Dear friends,

I’m here to say it’s not too late to enter into the fullness of Advent! Maybe because of the strange Thanksgiving holiday or just the general weirdness of this year, the start of our liturgical year snuck up on you.

As I wrote before, I’m especially grateful for Advent this year. In a year that has seemed chaotic and which has often not pushed me toward my better self, I look forward to this season devoted to repentance and preparation—getting my life and my heart ready to worship Jesus.

There are lots of ways to observe the season. Your church may have suggestions or resources or programs. If not, I have a few suggestions.

• Get yourself four candles and make an Advent wreath. The candles don’t have to be any certain color, but many people like to get candles that match the vestment colors of the four Sundays (some combination of purpose, rose, and blue). Light your wreath in the evening, perhaps as you say grace and eat dinner.
• Take on an extra prayer practice. You can pray evening prayer or compline or maybe just spend a few minutes each day telling God what’s on your heart.
• Savor some silence! It’s a rarity in our culture. Take a few minutes each day. Turn off your electronics. Ignore the phone. Just listen. Listen for the still, small voice of God.
• Read some scripture. You might want to read the daily lessons. Or ready a book of the Bible such as Isaiah or maybe one of the Gospels.
• In the opposite of silence, fill your ears with Advent song! My friend Kristen Fout made a fantastic playlist of Advent hymns, and they’re not all organ and choir. Enjoy the variety of musical styles with traditional Advent texts from The Hymnal 1982. Her Advent list is on Spotify. Because I’m an Apple person, I recreated (with a few adjustments because of availability) her Advent list on Apple Music.
• Take part in Advent Word. Each day of Advent, ponder the assigned word. Share a thought or an image on social media with hashtag #adventword.

So much of our world pulls us away from Jesus. I hope you’ll join me this Advent in letting the season pull us toward Jesus, who is our way, our truth, and our life.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

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Photo by Scott Gunn

Tune in!

Listen to today’s Forward Day by Day reflection on the Forward Day by Day podcast. Find morning prayer on the Morning at the Office podcast and end your day with the Evening at Prayer podcast. Available anywhere you listen!

In case you missed it…

Order Now: A Journey with Mark | Forward Movement

An Introduction to Advent with Tim Schenck | ChurchNext 

Gift idea: Give the gift of prayer with a Forward Day by Day subscription

Check out our interactive Advent/Christmas Catalog | Forward Movement

RenewalWorks: Connect featuring the Rev. Cannon Stephanie Spellers | December 2nd at 7pm EST

Dear friends in Christ,

Thank you. In fact, thanks a million. I recently learned that in the last ten years, Forward Movement has given away 1,050,016 copies of Forward Day by Day. That’s more than a million dollars’ worth of free, inspirational material that we’ve sent to prisons, hospitals, nursing homes, and military bases.

Most of our free materials are sent to prisons, and we get letters of gratitude from chaplains and incarcerated people all the time. Especially during the pandemic when visits are curtailed, words of hope matter more than ever.

Every one of those million free copies of Forward Day by Day was made possible by your gifts. We simply could not send this material out for free without donor support.

Thank you. And I am joined in my thanks by hundreds of thousands of people around the world who have been blessed with a message of compassion, hope, mercy, and grace. People are receiving reminders that Jesus loves them, and you made it happen.

The pandemic has brought plenty of challenges, but it has also brought us many blessings at Forward Movement. We know that many of you pray for us and our work regularly. We hear from you about how Christ’s love has been made real to you by Grow Christians, or Forward Day by Day, or courses, or videos, or books, or apps, or any of the other ways we reach people.

Today I have given our whole staff an extra day off to rest, to savor a nice, long Thanksgiving weekend. So you won’t find us answering the phone or processing orders today. You’ll find us all saying prayers of gratitude though, for our work, for donor support, for prayers, and for all the blessings of this life, even in tough times.

If you are grateful for Forward Movement’s ministry, I invite you to do two things. First, offer to God a word of thanksgiving. Second, if you are able to do so, consider making a financial gift to support our ongoing work. The work we are doing is needed now more than ever, and that means your gifts are critical at this moment. If you can’t make a financial gift, it’s OK. I know that people of all circumstances read Forward Today, and I am grateful for each and every one of you.

Let us know if we can do anything for you. And, above all, over this weekend, give thanks for whatever blessings you have received in this earthly life, filled as it is with delights and difficulties.

Blessings to you. And thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

Subscribe to receive Forward Today in your inbox.

Photo by Courtney Hedger on Unsplash

Tune in!

Listen to today’s Forward Day by Day reflection on the Forward Day by Day podcast. Find morning prayer on the Morning at the Office podcast and end your day with the Evening at Prayer podcast. Available anywhere you listen!

In case you missed it…

Order Now: A Journey with Mark | Forward Movement

An Introduction to Advent with Tim Schenck | ChurchNext 

Gift idea: Give the gift of prayer with a Forward Day by Day subscription

Check out our interactive Advent/Christmas Catalog | Forward Movement

RenewalWorks: Connect featuring the Rev. Cannon Stephanie Spellers | December 2nd at 7pm EST

Dear friends in Christ,

This coming Sunday we celebrate the kingship of Christ, as we always do on the Last Sunday after Pentecost. But what does that mean for us modern Christians?

To celebrate Jesus as our king and our Lord is to reject all others who might try to lay claim on us as our Lord. Many of the earliest Christians died for professing, “Jesus is Lord” rather than saying that Caesar was Lord. This is perhaps a poignant and necessary reminder for us coming in a time of intense political wrangling.

Neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump has claim on us, ultimately. We belong to Jesus. We are not first Republicans or Democrats, but people who worship a savior who asks us to take up our cross and follow him, turning away from all others who might beckon us to follow.

And what kind of king is Jesus, anyway? The Gospel reading for this Sunday brings us the parable of the sheep and the goats. In the parable, the king tells us what is important and what matters in the end.

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

Jesus shows us the way. He is a king of compassion, mercy, grace, and sacrifice. His most kingly act is his free offering of himself for our salvation on the cross.

I don’t know about you, but after listening to blustery politicians, I need to listen to another voice proclaiming a message of mercy and grace. Coming up on a pre-Christmas season when consumer spending will run amok, I need to be reminded that sacrifice rather than possessions is where we find our meaning. When our allegiance is demanded by political parties, nations, and corporations, I need to be reminded that my first and most precious allegiance is to Jesus Christ.

May we all profess Jesus as Lord, and may our lives show forth what we profess with our lips.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

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Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

Tune in!

Listen to today’s Forward Day by Day reflection on the Forward Day by Day podcast. Find morning prayer on the Morning at the Office podcast and end your day with the Evening at Prayer podcast. Available anywhere you listen!

In case you missed it…

Check out our interactive Advent eCatalog | Forward Movement

Gift idea: Give the gift of prayer with a Forward Day by Day subscription

Just Launched: Developing a Rule of Life with Hillary Raining | ChurchNext

Ten Ideas to See You Through the Holidays | ECF Vital Practices

Dear friends in Christ,

This coming Sunday’s Gospel reading brings us Jesus giving the Great Commandment. When asked which commandment in the law is the greatest, Jesus answers,

“’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19 here as he focuses the entire faith on just two things: we are commanded to love God and to love our neighbors.

Talk about easier said than done! It’s easy to say we love God, but to love God with our whole being would be quite something. Take the mind for example. If I loved God with my whole mind, I wouldn’t be filling my mind with distractions such as mediocre television and social media scrolling.

And when Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he is of course not just talking about the people who live next to us, people who are likely to be in our same cultural group, race, and economic status. He takes care elsewhere to teach us that our neighbors are, well, pretty much everyone.

Love God, love people. It seems so simple, and yet it is so hard to do.

When the world feels like it’s spinning out of control, we can become immobilized by a feeling of powerlessness. What can I do about all the problems? Just two things.

We can start with our own lives by loving God and loving our neighbors. Love is magnified as we share it. If more of us spent more of our energy loving God and loving our neighbors, the world would look different. Our church would certainly look different.

So I invite you, this very day, to just doing as Jesus commands, just two things. Love God. Love neighbor.

It’s impossible on our own, but we have a church filled with fellow disciples to be our companions. And we have the grace of God to help us.

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

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Photo: Pixabay

Tune in!

Listen to today’s Forward Day by Day reflection on the Forward Day by Day podcast. Find morning prayer on the Morning at the Office podcast and end your day with the Evening at Prayer podcast. Available anywhere you listen!

In case you missed it…

Advent resources now available | Forward Movement

Read an excerpt from Growing Christians | Grow Christians

Civil Conversations in Uncivil Times | ChurchNext

A Season of Prayer | Forward Movement and The Episcopal Church Office of Government Relations

Dear friends in Christ,

This coming Sunday, the assigned epistle reading is from 1 Thessalonians. We read how St. Paul greets the Thessalonians and then says this:

For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God… (1 Th 1:1-10)

There’s a lot to notice here. The Thessalonians have proclaimed the Gospel so effectively that St. Paul does not need to say more. We also read that the people of Thessalonica turned from idols to serve the living and true God.

We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that turning from idols is something that only ancient biblical people needed to do. In our baptismal service, we ask those to be baptized to renounce Satan and spiritual forces of wickedness, to renounce evil powers of the world that corrupt us, and to renounce sinful desires that draw us from the love of God. And then we ask them to promise to turn. We ask them to turn toward Jesus as our Savior and Lord, and to promise to put their whole trust in his grace and love.

We expect that the baptized life turns us from evil toward good, from Satan toward Jesus, and from distraction from God’s love toward trust in God’s love.

It’s very relevant today. We have made an idol of money. We may say we trust God, but it’s pretty easy to live as if money is what we trust. We have made an idol of security, as if it’s possible to be safe or as if the scriptures don’t tell us again and again to reject fear.

I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t use money or that we shouldn’t take prudent care of our selves and our world. But I do believe the scriptures call us to center our lives on trust in God’s grace.

What would it look like if we, like the Thessalonians, served the living and true God?

We would behave as if we know that God is living. God is not an abstraction or an ancient myth, but a living being who loves us more than we can imagine. God is alive and acts in our world.

We would behave as if we know that God is true. In an age in which we often invite “your truth” and “my truth”, we would proclaim the absolute certainty that God and God’s love are true. We would proclaim that we live in a reality in which some things are demonstrably false and others are demonstrably true. God’s grace and mercy is true, and we can trust that with our very lives.

What would it look like if we, like the Thessalonians, served the living and true God?

Yours faithfully,

Scott Gunn
Executive Director

Subscribe to receive Forward Today in your inbox.

Photo: Pixabay

Tune in!

Listen to today’s Forward Day by Day reflection on the Forward Day by Day podcast. Find morning prayer on the Morning at the Office podcast and end your day with the Evening at Prayer podcast. Available anywhere you listen!

In case you missed it…

Preorder: Growing Forward | Forward Movement

Civil Conversations in Uncivil Times | ChurchNext

Now Available: Share it Forward Packs | Forward Movement

A Season of Prayer | Forward Movement and The Episcopal Church Office of Government Relations