The church year
Every year the church tells the story of Jesus, season by season, from waiting for his birth to the long green weeks of everyday faith. Each season has a colour you’ll see in church.
- Advent Four weeks of waiting and hope before Christmas.
- Christmas Twelve days of celebrating that God came near, as a child.
- Epiphany The weeks when Jesus is shown to the whole world.
- Lent Forty days of turning back toward God, on the way to Easter.
- Easter Fifty days of celebrating the resurrection.
- Day of Pentecost The Holy Spirit comes. One red day that closes Easter.
- Time after PentecostYou are here The long green season: growing in faith in ordinary days.
Why a church year?
It keeps the whole story in front of us, not only the parts we like best. Over a year you hear about Jesus’ birth, his teaching, his death and his rising, and then what it means to live by it on ordinary days. The Bible readings each Sunday follow the season, which is why the readings for this Sunday fit the time of year.
Where you’ll see the colour
On the cloths on the altar and pulpit, on the pastor’s stole, and in the thin line under this site’s menu, which changes with the season. Congregations differ a little: some use purple instead of blue in Advent, or black on Ash Wednesday.