Multifaith Families & Communities
Practical resources for families, churches, and communities where more than one faith tradition is part of the story.
This shelf includes guides for multifaith couples, weddings, families raising children with multiple traditions, interfaith worship, classrooms, holidays, and creating spaces where people don't have to leave part of their religious identity at the door.
Designed to help communities move beyond simply learning about other religions toward building relationships, celebrating together, and making room for multiple traditions.
Explore the featured resources below, or browse the full Multifaith shelf.
Seasonal Resources
A One-Hour Worship Service Honoring Winter Celebrations Across Faith Traditions
How can a Christian congregation celebrate Christmas while genuinely honoring the winter traditions of its neighbors?
Five Lights in the Long Night is a complete, 60-minute, leader-ready worship service that gives equal space to Hanukkah, Bodhi Day, Winter Solstice/Yule, Kwanzaa, and Christmas.
Rather than blending these traditions together or treating other faiths as illustrations leading to Christianity, each tradition is given its own voice, story, music, reflection, prayer, and place within the sermon.
The resource includes:
• Complete 60-minute order of worship
• Hanukkah teaching, Maoz Tzur, reflection, and prayer
• Bodhi Day teaching, contemplative practice, music/chant, and prayer
• Pagan/Earth-centered Winter Solstice/Yule teaching, seasonal ritual, music, and prayer
• Kwanzaa teaching, Lift Every Voice and Sing, reflection, and prayer
• Christian Christmas Gospel, Silent Night, reflection, and prayer
• Full sermon notes for “Five Lights in the Long Night”
• Shared candle-lighting ritual
• Equal prayers for each represented community
• Specific guidance for avoiding antisemitism and supersessionism
• Guidance for avoiding religious appropriation and caricature
• Traditional/public-domain music and copyright notes
• One-page worship-team service flow
Each of the five traditions receives approximately equal time within the service.
The Christian Christmas story remains distinctly Christian. Hanukkah remains distinctly Jewish. Bodhi Day is presented within its Buddhist context. Winter Solstice/Yule honors Pagan and Earth-centered traditions. Kwanzaa is correctly presented as an African American and Pan-African cultural celebration rather than a religion.
The sermon asks what happens when we stop needing every light to mean the same thing.
A room with many lights does not need one candle to extinguish the others.
We can stand beside one another without claiming one another. We can protect one another's freedom, confront antisemitism and racism, practice compassion, care for the Earth, build community, and live our own traditions more faithfully.
Designed with 12-point body text, clean white print-friendly pages, and simple purple and lavender accents for easy reading and economical printing.
Ideal for progressive churches, interfaith communities, campus ministries, chaplaincies, and congregations seeking a thoughtful and respectful Christmas worship experience.
Digital download. No physical product will be shipped.
A One-Hour Worship Service Celebrating Resurrection & Spring Across Faith Traditions
Celebrate Easter Sunday with a worship service that proclaims the Christian story of resurrection while making space to learn from the spring traditions of our neighbors.
This complete, 60-minute leader-ready Easter service explores the many ways people welcome spring, renewal, liberation, joy, returning light, and new life. The service encounters Jewish Passover, Persian and Bahá’í Naw-Rúz, Hindu Holi, Pagan/Earth-centered Spring Equinox traditions, and Christian Easter while honoring the important differences between them.
Rather than suggesting that every tradition tells the same story, this resource helps congregations listen respectfully to our neighbors before returning to the Easter garden and Mary’s unexpected encounter with the risen Jesus.
Included in the download:
• Complete 60-minute order of worship
• Leader-ready prayers and congregational responses
• Passover/Pesach reflection and leader background
• Persian and Bahá’í Naw-Rúz reflection
• Hindu Holi reflection
• Pagan/Earth-centered Spring Equinox/Ostara introduction
• Participatory Four Directions ritual using Air, Fire, Water & Earth
• Easter Gospel transition and reading guidance for John 20:1–18
• Traditional/public-domain music suggestions
• Full sermon notes for “The World Begins Again”
• Participatory seed ritual for practicing resurrection
• Prayers for new life and justice
• Easter closing blessing
• Leader notes for respectfully presenting traditions outside Christianity
• Music and copyright guidance
• One-page quick worship-team order
The sermon moves from Mary mistaking Jesus for the gardener to a larger question for Easter:
What if resurrection is something we are called not only to believe, but to practice?
Plant something. Feed somebody. Protect something vulnerable. Participate in liberation. Tend the Earth. Make room at the table.
The garden is growing. The stone has moved. Morning has come. The world can begin again.
Designed in Easter purple and lavender with a clean white, print-friendly layout and 12-point body text for easy reading and economical printing.
Digital download. No physical product will be shipped.
Help children journey through Lent while discovering how spring, new life, courage, freedom, joy, and renewal are celebrated across the traditions of our neighbors.
Spring Across Traditions is an inclusive Children’s Church/Sunday School curriculum for ages 4–8, beginning the Sunday before Ash Wednesday and continuing through Easter.
The opening lesson gently prepares children for Ash Wednesday—what Lent is, why Christians use ashes, what children may see at church, and what the words and symbols mean. Children are also reminded that they may receive ashes, receive a blessing without ashes, or simply watch.
Throughout Lent, children explore the Christian story alongside spring celebrations and holy days from other traditions:
Getting Ready for Lent — What Is Lent? + Ash Wednesday
Lent 1 — Beginning Again + Nowruz
Lent 2 — Joy That Bursts Out + Holi
Lent 3 — Courage to Be Ourselves + Purim
Lent 4 — Waking Up to the World + Spring Equinox & Ostara
Lent 5 — Sharing What We Have + Vaisakhi
Palm Sunday — Freedom & Remembering + Passover
Easter — New Life + Our Shared Spring Neighborhood
What's Included
Every lesson gives leaders everything they need to teach it, including an expanded child-friendly Bible story, simple Lenten ritual, easy-to-read information about another tradition, “Imagine This Child’s Celebration” sections that help children understand what a peer from that faith might actually experience, wonder questions, crafts, weekly practices, and closing blessings.
The packet also includes a 40 Days of Growing Love activity calendar, an Ash Wednesday: What Will Happen? family printable, and a My Lent Practice activity page.
The curriculum is intentionally written for interfaith and inclusive communities where some children may actually belong to the traditions being introduced. Children are encouraged to share their own family experiences without ever being expected to represent an entire religion.
Throughout the journey, children learn:
Our story matters.
Our neighbor’s story matters.
Spring holds many stories.
We can listen and learn.
Five Interfaith-Aware Advent Candle-Lighting Liturgies
What if lighting the Advent candles could also help your congregation become better neighbors?
Advent: More Than One Light is a complete set of five leader-ready candle-lighting liturgies for Hope, Peace, Joy, Love, and the Christ Candle. Each reading pairs the Christian Advent theme with a light or seasonal tradition from another religious community—while carefully allowing each tradition to remain fully its own.
Rather than blending religions together, the readings invite congregations to listen, learn, and discover that loving our neighbors does not require making their sacred stories ours.
The five liturgies include:
• Hope + Hanukkah — Christian Advent hope alongside Jewish traditions of memory, dedication, identity, and perseverance
• Peace + Bodhi Day — Christian visions of peace alongside Buddhist traditions of awakening, attention, compassion, and non-harm
• Joy + Diwali — Christian Advent joy alongside diverse Hindu traditions surrounding the Festival of Lights
• Love + Winter Solstice/Yule — Christian understandings of embodied love alongside Pagan and Earth-centered attention to darkness, season, land, and returning light
• The Christ Candle — a distinctly Christian Christmas reading that remembers each tradition encountered throughout Advent without turning those traditions into Christian symbols
Each candle lighting includes:
• Two-reader script
• Accessible explanation of the Christian Advent theme
• Background on the neighboring tradition
• Clear language honoring the differences between traditions
• Candle-lighting words
• Congregational response
• Prayer connecting the week's theme with solidarity for the community being discussed
The resource also includes a Leader Guide for Interfaith Advent Without Appropriation, with practical guidance for avoiding antisemitism, supersessionism, religious appropriation, inaccurate representations, and the assumption that every tradition understands light in the same way.
The Christ Candle reading brings the series together with one simple idea:
Loving our neighbors does not require making their stories ours. There can be more than one light in the room.
Designed for progressive churches, interfaith congregations, campus ministries, chaplaincies, and Christian communities seeking an Advent practice rooted in curiosity, humility, religious literacy, and neighbor-love.
The printable PDF features 12-point body text, clean white pages, and simple purple and lavender Advent accents for easy reading and economical printing.
Digital download. No physical product will be shipped.
Help children experience Advent through the wonder of light while learning about the beautiful light traditions celebrated by their neighbors.
Light Across Traditions is a four-week Advent Children’s Church or Sunday School curriculum for ages 4–8, plus a Christmas lesson. Each week begins with a child-friendly Advent candle lighting and expanded Christian Advent story, then introduces children to another religious or cultural tradition in which light has special meaning.
Children learn about:
Week 1 — Hope + Diwali
Explore Mary’s story of hope while learning how Hindu, Jain, and Sikh families may experience Diwali and its Festival of Lights traditions.
Week 2 — Peace + Hanukkah
Travel with Mary and Joseph toward Bethlehem while discovering the Jewish story of Hanukkah, the hanukkiah, and eight nights of light.
Week 3 — Joy + Bodhi Day
Meet the shepherds who wake up to good news and learn how Buddhist neighbors remember the Buddha’s awakening during Bodhi Day.
Week 4 — Love + Winter Solstice & Yule
Celebrate love shining in the darkness while discovering how Pagan and other families may mark the longest night and returning light.
Christmas — Our Neighborhood of Light
Bring the whole journey together as children celebrate the Christian Christmas story while remembering what they have learned about their neighbors.
What’s Included
Each complete lesson includes an Advent candle-lighting reading, expanded Bible story, easy-to-teach “Our Neighbors’ Light” section, child-centered example of how a child might experience the featured celebration, wonder questions, hands-on light experience, craft, weekly practice, and closing blessing.
Leaders do not need previous interfaith education. Background information and important vocabulary are included right in each lesson so leaders have enough information to teach confidently.
The curriculum also includes a 24 Days of Light Advent Calendar filled with simple experiences children can actually do—watching a sunset, finding reflections, making shadows, noticing moonlight, taking a nighttime light walk with a grown-up, conserving electricity, and being a light through kindness—plus black-and-white take-home family cards for inexpensive printing.
Throughout the curriculum, children hear a simple message:
Our story matters.
Our neighbor’s story matters.
They do not have to be the same.
We can listen and learn.
Designed for inclusive and interfaith-friendly Children’s Church, Sunday School, Advent programming, and faith formation for ages 4–8.