The Advent Conspiracy

Church Name: Huber Mennonite

This year, the Huber Mennonite Church, a small fellowship of around 65 persons, participated in Advent Conspiracy for the first time. We had just participated in our most successful ever community wide CROP walk in September. So our hearts were very much ready to consider how we might give to others during the season of Advent.
We gathered a planning group of 4, with the support of our elders and pastor.
One person was responsible to research water projects in our denomination’s relief organization- Mennonite Central Committee. We wanted a project similar to our summer Bible school projects, that children could understand and get involved helping raise funds. We chose a water project in India. For $15, a family can irrigate a ½ acre plot to raise enough food for 6 months- or $30 pays for the necessary labor and materials needed to bring clean drinking water to 3 families. We put a goal of $1500 to our congregation. We raised $2100.
One person gathered ideas for children’s times. We wanted both stories and/or activities to help our children understand the concepts of worship more, spend less, give more relationally and love all. Our first Sunday, the children were given 2 cookies- one, they must give to a person in the congregation, the other they could eat- to introduce the concept of giving to others. They were then given a wristlet of sleigh bells to help accompany the congregation during the singing of “Come on, Ring Those Bells”. For the theme of ‘Spend Less’, we found the book- “A Keepsake Christmas” by Alice Gray and Susan Wales to have wonderfully creative ideas for children. We chose to have the children make advent paper chains. On each loop, the child wrote the name of a person they know. Each day of advent, they were to clip off a loop and pray for that person- a gift with no dollar amount attached. We actually missed the 3rd theme because we had church services cancelled by a snowstorm. So on the 4th Sunday, the children decorated a graham cracker (gingerbread) house to give to someone in the congregation. This Sunday before Christmas, after delivering their gingerbread house gift to the congregation, we had a totally unplanned joyful celebration with the children dancing and singing “Beautiful News” by Matt Redman, in the front of the church.
One person worked on media presentations. We found the site from AdventConspiracy.org and joined workofthepeople.org. We used several of the video shorts and loops during our services. The media person also created a booklet explaining the concept of Advent Conspiracy, each Sunday’s themes and the water project we had chosen. Each week she also created a bulletin insert with creative ideas and resource websites specifically targeting each theme. We gathered children’s Christmas picture books, adult Christmas devotional books, free trade catalogues, mission catalogues and other brochures of resources for families to garner ideas for reclaiming Christmas. We placed these in a foyer area for perusal and/or lending.
We worked cooperatively on choosing music, readings, and the visual effects for our church. We chose Isaiah 55 for our focal scripture. While not necessarily a “Christmas” scripture, it effectively pointed us to the Christ of Christmas as well as asking us why do we spend money on what does not satisfy? We chose the worship song- “Beautiful News” by Matt Redman as our theme song. We also used the quote from Ghandi – “Live simply so others may simply live” in our printed material. Our pastor preached on each theme. Since he, his wife and 4 young sons had spent several years in India as missionaries- just 3 years ago, the themes and our water project for India were especially poignant.
Some of the books we found really helpful to us as resources: “A Keepsake Christmas” – Alice Gray and Susan Wales, “A Simple Christmas” – Sharon Hanby-Robie, “Peace Is Here” – Jars of Clay, and a favorite “Come and Behold Him!” – Jack Hayford
For visual effect, besides the Christmas decorations of trees and greenery, a couple of men in the congregation erected an antique spigot in a galvanized water tub. Our idea did not come together as we would have liked, however. We had planned to have running water every week, but were unable to get the right size of pump. We were finally able to get the pump running the week we had topped our goal of $1500 for the water project. It was as if the Lord had orchestrated that the water would run when we had reached our goal!
For the theme of “love all and redistribute”, we helped with the food basket program in our local community co-op of churches. This year our food pantry had been heavily patronized and food supplies were low. Our co-op had experienced more than double the requests for Christmas baskets. Our area has been hit hard by job loss as well as rising fuel and heating costs. In previous years, our little church had provided 5 baskets. This year, we took on 16 families and the Lord provided. We have several in our own congregation without jobs, so it was a sacrifice for some to give. But they did and we were so pleased to be able to reach out to these 16 needy families in our community.
Effects? Some of our families were resistant, but many embraced the concept. There were some who felt the chains of obligation or tradition to continue the consumerism. But many chose to begin new traditions of providing food for a Christmas basket, or earning extra income to give to the water project, or singing a Christmas worship song together before family gift opening. Some chose to give only gifts that they could “make or bake”. Altogether this was a really good experience for our congregation. Now that we have practiced the idea one year, we hope the next one will be even more meaningful.
Thank you for letting us share our story with you all.
Julie Fisher- for Huber Mennonite Church

How much money was redistributed?: $3000

How much went to water?: $2100

What can we do better?:

This post was submitted by Julie Fisher.