REFLECTION BY  THE REV. DR. WAYNE SCHWANDT 

 GATHERING LEADERS:

Set-up/Put-away: Rick Stewart    

Greeter/Usher: Suzie Robertson  

Reader/Communion Assistant: Dave Miller   

Offering Invitation: Beth Lanier    

Community Hour:  Beth Lanier    

 InVent Advent

How many of us can remember the time when as children we eagerly anticipated the arrival of Christmas and Santa Claus? For me it was a magical season. Every Sunday we would light another candle on the advent wreath, we had Advent Calendars which would form magical pictures when every door had been opened, and the church gave us Advent collection boxes so we could save our loose change to give to children less fortunate than ourselves. Of course, being children, one of the best things for my brothers and me was the arrival of the Sears and Roebuck Christmas Catalog.

Surprisingly, the Sears catalog taught us many things as we made our lists. My mom kept us busy and out from under foot as we poured through the book. She had us organize our lists by type of item and how much we wanted it, and then we had to go back and add everything up. We had a wonderful time. There was never an understanding that we would get everything we wanted, or even anything on our very extensive lists, but the anticipation was both great and exciting!

Advent is a word which means "coming," and in the church it is a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of Christmas. Since the traditional interpretations of Advent no longer seem to fit our congregation's practice, the Celebration Team has been meeting and CoCreating a new way to celebrate Advent. As is often the case within our evolving spiritual gatherings, we needed to invent a new way of looking at things - and suddenly we had it - InVent:CoCreate!

InVent:CoCreate! is all about Evolve Chesapeake living into our own spiritual practices. As we travel through the four weeks of InVent, you will see familiar elements of a traditional Advent.   There will be candles, there will be anticipation leading to Christmas. There will be both traditional and non-traditional readings along with our music. What will be different is that we will be looking at InVent through our practices of Creation Spirituality.

Each week will have a different theme: Inspire, Integrate, Invigorate and Involve. We invite you to move through this season of InVent:CoCreate with joyful anticipation - anticipation of the services each week, anticipation of Christmas itself, but mostly anticipation of how you can become involved in CoCreating our community.

 ~ by Beth Lanier of the Evolve Chesapeake Celebration Team 

DECEMBER COVENANT DATES 

Spong Reading Group meets next on Saturday, Dec. 15    

 The group reading Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World by John Shelby Spong will meet at Panera, Festival at Riva at 11 a.m. on Saturday,  Dec. 15.  We are reading in Part X, The Synoptic Gospels, Chapters 48 through 51.  This is a lively group and there is still time to join.  If you need a copy of the book, contact Pastor Wayne at SchwandtW@aol.com.