Photo by Jessamyn Rubio
Melissa Musick Nussbaum: Make room for the real work of nativity and resurrection
Getting ready to host an immigrant family, a writer and speaker reflects on the book of Acts and the post-holiday question of “now what?”
Christmas
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This year, viewers from 30 countries watched St. Olaf College's five choirs and orchestra in a live stream of the festival’s final performance. Photos courtesy of St. Olaf College
Christmas Festival brings 'good news of great joy' to a diverse and changing world
The St. Olaf Christmas Festival, one of the oldest and most highly regarded musical Christmas celebrations in the country, is a constantly changing ‘global event,’ bringing a message the world wants and needs to hear.
Madonna and Child by Fra Angelico
Gretchen E. Ziegenhals: How do we make a lasting impact in a culture of instant gratification?
This Christmas, what are we as church leaders painting, praying, preaching, proclaiming or prophesying that will endure for another 500 years? Are we conveying the hope of the Christ child that keeps us alive despite the darkness that threatens to overwhelm us?
Bigstock / Balyasina
A worship service for a year of generosity and abundance
This worship service is based on Puerto Rican Christmas traditions, which include joyful gatherings of friends and family, music, and a soup called asopao.
Visitors to the spontaneous Puerto Rican Christmas-season parties called parrandas often play the güiro, the instrument pictured here. Creative Commons / le Guiro
Thea L. Racelis: Puerto Rican Christmas means asopao and resistance
A pastor shares the traditions of her native island, where big parties with steaming bowls of delicious soup called asopao symbolize abundance, hope and resistance.
This Chrismons ornament is called "Pelican in Her Piety." It's part of a series representing the seasons of Christmas and Lent called the "Christian Year Series," designed by Frances Spencer, who created the first Chrismon tree in 1957. Photos by Jessamyn Rubio
Meredith Williams: We are people who ...
Chrismons -- white and gold ornaments representing the story of Christ -- are part of the identity of the Lutheran congregation in Virginia where they originated six decades ago.
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Ken Evers-Hood: A case for good-enough parenting and pastoring
Mary and Joseph lost Jesus amidst the Passover crowds. They tried their best but weren’t perfect, and I don’t have to be either, writes a pastor.
Bigstock/Oleg Golovnev
Deb Richardson-Moore: A Savior is born to all us shepherds
In this excerpt from her book “The Weight of Mercy,” the pastor of Triune Mercy Center recalls the church’s first mid-week Christmas Eve service and the homily she delivered on her favorite Christmas subject, shepherds.
Jesse Lawton German collects the offering during services at Triune Mercy Center, an active, vibrant church that is both a place of worship and a thriving hub of ministries.
Photos by Ken Osborn
The joy and mess of incarnational ministry at Triune Mercy Center
More than just a ministry to people who are homeless, Triune Mercy Center in Greenville, South Carolina, is a vibrant -- and sometimes messy -- church where rich, poor and those in between worship and serve together.
All Saints' United Methodist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, began holding a Christmas Eve service outside in 2009; the service illustrates that God isn’t above becoming a spectacle for our salvation.
Photo courtesy of All Saints' UMC
Greg Moore: Christmas Eve in a barn
A pastor reluctantly becomes a field preacher when his congregation decides to celebrate Christmas Eve as the holy family did -- outside. But he learns to love it, both as spectacle and as sacrament.