December in FEC Kids
Prayer:
Please click HERE to see the FEC Kids December Prayer Guide
Please see Prayer — First Evangelical Church on our church web page to see more ways to be prayerfully involved at First Evan!
Community:
It’s time for Advent— when we look forward to the coming of Christmas. We hope you received your Christmas gift from FEC Kids; each family is a gift to us as a church, and we want to love and support you as you disciple your children in this season of waiting on the Lord, even as we enjoy the presence of His spirit in our lives. We have lots of fun ways to celebrate the season together… Here’s a list of what we are planning for this month! We would love to see you!
FEC Kids’ December Events:
Sunday, December 8: Lessons & Carols Services (9 & 10:30 am) Childcare for ages 2 & under
Sunday, December 1, 15, & 22: Regular Sunday Schedule
Wednesday, December 18: Live Nativity in the fellowship hall & gym (6-8 pm)
Monday, December 23: Pizza & Practice for Christmas Eve Children’s Nativity (10 am-12 pm)
Tuesday, December 24: Candlelight Christmas Eve Service with Children’s Nativity & Song (5-6 pm) Family Service, NO CHILDCARE
Sunday, December 29: Family Worship Service, no Sunday School, Nursery for ages 2 & under
Discipleship:
Christmas Eve: Let the Stable Still Astonish
Good teachers know: “songs lend themselves to memorization. You almost can’t help but memorize music and lyrics that you hear over and over again.” —Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra (Recorded Podcast: How an Australian Church is Changing Christian Songwriting).
Our song this Christmas Eve, Once in Royal David’s City, was written to teach children the astonishing truth of Jesus’ Incarnation. If you look online or in a hymnal, you’ll see many, many verses; we will sing only two that have been carefully selected by our staff (see attached below). Our children will come early on Christmas Eve, & dress in the costumes they’ve previously selected at practice on December 23rd (10:00am). They will read Luke 2 and then sing their two verses. Choir and congregation will then join them to sing two more. In addition to Pizza & Practice on December 23rd, we will also be practicing during Sunday School.
Please click HERE to see the verses we will sing on Christmas Eve!
Click HERE to listen on YouTube
Click HERE to listen on Spotify
Sunday School in December
December Key Passage:
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” —Revelation 21:4
Big Picture Question:
What is the hope of the church? The church looks forward to Jesus’ return when He will make all things new.
Unit Focus: The Church’s Hope
12/8: Lessons & Carols, NO SUNDAY SCHOOL
12/15: Jesus is Worthy of our Worship (Revelation 4-5)
12/22: Jesus will Return One Day (Revelation 19-20)
12/29: WORSHIP SERVICE ONLY, NO SUNDAY SCHOOL
Encouragement:
Excerpt taken from the Introduction to
Waiting on the Word: A poem a day for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany
by Malcolm Guite
This excerpt has been a welcome challenge to slow down in heart and soul and prepare for the true Adventure of Christmas. Enjoy!
“Advent is a paradoxical season: a season of waiting and anticipation in which the waiting itself is strangely rich and fulfilling, a season that looks back at the people who waited in darkness for the coming light of Christ and yet forward to a fuller light still to come and illuminate our darkness. Advent falls in winter at the end of the year, in the dark and cold, but its focus is on the coming of light and life, when the Ancient of Days becomes a young child and says, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ Perhaps only poetry can help us fathom the depths and inhabit the tensions of these paradoxes.
The Latin root of the familiar word ‘Advent’ is veni. It speaks of ‘coming,’ the coming of Christ in every way. And in that sense the advent of Christ has for us a triple focus, not simply the classic double focus of the (Anglican tradition’s) Prayer book’s beautiful and familiar Advent Collect. That collect speaks of Christ’s first coming ‘to visit us in great humility’ in the manger of Bethlehem, then leaps across time to the fulfilment and finality of all things: Christ’s second coming ‘in his glorious majesty.’ Of course, we need these two great advents to frame the in-between time in which we live; they are the alpha and the omega, as it were, in the lexicon of our lives. But surely, between this beginning and this end there are many other advents. ‘Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the age,’ says Jesus. ‘Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do it unto me;’ ‘This is my body, this is my blood.’ In our encounters with the poor and the stranger, in the mystery of the sacrements, in those unexpected moments of transfiguration surely there is also an advent and Christ comes to us. Perhaps that is why the other sense we have of the word ‘advent’ is to find it beginning the word ‘adventure.’ …The God in whom we live and move and have our being may come and meet us when and where he pleases…” (Malcolm Guite, Introduction to Waiting on the Word, p. ix, x).
Resources:
We hope you enjoy your Christmas gift from FEC Kids! Each family should have a book bundle with their name on it, but if you do not see your name, please let us know!!! We hope you are encouraged by the grand story of God— the miraculous truth of God as a baby, invading time and space to save us. Browse our Christmas books while you’re here, and don’t forget the library down in the church basement! It is open from 9-11 on Sundays so you can swing by before or after Sunday School.