Advent Coloring Posters

Mary’s Song Coloring Posters

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

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

B&W Digital Files of the poster illustrations
Mary’s Song Coloring Pages: 8.5×11 coloring pages (including a simplified version for our youngest artists)
Mary’s Song Devotional Guide: A devotional guide for both adults and children (and all ages in between!) to use as a companion to our posters and coloring pages

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.

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.

13 Foolproof Ways of Welcoming Visitors to Church This Holiday Season

Alissa Ellett Leave a Comment

Welcoming visitors to church can feel like a no-brainer. Just be friendly, right? I’ve worked in churches for over ten years. And all of that time was spent building ministries and communities from the ground up. And I went to seminary, where you sit around talking about this stuff. Welcoming visitors to church effectively takes a good deal of forethought and a multi-faceted approach. During the holidays more visitors come through the doors of the church. It’s a great time to begin welcoming them with greater intention. We hope our ideas help to create a culture of welcome and hospitality within your community this season and throughout the year.

FREE DOWNLOADABLE PDF: Grab a free 2-page PDF that you can share at your next staff meeting by clicking here.

Welcoming Visitors to Church During Worship

Make info easily available on Sundays. Make it easy for people to find information about the church. In a beautiful and consistently branded way, make it simple for people to understand how to get connected. Make the website obvious in slides and on marketing materials. Perhaps place a welcome booth at the entrance to the sanctuary. Alternatively, create a kiosk with flyers for each ministry.

Provide something for people to do. Visitors heading to a new church often carry with them some anxiety. And looking new with nothing to do can make that even worse. One way this is solved is having paper bulletins available during worship; reading it offers them a way to fill their time before worship. Additionally, having a coloring poster or coloring sheets out makes for a great activity.

Welcoming Visitors at Church 6

Have name tags. On a table near the entrance to the sanctuary, set out name tags and markers. Calling each other by name creates a sense of community and belonging. This helps visitors as well as those who’ve been in the pew for decades.

Provide information for biblical passages. When reading scripture, describe where the text is located in the Bible. Additionally, give context for the passage. Consequently, people are more likely to feel there isn’t insider knowledge they don’t have. This is helpful for all of us, whether new or long-time members.

Welcoming Visitors to Church through Relationships

Plan a January event. Give visitors a reason to return to the church after the holidays. Make this an event that doesn’t require any responsibility from those who may be new. For example, plan a soup and bread night. Or perhaps do a service project. Alternatively, host a pub theology night at a local brewery or family play date at a neighborhood park. Providing childcare for some of these events is a must to remove a common barrier for families.

Welcoming Visitors to Church 4

Leaders, introduce yourselves up front. Have those who are up front speaking on Sunday give their name and role in the church. This helps visitors get to know who’s who. And it makes getting involved easier for them.

Say hello, Pastor. A pastor saying hello can help a visitor feel important. If a greeting from the pastor isn’t possible, create a team of leaders who will keep an eye out for those who are new. Say hello, tell them you’re happy they came. And tell them to feel free to find you if they have any questions.

Train children’s ministry leaders. Often parents feel frazzled when they arrive at church. Whether volunteers or staff, make sure to train nursery and Sunday school leaders to be patient and friendly. Specifically, remember children’s names and what they like, even if it means taking note to reference. Furthermore, if parents drop their kids off, try having coffee and tasty treats available at the sign-in table. Small efforts go a long way.

Welcoming Visitors to Church on Sundays and Beyond

Welcoming Visitors at Church 7

Make clear what your church stands for. Put in writing what your mission statement is and how your church includes the marginalized. This is important in order for all of us to feel safe and know if we’re a part of the faith family.

Have a plan. Decide what to do the first three times a person visits your church. For example, take a loaf of bread with a note to the visitor’s home. Include the website and pastor’s phone number. Then, have the pastor call and invite them out for coffee or lunch. Next, have someone in their neighborhood invite them to check out their small group. This follow-up makes a big difference and rarely happens at churches.

Welcoming Visitors at Church 5

Be present online. Keep the church’s website up to date. Be sure to post holiday service times prominently on the homepage. Post regularly on social media. Moreover, bring someone on to be in charge of maintaining the church’s online presence, whether an employee or volunteer.

Provide clear signage. Make clear on church grounds where people need to go. For example, include things like the nursery and Sunday school, the sanctuary entrance, adult Sunday school and coffee. Also, create small signs at the refreshments area that are welcoming and beautiful. Details with intention make a large impact.

Offer good quality refreshments. Imagine how we treat guests when they come to our home. We give them some of our favorites, some of the best. Do the same in welcoming visitors to church. For example, buy high-quality coffee and perhaps delicious locally-made pastries. We feel cared for and important when someone invests in us in this way, and it’s no different for those who are new to a church.

Welcoming Visitors at Church 3

Hospitality as Community Culture

Welcoming visitors to church is more than checking boxes. Hospitality is for all of us. When we live out our faith through care with intention, we actually help those who are already regular attendees feel more connected, too. Furthermore, we communicate our common humanity, our personhood as individuals and worthiness as children of Creation. We hope you discover ways to welcome visitors to church this holiday season as an expression of your unique faith community and the whole year through.

Do you have more ideas? Share below in the comments!

Community Spotlight: How Churches Use Our Advent Coloring Posters

Adam Walker Cleaveland 3 Comments

Are you looking for a creative Advent activity for all ages? Over one thousand churches from around the world used our Advent Coloring Posters last year. It was an amazing experience for our team to follow everyone’s progress as they shared photos of their communities coloring the posters. There are so many different ways to use our coloring posters, and as we’ve mentioned before, there were children’s ministries, youth ministries, college groups, retirement homes, hospitals and entire churches that found ways to utilize these big coloring posters.

Advent activity for all ages

I had a chance to hear from some of the folks who used our posters, and I wanted you to hear from them in the short testimonials below. Take a few moments to read through some of these examples, share them with your friends and colleagues, and start dreaming about how your community might be able to use our Advent Coloring Posters as an Advent activity for all ages. You can find out all of the important details about our posters here, and they will be going on sale October 17!

FREE INFORMATIONAL PDF: Would you like a PDF handout that you can take to your next staff or committee meeting to tell them about our Advent Journey Coloring Posters? Click here to download an informational PDF handout all about our coloring posters.

The testimonials are below, followed by a small gallery of some more of our favorite photos from last year’s Advent Coloring Posters!

The Perfect Advent Activity for All Ages

Reflecting & Coloring

We used the Advent Coloring Posters as a time for all ages of our church to reflect and color together. They were then used as the backdrop for our Sunday School Christmas program and hung up for the Christmas season in the Church.

-Shanna VanderWel, Director of Youth and Family Ministry, Augustana Lutheran Church

Posters Also a Great Teaching Tool

We placed the posters each week on a large table in the center of our Fellowship Hall with colored pencils and invited people of all ages to participate in coloring the posters. We took one of the posters to our Youth Lock-In, and they joyfully colored it – and loved it! The posters were a great teaching tool. Looking at and explaining the different parts of scripture that each panel represented was a wonderful way to educate during Advent because the illustrations showed the depth of the story.

On the morning that we adorned the Nave and Sanctuary for Christmas, we put the posters together up on the east wall, and they were beautiful! They represented the beauty of community, which is what Jesus calls us to be. Thank you so much for these beautiful and thoughtful illustrations.

-Teresa Ryther, Christian Formation Coordinator, Good Shepherd Episcopal Church

Families Can Color Posters Too!

The children colored posters in the front of the sanctuary during worship, and we hung them in the sanctuary the following week. Sometimes a family would volunteer to take them home to finish since they’re kind of big! They are now on display in the main hallway of our church.

-Kristen Koch, Pastor, Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran (ELCA)

Community Collaboration

We started colouring the posters during our Advent Event and then had them out each week during Advent. After worship, people gathered around them during fellowship and coloured. We also took them to the school, so it became a community collaboration to decorate the church for Christmas.

-Nicole Hall, Child Youth and Household Ministry Coordinator, St. Paul Lutheran Church – Blair Athol, Australia

Coloring During Worship

We had a large open area in the back of the sanctuary (there used to be pews but they had been taken out several years ago) where we set up a table and chairs and the coloring posters. Children were invited to join the DCE at the table following the Children’s Sermon to work on the posters. Once we finished the posters, we hung them in Fellowship Hall.

-Laurie Fields, pastor, First Presbyterian, Harrisburg, Illinois

Coloring During Worship

Bonding & Coloring

We placed our Advent Coloring Posters in the children’s area at the back of the church, and during the service children and their families coloured them. Also, others in our community colored during coffee after the service, and it helped to make bonds between the different generations.

-Sarah Jones, Sunday Club Volunteer, St. Mary’s Church, Gomersal, England

Service, Community, and Coloring

We hung our Advent Coloring Posters in the city soup kitchen where our church meets so that they could be enjoyed during the week. We colored them at the community center, and so many people participated. People LOVED the art and the other Bible stories and themes in the posters other than the Christmas narrative.

-Angela Moyer, Co-pastor, Ripple Church

Everyone Colours! An Advent Activity for All Ages

We distributed the Advent Coloring Posters to different groups in our congregation (seniors, children’s ministry, teens, parish council). Each group would then bring them to their allotted Sunday, lead the lighting of the wreath, and then put the poster up on the wall. The first year we put them up in black and white, and then swapped for the colour poster. The creep of colour around the walls was fantastic.

-Jemma Allen, Priest Associate for Children, Young People and Families, All Saints Anglican Church, Howick, Auckland, New Zealand

Coloring in Sunday School

We used them at our St. Nick Party and in our Sunday School program. We also gave the small versions to our families so they could also color them at home.

-Erica Jeglum, Director of Family and Youth Ministry, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Indianapolis

We Can Color at Church AND at Home

Our church had larger posters printed and put them together in our sanctuary for Christmas. We also had 8.5×11 size pages in the worship bulletins for everyone and showed them how to put them together at home. People loved them!

-David Brown – Pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ, Akron Ohio

Additional Photos from Advent 2016

As you can see in the photos and stories from above, and the images below, our Advent Coloring Posters indeed do make a perfect Advent activity for all ages.