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You are here: Home / Archives for Advent

Advent

Community Spotlight: How Churches Use Our Advent Coloring Posters

Adam Walker Cleaveland 4 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

Coloring Posters in Advent
Coloring Posters in Advent

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)

Kid's Activities at Advent
Kid's Activities at Advent
Kid's Activities at Advent
Kid's Activities at Advent

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

Coloring Posters for Advent
Coloring Posters for Advent

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

Advent Coloring Posters
Advent Coloring Posters
Advent Coloring Posters

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.

Advent Coloring for Kids
Advent Coloring for Kids
Advent Coloring for Kids
Advent Coloring for Kids
Advent Coloring for Kids
Advent Coloring for Kids
FREE INFORMATIONAL PDF: Don’t forget to grab your free copy of the PDF here.

Advent Journey Coloring Posters

Adam Walker Cleaveland 30 Comments

Advent Journey Coloring Posters

Our Advent Journey Coloring Posters are available now – ORDER YOUR POSTERS HERE. Thousands of churches around the world have used our large coloring posters, and we are particularly excited about this poster theme and illustrations. These six coloring posters will walk you and your community through the journey of Advent, Christmas, and into Epiphany. With these posters, your community can journey together, color and do art together, and have a chance to create meaningful intergenerational relationships.

So many different groups of people have used our coloring posters over the years: Sunday School classes, youth groups, college ministries, 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.

Advent Coloring Posters

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

  • A digital version of the posters (and a bundle of both digital + physical)
  • 8.5×11 coloring pages (including a simplified version for our youngest artists)
  • An Advent Journey Devotional Guide (to use as a companion guide to our Advent Journey Coloring Posters & Pages)

We know many churches start planning for Advent early, so we hope you can share this blog post with others at your church as you decide about whether these would be a good fit for your community. You can also download a free PDF infoguide we created.

DOWNLOADABLE 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? Or maybe you don’t have time to read this blog post right now and want to save it for later? Click here to download a PDF Infoguide all about our coloring posters.

Advent Journey Poster Themes

During Advent, we want to provide you with the necessary resources so you can walk your community through a journey. This journey begins as we work our way through some Advent scripture passages, followed by Christmas, and finally as we eventually move into Epiphany. Our six coloring posters will guide you through these different parts of the church year through art, coloring and interactive reflection. Below you will find a brief description of each of the posters.

Poster 1: Keep Awake

We begin our Advent Journey with the reminder (and exhortation) to “Keep awake – Keep alert!” Our God is a God who constantly looks for ways to surprise us and catch us off guard. The Holy finds its way through cracks, and if we are awake and alert, we have a better chance of seeing God show up in all of the large, and small, ways that God makes Godself known to us.

Here in this poster, we have a group of people looking to the heavens and keeping watch and staying alert (inspired by Isaiah 64:1, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down…”).

Scripture Found in Poster: Mark 13:24-37

Advent Journey Coloring Posters

Note about the poster illustrations here. When you click on the B&W version of the poster, you’ll see a larger color version, which can help give you a sense of what they’ll look like when they’re colored.

Poster 2: Prepare

When we think of John the Baptist, we may imagine that no one could miss him because he was so eccentric. But he was also out in the wilderness, and while people came to him to be baptized, there were probably many others who weren’t paying enough attention to know about him. If we are awake, alert and watching for God’s presence in the world, we are more receptive to receive what God has for us. Even if it means finding an odd character like John the Baptist.

John’s message to the people of his day, and to us, is to “Prepare!” And that is what we do during Advent – we are preparing ourselves, our families, our communities, for the birth of love into this world.

Here in this poster, we have John the Baptist, out in the wilderness by the River Jordan, ready to baptize those who would make the journey to be baptized.

Scripture Found in Poster: Psalm 85:1-11, Mark 1:1-8 and 2 Peter 3:9

Advent Journey Coloring Posters

Poster 3: Do Not Be Afraid

“Do not be afraid” is a common refrain used throughout biblical stories and one that we need to hear over and over again. In our world today, and in a world that we fear and imagine is possible in the future, we need to be reminded not to be afraid.

Here in this poster, we have the angel Gabriel coming to bring this important message to Mary, as Mary’s life changes forever with the news of the child that will be born, Jesus.

Scripture Found in Poster: Luke 1:26-38 and Psalm 89:1

Advent Journey Coloring Posters

Poster 4: My Soul Magnifies the Lord

If we accept the angel’s invitation to “Not be afraid” – this can often put us in a posture to be more receptive to what God might have for us. We see this in Mary’s response both to the angel’s exhortation to not fear and the news that she would bear a son and name him Jesus.

Mary’s response is “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” This is not the response from someone who is living in fear. When we do not fear, we open ourselves to all of the amazing (and unbelievable!) things that God has planned for our lives.

Here in this poster, we have Mary responding to the angel Gabriel’s news for her. We can see a look of contentment on her face as she ponders all of these amazing words.

Scripture Found in Poster: Isaiah 61:10 and Luke 1:46b-55

Advent Journey Coloring Posters

Poster 5: The Christmas Story

From the decree of Emperor Augustus to Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem, to the birth of Jesus, shepherds, angels and more, our fifth poster walks people through the Christmas story. Surrounding the illustrated story, we find scripture references that tell different portions of the biblical prophecies and promises of the Christmas story.

Scripture Found in Poster: Isaiah 9:2,6, Luke 2, Titus 2:11, and John 1:14

Advent Journey Coloring Posters

Poster 6: Reflecting On Your Journey

As we move from Advent and Christmas into Epiphany and a new year, this final poster will give your community the chance to do some reflecting on the themes of Advent in their own lives and what it means for them moving forward into 2018.

As you can see below, this poster’s primary purpose is to serve as a tool to prompt ideas, prayers, conversations, and hopes for the upcoming new year.

Participants will be encouraged to write or draw their responses to the following four questions:

  1. Keep Awake: What are you watching for?
  2. Prepare: What are you preparing for?
  3. Do Not Be Afraid: What do you need to stop fearing?
  4. My Soul Magnifies the Lord: What are you praising God for?

Advent Journey Coloring Posters


Advent Journey Coloring Posters

Part of what makes our posters so great is the paper they’re printed on. When you buy the physical posters from us, you will receive the illustrations on an amazingly high-quality paper. This is a very thick and sturdy 32-pound paper – which is what we’ve used in the past.

The quality of paper you will get at Staples or FedEx (or other print shops), is not nearly as nice as the quality that we provide when we ship the posters to you. Don’t get us wrong – it’s certainly not bad (we shipped our first two sets of coloring posters after having them printed at Staples). But now that we have a relationship with a local, family-owned print shop in Chicago, they can provide us with a very high-quality paper that will stand up to all the little kids who will want to crawl around on the posters.

DON’T HAVE TIME TO FINISH?: Yes, this post is a little bit long – but we want to make sure you have all of the information you need about our Advent Journey Coloring Posters. If you don’t have time to finish the post right now, click here to download a PDF Infoguide all about this year’s coloring posters.

Ways to Use Our Advent Journey Coloring Posters

We are so excited to see all of the creative ways that congregations and communities use these Advent Journey Coloring Posters. Thousands of churches use our coloring posters, and we loved seeing all of the amazing photos they shared with us. Here are some testimonials from churches who have used our posters in the past.

Advent Coloring

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 Advent Journey Devotional Guide as your 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.

There are so many wonderful ways to gather intergenerationally and color these posters. Here are some other ways that we know churches have used our posters:

  • Children’s Ministry: Find ways to incorporate the posters into your Sunday morning programs for children (whether that’s during Sunday School or during another time).
  • During Worship: Dedicate a portion of your worship space to allow young people (and those who are young at heart) to color during worship. We’ve heard this is an excellent way to allow children to engage with worship in a fun and creative way.
  • Youth Ministry: Children aren’t the only ones who like to color. We’ve had hundreds of youth programs around the world use our coloring posters. Give your kids a ‘study break’ some week when it’s close to finals and allow them to color one of the posters.
  • College/campus ministries: We’ve also had many campus ministries use our coloring posters. And we’ve seen photos of our posters in some faculty lounges at colleges where professors have worked on a poster together!
  • Private/Parochial Schools: Some private Christian schools have purchased our posters and found ways to engage multiple classrooms in creating a collaborative art project.

How do YOU plan on using your Advent Journey Coloring Posters?

Here’s What You Need To Know

Poster Details & Cost

Our Advent Journey Coloring Posters are made up of 6 large posters. The first four are 3’ x 2’, and the remaining two are 6’ x 2’. You can purchase the physical posters, digital files to print yourself, or grab the bundle of both for the most options.

The cost for our Advent Journey 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 JOURNEY-BUNDLE at checkout.

* We realize that most people won’t have access to a printer that can print out Posters 5 and 6 (which are 6′ wide and 2′ tall). So while we will include those two digital files for the last two posters, we will also include four digital files that split those two posters into four separate posters, each 3′ wide and 2′ tall. If you choose to print them that way, you will end up printing eight 3’x2′ posters, and Posters and 6 will look like the images below:

Poster 5 (part 1)
Poster 5 (part 2)
Poster 6 (part 1)
Poster 6 (part 2)

Ordering Process

Our posters are now available and will ship within a day or two of submitting 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 figure out a different address.

International Shipping: We ship our posters (and other physical products) to Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

We acknowledge that shipping internationally is VERY expensive. As always, all of our international customers can purchase the digital version of the posters and get them printed locally.

Coloring Posters

An Illustrated Advent Update: 2 Weeks!

Adam Walker Cleaveland Leave a Comment

By now I hope you’ve heard the name of the Advent/Christmas resource that I’m launching in two weeks: An Illustrated Advent: Engaging Activities for the Season. I’m both nervous and excited to complete this resource and get it to you! The more time I spend with it, the more excited I am by the possibilities that it brings to churches and families. You see, there will be a Church Edition (for churches) and a Family Edition (for…yup: families!). They can both be used independently of each other, but they will also work really well together. When  you buy the church edition, you’re going to receive a promo code for 25% off the Family Edition. That is a code that you can send out in your children’s and youth ministry weekly emails, and families can purchase the family edition to use at home during Advent and Christmas.

Some people have been asking what will included in An Illustrated Advent. To be honest, that’s probably still a bit of a moving target, but here is what I am hoping to have included in two weeks:

An Illustrated Advent: Engaging Activities for the Season – Church Edition

  • A short introduction to Advent and ideas on how to use the enclosed materials
  • Five Illustrated Children’s Moments (based on the RCL Gospel texts for Advent, and then one for the Sunday after Christmas)
  • Five Worship Activity Sheets for Advent and the Sunday after Christmas
  • One 11×17 Advent poster that can be printed and placed in classrooms or bulletin boards (I know you all have bulletin boards you have to decorate). It can also be used digitally during worship or on your website.

An Illustrated Advent: Engaging Activities for the Season – Family Edition

  • A short introduction to Advent and ideas on how to use the enclosed materials
  • Four engaging weekly family devotions that can be done around the table or at bedtime
  • Four coloring sheets that go through the story of Jesus’ birth
  • Flat Wise Men: think Flat Stanley meets the Elf on the Shelf. Here’s a new, fun way to engage your kids during Advent. Hide the Flat Wise Men in different places around your house – slowly making your way to the Christmas tree (or wherever your presents show up on Christmas morning). A fun way for them to have to look for something around the house that is a little different than a creepy elf watching your every move, ready to report back if you’ve been good or bad. (Full Disclaimer: I own an Elf on the Shelf)
  • Advent Calendar Activity Guide: An Advent calendar that provides daily activities from December 1 – December 24 that children can do on their own, or with their families.

In addition to these two resources, I will be selling the coloring pages and posters that you’ve been seeing and hearing about. We all know the adult coloring craze is most definitely a thing right now – so this could be the perfect opportunity to get your congregation (or your family) more involved in this fun intergenerational activity that everyone can participate in.

Alright…I can already hear what you’re saying right now: “LESS talk, MORE drawing!” Alright, alright. Let me leave you with a few photos of the process involved so far in creating An Illustrated Advent.

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