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To Advent or Not to Advent?


I went to church yesterday with anticipation of celebrating the Advent season…since it was the 2nd Sunday of Advent.  Entering the church, I was immediately struck with the beautiful decorations…lights, Christmas trees, HUGE star hung at the back of the platform…yea, it’s Christmas!  The band came out and started to play…sounded good…then as we went from song to song to song…nothing about Advent, Christmas…nothing!  The songs would have worked just as well in July as they did on the 2nd Sunday of Advent!  I was disappointed.

 

I understand that there is no rule that any church must sing Advent songs on Dec. 6.  I do know that, BUT this is one of the great seasons of the church year.  We not only celebrate the 1st Advent…a Savior was born!  That’s a big deal!  We should give attention to that!  We also are in the preparation mode for the 2nd Advent - Christ’s return…or do we not really believe that?  Hmmm…?  I heard more real Christmas music outside of the church than inside this weekend.  Is that the right statement to make about our beliefs?  I hope not!

 

Jubal, I know you were around before even the first Advent, but don’t you think there should have been some indication for the reason for the season except for the nice lights and trees and star…?

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 9:13 am and is filed under Music, Worship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “To Advent or Not to Advent?”

  1. Mark Baker-Wright Says:
    December 7th, 2009 at 11:35 am

    I understand that there is no rule that any church must sing Advent songs on Dec. 6.

    In one church I used to attend, which tried very hard to observe Advent by holding off on Christmas-specific songs until the actual liturgical Christmas season began, they found it difficult to “sing Advent songs” because–other than “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” and “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus”–there weren’t all that many “Advent” songs that everyone knew!

    But this idea that a church would worship on the 1st Sunday of December (falling within the Advent season in any year) and sing neither Advent nor Christmas songs is simply mind-blowing!

  2. To: Mark Baker-Wright Says:
    December 9th, 2009 at 10:04 pm

    Mark, please forgive a personal plug. Visit LNWhymns.com. We offer 35 new Advent hymns, all free. Many are meaningful new texts to familiar tunes. Congregations can sing them comfortably the first time.

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