Advent Conspiracy | Interview with Greg Holder | Trinity Talks

Hello everyone, I'm Elizabeth Archer and today I am joined with Greg Holder.

He is one of the founders of the Advent Conspiracy and he is joining us today here over Zoom

at Trinity Church, Streetsville here in Mississauga, Ontario.

So welcome, Greg.

Welcome.

I'm so glad to be here, Elizabeth.

Maybe early, but Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you too.

That's right.

Maybe early, but never too late to just spread some of that joy.

So Greg, you among many other things, I'm sure, you're an author and you're a speaker.

You are a lead pastor at the church called The Crossing, right?

That's right.

It's at Mississauga.

Yep, and it's a multi-site church.

Wonderful.

So we're just so glad that you've decided to take the time to come and join us here

at Trinity Church, Streetsville.

I'm just thrilled to be with you.

Thanks for asking me.

Thank you.

So we're actually fast approaching, like you mentioned, the Christmas season.

And the Christmas season, as I'm sure probably at your church as well, it's one of the busiest

seasons of the year.

We see this busyness really all over society, don't we?

We see it in the malls, in the streets, we see it in the grocery stores.

But as we prepare here at Trinity for Advent, so those four Sundays before Christmas, we

always like to come up with a theme and have a focus for those four Sundays.

And we've done different things in the past.

But as we were doing our brainstorming with the staff this year, we came across something

that immediately captivated us.

And that was called the Advent Conspiracy.

And I think it captivated us, first of all, because you don't usually see those two words

together do you?

Right, right.

Advent Conspiracy.

But it captivated us for a few other reasons as well.

And anyway, Greg, you are actually one of the founders of the Advent Conspiracy, aren't

you?

Yes, yes, yes.

Which is wonderful.

So today, I'm glad that you're here, because I was hoping you could just take some time

to answer some questions that we have about this.

I'd like to say program, but I think it's more of a movement.

Yeah, I agree with that.

Yeah, let us know a little bit more about what it's all about.

And I was on your website or on the website of the Advent Conspiracy.

And on the front page, it says that there's this invitation and it says, be a part of

a different story this Christmas, one that celebrates our King and brings hope to the

watching world.

Wow.

What an invitation, radical in many ways.

Could you just let us know and ask the listeners know what exactly is the Advent Conspiracy?

Well, sure, sure.

Let's start with what you were saying about that odd combination of words.

So you just don't hear conspiracy used in a very positive way these days, nor have we

ever, right?

Right, I think skeptical.

Exactly, yeah.

And ooh, is there some hidden thing going on here?

But let me just start off by reaching back to you said that this is a busy time of year

for all of us, and particularly those of us that are in the church.

And so we get caught up in the, there's so much beautiful, so many wonderful things that

are happening, but before you know it, it's overwhelming.

And so to go back to the beginning of this, myself, Chris C and Rick McKinley, so these

are three friends.

We're in the St. Louis area, Chris is in the Houston, Texas area, and Rick is in Portland,

Oregon.

So we three friends were together, and there was a time after Christmas, sometime early

in the year, where we were sort of lamenting how we get through the Christmas season and

we miss it.

We miss some of the joy, we miss some of the wonder because we're so focused on all of

these things that we have to do in leading churches.

And then we started to say, well, wait a minute, I don't think it's just us.

I think our folks get through the Christmas season and some of them survive it, but they

don't thrive in that season.

And then there were other things that began to come to mind for us, one of which was our

folks were putting themselves further and further into debt, all in the name of celebrating

Christmas.

And we looked at each other and said, is there a better way for us to do this?

Because we're sort of getting lured into something that isn't even a part of the story.

And so we began to think, how can we do this in such a way where we do ask our folks to

conspire?

There's the word.

How do we conspire against some of these societal pressures?

How do we get back to the original story?

How do we find beauty in some of this in a sort of a unique way and still hang on to

the beauty, the joy of giving, of loving, of celebrating, all of those things.

Hence the four tenets of the Advent Conspiracy.

And so that's really kind of the birth of it.

Wow.

Wow.

So I think that through these conversations, I'd love to hear a little bit more about what

those four tenants are going to look like for our churches.

We work through the Advent Conspiracy.

But before I even get to that question, I want to throw it back, Greg, what did Christmas

look like for you as a kid?

It was great.

I grew up in a home where both my parents were Christ followers.

And so we would be involved with church.

Mom and dad were very involved in what I would call a traditional music ministry.

So they would be all a flutter with what the choir was doing and those kinds of things.

So that was fun.

But as a family, we would gather together and there were just really joyous moments.

I remember being with family and extended family and I don't know if it was a simpler

time or if I was just unaware, but it didn't seem as complicated as it is now.

It didn't seem as overwhelming.

And I remember as a kid just loving the family and the joy and the laughter and all of it.

So for me, Christmas was a good thing.

Was a joyful thing.

And through the eyes of a child, right?

Yeah.

And like you said, I have done my research and I've seen that there are those four tenants

of the Advent Conspiracy.

And I'll ask you maybe now to go through each of those four tenants.

I believe they're worship fully, spend less, give more and love all.

Could you tell us really where you got those ideas from?

Maybe a little bit about the order because I know that there's a specific order to those

and sort of what we can expect as we walk through those Sundays.

Yeah.

So first of all, let me just say way to go.

I'm excited for the journey that you guys are on.

We're excited.

I remember the first time our church went through this and Elizabeth, you and I were

talking before the podcast.

This is something that has a life of its own throughout the years.

Like our church is still, I'm teaching on Advent Conspiracy this very weekend, this

next weekend.

It is still something that we celebrate and we have kids here that they've grown up and

it's the only way they've known how Christmas goes.

And so it does come down to those four tenants.

The first one, worship fully.

Obviously, this is where it has to start.

Christmas begins and ends with us worshiping the King.

If you take that out of our celebration of Christmas, it all falls apart.

And so we do want to stress that when we talk to our families, when we talk to our churches,

we are going to gather around the King and worship the God who came to be with us, the

God who came to rescue us.

It all begins and ends with Jesus.

And so for us, he is the focal point of all of this that begins to fuel our gratitude.

It begins to clarify our perspective and ultimately begins to motivate even our generosity, but

it is worship fully.

And I would say most churches, when I've talked about this over the years around the world,

this is the one that everybody's like, got it, makes sense, perfectly clear to me, right?

And I would imagine your church has this dialed in and it's probably something that you all

think about, pray about and prepare for even now, the worshiping fully, you get it.

Then we get to these next two, which are sort of interesting and it's spend less and give

more.

Right.

Which to me at first, they sound like they might juxtapose each other.

Well, and that's a great insight.

And I want to, let's answer that in just a second.

The spend less is just what you think it is.

It is spend less money.

Now, I will tell you that here in the States, I just read an article that said that we may

now be going into historic levels of credit card debt as we move into the Christmas season.

So personal debt on our credit cards might reach all time highs.

And we're doing this in the name of celebrating the birth of Jesus.

I promise you, Jesus is not thrilled with us spending money that we don't have.

When we say spend less, there's a practical aspect to it.

Be good stewards with what God has given you.

So it is that.

But I also think there's another part to it.

For us, it is spend less because celebrating Christmas, one of the things that we will

sometimes say is that a beautiful Christmas morning is not defined by having a pile of

presents four feet high around the tree.

What I've noticed in my own life and previous, like pre-advent conspiracy days, and we all

fall into this, it's kind of like you think, well, more is better.

And so we've just got all of these things.

And particularly when you have young kids, it's like, let's just shower them with so

many things.

And what we have found is when this happens, which I understand motivation, but when it

happens, the kids then really don't even take the time to savor or enjoy one gift from the

next because they're tearing into something and tossing it over their shoulder to get

to the next thing, to get to the next thing, which is just this hyper-consumerism that

we've all been led to believe, well, this is how you celebrate Christmas.

Now, sometimes you even see it on some of the advertisements and some of the commercials.

I love those commercials where the husband and the wife give each other matching cars

or pickup trucks that have the big red bows on the top of them.

And it's like somehow we're being told, well, if you really love him, you're going to give

some exorbitant gift.

And so we all get sucked into that.

And so when we say spend less, we mean resist the societal pressures of that.

And you actually begin to help your families to resist that.

You talk about it.

It does not mean, and I want to stress this, it does not mean spend nothing.

It does not mean don't give gifts.

We're not saying that this is not an anti-Christmas movement.

This is when we're not Scrooge's, none of those things, but spend less, be reasonable,

talk about it.

And then the counterbalance to that is give more, which you're absolutely right in suggesting

that that sounds like a contradiction.

What we're saying is to give more relational gifts.

Now, what does that mean?

Well, let's go back to the story.

The most relational gift we've ever been given is Jesus, our Savior, who takes on flesh and

blood.

We can all go to the scriptures.

For God so loved the world, he gave his son.

So there's an incarnational aspect to this.

And what that means is that we begin to think through how do we give relational gifts?

Now, what's a relational gift?

It is a gift that you and I can celebrate our relationship together as I give it to

you.

So here's an example, and there's a myriad of these examples, and we have them on our

website for if people are going, wait, I need more ideas.

A simple one is, hey, I know you like cooking, and we haven't been able to spend much time

together.

I'm going to give you like a one night cooking class.

That's my gift to you, but we get to go together.

And so all of a sudden now it's you and your sister, it's you and someone else, it's a

friend, and it's like, we just have grown too busy, so I want to give this to you, but

we're both going to go and spend the evening together.

And all of a sudden, that's a relational gift.

You're still giving, but it's a relational gift.

Now, sometimes it doesn't even involve an expense at that level.

It could be one of the classic gifts, and it's in the book that we wrote that eventually

when this really started to take off globally, Zondervan asked us to write a book.

And so in the book, we talk about a young man, I think he was in his 20s if I'm remembering

right, he gives his dad a bag of coffee beans.

And you're like, okay, I mean, so dad liked coffee, right?

Okay.

He spent less.

No, he gave more because it was a note accompanying the gift.

And it said, dad, you're only allowed to grind the beans and to drink this coffee down with

me.

And however long it takes, however many times we have to sit down as we go through this

bag of beans, I want you to tell me stories of how you became the man you are.

I want to get to know you at a different level.

Now you tell me how important was that gift to that father?

Wow.

That's a relational gift.

So it's something that celebrates that.

In my own life, I've seen that when people have given my wife a gift that celebrates

a relationship and that she has to sit there.

It's like a journal where friends all wrote into this journal over the course of some

weeks and this one friend compiled it.

And so then Robin on Christmas morning is taking the time to actually read through these

notes of how she has impacted people's lives and how loved she is by these people.

Wow.

Now we're going back though to it's our Christmas is Elizabeth now at my house are so much slower.

I hear a slowness.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

And there's a, there's a, there's so much meaning to some of these gifts that we, we

kind of sit there and we'll laugh and in some cases cry and somebody will say, well, wait,

wait, wait, what is that gift?

And well, you got to look at this.

This is something that someone gave and all of a sudden we're not consuming.

We're enjoying.

And I would suggest we're actually, we're actually worshiping because it's like, wow,

God, you've blessed me so much with this friend.

You have blessed me so much with this child that, that I love.

And it's just, you get to slow down now.

And I know you're going to think I'm crazy.

And some of you guys who have younger kids are going to just think I'm, I'm, I've lost

touch, but I'm telling you, I've watched it.

I watched it in the life of my own kids.

I've watched it in, in the lives of so many others.

Kids get this.

They get this.

And when you start giving gifts that there's nothing wrong with, you know, giving your

kid, I'll say baseball because you know, a little boy.

Okay.

But don't just give him one glove.

Make sure that you go dust your glove off and wrap it in there with him and say, you

know what, we're going to have a catch now because I, you and I've got to, we're going

to spend more time together.

That's a relational gift.

You can do this in so many different ways.

You can celebrate a relationship.

I know a, I know a young girl who took a glass jar, an old Mason jar.

And over the course of a period of time, she would just write these little memories of

her Nana in this jar.

I remember when you walked me around the duck pond.

I remember when you used to make me this for lunch.

I remember these days.

So she puts all of these into this Mason jar.

That's the gift to her Nana.

She says, Nana, every week at the first of the week, I want you to take the lid off and

just pull one of those out.

And over the course of this next year, I just want you to know, I'm thinking about you.

I love you.

I'm grateful for you.

We can do this.

So it's worshipfully, it's spend less, it's give more.

Now, with some of the money, this is what we have said, with some of the money that

we save from not buying, you know, uncle Bill, that sweater he was never going to wear anyway.

Why don't we together as a family and what we do as a church is to say, why don't we

pool some of that money?

Not all of it, but why don't we take some of that money and pool it together and give

it to the least of these?

Why don't we find something in our community, in our world that we say, hey, together we're

spending less, but some of that money that we now have, we want to give that away to

those in Matthew 25 that Jesus says are the least of these.

And so for us, that became the water crisis around the world.

And it began a relationship with an organization, a global organization called Living Water

International that provides water and sanitation and hygiene around the world.

And so the four tenants come together for us at Christmas when we take an offering.

And for us, we say, as we take this offering, this is who we're giving this away.

This money is leaving the building, it's going outside these walls and you're blessing another.

I cannot tell you how winsome that idea is to children.

I'm telling you all along the way around the world, I've heard this over and over and over

again, kids are the ones who lead the way on this.

If you teach them all of this, I remember a story at our church a few years ago where

a young child, I'm going to say like school age, second, third grade, said to their grandparents,

me, that one gift that you were going to give me, OK, I want that one gift because that's

the thing I want.

But don't give me anything else.

Let's take all the money you were going to spend on me and let's give it to those kids

that we're talking about in our kids class that don't have water.

Let's give it to them.

Now, that wasn't mom and dad saying that.

That was like an eight or a nine year old child leading the family and saying, we can

do this.

So that was a pretty fast run through of the four tenants, Elizabeth.

That's how it works.

And that's honestly, it's something that every church can be a part of at one level or another.

And it begins to change.

I'm telling you, it can change Christmas morning like you can't even hardly believe.

That's beautiful.

I'm inspired.

I'm encouraged.

I'm excited.

I can't wait to take this home to my own family, my own children, my own husband, and then

our families as well.

I think this seems radical, but it seems so real and it seems so honest.

All this fear just kind of goes away.

We have so much fear, I think, around Christmas time that really guides our choices.

Then we don't even realize it.

But I think it's fear that really sort of guides the way that we progress through this

season.

And there's a letting go in this advent conspiracy I hear.

A little bit of surrender.

That's a great point.

The pressure is off if we focus on these things.

I will say this.

Some people feel the pressure of, oh boy, I'm not a very arts and craftsy person.

I don't know how to make a gift.

What do I do?

Take a deep breath.

Think about it.

The Lord leads, but it's okay to talk to other people too.

And it's okay to go to our website and see if there are other ideas.

That's okay.

But yes, I love your point about it takes some of the pressure off.

Absolutely.

And I think you mentioned that your website has these resources.

Everything is free on the website.

Anyone can access it.

No, that's exactly right.

It's a wonderful way for you and the founders of the advent conspiracy to bless the whole

world, I think, with these ideas.

So thank you for that.

Now we talked about these four tenets and I think you explained them quite beautifully.

But after Christmas is over.

And we go through the four Sundays of advent and we enter into January and at least here

in Canada, it's pretty dark.

It's pretty bleak.

How do I'm not sure about Missouri, but I know that here in Canada, January can be a

kind of a dull, dreary, cold, even isolating month for many people.

How do we carry this truth that we experienced through the advent conspiracy into our coming

months and even throughout the year?

Even in the middle of January, let's continue to worship.

Let's continue to focus on this king that has he's brought us this life that yes, we

have eternal life, but that life starts now.

So let's celebrate what it is that he's doing now.

I do think just in a really practical way, one of the things that happens if we do this

is that we don't wake up in January and open our credit card bills and think, what on earth

have I done?

I really think there's a different level of relief.

There's a chance that our breathing go, okay, okay, we had great Christmas and we didn't

wear ourselves out and overspend.

So there's that.

But I also think, remember some of those relational gifts.

If we're in the process of giving these relational gifts, well, they have a lifespan of their

own.

And I would say if that's the case, then let's be looking forward to some of that.

When are you going to go on that cooking class with your friend?

When are you going to be able to go out and ice skate together?

When are you going to be able to go and to do this thing together?

When is somebody going to say, you know what, you gave us a game night and you said we were

all going to play games that night.

Well, this seems like the perfect night because it's pretty wintry out there.

Do you have any idea how wonderfully, like your kids are going to love that night because

it's like, here we go.

We said that was the gift.

Here it is.

We're going to do this tonight.

And right now in the middle of January or February, you are celebrating that relational

gift that you gave in December.

And so I think that that's a part of the echo.

And then the last thing I would say is keep as a church telling stories of how Christmas

was different.

Keep telling stories of how God met you in those sacrificial moments and keep telling

stories as a church of what's echoing into your community because you're loving all.

At our church, stories are the rocket fuel.

I can teach all day long, but when we tell a story of what God is doing, that's what

gets people inspired.

That's when they go, wait a minute, we're not crazy for trying this.

And so I think telling those stories of how your generosity is touching lives in your

community or around the world, however you all choose to do this, I'm telling you, you'll

be celebrating this whole idea of how you went through Advent.

You'll be celebrating it far past December 25th.

Wow.

Thank you.

And I think you're right about those stories.

Jesus himself was the ultimate storyteller, wasn't he?

He told stories.

That's how he engaged us.

So you're right.

And hopefully we have some good stories to even share with you after all this is said

and done.

I would love to hear them.

We would love to do that.

Now, before we wrap up, Greg, I do want to wrap it back to that invitation that you had

on the website for the Advent Conspiracy.

And it said to be a part of a different story this Christmas, inviting us in to be one that

celebrates our King and brings hope to the watching world.

And I love that watching world.

What is your hope for those people who are part of the watching world this Christmas?

Yeah.

My hope for them is that they would honestly be able to watch the way we who follow Jesus

celebrate his entering into the story.

I want them to see that the way that Jesus entered into this story affects the way that

you and I live our everyday lives.

Absolutely, this changes eternity.

I will never stop telling that story.

But the way that Jesus loves me changes the way that I live today and the way I live with

other people today.

And so this watching world gets to look at us and see a completely different life because

you and I are serving and loving and listening and laughing and lamenting and crying and

giving and sharing differently.

And I want a watching world to watch the followers of Jesus celebrate and become intrigued with

who he is.

I want them to know that hope is more than a word and that if they begin to take steps

on their spiritual journey towards him, well, that changes everything, doesn't it?

So that's my hope is that a watching world would begin to notice who Jesus is and just

how much he can mean to them.

It's exciting.

Thank you, Greg.

Thank you so much for your insights.

Wow.

I think that we've got a lot to look forward to and to see what God and the Holy Spirit

has for us here at Trinity Church, streetsville.

So just thank you for your time.

I know you're a missed guy.

No, I'm so grateful.

And as you mentioned, I can't wait to hear stories of what God's going to do in your

church.

It'll be beautiful.

We'll be sure to share those with you.

So anyway, we'll be in touch and thank you again for your time, Greg.

Thank you.

All right.

So that was Greg Holder.

Again, he was one of the founders of the movement that we're calling the Advent Conspiracy,

where we are invited to worship fully, to spend less, to give more and to love all.

And here at Trinity, we're going to be joining the Advent Conspiracy starting December 3rd.

That's the first Sunday of Advent.

And we invite all of you to come and join in this conspiracy with us.

So we'll see you then.