Purpose Behind This Project

We recognize that the spiritual process of Advent is often under emphasized but in a season of invitation and celebration we have an opportunity to reach in, seeking a deeper or expanded understanding of the season of anticipation, with the hope that there will be a foundation laid for each participant to then reach out in the season of celebration. The season of Advent heralds the continuation of God’s missional and redemptive work within in Creation with the birth of our Deliver. As Eugene Peterson translates in the Message, “the Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish” (John 1:14). The coming of Jesus to Earth, the heralding of the Kingdom that is now present, is not only our joy but also our model. As such Advent is an opportune time to begin not only our outworking, but more importantly begin a season of inner work to reframe the life and mission of God to the world.

 Walter Wangerin writes, “the world Advent is derived from the Latin adventus, which means “the approach” or “the arrival.” The verb is adventio: “I arrive. I come. I am coming.” We celebrate the first coming but we also look in anticipation in the coming that is before us as such we celebrate one while continuing in a season of anticipation. “The story of the birth of Jesus is open before us. We have a spiritual and holy account of the time when God himself directed preparations for the first coming of his Son into the world… those preparations maybe the perfect pattern for our own.” Jesus physically entered into a world much in chaos like our own, with the same anxieties, fears, political and social instabilities, grief, anger and all the other forms of brokenness. Into this darkness there came great light, a light that we as the Church, an outcropping of the Kingdom, need to continue.

This program can also provide an opportunity for a church to test out what it might look like to be a missional church. They can consider what it looks like not to be just a building but a gathering of people empowered in their renewed understanding of the Kingdom and their participation in it. This program offers a challenge to also re-frame our lives in the awareness, as “there is no private Christianity. For this reason we cannot but take seriously, affirm, and love this community in its peculiarity.”

References:

[1]           Walter Wangerin, Preparing for Jesus: Meditations on the Coming of Christ, Advent, Christmas and the Kingdom. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 21.

[2]           Karl Barth, The Humanity of God, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 64.