sustain:if:able kiwi

christmas worship treats 2007

A range of things that seemed to click in worship this Christmas.

1 – Advent beads: each a different colour, each with the Advent word (hope, peace, joy, love) glued onto their base. Given out, one for each week of Advent, an object of beauty, a tactile reminder of the journey toward Christmas.

2 – Something Beautiful: a song from Sinead O’Connor Theology album, played at 11 pm communion. It has lyrics including;
U who give life through blood
Oh I wanna make something
So lovely for U, ‘Cos I promised that’s what I’d do for U
With the bible I stole
I know U forgave my soul
Because such was my need on a chronic Christmas eve. Sinead has such a beautiful and haunting voice, and the place was candlelit at 11:30 pm on Christmas Eve and we’re entering into communion as life through blood. You get the idea.

3 – Wheat prayers and communion: In Croatia they have a custom of planting wheat in small pots in early December. By Christmas Eve, the wheat has sprouted and the plants are tied with ribbon, and placed as a Christmas decoration. So just before communion, we had introduced the custom as a reminder, of life and growth, no matter how cold and dark and gloomy the winter.

We then prayed pastorally for young and old and placed the plants on the communion table. The wheat, bound with a red sash, sat amid bread and wine, a sign of the cycles of life and hope and potential. Which might help answer this question: as to why communion at the birth of Jesus. Because we are remembering the “One who gave life through blood.”

4 – Making animal noises: Yep. Animal noises.

We played “Day 2” from here.

Yep. Animal noises. Then we divided the church up into cows, sheep and roosters; then rewrote the first line of the second verse of Away in a manger;
The cattle are lowing
The sheep are bleating
The roosters are crowing
and invited people to express their inner animal!

Yep. Animal noises. It ensured a range of random animal noises through out the services. All good fun. All a reminder of the humanity and reality of the birth.

5 – Blue Christmas tree with blue boxes: About 15 people turned out for our Blue Christmas service. I had created a central focus by spraypainting a Christmas tree blue which we hung from the ceiling (it was more blue in reality than in this photo).

Below the Christmas tree was a manger, empty, and draped in blue cloth. Inside were blue boxes.

We prayed the Magnificant, God’s promise to all those who are blue. I had set up a range of stations offering various resources – music, images, Biblical meditations, candles, blue beads – that might prove helpful. People were invited to pick up an empty blue box, walk the stations and place whatever resources they might want in the box, which was theirs to take home.