Advent Reading Plan

This Advent, we invite you to join your Rise family in our weekly Advent devotional as we prepare our hearts for the birth of Jesus!

Our hope is that you will make time each week to engage with the short devotional as a family or with friends.  In addition to scripture readings, Advent topics, and sharing prompts, we wanted to use this season to introduce, or reintroduce, you to our church leadership team. Each leadership family has written a “Christmas card” from their family to yours, briefly introducing themselves and sharing a few holiday/advent traditions.A few ideas to add to your Advent experience:

• Create a rhythm of coming home from church, having a family meal together, and reading through the devotional during or after the meal.
• Get an Advent calendar and open it up each day leading up to Christmas
• Slowly decorate your Christmas tree throughout the month of December, reading a scripture each time you add an ornament.
• Simply sit in front of a festive area of your home (such as a lit Christmas tree) and read the devotional together and talk about it.
• Depending on the age of the children in your home, you can engage in  further discussion questions like “What does this story tell us about God?” “What do you think it was like to be [insert person’s name here]?” “What’s one thing you’re excited for about Christmas?”
• Create your own Jesse tree. For each passage, create a small ornament to add to your tree. There are a number of online resources dedicated to this topic.