First Sunday of Advent

Yesterday was a snow day for us.

While we probably technically could have "gone" to church, the snow plow decided to dump a couple of feet of packed snow at the end of our driveway just about the time we would have had to leave. Of course we still were in our PJs when that happened, so we wouldn't have made it in time anyway.

Instead, I went back to bed and Mr. D did some online research for the service of the church that occasionally meets at the Dugan manse.

Since yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent, he incorporated the lectionary readings for the First Sunday of Advent into our service, we sang some Christmas carols, and enjoyed a message from John Piper via the little red Joy booklet that Terry had picked up at Bethlehem a couple weeks ago.

Doing the lectionary readings and thinking about the church calendar got me thinking about how much evangelicals (of which I guess I am one, I haven't fully decided yet) tend to have a strong distaste for things "churchy". Things like lectionaries, and creeds, and church calendars. I suppose anything done by rote can become meaningless. But then, so can the average evangelical service. Sing the worship songs while you clap a certain way, give the announcements, take the collection, it's just a different sort of doing things by rote. Not so high churchy rote.

The lectionary, for example, gives you readings from the entire Bible. You get the whole picture and Christianity doesn't end up as just a "to-do" list from Paul's letters.

Anyway, I found this link on George Grant's blog about the church year and how it is all done to help us tell the Gospel story and wanted to share.

And, don't forget that December 6th is St. Nicholas Day.