Advent Worship and Corporate Action: A Resource for Churches
By Carl Park
I
n the attached document you'll find four worship services for the four Sundays of Advent. Great Commission Community Church created these services in 2023, with a focus on corporate responses to issues of justice with which we as a church are involved. While these services contain elements that are specific to our own local ministry, it is our desire that you can adapt them, use their basic ideas as a skeleton, or just incorporate certain sections for your own church's worship.
Three basic ideas are at the heart of these services. First, these are Advent services, so they celebrate Christ’s two comings, his two “advents.” One is in the past, his incarnation that we remember at Christmas. The other is in the future, when his redemption of all things will be complete. This redemption includes much more than the glorification of individual souls—it is the transformation of societies and relationships, the establishment of justice and righteousness in every part of our world, the healing of societal and communal wounds, and more.
Second, because of the incredible scope of Christ’s redemption and the hope we have of his return, we want to move away from expressing an individualistic, narrowly spiritual hope in Christ and toward expressing a more communal, cosmic, and holistic hope in Christ. With that in mind, our services are focused on specific issues of justice in our world today, which Christ will redeem and make right at his return.
Third, we want to move toward corporate responses and corporate action, rather than restricting ourselves to individual responses and actions. In many American churches, sermons ask only for individual responses or commitments. But this is deficient if we want to be a biblically robust church that challenges our hyper-individualistic culture. So, we ask, “What would truly corporate responses to God’s word look like?” We have found that this can require more planning and discussion, to put together an organized response ready for the church to join. But this extra effort is worth it.
During our church’s Advent services in 2023, each Sunday had a particular focus. The first Sunday’s focus was recent immigrants in our area. The second Sunday’s focus was gun violence in our area and the whole country. For this service, we used postcards made by AACC to send to local representatives, urging them to work toward curbing gun violence. The third Sunday’s focus was a set of housing project communities in Washington DC. The fourth and final Sunday focused on telling the story of Christ’s first coming to us, his incarnation.
One final note about us: our church values elements from both liturgical traditions and Charismatic traditions. We also value accessibility, so we try to use the language of the larger culture around us (and we meet in a hotel space, we play mostly contemporary music, and more). And we say we have at least three goals for weekly corporate worship: telling the story of Christ together, encountering the Holy Spirit together, and being formed to be like Christ together.
We pray that this is a helpful resource for you as we all do our parts as members of Christ’s one body, growing into him who is our head, with truth and love.
Access and download the full resource HERE.
Carl Park serves as a pastor to Great Commission Community Church in Arlington, VA, and faculty for the Institute for Worship Studies.
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