God: Part One from IotaMedia
'You do not necessarily need to spend hours slaving over your computer trawling the internet for ideas or resources.'

With Christmas fast approaching those of us who are preaching, leading worship, leading youth groups or working in the junior church during the Christmas season will be on the look out for those Christmas resources.

I know that I for one am always on the prowl for new or different resources for Christmas to ease the workload when trying to come up with new ideas or different ways to bring the great Christmas message alive. With this in mind I will be looking at a small selection of resources that I have or will be using this Christmas to hopefully help you in your search this year.

I have heard many people say that Christmas is one of the hardest of the Christian festivals to prepare for. I think that this comes down to the fact that the Christmas story is one of the best known stories within the Christian year whether churchgoer or not and therefore there is this worry of how do we bring the message to people in a way that they can interact with and be challenged by in a fresh way.

It is one of the seasons when we know that we will have people in our churches that may not walk through our doors at any other times of the year and so we want to make the message accessible and challenging for them as well as for our regular congregations.

So where do we start?

Well I want to make reference to two books first of all that I have used on several occasions and found are packed full of different ideas for the seasons of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. The first of these is an Iona resource book called ‘Cloth For The Cradle’

ISBN: 1-901557-01-4 available from all good bookshops or direct from the Iona resource shop at £10.99.

This book has a wide range of useful material from Liturgical Material (shared responses etc, not complete orders of service), Prayers, Readings, Meditations, Scripts and Symbolic Actions (which enable the congregation/group to be actively engaged in the worship by physically moving around the building). Each of these subject areas are usefully marked with an icon so when thumbing through the book you can quickly find the type of material you are looking for.

As with all Iona worship resources the material is presented in down to earth language which both engages and challenges those interacting with it in new ways.

Along with this resource there is also a music resource be the same title (ISBN: 0-947988-62-9 available from the Iona resource shop at £9.99)

The audio cassette contains 18 tracks with a selection of hymns from central Africa and compositions by John Bell and Graham Maule. This along with the book would prove to be a valuable resource in any ones worship library.

The second book that I want to refer to is a Christian Aid resource book called ‘shine on, star of bethlehem’ again a resource for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany.

This book contains a wide selection of prayers, poems, reflections and sketches for use over each of the seasons and reflects the way that the seasons are celebrated throughout the world especially in countries where Christian Aid is working. The material comes of a range of different authors and therefore range of styles and approaches.

I find that the range and type of resources provide me with an extensive selection of material which can be used in a variety of ways thus making the book a mini library in itself.

There is a very useful section of candle meditations which can readily be used during Advent week by week for the lighting of the Advent candles at the start of worship. There are four of these ceremonies in the book providing you with material for a number of years!

Overall the book is a must for your resource library. Shine on star of Bethlehem is available from many Christian bookshops, or directly from Christian Aid – telephone 020 7523 2229 to order your copy. Price £9.99.

Christian Aid Christmas resources

Christian Aid's Christmas appeal in 2004 focuses on Bethlehem, a troubled place of violence, occupation and poverty. Our resources take a special look at Jessica Safar, a seven-year-old Palestinian Christian living in Bethlehem.

‘The Child of Bethlehem’ resources includes a worship handbook with a full act of worship, posters, giving envelopes, carol sheets, prayer card and Just Gifts catalogue. All available from the Christian Aid website here.

The next items that I want to mention are all in the form of video/multimedia resources. The first of these is the CPO ‘Resources @ Christmas 2004’ CD-ROM. This CD-ROM is available from CPO through their online store priced at £14.99. The CD-ROM is only suitable for PC users (so I apologise now to those running Apple Mac computers).

The CD is a pull together of resources from various sources and includes:

• Christmas Collection Range images
• Christmas Clip-art
• Screensavers
• Video presentations
• Sermon outlines
• Drama scripts
• Useful web-links

As can be seen from the items above the CD provides a mix of material. The CD will enable you to add a multimedia flavour to worship over the Christmas season by using the video presentations and incorporating some of the clipart.

The four pieces of video material provide you with a selection of items including video music performed by Soulmates and taken from their album Cracking the Cocoon taken from IotaMedia’s DVD ‘Christmas with the Lights Up’.

There is also the nativity story written and performed by Rob Lacey (which I have to own up to being a piece from one of my companies DVD resources JustWorship).

The sermon outlines are provided by Rev. Rob Frost and Rev. Roy Bedford, and provide a useful basis for three Christmas themed sermons.

By linking the video, sermon outlines and sketches together you would be able to produce a full multimedia act of worship over the Christmas season without having to take hours searching or creating your own material from scratch.

The material is presented through an easy to use interface and so little IT knowledge is required to be able to make full use of the resource.

The next resource is from IotaMedia mentioned in the CPO CD above. IotaMedia produce a range of worship material in DVD format called ‘God Part One’ the first of these DVD’s came out last Christmas. The material is designed to be used in seeker friendly environments but is also suited to home groups, schools and colleges. ‘The Christmas File’ was released in 2003 and is still available from IotaMedia’s online store priced £19.49.

The DVD contains a mix of video resources including a very powerful drama based on the story of Terry Waite adapted from his book ‘Taken on Trust’ where he contemplates his third Christmas in captivity.

The next section is Vox Pops where a selection of people are asked ‘What's the best part of Christmas?', 'What's the worst part of Christmas?', 'What's the meaning of Christmas?'. There is also a section of ‘Kid’s Talk’ where children are asked various questions including, 'What does the Queen get for Christmas?' 'What do you want for Christmas?' and 'What did Jesus get?'.

The final section consists of multimedia presentations featuring basic facts about Christmas which make you think about the attitude and approach that we as nation have towards Christmas time! The DVD is easy to use and navigate and will work in your DVD drive on your computer/laptop as well as a standard DVD player.

This year IotaMedia have produced a new Christmas resource ‘Christmas with the Lights Up’ which is priced at £15.00 and available from CPO’s online store or direct from IotaMedia.

The DVD, as with the one above, contains a range of media from Bible passages (including John Chapter One, Isaiah 9, and fast moving images to reflect on the Three Kings searching for the Saviour) to multimedia presentations of survey material showing that Christmas is not a happy time for everyone to the song mentioned on the CPO resource ‘Look Beyond the Manger’ to a Christmas reflection by Lynne Wright.

The selection of material as with all of the resources mentioned this month will not suite all occasions but by selecting material appropriate to your situation will greatly enhance your worship this Christmas. The DVD also includes a selection of sermon outlines which can be accessed through your computer. The DVD provides you with around 15 minutes of video material.

The next and final resource that I am going to mention is my own product JustWorship Volume 2, which is a selection of Christmas and Easter resources providing material for both seasons. JustWorship as a resource is designed to be suited to corporate acts of worship, personal devotions, home groups as well as youth work. The DVD contains over 1 hour of video material, is priced at £19.99 (available from CPO, Sunrise Software, Armadillos Ltd, and Active Media Publishing Ltd).

The DVD includes:

• four clips based on the NIV version of the Bible. John 1 and the Mary’s Song being suited for Christmas
• eight clips from the street bible performed by Rob Lacey author of the book with the Nativity being the main one for the Christmas season
• seven prayers by David Adam performed by a range of different people and appropriate to Christmas or Easter
• eight musical reflections composed and performed by Rev. David Jenkins. Four of them being appropriate for Christmas
• four poems/reflections including Mary’s Video Diary part one

As with the IotaMedia DVDs JustWorship has a simple menu navigation system making it easy to navigate to the desired video clips.

The DVD has additional features to enable it to be easy to use in worship. As well as running as a straight DVD there is a PowerPoint version of the material included on the DVD which allows you to use the material in PowerPoint as part of your presentations. There is also a selection of sermon outlines included on the DVD accessible through your computer.

Conclusion

Hopefully even from the relatively small collection of resources that I have mentioned you will realise that help is at hand when you are not sure of what material you are going to use this Christmas.

You do not necessarily need to spend hours slaving over your computer trawling the internet for ideas or resources. By selectively spending your hard earned cash you can start to build a very effective library of resources which will help to keep the Christmas message fresh and vibrant in your church, school, youth group or home group.

Many of the resources mentioned would also be suitable for personal devotions as well as corporate acts of worship. I hope that this has given you a flavour of what is available out there and made some of your Christmas preparations less stressful this year!

Happy Christmas!
Richard Armiger

www.armadillos.biz