The season of Advent is beginning on Sunday, November 29th. Advent is a time where we prepare our hearts to celebrate the coming of Jesus. This year we are doing a few different things to celebrate Advent that we hope you will find meaningful.
Daily Advent Readings
As we enter the Christmas season, we want to encourage each of us to follow along with the Advent Devotional Guide put out by BIC Canada. You can find a digital version here or a printable version here. We also have a limited supply of printed copies available at the church office. Please contact office@westheights.org to make arrangements to pick one up.
We have also set up a Facebook group that will be a place where we will post the daily Advent reading as well as where we can discuss the reading together. We hope that you will join us!
Advent Wreath
During the season of Advent, our Sunday services will include the lighting of candles on an advent wreath. An advent wreath provides us with a beautiful visual that is centered around the birth of Jesus. The wreath contains four candles representing the four Sundays before Christmas Eve. The candles, placed in a circle, each have a theme: Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. In the centre of the wreath is a fifth candle known as the Christ Candle. Click this link if you would like to make your own advent wreath!
Advent Discussion
One of the great things about watching our Sunday morning services live is the ability to interact with people using the chat function in YouTube. But do you ever get to the end of the service and wish you could keep the conversation going? The good news is that you can in our Virtual Foyer (using Zoom)! But during the Advent season, we are adding a second after-service online gathering that we are calling an Advent Discussion.
Starting Sunday, November 29th, we will be hosting a discussion centred around the theme and sermon, immediately following the service. These chats, which will take place on Zoom, are meant to be very interactive and will likely go for about 20 to 30 minutes. They will be facilitated by our House Church Director, Terry Kreutzkamp, and are open to anyone who is interested in participating in this kind of exchange of ideas.
As well, we will be recording the audio of these conversations with the intent to edit them and make them available as podcasts for later listening. Here is the link to join in our Advent Discussion on Sunday mornings beginning on November 29th.
Christmas Eve Teaser
As you can imagine, our Christmas Eve service will be different from previous years, but we believe that it will be very, very special nonetheless. Over the next few weeks, you will be getting information about our virtual Christmas Eve service that will be hosted on December 23 @ 7pm, and December 24 @ 4pm and 7pm. We hope that you will plan to attend one of these three services with your family and that you will also invite others to attend as well.
One last thing, we still want this to be a “Candlelight” service. So make sure that you have candles ready for the last song!