Disrupting Darkness: Light, Love, and the Birth of Jesus • National Small Group

11/25 from 7:00 – 8:30 CT • Session 1: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (1.5 hours to allow for introductions): What does Advent mean for our world? What does it mean for us? What does it mean for our place in the world?

12/2 from 7:00 – 8:00 CT • Session 2: Yes, Mary Knew (1 hour): Mary’s song is radical: it envisions a world in which hierarchies are leveled, the oppressed are set free, and when women speak, they are heard.

12/9 from 7:00 – 8:00 CT • Session 3: Luke’s Story (1 hour) – Luke and Matthew’s accounts of Jesus’s birth are entirely different with almost no overlap. This session explores Luke’s radical claim that Jesus identifies not with the wealthy (or the church-y!), but with the oppressed.

12/16 from 7:00 – 8:00 CT • Session 4: Matthew’s Story (1 hour) – Explores Matthew’s subversive, dangerous challenge to the Roman Empire – and the American Empire.

You’d never know it from Christmas pageants and drive through nativities, but the Christmas story was dangerous and subversive in its time, threatening an Empire that oppressed women, poor communities, and religious outsiders. This same story is equally counter-cultural today. Disrupting Darkness: Light, Love, and the Birth of Jesus is for anyone willing to uncover the true meaning of Christmas and discern how it calls them to live differently.

Additionally, for those facing difficult times in their lives, the festivities of the Advent season can feel lonely and painful. This series invites participants to accompany one another in bearing witness to the suffering and darkness of our lives and our world by creating a space for lament and healing.