Our FAVORITE Advent book for Family Worship! Rejoicing in Christ the Newborn King by Taigen Joos
Hey y’all! Welcome to our latest book review! We are big readers in our home and thought this may be a good way to serve our brothers and sisters in Christ.
***Disclaimer - Some of these product links are affiliate links. That means that if you choose to do some amazon shopping using the links on this page, we will receive a small commission at no cost to you. It’s a great way to help us cover the costs associated with running this site and creating content without it costing our readers/viewers anything. Thanks to all our readers and viewers for your support!
(((If you would like to see/listen to a review of this book, check out our video review here or our podcast review here)))
Christmas is such a special time of year! During Advent as we focus on the greatest gift the world has ever received, we like to really dive into it and talk about these things often as a family. We began doing a family worship time last year and when It came time for Advent, we knew we want to do something special and really focus on why we celebrate at Christmas, but we didn’t know where to start. Then Courtney stumbled upon a post by Michelle Lesley recommending Rejoicing in Christ the Newborn King. So we decided to get a copy and try it out.
Needless to say we were NOT disappointed! This book is excellent! When we got this last year we were still new to both family worship and Advent, so we were a little unsure of what resources to use and how to go about adding Advent to our family worship time. Rejoicing in Christ the Newborn King made it so simple and we were and are very thankful for that!
The book itself isn’t very long, so it’s great for newbies like we were. It contains 25 daily discussions for the season of Advent. Each day (except for Christmas Day) is one single page of reading packed with theology and doctrine. Also included for each day is a Christmas hymn or carol that complements the reading perfectly. It looks exactly like you would find it in a hymnal, so for all of y’all who are musically inclined, you could even gather around with your instruments and add that to your family worship time to make it even more special! We are not musically inclined so we just sing them together as a family!
Along with the Hymn and the daily reading are a few questions for each day to help you discuss the reading and really dig into the text a bit further for better understanding.
Rejoicing in Christ the Newborn King is also broken up into four thematic sections. These are: the pre-incarnate Christ, the prophesied Christ, the purpose of the Incarnation of Christ, and the particulars of Christ’s birth. We love how the book and the reading shows that the entire Bible is about Christ!
The hymns and carols that were selected for Rejoicing in Christ the Newborn King are a wonderful addition to both family worship and Advent! Many that are included people will be familiar with, but several may be new! We found a few that have become new favorites! We love history as well so we took the opportunity to research the history of some of the hymns too which was a lot of fun and really added an extra layer to our family worship time.
The reading for Christmas Day is the only instance in the book where the reading is more than one page. It is simply a harmonized reading of the Scriptures relating to the birth of Jesus. We enjoyed reading this first thing on Christmas morning to really prepare us for the day and to help us remember and focus on what Christmas is truly about. There are no discussion questions for that day, but there is still one more beautiful hymn to sing.
We are so thankful to have found this book and recommend it to anyone looking for something to do during family worship this Advent and Christmas season. Whether you’re new to Advent and/or family worship or not, Rejoicing in Christ the Newborn King is a wonderful addition!
We hope y’all have a wonderful Christmas season and that the resources we have reviewed for Christmas are helpful for you and your family. You can check out our other Christmas reviews under the reviews section.
If you’re looking for other great kid resources or gift ideas, check out our kids/homeschool resources page for more reviews and recommendations. We also have and adults resource page if you’d like to check it out too for some of the books we have found helpful!
Merry Christmas and Soli Deo Gloria!