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An Illustrated Advent for Families: Preparing the Way

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This is the first truly “family friendly” devotional for Advent that I’ve found. There was something to which everyone in the family could relate – from our preschoolers all the way through adults. The coloring pages were wonderful! Even my little two-year-old was able to participate. My kindergartner read the devotional book as part of her reading practice at night. It was great that the words were easy and straightforward!
– Rev. Meredith Keseley, Senior Pastor, Abiding Presence Lutheran Church, Burke, VA

We are excited to announce the launch of our newest family Advent devotional resource: An Illustrated Advent for Families: Preparing the Way! Click here to ORDER NOW!

Advent Family Devotional

This is our fourth year of providing families with a resource for engaging their children in faith formation at home during the Advent season. Our Illustrated Advent for Families and Illustrated Lent for Families have been used by thousands of families around the world, and we’re looking forward to sharing this new edition.

It can be difficult to find meaningful ways to engage our families in faith formation. It can sometimes feel awkward, we don’t always know what to do, and sometimes we have a hard time talking about our own faith stories.

FREE SAMPLE: Click here to download a free sample of An Illustrated Advent for Families: Preparing the Way.

An Illustrated Advent for Families

An Illustrated Advent for Families: Preparing the Way is one way to do that – to slow down, ask questions, have fun, be intentional about how you spend your time, and try new things. There are coloring pages for your children, but we’ve often found that parents enjoy coloring them as much (if not more…) as their children enjoy the coloring. There are simple but meaningful devotions for families to do throughout Advent, our Illustrated Ornament Set, and our Advent Calendar.

Keep reading to learn a bit more about the activities in this year’s edition, and to hear testimonials from people who have used our previous editions of Advent family resources.

Our family, like many, struggles to find opportunities for prayer and faith formation. My children were attracted by this resource, and even asked about when we were going to do the next portions. As a widow with three elementary-school-aged children, I was grateful for this resource, because it had a marvelous combination of flexibility and structure, and let me find ways to fit activities in as it became possible.
– Elise Erikson Barrett, Consultant with Indianapolis Center for Congregations

Family Advent Devotional

Family Devotions for Advent

This year, in our family Advent devotions, you will be introduced to prophets–or God’s messengers–who helped prepare God’s people for Jesus’ arrival. You will also encounter individuals who faced the unexpected, trusting in the promises of God for their lives, continuing to prepare for Jesus.

Incorporated into the devotion is a time for coloring the Illustrated Ornaments if you would like to do so, however that can also be used as a stand-alone activity.

These weekly devotionals are written so they can be used by children of all ages (and adults as well), and we believe you’ll find questions and discussion topics in each of the devotionals that will work for your children, no matter the age. Each devotion includes scripture, a brief reflection, and discussion questions, an activity a family can do over the week and a short prayer.

Having a weekly Advent activity rather than a daily one was helpful for our family. We liked spending a more meaningful block of time on this activity once a week rather than trying not to squeeze in a daily activity that was shorter but less meaningful. We have felt guilty in the past for missing a day of other Advent devotions, and knowing we had a week to complete the activity removed the pressure and stress.
– Emily Barlow, volunteer worship planner at The Well, Long Beach, MS

Coloring Pages

Obviously, we love coloring here at Illustrated Ministry. But it’s not just that we like getting messy with markers and crayons. It’s really the conversations that happen when you’re coloring that we treasure.

If you’ve used any of our products and resources before, you may have experienced some of these types of conversations with children. When they’re immersed in coloring, you’ll be amazed at what they will share with you.

Our coloring pages for this year’s Illustrated Advent for Families: Preparing the Way go along with the themes for our devotionals.

As a Christian educator who is also a mom, I found this resource to be an excellent guide for our family and our congregation’s families during Advent. I appreciated how both my 8-year-old and 5-year-old could engage with the writings, questions, and prayers. The coloring is always a hit and creates space for conversations and questions around scripture…I’ve done a lot of research on Advent devotionals for families and hands down, An Illustrated Advent for Families is the best. Sound theology with content that has depth and engages families while understanding the realities of a family’s life makes this resource a must-have for Advent.
– Jenna Campbell, Director of Children and Youth Ministry, First Presbyterian Church, Stillwater, OK

Illustrated Ornaments

Illustrated Advent Ornaments

This year, we invite you to create your own Illustrated Ornaments. Each week of Advent, you will have the opportunity to color an Advent Ornament as you read through the devotional materials.

We have put a lot of attention into these ornaments, and if you use nice card stock to print them out, we think they could be ornaments that you’d keep year after year. It is our hope that our Advent resources will deepen your faith and connection with God and your family as you journey together through Advent.

Our family has used An Illustrated Advent for Families for the last several years, and each year it brings a new sense of joy and understanding to our family’s Advent season. Each Sunday night, we all sit down with the activities, light our family Advent wreath, and share in a special time together that helps start off each week of Advent with intention and focus. The devotions are well-written and thoughtful and the calendar has great ideas. But I think the coloring sheets are my favorite part overall. If nothing else, reading the scripture and coloring together offers a point in our week where we can reflect together, pray together, and meditate on Advent as a family.
– Courtney Willis, associate pastor for spiritual formation, First Baptist Church, Greensboro, NC

Advent Activities for Families

While many Advent calendars today come with the promise of chocolates or toys behind each of the numbered doors, this Advent calendar is a little different. Our Advent calendar is more of an activity calendar — activities that can help you get into the Advent and Christmas spirit. Some of these activities will be great for your kids to do by themselves—others will require the whole family. And there are some activities that require you to get out of your house and go into your community.

We think these activities will be a lot of fun for your kids and your family and maybe some of the prompts will cause you and your family to get creative and make up other activities on your own.

Each of the weeks of Advent has a different theme and focus, and we hope that this will provide you with meaningful ways to get into the Christmas spirit. Click here to ORDER NOW!

The feedback from our congregation was that the resources were really great quality and easy to access. Parents felt that they could discuss the ideas without needing to check with the vicar first, and children were keen to undertake the activities. The quality of this product is wonderful! We loved that the devotionals were geared towards families, but weren’t in any way ‘dumbed down’ – adults felt they were just as relevant to them as to our youngest members.
– Deb Scoble, Authorised Lay Minister (Worship Leader), St Mary-the-Virgin Dover, Kent, United Kingdom

We hope you’ll take some time to check out An Illustrated Advent for Families, and let us know if you have any questions. If you’d like to download a sample of the resource to check out before you purchase, you can click here.

Nativity Stickers and Nativity Sticker Sheets

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Nativity Stickers and Nativity Sticker Sheets

Nativity Sticker Sheets

Pre-orders: Last year we sold out in just 9 days, and so we are taking pre-orders this year to make sure everyone can get them. Pre-orders will start September 24 and go through October 22. To be notified as soon as they are available to pre-order, click here.

When Illustrated Ministry started to take off in the fall of 2015, one of the first questions we received from our customers was, “Are you going to make some Nativity sticker sheets?!”

People shared with us that they were so tired of buying the same, cheap, stickers from the same, online discount website. To begin with, the stickers weren’t very good quality, but more so because Jesus and all of the biblical characters on the sticker sheet were all WHITE!

White? WHY?

Breaking News! Jesus wasn’t white.

And Jesus ISN’T white on our Nativity Sticker Sheets.

I’m honestly not sure why it’s so hard to make stickers and illustrations that are more authentic and diverse. Seriously though – these are just a few of the faces of baby Jesus that I picked out from some of the most popular Nativity sticker sets that I found online:

White Jesus

Really? Why? Oh, why?

And it doesn’t get much better when you start looking at the full collections of sticker sheets. Sweet little White Baby Jesus is surrounded by White Mary and Joseph, White Angels, White shepherds, etc. You get the idea.

Nativity Sticker Sheets

From the very beginning of Illustrated Ministry, we have created fun, engaging, diverse and well-made products for children and youth of all ages. Our Illustrated Nativity Sticker Sheets are just one more example of the decisions we’ve made to continue to be as inclusive and authentic as possible with our products.

How to Use our Nativity Sticker Sheets

Nativity Sticker Sheets Nativity Stickers Christmas Stickers

There are many fun and creative ways to use stickers…and sticker sheets! Kids obviously love them, and they can provide endless entertainment for young children during a worship service. Add them to your pew bags, give them to families in your church, buy them for your own family, stick them in gifts your community is collecting for families in need…there are endless ways to use these kinds of sticker sheets.

So if Nativity Stickers and Nativity Sticker Sheets are so great…why is it SO hard to find ones that don’t look cheesy, feel cheap, show white-washed biblical characters (literally), and portray Jesus as a cute little white baby with blonde hair and blue eyes?!

If you’re tired of giving out sticker sheets that make you cringe as you hand them to the little kids in your congregation, I’d recommend that you take a look at our Illustrated Nativity Sticker Sheets.

Mary’s Song Coloring Posters

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Check out our Mary’s Song Coloring Posters, which you can purchase here.

2018 Advent Resources

In addition to our large physical coloring posters, we will also offer the related products below:

We hope you’ll take a moment to check out this post and look at the video and poster illustrations below.

NOT SURE IF THESE ARE RIGHT FOR YOU?
 CLICK HERE to download a free PDF of information that you can take to your colleagues/committees/staff meetings to share about our Mary’s Song Coloring Posters!

the Magnificat prayer

Mary’s Song Coloring Poster Themes from Luke 1 46-55

For these posters, we are looking at the traditional Advent themes through the lens of Mary’s Song, found in Luke 1 46-55. This passage is also known as the Magnificat prayer.

Below is a list of the posters and the scripture included on each of them:

  • Poster 1 • Hope (Luke 1:46-50): All generations will call me blessed.
  • Poster 2 • Peace (Luke 1:51-53): God has filled the hungry with good things.
  • Poster 3 • Joy (Luke 1:54-55): The promise made to our ancestors.
  • Poster 4 • Love (Luke 1:39-45, 56): Blessed is She who believed.
  • Poster 5 • God is With Us (Luke 2:1-18): I am bringing Good News of great joy for all the people.

These posters are designed to take you through the Gospel of Luke’s account of the Magnificat prayer of Mary and Jesus’ birth, found in Luke 1 46-55. Through the Mary’s Song Coloring Posters (and the accompanying devotional guide), you will explore the themes of the HOPE we have when we remember all God has done, the PEACE that comes with God’s provision, the JOY we have in God’s promises, the LOVE we feel from God’s blessings and the celebration knowing GOD IS WITH US.

As we thought about what to focus on for this year’s posters, we contemplated various passages of scripture, the world that we live in right now, and what we wanted to speak into that world through our art. In the end, we felt that the Magnificat prayer, Mary’s revolutionary and subversive song and prayer from Luke 1 46-55, felt like an important message to share.

Take a moment to view the posters and hear the words from Luke 1 46-55 in the video below:

This Advent, let us stop and ponder the words of the Magnificat prayer of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and imagine how we might bring about this vision and prayer in our world today.

Below are more detailed images of each of the Mary’s Song Coloring Posters:

Who Uses Illustrated Ministry’s Coloring Posters?

So many different groups of people have used our coloring posters over the years: Sunday School classes, youth groups, college ministries, men’s and women’s Bible studies, nursing home residents, and more!

But we’ve found that churches who have taken the time to create intergenerational opportunities with the coloring posters have received one of the greatest gifts of all: deepened relationships among people of all ages.

If you’re having a hard time imagining what it would look like in your space to use our coloring posters, take a look at some of the photos below and start getting creative!

How Do I Use the Mary’s Song Coloring Posters?

We are so excited to see all of the creative ways that congregations and communities use these Mary’s Song Coloring Posters. Almost 1,200 churches used last year’s posters, and we loved seeing all of the fantastic photos they shared with us. Here are some testimonials, and ideas, from churches who have used our posters in the past. And if you’re wondering how you can display your posters as beautiful art in your church when they’re colored, take a look at this fantastic tutorial for creating beautiful wooden poster hangers! And finally – here are ten creative ways to use our large coloring posters!

As we mentioned above, we’ve learned that most churches find the posters to be a slam dunk when it comes to developing intergenerational ministry. If you’re looking for ways to use these posters intergenerationally, here are a few ideas:

  • Host an all-ages education hour during Advent. Use our Mary’s Song Devotional Guide as the curriculum for the classes.
  • Start coloring the posters during your Advent Fair.
  • Have your children’s ministry or youth ministry take a poster to a nursing home to color with the residents.
  • Host a simple soup/salad/sandwiches dinner on Wednesday nights during Advent and have conversation and coloring before or after eating together.
  • Leave the coloring posters out on tables during Fellowship/Coffee Hour after church for people to sit, color, and talk with one another.

Luke 1 46-55

Here’s What You Need To Know About the Posters

Poster Details & Cost

Our Mary’s Song Coloring Posters are made up of five large posters that cover Advent themes from the Magnificat prayer. The first four are 3’ x 2’, and the fifth poster is 6’ x 2’. You can purchase the physical posters, digital files to print yourself, or add the digital files to your order of the physical posters for the most flexibility to use the posters in a variety of ways.

The cost for our Mary’s Song Coloring Posters are listed below:

  • Physical Coloring Posters: $69.99
  • B&W Digital Files: $74.99
  • Digital Add-on: Save 50% off the B&W Digital Files when you add both the Physical Posters AND the B&W Digital Files to your cart and use the discount code MARYS-SONG-BUNDLE at checkout.

Ordering Process

Posters are available now and ship within a day or two of receiving your order. UPS ships our posters in heavy-weight cardboard poster tubes. Because we use UPS, we cannot ship posters to P.O. Boxes. If you list a P.O. Box as the shipping address, your order will be delayed until we can be in touch with you to determine an appropriate physical mailing address.

We ship our posters to the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Of course, we have many other international customers who have successfully purchased the digital versions of our posters and printed them locally.