NewCelebrations NewsLetter 2018-2

New Celebrations:
Alternative Resources for Discovering and Celebrating Emmanuel
Throughout the Year #2

Clearly, it is not too early to start thinking about how we may celebrate Christmas this year.

You can be sure the "Christmas machine" is well underway with its plans to affect our Christmas celebration.
To have any impact,
to have any influence,
to have any hope of celebrating Emmanuel,
we need to make our plans now.

A good way to begin is to make a list of what was done last year at your church, or in your family.  As you evaluate your list, make a pledge to add ONE MAJOR activity this year -- along with what ever other actions you may deem do-able.

You are encouraged to have a brain-storming session with yourself,
with your key church leaders,
with your family,
with whomever will participate.

Perhaps some of these suggestions will prod your thinking.
You are urged to explore some of the resources in this edition of NewCelebrations
Newsletter.
My wish is that, this year, you and your church will have the most meaningful
Christmas celebration ever: that many will come to see, to know, and to celebrate
Emmanuel in their lives as never before.

I would hope that you feel free to copy some of these resources and circulate them
among your church friends and other acquaintances.

Clyde Griffith
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Preparing for Christmas 2018: Plan New Major Activity

Depending on what you are currently doing, plan an event to extend the reach of
your Christmas doings.  Look at what others are doing.  Perhaps you will find
something here that stimulates your thinking.  Remember, plan now so an event
can be held early enough to make a difference for celebrations this year.

Plan a workshop around the theme: Unplug the Christmas Machine. 
Through this workshop your church will help its members create more rewarding,
more spiritual, and less stressful celebrations. Participants have an added benefit
of being able to function as a built-in support group for each other during the
holiday season.  Highly recommended! Try it!
(Free Leader's Guide Resource available at Simple Living Works.

 

Plan a workshop around the theme: Whose Birthday Is It Anyway? 
This most excellent resource was published each year with new material for 26 seasons!
Many churches use the contents of this publication for a church-wide workshop. 
Others make varied use of it by Sunday School classes, special children's activities, and other events.
All 26 issues are available free for you to pursue and use from Simple Living Works.
 





Plan a workshop around Bill McKenna's  Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas. 
This is an excellent resource for stimulating thinking about planning holiday
celebrations around what is really important.  Although now out of print, Amazon is still showing plenty plenty of used hardback editions for $4.99 (including shipping).
(There will be more about this particular resource in a later edition of the New Celebrations Newsletter.)



Plan to host an Alternative Gift Market.
 Stimulate thinking about new ways of celebrating by hosting an alternative gift market for your church and community.  Churches that have done this report excellent benefits.  
A whole issue of the New Celebrations Newsletter will be devoted to this topic later next month.


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A Christmas Pledge

Prepare, publish, promote and promulgate a pledge for your church members to use.
(Use this to spur the development of your own pledge.)

Believing in the true spirit of Christmas, I commit myself to
 Remember those people who truly need my gifts
 Express my love in more direct ways than gifts
 Examine my holiday activities in the light of my deepest values
 Be a peacemaker within my circle of family and friends
 Redidicate myself to my spiritual growth

(From Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love & Joy
Back Into the Season) 

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Check out our webpage: NewCelebrations . . .

Reclaiming Lent

We need Lent . . .
 
Traditions are the vehicles by which faith, values and the fundamental sense of
what is really important is passed from one generation to another. 
The effort to keep Christian and pagan traditions separate is a continuing struggle for
Christians. Traditionally, Lent has played an important part in this struggle.

Originally a season of fasting and penance for new converts preparing for baptism on Easter Eve, Lent is a period of 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter.
Sundays, days when fasts could be broken, are not included in the 40 days.
The 40 days of Lent correspond to Jesus' 40-day fast in the wilderness in preparation for his ministry.

When Christianity became the state religion of the Roman empire in the fourth century, the foundation of the church was endangered by throngs of new untutored members. Identification with Jesus through the lenten fasts and practices of self-renunciation was meant to counter the paganism of these new converts. 
Lent became a time of re-commitment; a time to ward off the threat of assimilation into the popular culture.

As in earlier days, Christians today are threatened with becoming a part of the popular culture. In fact, assimilation has already occurred to such a degree that it is hard to tell what differentiates Christian faith from popular culture.
The popular celebrations of Christmas and Easter are poignant reminders of this dilemma. In addition to the annual Easter clothes, card, flower and candy blitz, attempts by business to make Easter a "Second Christmas" has spawned an Easter-oriented toy industry and a massive live-animal business, with millions of rabbits, baby chicks and ducks sold each year.
"What happened on the third day?" asked one church school teacher to a group of preschoolers one Easter morning. "The Easter bunny brought eggs," was the immediate and unequivocal reply.

We need Lent! Lent encourages us to look within ourselves to see how we have confused popular cultural values with Christian faith. 
Through a sustained focus on the life and ministry of Jesus, Lent can help us resist the pressures of this culture. Lent can remind us that we are called to continue his ministry:
"As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (John 20:21). Consequently, Lent prepares us for an Easter that is more than bunnies and eggs, an Easter when we celebrate God's great act in raising Jesus from the dead.
 Adapted from a piece published by Alternatives no longer published.

Making ThanksGiving ThanksLiving

The days are shorter, the nights are longer.  The autumnal sun dances through the colored leaves – it’s as though God had this in mind all summer long. 

It is right, and quite natural, for us to feel a certain thankfulness for all the blessings that come our way – especially at this time of year.

Thanksgiving is one of the most universal of holidays.  And, as you may have heard me say before, it may also be one of the most Christian.

Locked behind cell doors, Paul admonished his new Christian followers to  be thankful in all things.

For us Christians, thanksgiving is a calling. 
It is an attribute of the life we seek to live. 
It is a definition of a way of seeing ourselves in relation to our God who created us, redeems us, and sustains us through the trials and tribulations that have a way of showing up on our life-journey.

Notice, the Ten Commandments do not start with “Thou shalt not...”
But, rather with, “I am the Lord God, who brought you out of Egypt, therefore . . .”

The entire Mosaic Law is to be followed as an act of thanksgiving.  The basic understanding is that because God is God and enables marvelous things to happen and continues to be involved in my life and in the world around me, therefore, I can do nothing other than live in gratitude.

We Christians live in thanksgiving for what God has done and continues to do for us. 
For us, thanksgiving is really thanks-living.

The Psalmist could sing: This is a day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!  Greeting each day with thanks for another chance to live and to love is a very Christian thing to do.

It is not without merit that many writers refer to ingratitude as the most basest of sins. 

Even Shakespeare could write:
I hate ingratitude more than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, or taint of vice.

Thanksgiving reminds us of how much we owe to forces outside of ourselves.

It behooves us to take an inventory of our blessings and offer up thanks in all things.

This year, expand your thanksgiving thoughts to thoughts about thanks-living. 

Lest We Forget: The Role of the Preacher in the American Revolution

Folks in colonial America heard sermons more than any other form of communication.

The colonial preacher was prophet,
newspaper,
video,
Internet,
community college,
and social therapist all wrapped in one. 
Their  influence on all aspects of life in those days was so great, that even contemporary television and personal computers pale in comparison.

Day after day,
week after week,
ministers drew the people into a rhetorical world that was more compelling and more immediate than the physical settlements surrounding them.
Sermons taught not only the way to personal salvation in Christ, 
but also the way to temporal and national prosperity for God's chosen people.

Events were perceived not from the mundane, human vantage point
but from God's perspective.

The vast majority of colonists were  Presbyterian
to whom things were not as they might appear at ground level:
all events, no matter how mundane or seemingly random, were parts of a larger pattern of meaning, part of God's providential design.
The outlines of this pattern were contained in Scripture and interpreted by discerning pastors.
Colonial congregations saw themselves as the "New Israel,"
endowed with a sacred mission that destined them as lead actors in the last triumphant chapter in redemption history. 

Check it out:  http://www.newcelebrations.com/independencedayusa.html

The American Revolution Was a Religious Event

This week we in the United States of America  will celebrate our 241st anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
It is significant for us to remember, many historians agree that when understood in its own times,
the American Revolution was first and foremost a religious event.
At the forefront of the revolution were the preachers.
Think about the influence of the preachers:

Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately 8 million sermons, each lasting one to one-and-a-half hours.
The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening.

No matter what denomination,
folks in colonial America heard sermons more than any other form of communication.

Check it out:
 http://www.newcelebrations.com/independencedayusa.html

About Memorial Day

Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May, 1, 1865 in Charleston, SC to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. They dug up the bodies and worked for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 Black children where they marched, sang and celebrated.

Thanks to Abstrakt Goldsmith for this nugget of history that most of us never learned in school.

Reclaim Mothers' Day

If there ever was a holiday that needs reclamation it is Mothers’ Day!

Churches all over the United States report attendance on Mothers’ Day as one of the top three of the year - surpassing Christmas and/or Easter in some cases.

But, what is celebrated and valued is no longer a common-cultural experience for most people.

Significant numbers of our congregation have not had a positive mothering experience - for one reason or another. 
And, of course, a number of our congregation are male and could never experience motherhood.
Other increasing numbers of folks have experienced a loss that precluded them from ever experiencing motherhood.
Others, through choice, or through no fault of their own, have never and will never experience motherhood.
And, still others experience mothering through persons not typical to a culture of 100 years ago. 

It turns out that mothering is a very sensitive issue to very large numbers of people - and it takes a skillful preacher to be sensitive to their issues and craft a sermon that speaks to the needs of all in this day and age.

It is interesting to note that the one person responsible for creating and encourage the widespread adoption of a nationally recognized mother’s day, Anna Jarvis, lived long enough to see what was happening and spent her latter years trying to change the emphasis. 

As we think of a way of celebrating Mother’s Day in a new way, there is much to give fodder to our thought.

Consider the first call for a mother’s day came from Julia Ward Howe, who dreamed of an international gathering of mothers pledging to protect their sons and daughters by ending all war.

And, most recently, a group of folks in the US call for Mothers for Action to work for peace on Mothers’ Day.

For years, after giving nod to the fact that all of us have mothers, I have proceeded to give homage to the roll of women in our church and in our faith.  The preacher doesn’t have to look far for sermon points to lift up the role of women.

Taking a clue from the original call for a mothers’ day, we would do well to consider mustering interest in supporting a “cause” near and dear to mothers’ hearts:

Promote awareness of working mother’s issues.
Support a local women’s center.
Get involved in a Big Brothers / Big Sisters project.
Go to a nearby Senior Citizens Center
Support or start a day care center for working women

We received a special offering on Mothers’ Day to support Baby Manna in Philadelphia which supplies baby formula for poor mothers in Southeast Pennsylvania.