into the mystery of our journey to Bethlehem together.
Now you might be thinking, “I still don’t get it, what will Sunday be like? It this like a vacation Bible school (VBS)?” For most people who grew up in the church our imagination of children’s curriculum is Sunday school or VBS. Godly play is nothing like either of those. Godly Play is structured around the structure of worship to invite children into the wonder of worship.
In worship we gather together in this space and approach God; we invite God presence with us; we hear the word proclaimed; we respond to the word and give thanks to God, and then we are sent forth. Godly play follows that same structure of worship. The main difference from our typical worship will be how it is that we do the proclaiming of God’s word and the response.
Generally we proclaim Gods word with a sermon, and then for our response we have a discussion and a time of prayer. During advent we will proclaim God’s word through story telling. Then we will respond with a time of wondering together. Wondering what our favorite part is in the story, wondering if it was hot or cold, wondering how it felt to be on that journey, ect. After we wonder we will have time to respond to God’s word by art, or story, or prayer. We will have lots of options for the work we want to do. You might draw or make something that expresses how we feel about the story, you might make figures to retell the story, you might choose the quite prayer station to sit and be with God, you might reflect more on your wonderings.
Because of this story telling and response, our sanctuary will be set up quite different. We will have a long row of chairs in a semi circle so that all are able to see and story as it’s told. The tables will be behind with the parts needed for the different response options.