For those engaged in campus worshipping communities, this season has its liturgical tensions. The worshipping year includes Advent, but not Christmas; Lent, but not Easter. The students are off campus / at home. Especially for those liturgically inclined, how can we allow the community to participate in the full range of the church year?
The culture has been celebrating Christmas since October, and the rest of campus since the return from Thanksgiving Break. How to seriously address Advent? Many have the largest worship service of the year, some sort of Christmas and candle-lighting event, a pseudo- Christmas Eve, this weekend. (Some had it last week.) Perhaps a couple of weeks with Advent themes and hymns, then the last week on campus could be Christmas? Perhaps a recognition of Advent and its themes with the acknowledgement that the community wants to celebrate Christmas together before everyone goes their separate ways? Any suggestions?
Lent and Easter seem a little different. With Lent and Easter, the campus isn't celebrating Easter, but when will the campus worshipers celebrate Easter? Prematurely, during Lent, or during Eastertide, when students have already celebrated Easter at home (or on the beach)?
Is this an "in the world, but not of it" issue?
J. Cody Nielsen
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Hey all. So looking forward to being in connection with all of you in just
a few short weeks. My name is Cody Nielsen. I am an ordained United
Methodist c...
5 years ago
4 comments:
The Advent/Christmas tension is one we feel here - especially since it also means final exam season, which feels more pressing than Advent.
However, the Lent and Eastertide is different. Partially since they aren't observed in the secular culture as much (apart from fuzzy bunnies and peeps!). Lent has become a time when students are open to thinking about/discussing/trying spiritual disciplines. And Easter (unless it falls on spring break) has become a time when we can gather together after worship and celebrate with the community of those in our campus ministry.
Please keep writing. I am reading.
The tension during Advent for me is that we are spending lots of energy helping the students prepare to leave, to finish up. Just as in our church (we are a congregational ministry), we are trying to sit expectantly, to wait and be still. The energies are so different. Christmas for PSU students is intimately entwined with leaving, going home.
At Wooster we have been wrestling with this - can we sing the favorite advent hymns in the ordinary time? Our response has come to be "super Advent" and "Super Lent" with a simply Taize on Easter in the evening when the students return. The services invgolve all the students as readers and bring in musicians to swell the offerings. Its one way of witnessing to the seasons with what is truely a worshipping community that has the odd interruptions of the set academic year.
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