The Way Through Advent Sermon Series Set

Description

An Advent series for congregations the other vendors don’t serve

Most Advent series are John the Baptist in camel hair for two weeks, a wreath, and a countdown to the manger. The Way Through takes its four titles from the season’s First Readings instead — Isaiah three times, then 2 Samuel — and reads them the way the lectionary actually lays them out: as a construction sequence.

The sky gets torn open. The ground gets leveled. The ruins get repaired. And then David offers to build God a house, God declines, and the dwelling turns out to be a body that has to be asked first. Four weeks that move somewhere, with the Gospels left free for you to preach as companions rather than as constraints.

The four weeks

• Nov 29 · Tear the Sky Open — Isaiah 64:1–9, with Mark 13:24–37. Advent opens in the dark with a demand rather than a nativity. The prayer is for God to break in, not for us to hold out.
• Dec 6 · Level the Ground — Isaiah 40:1–11, with Mark 1:1–8. Comfort comes before instruction. The terrain changes, not the traveler.
• Dec 13 · Repair the Ruins — Isaiah 61:1–4, 8–11, with John 1:6–8, 19–28. Joy Sunday, where joy is release and rebuilding and repair of ruined cities — material, not a mood.
• Dec 20 · Not a Building — 2 Samuel 7:1–11, 16, with Luke 1:26–38. God turns down cedar and stone and asks instead — and waits on a freely given yes.

What “prepare the way” looks like when the terrain does the changing

Isaiah 40 is usually preached as our preparation: get ready, straighten up, make room. Read alongside the other three First Readings, it goes the other direction. The valleys are lifted and the mountains brought low so that God can reach people already in exile — the road is built for the arrival, not for the journey out. The whole set runs that way. God toward people, not people toward God. We are the destination, not the travelers.

That reading is in the artwork as much as the guide. There is no ranked hierarchy in these images, no one supervising the repair work, and no one sorted. The week four figure stands at her full height.

What’s in the set

Thirty-seven files, organized in labeled folders with dimensions in every filename, so a volunteer can find what they need without opening anything.

• Series key art and a secondary slide background for bullet and body-copy slides
• A seamless motion background — silent, text-free, 1920×1080, loops all four weeks
• Week title graphics, plus a text-free twin of every one for your own titling
• Scripture slides for each week’s primary text
• Social artwork for in square and story formats
• Editable PowerPoint decks — title, content, and blank layouts on the week art
• An editable title template, so you can drop in your own sermon titles
• A preaching and discussion guide: the turn in each text, a preaching angle, a call-to-worship line, and a discussion question per week, plus key threads and a closing reflection written to be read aloud

Cut-paper collage artwork in a five-color Advent palette that runs dark to warm across the four weeks — night indigo, sarum blue, Gaudete rose on the third Sunday where rose belongs, and candle amber. It reads as a light progression without ever drawing a wreath.

Built affirming, and vetted before it shipped

Readings verified against the Revised Common Lectionary for Year B. Blue Advent throughout, stated plainly rather than left ambiguous. Expansive language for God across every word of the guide. Mark 13 preached as presence rather than as end-times prediction. Mark 1’s repentance read as reorientation, not sin management. Isaiah 61’s joy kept material. And Mary treated as a person exercising agency, whose yes is freely given — never framed through obedience, compliance, or virginity as virtue.

If you have ever bought worship media and then spent an evening editing the theology back out of it, that is the work this set has already done.

Edit it into your own language

All PowerPoint text sits in real text boxes rather than baked into the image, and the motion background carries no words at all. Nothing here has to be rebuilt to be re-set in Spanish or any other language your congregation worships in.

Your license

Use these materials in worship, online, and in print for as long as your congregation wants them. No download meters. No streaming approvals. No per-view counting.

Scripture citations follow the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.

Plan Advent once

Get this set and everything else with PCM Complete — one membership, the full library, a year of seasons covered.

Preparing week by week? The Advent collection has liturgy, bulletin text, and sermon prep for each of these four Sundays.

Writing your own? PCM Lumen drafts sermons, liturgy, and pastoral letters in a progressive voice, and PCM Imago generates worship images with affirming presets built in.