Advent Family Worship Guide

God gave Old Testament Israel various feasts, fasts, sabbaths and festivals to mark and guide their weeks, months and years; all of which were meant to remind them of God’s mighty works and promises. We, much like our Jewish forebears, have a calendar which we observe; except ours is oriented around the life of the incarnate Christ on earth. While the ancient Israelite festivities yearned for the promised and coming Messiah, ours celebrate that He has come and will come again. 

For Christians, Advent is a season of waiting and watching, yearning and hoping. We are strengthened by remembering that Christ has already come, according to the Scriptures, so we can be assured he will return, in accordance with the Scriptures

With that in mind we compiled this family worship guide to help you, you and your spouse, or you and your spouse and children to intentionally and actively participate in the watching and hoping that the church has been doing all her life. 

This family worship guide provides liturgies for Morning and Evening everyday of the week except Sunday. The morning liturgy is intentionally short to allow for either a more contemplative schedule where you can meditate and pray throughout the elements, or a more hectic one where you’re barely making it through breakfast to get to work on time. The evening liturgy is much longer, including a confession of sin and assurance of pardon in the gospel. Use this guide however it will be helpful to you and your family. Something helpful I learned a while ago is that you really only need three elements to cultivate a robust and healthy habit of household worship: 1) reading the scriptures, 2) praying together, 3) singing. So read, pray, sing. If you are short on time, energy, motivation, or have young children that can’t sit through a full liturgy, you are encouraged to read, pray and sing and forget everything else for now. 

A final help: if you find it hard to establish rhythms like family worship, attach it to an activity you or your family is already doing. For the morning liturgy my family will be doing it before or after breakfast. For the evening we will do it immediately after dinner. 

We pray you are encouraged and edified in the Lord while worshiping him in your home and with your family. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Surely I am coming soon.” - Revelation 22:13

Also, here is an Advent reading guide we found helpful last year.