2022 Advent Season Resources

Celebrating Advent and Christmas

Advent is a season of beautiful traditions, symbolism, art, music, and liturgical practices. To help our local churches explore new ways to mark the season, we will place readily-available Advent resources and other useful information on this page for your consideration, use, and adaptation.

Please check back often as the season progresses. We will aim to consistently add to the page with the intention of growing it with tried-and-true ideas shared from around our Conference.

If you have plans, ideas or information that you feel can be useful to others looking to lift spirits and further a sense of excitement, anticipation, and connection in these challenging times, please share. Our goal is to collect any and all so that we can post them more broadly.

Please e-mail us details on your creative plans for Advent celebrations at dcm@nyac.com

Ideas from New York Annual Conference Clergy and Laity

Distribute kits for gingerbread houses and make them together as virtual intergenerational activity on Zoom.
Give members of your church family kits to make their own nativity sets (or paint the figures) and home altars with devotions and prayer experiments they can try at home.
Adapt the VBS/church school curriculum to make it a drive-thru Bethlehem Marketplace experience for the whole community.
Light candles outside where neighbors can see, possibly on Christmas Eve, and have a distanced singer or recording of Silent Night as they are held high.

New York Annual Conference Connectional Ministries

Advent Action a Day is a resource geared to youth, but realistically anyone can take part.
A Christmas Pageant Skit: A Newscaster Christmas Pageant (This skit translates well for performance on the Zoom platform)

UMC Advent Devotions, Activities and Information

UMC Discipleship Ministries

Resource UMC

Books and Studies for Advent
Advent Photo-a-Day Challenge
Go deeper with Advent Prayer Stations
The .99 Advent Wreath is an oldie, but goodie that is adaptable for a Zoom or small group activity.“ It is inexpensive and connects children with Christian tradition.
New Ways to Celebrate Advent with Kids
An Epiphany Blessing of Homes and Chalking the Door
New Year, New Beginnings: Social Media Graphics

The General Commission on Religion and Race

Reimagine Advent: Discover the Liberating Christ: Worship Resources for Congregations

Amplify Media/United Methodist Publishing House

In The Promise of Advent: Preparing for a Season of Hope in Unparalleled Times. This online series is hosted by Adam Hamilton, a UMC pastor and bestselling author. During the FREE webinar, church leaders discuss their hopes and concerns around Advent planning with a panel of pastors and experts.
Prepare for the Celebration of Advent featuring features Adam Hamilton and Susan Robb, authors of two
new Advent studies for United Methodists.

The Upper Room

Advent Candle Lighting Liturgy 2022
Child of the Light is an e-course led by Upper Room author Beth A. Richardson. You will be invited to experience the weeks before Christmas differently this year as Richardson offers live worship, prayer, reflection, daily reading, space for conversation, and more. Cost: $19
The Blue Christmas: An Experience of Light and Hope in an Unprecedented Advent is an online experience featuring Todd Outcalt’s book Blue Christmas. The recorded course includes a variety of elements and participants are not required to participate in every element of the online experience.

Cokesbury Advent Resources

General Resources

Fear Not Advent Series
Fill the Night with Music and Light are resources from Worship Design Studio focused on safe singing.
CHRISTMAS – PARK, PORCH, AND SIDEWALK SINGS! from the Center for Congregational Song, the resource and programmatic arm of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada.

Connectional Ministries