Go Light Your World Campaign

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Resources for your participation:

We invite you to be part of a campaign to Go Light Your World to bring the light of hope, peace, joy, and love to our communities and the world by offering encouragement to health care workers in these challenging weeks and month. Ways you can participate in the campaign (access all campaign materials):

• Send cards to health care workers: Adopt a hospital or clinic (or, if you don’t have that in your town, another group of essential workers—like law enforcement or grocery store employees). Send them cards thanking them for their service. We created a few 8.5x11-inch templates for thank you cards that you can use (the cards are 3.5x5 inches when printed, cut, and folded). Download and print the cards, write personal notes on them, and drop them off at your chosen location the week of Dec. 20. Card templates: Health care-Christmas / Health care-generic / Essential worker
• Participate in our media campaign: Use the provided social media images on your church channels and encourage individuals to post on their own. We’re also running a full-page ad in the “Inspired” section of the Star Tribune on Saturday, Dec. 19 (download JPG or PDF version of the ad). We recommend using this copy with any social media images you use: “Health care workers: We see you. We thank you. We’re staying home for you.” Social media images: Facebook cover / Facebook post / Instagram post / Facebook or Instagram story / Twitter banner / Twitter post
• Light up your church and home: On Christmas Eve, light up every window in your church building and your home. We may not be gathering, but hope is alive. Christ is born, and the light shines in the darkness. May we be a collective witness of hope in our world.
• Encourage your congregation to participate: Use these images in worship to encourage your congregation to join in the campaign: PowerPoint presentation / Individual JPG images: Title slide / Slide 1: Cards / Slide 2: Social media / Slide 3: Candles

Campaign overview:

Doctors and nurses are not the front line against COVID-19, which has claimed the lives of more than 4,000 Minnesotans since March. They are the end of the line—the last stop before a slow and difficult recovery, or for many, the morgue. The public is the front line. And far too often, “the front line is failing us,” Dr. Charles Bruen, a cardiovascular intensive care specialist at St. Paul’s Regions Hospital, recently told the Pioneer Press.

It has been an exhausting nine months. Many expect that these next few weeks may be the worst of the pandemic. Our ICUs are full. Hospital staff have been working double shifts; many have been exposed to the virus, become sick, and returned to work. We need them. Our lives depend on it.

The seasons of Advent and Christmas have always been connected to light. We lit the candles of hope and peace over the past two Sundays. Over the next two Sundays, we’ll light the candles of joy and love. We put lights on our houses and trees to shine in the darkness. We sing about stars that light our way. We proclaim: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all humankind. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4-5). 

We invite you to be a part of a campaign to Go Light Your World. Not only do we want to light candles in our own homes, but we want to bring the light of hope, peace, joy, and love to our communities and the world by offering encouragement to health care workers in these challenging weeks and month.

Together, may we embody these words from the song “Go Light Your World”:

“Carry your candle, run to the darkness
Seek out the lonely, the tired and worn
And hold out your candle for all to see it
Take your candle, and go light your world
Take your candle, and go light your world”

We are the front line. We can make a difference. Wear your mask. Stay home as much as possible. And be light and encouragement for those risking their lives for all of us.

Go Light Your World.