Everything Advent and Christmas
About This Bin
All your preaching, worship, outreach, and teaching ideas for Advent and Christmas in one place! Also see more specific bins for Advent and Christmas Sermon Series and Worship Videos for Christmas!
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Articles How Christmas Can Help Your Church Grow in 2012
Churches sometimes underestimate the importance of the Advent and Christmas seasons when planning their growth stategies for the year. Because December is such a busy month, it…
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Articles Sermon Series: Gifts
2 Week Series Week 1: Where Do Gifts Come From? Deuteronomy 26:1-19 One Christmas, shortly after my mother-in-law had passed away, a new dish appeared on our dining room table. …
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Articles Tried and Tested Christmas Series Ideas
It's fun to brainstorm and plan your own sermon series, but there's no shame in borrowing or being inspired by what other churches have done. Here are a few sermon series that…
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Articles Santa Claus Jesus
What does God look like? How would you recognize God if or when God showed up? Artists have attempted to depict God’s image in countless ways through the millennia…
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Articles Why Nazareth?
The Christmas story begins in the town of Nazareth nine months before the birth of Jesus. Now, if any narrative ever cried out for attention to detail it is this one, so…
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Articles Advent Studies for Small Groups
The four weeks leading up to Christmas are a special time of spiritual preparation that can often get lost in the tangible preparations of decorating, baking, and gift-buying…
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Articles Review: The Journey
Pastor and prolific author, Adam Hamilton, has written an engaging, highly-readable book for the Advent/Christmas season based on portraits of the major characters and places in…
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Articles Review: Christmas is Not Your Birthday
Christmas has been hijacked, and Mike Slaughter is fed up. His latest book, Christmas Is Not Your Birthday: Experience the Joy of Living and Giving Like Jesus, lines out what he…
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Articles Don't Just Talk about Jesus Again This Christmas
I know that titles that grab your attention usually resolve with being more catch than truth, but I am spitting truth here. Please don’t talk any more about Jesus…
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Product Christmas: Just Invite
Encourage your congregation to invite friends, family and neighbors during the Christmas season. This video confronts the fact that people are more open to spiritual truth during…
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Product Christmas: So He Could Be Known
This video is similar to Beamer's other Christmas video entitled "God's Greatest Gift", but with a few changes, including music with a more Christmas feel. Encourage others with…
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Articles Walk Through Bethlehem
In the busyness of the holidays, take time to imagine what Bethlehem might have been like the night Jesus was born, as if you were a traveler on a special journey through this…
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Articles A Mysterious God, a Tangible Christ
As Advent draws near, we spend a lot of time thinking, teaching, and preaching about the great Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. In Christ, God comes to us, becomes one of…
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Articles Advent Wreath Liturgies for "A Different Kind of Christmas"
This Advent season, our worship and education teams have chosen to take on the A Different Kind of Christmas study, based on the book Christmas is Not Your Birthday by Rev…
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Articles Christmas in Two Homes
A suitcase, step-families, many grandparents, a manger, Santa, and maybe Hanukkah. Airplanes, long car rides, and different beds. Quick stops in many places. Gifts, food, and…
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Articles Hurry Less, Worry Less at Christmas
A Sweet and Special Time of Year Most of the people I know are nearly obsessed with time—not enough time, how fast time is passing, where the time goes. Part of the way we…
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Articles The Truth About Santa Claus
Some call him Sinterklaas. Others Pere Noel or Papa Noel. He’s been known as Hoteiosho, Sonnerklaas, Father Christmas, Jelly Belly, and to most English speakers, Santa…
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Articles Worshiping Through Advent
The season of Advent begins the Christian year. In Advent we learn to wait, to expect God’s movement in the world. The most familiar Advent tradition is the lighting of the…
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Product Christmas: A Time To Prepare
Pregnancy is a wonderful illustration of the season of Advent. Waiting, hoping, and anticipating that special day in which we celebrate the birth of Jesus -- the light of the…
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Product Christmas: God's Greatest Gift
Encourage others with this video about epic story of Jesus... how his humility is our gift, his poverty is our riches, his shame is our glory, and his life is our light.
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Blog The Lowliness of God
What picture comes to mind when you hear this phrase: a homeless refugee with a price on his head? That description fits the baby Jesus held tightly by his parents fleeing in the…
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Blog Not Just a Tree
One of the highlights for me during the Advent season is the Chrismon Tree. A Chrismon Tree is an evergreen tree decorated with chrismons, or Christ-monograms. Chrismons are…
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Articles 5 Things Your Church Must Do at Christmas
Earlier this week, someone asked us to list five things that churches really need to do at Christmas. The Ministry Matters team brainstormed the question and came up with the…
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Video A Different Kind of Christmas
This video is a preview of the DVD study sessions from Mike Slaughter's A Different Kind of Christmas, a five-session study for Advent based on the book, Christmas is Not Your…
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Video Christmas is Not Your Birthday
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Articles Jesus' Birthday Wish List
What do you get for somebody who has everything? Choosing Christmas gifts is one of the most torturous social exercises known to humankind. It’s our own fault that it has…
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Articles Longest Night
The Christmas season is often marked by expressions of joy, excitement, and happiness. It’s a time for family to gather and for churches to worship pointing to the hope that …
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Articles Modeling Mary: Switching Agendas with God
Mary of Nazareth must have been very excited about her immediate plans. She was engaged to marry Joseph, a good man from a great family. Surely her mind was filled with wedding…
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Articles It's a Wonderful Life (Sermon Series with Drama)
This five part series for Advent uses the classic holiday film, "It's a Wonderful Life," as a creative vehicle to preach the lessons of Advent. The approach was especially…
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Articles Focusing Christmas Outward
It is a hot July all over the country and already thoughts are being turned toward Christmas. While it may seem a little crazy to already be talking about a holiday that is months …
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Articles Christmas Remix
Rethinking How and Why Your Congregation Celebrates the Season As a church leader, have you ever thought about skipping Christmas? There’s a quirky little John Grisham…
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Articles Advent Traditions to Try
Christians today have a tendency to get into the Christmas spirit a little earlier than we probably should. Retailers in the United States more than a century ago decided that the …
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Articles Creating an Advent Devotional for Home
An Advent devotional booklet can encourage families and individuals to take time at home to remember what Christ's birth means. What we believe and what we do can come together in …
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Articles Helping People Spend Wisely
Christmas is a half-trillion dollar industry in the United States. Gifts, decorations, big meals, travel, cards, shipping. . . all this merriment comes with a hefty price tag, if…
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Articles Big Events for Christmas
After pastoring the same church for 31 Christmases, I’ve got mixed feelings about the holiday. For church workers, Christmas isn’t easy. It comes annually with the…
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Blog Top 5 Ways to Mess Up Your Christmas Opportunity
Every year I have to convince senior pastors that Christmas Eve is a powerful and great opportunity to reach out to their communities. Catholic churches have known this for…
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Articles Christmas is Not Your Birthday: Sermon Series
I stood before our congregation in the fall of 2004 and said, “I want you to have a slim Christmas this year . . . and whatever you spend on your family, bring an equal…
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Product Winter Snow v.7
This is version 7 of 7 loopable motion backgrounds that show the glories of winter! Sure to add ambiance and heighten your winter or Christmas service offerings.
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Product Glowing Lights Loop 03
This loop is from our "Glowing Lights" collection, a set of 6 looping motion backgrounds great for sermon notes, announcements, lyrics, or by itself to add a creative edge to your …
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Product Christmas Quotes Countdown
Against the backdrop of nativity images, this countdown features powerful Christmas scriptures and quotes that are sure to inspire. Surely a perfect lead-in to your christmas…
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Articles Try Something New for Advent
Before we know it, the air will be turning cool, leaves will fall, the Thanksgiving turkeys will go on sale, and the twelfth month of people's calendars will start filling up with …
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Articles Worship in a Flash (Free Download!)
When your kids' Christmas gifts arrive on the doorstep from Amazon in a few months, many people's excitement may give way to panic when they see those dreaded words "Some Assembly …
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Articles 5 Outreach Ideas for Advent
For the Western secular world, the Christmas season starts right after the Thanksgiving Day meal and ends on Christmas Day. Then we set our sights on the New Year. But…
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Articles Keep Christ in Advent
“Wait,” you say; “Didn’t you mean ‘Keep Christ in Christmas?’” Well, no, I didn’t mean that. As we’ve all suspected and…
This Sunday May 26, 2013
May 26th is Trinity Sunday. (Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15)








































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