The Story of Light Advent Candles & Christingle

The Story of Light Advent Candles & Christingle – Bradford Methodist Circuits, North and South.

This year during December we'd like to invite you to pray for a little light in our city. 

During our services through advent some of our churches are handing out candles (well, battery powered LED tea lights to be more precise), to each person present as a sign of God’s light, for them and their community.   As we give them out to people in our congregations or at our Christmas fairs or Carol services we invite people to pray for the City of Bradford.

We are also inviting people to bring their tea light into a special Story of Light Christingle service at 3pm on Christmas Eve in The Wild Woods (the former M&S building on Darley Street). After a 30 minute service we can either make our way down to the mirror pool and stretch out our lights around its perimeter, adding our lights to the lights of the city, or head back to add our lights to the Christingles that are happening at 4pm in some of our churches.

Then (for those who want to) it's off to the Made of Bradford bar on Ivegate for refreshments and carols around the Christmas tree! 

Please do be creative with the way you use your tea lights in prayers. Maybe they could become the focus of your intercessions during services? Perhaps you could encourage people to carry them to all their Christmas events? 

However you decide to use them we hope they will focus our prayers on the whole city of Bradford, and help us all to point towards the coming light of Christ this Christmas.

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Looked for, the light of Christ surrounds us. It pushes back the darkness and points us to the promise of God with us, Immanuel.     

May the light of Christ be in all we do

May the light of Christ be in all we say

May the light of Christ be in our every thought

Looked for, the light of Christ draws us. It calls us to pray for our families, friends and communities.

May the light of Christ be in all we do

May the light of Christ be in all we say

May the light of Christ be in our every thought

Looked for, the light of Christ transforms us. It changes our homes and our cities into places of joy and peace. 

May the light of Christ be in all we do

May the light of Christ be in all we say

May the light of Christ be in our every thought         

Amen

Rev’ds Nick Blundell, Lyn Gregg & Graeme Dutton, on behalf of the joint staff of our two circuits.

For more information on The Story of Light go to www.westyorkshiremethodist.org.uk/mission-enabling-team