This is the plan for our Advent and Christmas season, shared as a template. If your congregation follows the Narrative Lectionary, you are welcome to use it and adapt it for your own context. Scripture, sermon focus, and music may still change as the series develops.
Dates: November 29 through December 27, 2026 · Texts: Habakkuk, Esther, Isaiah, Matthew, Luke, the Advent arc (Narrative Lectionary 113 through 117)
The Narrative Lectionary’s Advent texts this year hand us a cast of unlikely people God worked through: a prophet with a complaint, a queen who almost stayed quiet, a servant nobody expected, a carpenter who had every reason to walk away. The thread runs to the most unlikely King of all, born in a manger. That is what this series says out loud. God’s coming does not wait for ideal conditions or qualified people. God shows up in the mess and works through people like us.
The Look and Feel
Our altar carries the Advent wreath with its four candles plus the Christ candle, lit progressively week by week. Christmas Eve is candlelight. Beside the wreath sit a plain wooden manger with straw, a shepherd’s staff, and burlap under one warm light, with a simple gold crown resting in the straw through Advent and Christmas Eve.
The title pattern does the visual work alongside the altar. “An Unlikely ___” runs as a refrain across the four Advent Sundays, then breaks on Christmas Eve to mark the arrival. The series graphics carry that refrain so the congregation sees the pattern before anyone explains it.
How the Season Fits Together
The preaching series is four Advent Sundays plus Christmas Eve. Two more services can share the same look: Blue Christmas, a quiet service the week before Christmas for anyone who finds the holidays hard, and the first Sunday of Christmas, on the family tree in Matthew 1:1-17, full of unlikely names.
Week 1, November 29: An Unlikely Prophet
Scripture: Habakkuk 1:1-7; 2:1-4; 3:17-19 · 1st Advent, Thanksgiving weekend
Advent opens with a complaint. Habakkuk asks how long, and God does not answer the question so much as tell him to write the vision down and wait for it. This is faith as a way of life in the middle of unanswered questions, watching for God in the dark. Starting the season here rather than with a lit candle and a carol says something about who Advent is for. The Sunday after Thanksgiving is a gentle place to say it.
Hymns / Organ
Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus (UMH 196)
People, Look East (UMH 202)
Toda la Tierra / All Earth Is Waiting (UMH 210)
Great Is Thy Faithfulness (UMH 140)
Be Still, My Soul (UMH 534)
Contemporary / Praise Team
Waiting Here for You by Chris Tomlin
Promises by Maverick City Music
Even So Come by Passion
Weary Traveler by Jordan St. Cyr
Evidence by Josh Baldwin
Week 2, December 6: An Unlikely Queen
Scripture: Esther 4:10-17 · 2nd Advent
Mordecai’s question to Esther is the line the whole series is named for, which the Common English Bible renders: “But who knows? Maybe it was for a moment like this that you came to be part of the royal family.” Esther has a place, and the question is whether she will spend it on people who do not have one. Courage here is not fearlessness. It is using the standing you happen to hold on behalf of someone else. If you share Communion this Sunday, it sits well beside the text, since the table is where we are fed for exactly that kind of work.
Hymns / Organ
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (UMH 211)
Lord, Speak to Me (UMH 463)
Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus (UMH 514)
Come, Sinners, to the Gospel Feast (UMH 616)
Become to Us the Living Bread (UMH 630)
Contemporary / Praise Team
Here I Am to Worship by Tim Hughes
Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) by Hillsong UNITED
Christ Our Hope in Life and Death by Keith & Kristyn Getty
Come to the Table by Sidewalk Prophets
Living Hope by Phil Wickham
Week 3, December 13: An Unlikely Servant
Scripture: Isaiah 42:1-9 · 3rd Advent
Isaiah’s servant brings justice to the nations without shouting in the street, and does not break the bruised reed or snuff out the dim wick. That is a strange kind of power, and it is the kind God chooses. A light to the nations turns out to look like gentleness. If you hold a Blue Christmas service, this is a natural week for it, and the two speak to each other: the bruised reed is not a metaphor to the people who come to that service.
Hymns / Organ
Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates (UMH 213)
I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light (UMH 206)
Wild and Lone the Prophet’s Voice (UMH 209)
Hope of the World (UMH 178)
Emmanuel, Emmanuel (UMH 204)
Contemporary / Praise Team
Light of the World by Lauren Daigle
Hope Has a Name by River Valley Worship
Behold Our God by Sovereign Grace Music
He Shall Reign Forevermore by Chris Tomlin
Shine, Jesus, Shine by Graham Kendrick
Week 4, December 20: An Unlikely Father
Scripture: Matthew 1:18-25 · 4th Advent
Joseph has decided to end it quietly, which under the circumstances is the decent thing to do. Then he is asked to stay, and to name a child who is not his. Immanuel means God with us, and Joseph is the first person who has to make room for that. Saying yes to God-with-us has always meant rearranging your own plans. A combined service with children’s music fits this Sunday well, with the whole church in one room.
Hymns / Organ
To a Maid Engaged to Joseph (UMH 215)
Savior of the Nations, Come (UMH 214)
Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming (UMH 216)
Infant Holy, Infant Lowly (UMH 229)
Away in a Manger (UMH 217)
Contemporary / Praise Team
Emmanuel (Hallowed Manger Ground) by Chris Tomlin
Adore by Chris Tomlin
God With Us by MercyMe
Mary, Did You Know?
Christmas Offering by Casting Crowns
Christmas Eve, December 24: The Most Unlikely King of All
Scripture: Luke 2:1-20 · Candlelight
The refrain breaks here. Four Sundays of unlikely people culminate in the least likely thing of all: God arriving as an infant, announced to shepherds, laid in a feed trough because there was no room. The cast has been preparing us to believe that God works this way. Pairing the offering with the invitation to give makes generosity part of the service rather than an announcement inside it. Write the closing invitation for guests, because on Christmas Eve many of the people hearing it are.
Hymns / Organ
O Come, All Ye Faithful (UMH 234)
O Little Town of Bethlehem (UMH 230)
Hark! the Herald Angels Sing (UMH 240)
Silent Night, Holy Night (UMH 239, candlelight)
Joy to the World (UMH 246)
Contemporary / Praise Team
O Holy Night
Joy to the World (Unspeakable Joy) by Chris Tomlin
Noel by Chris Tomlin and Lauren Daigle
Born Is the King (It’s Christmas) by Hillsong Worship
Go, Tell It on the Mountain
About the Music
Each week lists five hymns for an organ service and five songs for a praise team. Check them against what your congregation has sung recently, and treat the lists above as a starting point rather than a final set. Advent has the added constraint that the carols people came for are not optional, which is why Silent Night, Joy to the World, and Hark! the Herald Angels Sing stay on the Christmas Eve list. Hymn numbers refer to The United Methodist Hymnal (UMH).
Using This Series
Reading the Narrative Lectionary texts as a cast of characters rather than a set of themes gives the season its shape, turning Advent from a series about waiting into a series about who God uses. Another congregation can take the same five texts and the “An Unlikely ___” refrain and make them its own: your altar, your music, and whatever special services your church holds around Christmas.
The series opens the Sunday after Christ the King, and the handoff is deliberate. If the season before it ends on the promised end of the story, Habakkuk asking how long moves the congregation straight back into the waiting, which is what Advent is.