Yearly Worship Cycle
Most Baptist churches mark Christmas and Easter. We do too — but we have found that inhabiting the full cycle of the church year does something to us that occasional celebration cannot. Moving through the seasons together, year after year, we find ourselves drawn more deeply into the whole story of God and the world: not just its high points, but its waiting, its costliness, its ordinary stretches, and its surprising eruptions of grace.
Each season has its own colour, its own character, and its own way of opening us to a different dimension of the Christian life. The images on this page were created for our congregation — the Lord’s Table set in different Australian landscapes, each landscape chosen to carry something of the season’s emotional and spiritual weight.
Advent
Four weeks of waiting and longing prior to Christmas that resists the premature celebration that surrounds us in December. Here in Australia, Advent builds toward midsummer, and is not so much about preparing for the arrival of the baby Jesus, but for the arrival of the Jesus who comes as a purifying fire that will set the world ablaze with a passion for peace that will never go out.
Colour: Blue
Christmas
Not a single day but a season of twelve days beginning on December 25th. In the height of the southern summer, God comes to us not in splendour but in a fragile baby — gurgling, crying, laid in a manger, sharer of our flesh and blood. The blazing Christmas sun withers all that is trivial and false, driving our roots deeper into mercy, and sending us to seek rest in the cool oceans of Christ’s love. The season runs until Epiphany on January 6th, when we celebrate the light of Christ breaking into the wider world.
Special services: Christmas Eve, Epiphany. Colour: White
Ordinary Time
Between Christmas and Lent, and again between Pentecost and Advent, we move through seasons of ordinary time — exploring the stories and teachings of Jesus and how they shape our lives in the everyday. Ordinary time is not a gap between the special-focus seasons. It is where most of life is lived, and it deserves its own attentiveness.
Special services: All Saints Day. Colour: Green
Lent
Forty days (plus Sundays) leading up to Pascha. As the days shorten and clouds darken the horizon, Lent invites us into honest reckoning with the costliness of the Christian journey — with our own brokenness and the suffering of the world. Where most of us live, many of our neighbours think “Ash Wednesday” is a reference to bushfires, and indeed in this season the parched earth offers its own kind of wisdom. The dust and smoke rises like prayer; the charred valleys remind us that the road to life passes through death. Lent is not primarily about giving things up, though that has value. It is about clearing space to see more honestly.
Special services: Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday. Color: Purple
Pascha (Easter)
We use the older biblical name Pascha to sidestep the eggs and bunnies and instead signal the depth of this season’s roots and its connection to the whole story of liberation that runs through the Bible. Fifty days of resurrection celebration beginning on Easter Sunday. As the heat relents and the rains return, life rises anew from the parched earth — and the thought of fire loses its fear and promises instead warmth and rest. The season does not rush past the resurrection to get back to normal. It dwells in it.
Special services: Paschal Vigil (Holy Saturday night), Ascension. Colour: Gold
Pentecost
Beginning on the Day of Pentecost — the fiftieth day of Pascha — we celebrate the empowering presence of God’s Spirit in the church and the world. Like a blazing fire, melting the stubborn grip of fear. Like a wild wind, dispersing the dust of complacency. Like a kookaburra’s call, piercing pride with joy. Traditionally Pentecost is a single day that closes the season of Pascha, but in our church it is a short season that runs until our Church Anniversary in June, marking the moment when this congregation first gathered. It is a season of vocation: what are we called to be and do, here and now, in the power of the Spirit.
Color: Red
Advent
Four weeks of waiting and longing prior to Christmas that resists the premature celebration that surrounds us in December. Here in Australia, Advent builds toward midsummer, and is not so much about preparing for the arrival of the baby Jesus, but for the arrival of the Jesus who comes as a purifying fire that will set the world ablaze with a passion for peace that will never go out.
Colour: Blue
Christmas
Not a single day but a season of twelve days beginning on December 25th. In the height of the southern summer, God comes to us not in splendour but in a fragile baby — gurgling, crying, laid in a manger, sharer of our flesh and blood. The blazing Christmas sun withers all that is trivial and false, driving our roots deeper into mercy, and sending us to seek rest in the cool oceans of Christ’s love. The season runs until Epiphany on January 6th, when we celebrate the light of Christ breaking into the wider world.
Special services: Christmas Eve, Epiphany. Colour: White
Ordinary Time
Between Christmas and Lent, and again between Pentecost and Advent, we move through seasons of ordinary time — exploring the stories and teachings of Jesus and how they shape our lives in the everyday. Ordinary time is not a gap between the special-focus seasons. It is where most of life is lived, and it deserves its own attentiveness.
Special services: All Saints Day. Colour: Green
Lent
Forty days (plus Sundays) leading up to Pascha. As the days shorten and clouds darken the horizon, Lent invites us into honest reckoning with the costliness of the Christian journey — with our own brokenness and the suffering of the world. Where most of us live, many of our neighbours think “Ash Wednesday” is a reference to bushfires, and indeed in this season the parched earth offers its own kind of wisdom. The dust and smoke rises like prayer; the charred valleys remind us that the road to life passes through death. Lent is not primarily about giving things up, though that has value. It is about clearing space to see more honestly.
Special services: Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday. Color: Purple
Pascha (Easter)
We use the older biblical name Pascha to sidestep the eggs and bunnies and instead signal the depth of this season’s roots and its connection to the whole story of liberation that runs through the Bible. Fifty days of resurrection celebration beginning on Easter Sunday. As the heat relents and the rains return, life rises anew from the parched earth — and the thought of fire loses its fear and promises instead warmth and rest. The season does not rush past the resurrection to get back to normal. It dwells in it.
Special services: Paschal Vigil (Holy Saturday night), Ascension. Colour: Gold
Pentecost
Beginning on the Day of Pentecost — the fiftieth day of Pascha — we celebrate the empowering presence of God’s Spirit in the church and the world. Like a blazing fire, melting the stubborn grip of fear. Like a wild wind, dispersing the dust of complacency. Like a kookaburra’s call, piercing pride with joy. Traditionally Pentecost is a single day that closes the season of Pascha, but in our church it is a short season that runs until our Church Anniversary in June, marking the moment when this congregation first gathered. It is a season of vocation: what are we called to be and do, here and now, in the power of the Spirit.
Color: Red