Being in the UK, I did not get to partake in any Thanksgiving meals or celebrations. In fact, the day was pretty typical in most ways. It is interesting though that while Thanksgiving (obviously) hasn't affected life in the UK at all, Black Friday has. Today, for odd reasons here, the holiday shopping season officially launches. As I thought about this, I couldn't help but notice that Black Friday really is the worldly equivalent to advent. It is time to drop a knee and worship, one at the cross the other at the mall.

As I've been thinking about this, and thinking about my church background and how we neglected the church calendar, I had a thought. It seems to me that our lives as humans are necessarily ordered by rhythms. What we find in the Old Testament is that God ordered the rhythms of the people around who he was and what he had done. On the other hand, if we don't do this, it won't simply go unfulfilled. In other words, because we necessarily order our lives this way, something will expand and fill that neglect. In the case of much of evangelicalism, we just accept the rhythms of the world. Black Friday slides over to take the place of Advent.

I wonder if anyone has any thoughts about how we can create communal rhythms of Advent in our church communities that goes beyond church service announcements and programming but actually enters into the day to day lives of congregations and communities.