Thriving Mennonite Church

Our congregation uses the Menno Media worship resources during the season of Advent, and this year’s theme is Together on the Journey. For the first week of advent, the title is Embodying God’s Spirit, and we explore the scriptures of Luke 1:26–49 and Psalm 113.

We also choose an organization during advent to support with our congregational offerings, and this season we’ve chosen The Nazareth Center for Peace Studies. I’ve tried to integrate peace-related resources into the activity table every week because of that, with a specific focus on the conflict in Palestine. I found a great bunch of free resources for kids through an organization called Ummah that has a Google drive where they can be downloaded. For weeks 1, 2, and 4 of advent, I drew on their resources for this purpose.

As a take-your-worship-into-the-week offering, I printed the black and white version of the Counting Snow Flakes? tract from the Flanders Family Home Life blog (free – if you use this resource, be sure to fit to page, and flip on SHORT edge rather than long edge in order for the layout to work).

On Eternity Sunday, I offered colour-in prayer cards for folks to make to give or send to people who might appreciate them. I thought I’d do the same for Christmas, in case there were folks lacking in those resources. These (free) cards by Katie Helmreich for Visual Faith Ministry were so beautifully coloured (by Jennifer Barbe) that I figured I’d take advantage of our great printer at the church and offer a few in case folks wanted or needed them.

The Adventure Bible has some great free resources on their website, including a Christmas pack. I decided to use the word search and fill in the blank activities from the pack for this table, to have something that wasn’t just colouring.

Throughout advent, I included some wholesome colouring sheets that are available mostly for free from a fantastic artist, Morgan O’Brien. For this season, I drew largely on the free Matchstick Mouse Merry Little Christmas, and the Matchstick Mouse 25 Days of Kindness book.

Finally, I decided to check out some of the new advent devotionals that came out in 2024 that were available to borrow through CommonWord. Comfort and Joy by Sherah-Leigh Gerber and Gwen Lantz ended up being an uplifting, age inclusive book, so I hope that they won’t mind that I decided to provide copies of a couple of select offerings from the book on the activity table, with a QR code provided so that others could find the book through the library service if they wanted to read the whole thing. There happened to be a section on embodied Christ, which seemed almost too perfect not to share this week, on p. 132 of this lovely title.