UK based global development agency Christian Aid is offering people a "thought provoking, chocolate-free countdown to the Christmas celebrations."

A community group in Hoylake, Wirral, will this Christmas be projecting the radical 1964 Pasolini film about the life of Christ onto a church in the town’s High Street.

Advent is "a time of waiting, but it is not a time to sit around and wait for someone to do something," Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori says in her seasonal message.

The season of Advent is about waiting and anticipation. But what kind of Jesus is the church expecting by the way it behaves, asks Simon Barrow. What is it truly mortgaging itself on?