(Author's Note: The following description of an Advent worship experience is written by Sherri Van Houten (M.Div., STM), one of my students in a course I teach at Drew on worship and evangelism. While this makes an ideal Sunday before Christmas worship experience, which is how we are presenting it here, it could also be used the Sunday after Christmas. Your people will have opened one set of boxes with presents inside on Christmas Day. On this day they will open another set of boxes - with presence inside.)
In an Advent Worship Service at Drew University chapel in 2003 offered by Professor Sweet's "Ministry and Mission in Advent and Christmastide" class, the gifts of memories were made visible in the following fashion.
As each person walked into the chapel, they were given a paper cross which could be folded into a box by folding along printed diagram lines.
Each cross-box was unique, with original designs and favorite Christmas quotes hand-written on side panels days before by members of the class. Some students drew pictures (some simple, some elaborate) on the crosses. Others pasted stickers on the crosses. But all crosses bore hand-penned sayings and biblical verses on them. All crosses, furthermore, saved the center panel as white space. Each worship participant was given time to write a favorite Christmas memory on the white center of the paper cross. Then each worship participant folded that cross into a box along printed diagram lines (some people needed help crafting their crosses into boxes, which actually added to the experience). These acts of worship can be done, either in silence, or with music in the background. We did it with an Advent melody playing in the background, but some students thought that silence would have been better.
These crosses were then brought up front as an offering and placed into a "manger." The participants were invited to bring their offering, the crosses, and deliver them into the manger while the congregational song, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" was sung. When everyone was done depositing their cross-box into the manger, and had returned to their seats, each person was invited to return to the manger and bring back to their seat somebody else's offering. The choir sang an offertory while this return to the manger was conducted.
Before being invited back up to the manger to receive a cross, prayers of the people were exchanged. During this time, many participants prayed for family or friends, living or dead, whom they wrote about on their crosses. After the prayer time concluded, the people approached the manger, one by one, and received someone else's cross containing a sweet or bitter Christmas memory.
Again in silence, people opened boxes and read the quotes and stories that were found therein. The outflow of emotions that surrounded the opening of these crosses surpassed secular gift exchanges, partly because these boxes contained Christ-centered, raw experiences and moving memories.
In order to enhance a participatory atmosphere, the chairs in the chapel were placed circularly with all seats facing the centrally located manger. The order of worship included opening prayers, which was then followed by simple, clear instructions about the crosses that were distributed to the participants as they entered the chapel.
The sermon for this EPIC worship experience consisted of different members of the body rising to read something that touched their soul from the cross-box they took out of the manger. Some people read a Bible verse. Some read a quote. Some described a picture drawn on the cross. Most read the center-of-the-cross Christmas memory or story that had been written by another member that very morning. One particularly striking moment in this service occurred when a woman read of another woman's child dying on Christmas Eve. The tears shed by everyone were a gift from God, as such moving experiences serve as spiritual connectors between mortal and mortal, and between mortals and God.
After this central worship experience was completed, Dr. Leonard Sweet offered words of parting that emphasized the presence in the presents that were exchanged. The parting hymn was "The Lord's Prayer," sung to the tune of "Away in a Manger." The participants left the service as one in the Spirit, and spiritually one. The service inspired a connectedness, and nobody left alone.
A word about the logistics of engaging in this service: if the sanctuary doesn't have moveable seats to form a circular seating arrangement, another possibility might be to place the manger in the center of your narthex or foyer with surrounding chairs. While ideally the participants should be facing the manger and each other as well (visual barriers often weaken the intensity that comes from face-to-face connection), this service could also be done in more traditional pew settings. Aside from the challenge of circular seating, this service is user-friendly and simple enough to include in your Advent planner.