At Crossroads Church in Severn, Maryland, we want our people to experience the joy of the season and live in the peace and hope that Jesus brought us all year long, and the Advent Conspiracy helped us experience that this year.  At Christmas, our pastor preached an advent series and throughout the series he challenged us to consider making this Christmas different by focusing more on Jesus in all the ways that the Advent Conspiracy movement emphasizes: giving the gift of presence, by worshipping fully, spending less, giving more, and loving all.
Many of our people resonated with that message and began to make changes in the way they did Christmas this year, which was awesome to hear about and see in action. We didn’t do just one Advent Conspiracy project, instead we offered lots of ideas for some lifestyle changes that would help make this Christmas different and a couple of different mission projects, and asked our families to choose the ideas and projects that would help them put Jesus in the center of their family’s Christmas celebration.  Many of our families incorporated some of these lifestyle change ideas, and experienced new ways to spend time with their children and interact around the Christmas story and new ways to spend time with friends and give the gift of presence. Rather than getting totally caught up in all the busyness of the season, many in our church family chose to join one of the small groups that met during the advent season to focus on Jesus and what he provided for us when he came to live among us and die for us.
We also offered a couple of different mission projects during the season that allowed our people to practice spending less on themselves and giving and loving more, and our people stepped up and did an awesome job.  We ordered AIDS caregiver kits from World Vision and invited our people to cover the cost of a kit as a way of giving more, and to stay after church to assemble a kit. We are a fairly small church and we ordered 25 kits, but our people covered the cost of more than 40 kits and stayed to assemble all the kits that we ordered!  In addition, a local homeless shelter sent us a list of the children who live in the shelter and one special gift that that child wanted for Christmas. It was so encouraging to see our families take a part of their Christmas budget that would have normally bought gifts for their own family and pick one child’s name for each of their family members, including their children, to buy a gift for, wrap the gift, and deliver it to the shelter.  There were lots of small changes that added up to a very different kind of Christmas for many of our families!
We are still hearing the stories, in living rooms and around dinner tables, about how the individual families in our church did Christmas differently this year and the many creative ways that these families chose to live that out and how much they enjoyed themselves. Without a doubt, these families will never go back to the old Christmas-as-usual routines after they have experienced a Christmas with Jesus, rather than busyness and consumption, at the center of the season.  We know that their stories and the changes that God has made in their lives, will inspire more families, in our church and outside our church, to join in the Advent Conspiracy!

Melba Miller
Crossroads Church
Severn, Maryland