Advent Conflicts

What is Advent, and why does it still matter today?

For generations, God’s people waited, hoped, and prayed for the promised Messiah. Then Jesus came, not as the mighty earthly ruler many expected, but as the Savior of the world.

Advent Conflict connects that ancient season of waiting with the way Christians still live today, looking back to the birth of Christ while also looking forward to His promised return.

Through the conversations of a family and narrator, each part explores one of the central themes of Advent: Hope, Peace, Love, Joy, and finally Christ Himself. Along the way, the family discovers that Advent is more than lighting candles or counting down the days until Christmas. It is a time to slow down, prepare our hearts, and remember exactly what, and Who, we are waiting for.

Designed for easy staging, the script can be presented in short segments during the four Sundays of Advent and Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, or performed together as one complete five-act presentation.

Cast:    5

• Dad middle age
• Mom middle age
• Child m or f, likely pre-teen
• Grandfather (or Grandmother with some adjusting lines)
• Narrator on or offstage, m or f

Bible Reference:  1 Thessalonians 4:17

Set:

• bare with table for the wreath
• wreath or candleabra with a candle for each script

Lighting:   standard

Sound:   wireless mics if available

Song:  none

SFX: 

• Keywords from script will be projected on wall

Costumes:  standard

Props:   none

Special Instructions:

• actors could be same or different in all 5 presentations
• First act is longer, setting up the reasoning behind Advent.
• Keywords and graphics (as indicated in the script), will be projected on the wall
• Ensure candles and matches are pre-tested

 Time:   20

Sample script:

actors are onstage

Project the word “ADVENT”

Narrator: This is the time in the church year which Christians refer to as Advent.

Child: What’s Advent, Dad?

Dad: It’s a something that churches people do; happens sometime between Christmas and Halloween, mostly.

Child: At Advent do church people give gifts like at Christmas, or go trick or treating like at Halloween?

Mom: No, honey, it’s not that kind of thing. It’s . . . well . . .

Dad: Thing is, church folks they light a bunch of candles and stuff.

Child: Why, Dad?

Dad: ‘Cause they . . .  just . . do. .

Project: graphic of the Advent wreath with candles

Narrator: We recognize this special season of the year by lighting the candles of the advent wreath on the Sundays of Advent. The wreath, a circle, reminds us of God, endless and eternal, without beginning or end.
The green of the wreath reminds us of the hope we have through God, and that through God we have hope for renewal, salvation and eternal life.
Candles remind us that God came into the world through His Son, Jesus Christ, as a man, who suffered and died for our sins, so we could have a home in heaven.

Dad: Yeh, basically that’s what I was gonna say.

Mom looks at Dad, lifts her eyebrows

Child: How come there is only one wreath but five candles, Mom?

Mom: Well, I am not sure hon, likely it’s . .

Dad: It’s a matter of space, see there’s just not room for four wreaths, so they . . .

Narrator: The four outer candles symbolize the time of waiting and anticipation which we celebrate in the four Sundays of Advent.
The center candle represents Jesus Christ; he was, and is, central to our faithful hope. And so it is that the first candle, which we light today, is a symbol of the hope we have in salvation, and the hope of Jesus’ return.

Child: How long have church people been lighting Advent candles?

Dad: Oh wow, this like goes back a long time, about the time I was a kid I think it started.

Mom: Dear, I think it was way back before that, seems to me it was . . .

Child: Look I am sure you guys are likely right but . .  maybe I should ask Grandpa . .
Grandpa, did Advent start way back when Dad was little?

Grandpa: Advent started long, long before that, thousands of years ago actually.
For many years the people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt. But God through his prophets promised them that he would send a Messiah.

Child: A messiah? . .  What’s that?

Grandpa: A messiah is a leader, someone who will come to save his people.
So for hundreds of years the people of Israel hoped and prayed that God would send his promised Messiah, someone who would free them from slavery.
A proud people . .  slaves in a foreign land . . their only hope a Messiah who was promised but didn’t come . . . and didn’t come.
But the people never gave up hope, the hope for a Messiah.

Child: And did God send a messiah?

Grandpa: He did, but not the kind of messiah they expected. The people were expecting someone to lead their army.
But God sent a little baby.
He sent Jesus . . .to save the people . . and us . . . from our sins.
Advent means waiting . . And so it is that even today in this advent season we are waiting, with our hope in Jesus.

Narrator: True Advent must be a time of wonder, astonishment, surprise, amazement.

Mom: Advent is a time of preparation and celebration.
The danger is that we do all the preparation but little of the celebration.
Please God don’t let me be worn out from the wrong reasons.

Dad: We need to balance all the busyness of Advent with the sacred reason for the celebration.
We need to make time in advent for quiet and prayerful understanding of advent.

Grandpa: We can’t fully appreciate Christmas without fully understanding what the Jewish people two thousand years ago were waiting for . .
And . . . hopefully . . . . what we are waiting for.

Child: Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel.

Narrator. as the first candle is lit:
We light the hope candle, recognizing the hope of Jesus.

Light first candle

Child: Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel.

end of first segment, actors return to seats

Second Sunday of Advent

the first candle is lit

Project: the word “PEACE”

Narrator: On the second Sunday of Advent we light the second candle, sometimes called the Bethlehem candle, or the peace candle.

Child: Peace on earth, goodwill to men, from heaven’s all gracious king.

For hundreds of years the Jewish people had heard their prophets speak of the coming of the Messiah, one who would bring peace to their land.
But Bethlehem, at the time of the birth of Jesus was under the cruel control of the Roman army, and the Jewish people could only dream of peace, since they knew no freedom even in their own land.

Mom: It must have been hard, in the midst of fighting and injustice, to keep the hope that peace would really happen.

Child: Hundreds of years! . . . Wow!
How did those Jewish people keep believing that the Messiah would come, and that he would bring peace?

Mom: So much has changed in the last two thousand years.

Dad: But the fact is so much is still the same.
Everywhere in the world today there is war, . . . fighting . . .  death.

Mom: You know, with all we have gained in our modern world, peace has not come.

Child: So what does all this mean? . . .
Were the people wrong?
Did the Messiah not come, as God promised?

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