Over the last 8 weeks, since we officially launched Veritas back on September 13, there have been so many things that have been exciting. The launch day, people visiting, new people becoming part of Veritas, alot of interest from various places, and the freedom to pursue missional kingdom life in a new way. One of the upcoming things that has me super excited is our Advent series called Advent Conspiracy.

Last year at Hempfield COB, I wrote an article for their newsletter about Advent Conspiracy. I knew then that our first Advent as Veritas, the church plant, that we would undertake our own Advent Conspiracy. And now that Advent will be here in a few short weeks, we are working on various plans for how Veritas will live out its own Advent Conspiracy.

Some of the ways we are going to live it out include:

Worship Gatherings: Over the course of 4 weeks (November 29-December 20) we will be covering 4 themes. The four themes are Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All. Next week a few of us are getting together to plan our worship gatherings for those 4 sundays and I trust that this group will come up with awesome ideas to make our worship times interactive, experiential, visual, and meaningful.

Offering: The other week during our Leadership Team meeting our group decided that we will be giving 100% of our offerings for the 4 weeks to 2 different organizations: one local and one international. So each organization will receive 50% of our offerings from 4 weeks. The international ministry that we will be supporting is Living Water International (www.water.cc) and works on getting clean water for villages in third world countries. The local organization is still being decided but will either be Music For Everyone or possibly The Gathering Place, a local HIV/AIDS ministry in downtown Lancaster.

Interview: Just yesterday I received an e-mail from a reporter from CNN wanting to talk with me about Advent Conspiracy and what we as a church plant will be doing during those 4 weeks. I’m not sure where she got my information, but I am super-excited to talk with her about Veritas and our Advent Conspiracy plans. I called her this morning, and am waiting a return call. So if something happens with an article on CNN.com, I will post it here for all to read.

Anyway, may we all live out the Conspiracy to take Advent/Christmas back from the consumer holiday it has become and put it back to focusing on the infant King Jesus, who says, “Why do you go into debt to celebrate my birthday?”