Christmas Archives - Passion for Planting

Your First Impressions Checklist for Christmas

Sean Cronin — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 10:00:58 +0000

by Greg Curtis: Most of the focus at Christmas revolves around what happens in the auditorium, not around it. Yet it’s where the “common areas” surrounding your auditorium/sanctuary are that most of your guests will decide if your church is one they will be returning to or not. That’s why we all need a first impressions checklist for Christmas.

Wherever the “common areas” surrounding your auditorium/sanctuary are, that’s where most guests will decide if your church is one they will be returning to or not

Out in your Common Areas, what can you focus on this Christmas? Here is your First Impressions Checklist to help you make the right choices and get them implemented:

Here’s a good way to conceal a speaker at your campus when people arrive in the parking lot. This is from Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Chandler AZ. These speakers were sending out the greatest music when I arrived last month at the S2 Conference. Great idea!

? Play Christmas music in the parking lot

I have long felt that we are missing a key opportunity for creating a great first impression for our Christmas guests. It has to do with the well known “decision whether to return” that guests make in the first 7 minutes after arriving.

I think it is fair to say that up to half of that 7 minutes is spent in the parking lot. In addition to the lighting and parking lot team, there is one thing that I believe would bump things up to a 10….music.

After arguing in the car, trying to find this place they’ve been invited to, opening up the car door to silence and other people trying to get their kids in line is not a great impression. That’s why places like Disneyland and other churches, year round, play music in the parking lot. They know the guest experience begins there, not when they walk in the doors.Hearing Christmas music would set the tone from the moment they open the car door, let them know they have arrived someplace special, and would grab their mood before more negative things that compete for their attention can win.

At one of the churches I was at recently, the outdoor trash cans double as speakers (see photo). You could do something now without money by just setting up a portable system outside you may use for special events.

Outdoor Christmas Music Checklist

? Secure any approval you might need.

? Find an appropriate sound system to play your Christmas music that allows people to hear it as soon as they get out of the car.

? Recruit a person to be in charge of set up/tear down of sound equipment as well as operation. You might want to recruit a team leader if you have so many services that you will need multiple team members to set up and operate sound.

? Appoint a person to create the right playlist to set the mood you want (contemporary, traditional, nostalgic, secular or not, etc).

? Decide on exactly what time you want the music to begin and when you want it to stop playing.

?Look for eyes that wander inquisitively

Looking into people’s eyes as you walk around to see if they are trying to find something is a call to inquire. “Can I help you find something?” is a great question to ask people staring up at way finding signs or stopping to survey where to go next with their kids. Walking handicap people to the front of the line or the auditorium is a nice touch here too and reflects the heart of the one whose birth we are celebrating.

Need Finders Checklist

? Decide whether you will give existing volunteers (i.e. Parking Lot, Greeters, Ushers, Staff, etc.) vision and training for Need Finding or if you will form a specialized team. If a special team will be formed, write a job description for them.

? Determine if and how guests with special needs and elderly guests will have their needs addressed (think timing, preferred seating, etc.).

? Design training ? for whatever teams will be owning need finding. Include looking for people who need photos taken of their family so everyone gets in the photo.

? Schedule training for team(s) responsible. Share job description in advance with them so they can ask questions.

We call our volunteers “Change Makers” and they are all over during Christmas services at our church directing parking, handing out gifts, performing on stages, and taking photos of guests.

?Take photos for people at any photo ops

Though we have volunteers manning the photo ops, sometime your church’s Christmas decor creates an unplanned photo op for a family or group of friends who would love everybody to be in the photo if they had someone to take the picture. Be that person.

Photo Op Checklist

? Decide if you are going to have special photo op areas set up in your lobby and at strategic places on your campus. Build a hashtag into your photo ops (ours was #ChristmasatEastside) so that when people post their photo on social media, people can find your church.

? Appoint an artist NOW so they have time to send you a design to approve for 1 to 3 photo ops.

? Provide a team of builders to help make that artist’s dream a reality.

? Decide who will set up and tear down the photo ops after Christmas.

?Ask if this is their first Christmas at your church

If it is, have a VIP experience in mind to kick into. Maybe its some candy in your pocket for kids or a gift card for free cocoa in your cafe. If it is, ask how they heard about your church. You will find out things from this spontaneous focus group that you would have found out no other way. Put their answers on your note app on your phone and send them to relevant staff when everyone comes back to the office to evaluate Christmas in January.

VIP Experience Checklist

? Make sure your Guest Service Teams (and/or Need Finders from above) are trained to ask this question as conversations develop with guests.

? Design a simple plan to give that guest(s) q VIP treatment, being very specific as to what you want that experience to look like.

? Include a way of tabbing on their phones the way people heard about your church (this is of course if you don’t ask that question on the guest cards in your bulletin).

? Schedule a time to review the results of the data collected on how people found your church and what that might mean for next Christmas.

On every table for our entertainment at Cornerstone: a yo yo. Some people really are experts at this bad dog and watching people’s tricks while we waiting in a long line for food became a fun distraction.

?Work the lines

If lots of people come early and are needing to stay in your lobby till the doors open, have stanchions for them and/or a special room where you and other Sherpas can “work the room”. We have staff and volunteers sign up for just this every year. Some give out candy, some play a Christmas version of “Heads Up” on their phones with others. On one campus, we even have a volunteer performing illusions for people in line while they wait. Conversation is a great way to connect and welcome Christmas guests but you can’t have conversation if you are not located where the conversations can be found so identify staff or certain volunteers to engage those in the lines while they wait.

Line Experience Checklist

? Identify who will work the lines while people are waiting to enter your auditorium to celebrate Christmas.

? Determine what activities they will use to engage the guests waiting in line.

? Decide what props or supplies will be needed to those activities to take place and who will be responsible to acquire them.

? Schedule those people for each Christmas service.

?Respond with spontaneous prayer

One time in our lobby, I was leaning against a podium that was being used for check in. Someone came up to me to ask for prayer for some people they were inviting to church. I leaned against it and prayed, inviting this person to hold my hands on the “prayer podium” as I did. We laughed about it, but then someone else wanted prayer when they saw it. I moved the podium (a small stand) up to them and did the same thing in a humorous but “get the job done” kind of way. I prayed for a few people spontaneously in the lobby that day. I also got to baptize the people I prayed for from the first request a month later at their small group. If someone asks for prayer, take their hand, include others and pray right then and there. It also shows the heart of God and your church in a way nothing else can.

Spontaneous Prayer Checklist

? Appoint a pastor on call to be available before and after all Christmas services as a specific location.

? Communicate to all Guest Service Teams the availability of that resource with instructions to bring people to him/her rather than abandon their post to do pastoral care.

?Meet family and friends that people have invited

Don’t let people get away with not introducing their guests to you as you wander the lobby. Hearing their stories, having a few lines in your pocket that get a laugh, asking questions like, “How did they get you here tonight?” and “How far did you drive?” among many others are good conversation starters among 1st timers that came on the arms of people in your church. The people of your church will feel very valued that you did so.

Our Lead Pastor Gene Appel sets the example by doing this every weekend much less at Christmas. You can too. You are all powerful jet in the “lazy river” that guides guests into deeper connection with God and your church family.

Do you struggle with finding, recruiting and training enough volunteers for your Christmas services? Next post: a Volunteer Recruitment and Onboarding Checklist for Christmas.

Get together with Staff or your Guest Services team having shared the link to this post. Brainstorm together what it would look like to make the best first impression possible for your Christmas guests.

Check any of the large boxes that represent anything you would like to add to enhance your first impression on your Christmas guests.

Copy/Paste and print out the sublists and delegate them to qualified people who would be excited to run point on that kind of effort. Decide on due dates for specific items.

Schedule an evaluation date in January to evaluate how everything went and the implications for Christmas services next year.

Get your Christmas Volunteer Recruiting & Onboarding Checklist in your inbox*:

*no need to sign up if you are already a subscriber.

Name *
Name

First Name

Last Name

Email *

Church Name *

Church Website *

Thank you!

Source: Your First Impressions Checklist for Christmas

The post Your First Impressions Checklist for Christmas appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Creating Community Over the Christmas Holidays

Patrick Bradley — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 10:00:15 +0000

By Daniel Im: We all tend to spend our holidays in different ways. Some of us spend it with our families, others alone. Some with big Turkey feasts and others with mac and cheese or bbq chicken from the grocery store. However, the one thing that stays constant throughout the holiday season is our need for community.

Although this may be a pretty funny picture of me sitting all alone, and not being a part of the party, this is how a lot of people feel throughout the Christmas holidays. In fact, for some of your small group members, your group may really be the only family they have in town.

So here is a brief list of suggestions for your group to continue to grow through community over the holidays. Feel free to consider one, two, none, or all of them.

Have a big holiday/Christmas potluck. (I’ve already heard of two of our groups doing this – one having a potluck, and the other having a turkey)
Visit a nearby coffee shop after one of the weekend services and just catch up with each other.
Continue to share prayer requests via email, phone, or any other possible means on a regular basis.
Identify those in your group who don’t have family in town and invite them to your home for a meal on Christmas.
Go shopping together on Boxing Day.
Have a New Years Party together.

I pray that over this Christmas holiday, God would grant you such a time of rest, rejuvenation, and strength. I pray that God would shower his abundant blessings upon you and that you would once again be captivated by the beauty of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Source: Creating Community Over the Christmas Holidays

The post Creating Community Over the Christmas Holidays appeared first on Passion for Planting.

11 Strategies to Help You Leverage Christmas To Reach The Unchurched

Patrick Bradley — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 09:00:02 +0000

by Carey Nieuwhof: Any idea what the best outreach opportunity of the year at your church is?

You might think it’s an event you do, or perhaps it’s Easter. But whether Christmas has historically been your best opportunity to reach unchurched people or not, I believe it could be.

You may think it’s far too early to start thinking about Christmas, but think again. Whenever I share these ideas about Christmas each year, people say “Hey, I wish you’d talked about this earlier.” So we are.

So why can Christmas become your very best outreach event of the year?

As our culture becomes more and more post-Christian, we’re seeing far fewer times when the holidays of the church and the holidays of culture sync.

I remember about a decade ago hearing a Toronto DJ refer to Easter as “the first long weekend of summer” (in Canada Good Friday is a holiday and schools still take Easter Monday off…a relic from Colonial days). Good Friday and Easter were completely lost on him. It was simply time off.

Christmas is completely different. It’s the one time each year mainstream culture still pays attention to a Christian holiday.

Our culture still loves Christmas. Sure, you can yell and scream that the motives are commercial.

…

The post 11 Strategies to Help You Leverage Christmas To Reach The Unchurched appeared first on CareyNieuwhof.com.

Source: 11 Strategies to Help You Leverage Christmas To Reach The Unchurched

The post 11 Strategies to Help You Leverage Christmas To Reach The Unchurched appeared first on Passion for Planting.

What you need to do for your Christmas service

Patrick Bradley — Sat, 16 Dec 2017 14:15:33 +0000

Go ahead and click here to listen to this podcast or click here to head on over to the apple store to listen and download this and previous episodes in the Church Planter Podcast series!

Buy Peyton’s newest book “Reaching The Unreached: Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art” over on Amazon.com. You can also download a free chapter and watch a cool trailer for the book HERE or click the image below.

Source: What you need to do for your Christmas service

The post What you need to do for your Christmas service appeared first on Passion for Planting.

11 Ways To Make Christmas Your Best Outreach of the Year

Patrick Bradley — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 10:00:43 +0000

by Carey Nieuwhof: Any idea what the best outreach opportunity of the year at your church might be?

You might think it’s an event you do, or perhaps it’s Easter. But whether Christmas has historically been your best opportunity to reach unchurched people or not, I believe it could be.

You may think it’s far too early to start thinking about Christmas, but think again. Whenever I’ve shared these ideas about Christmas, people say “Hey, I wish you’d talked about this earlier.” So we are.

In addition to this post, Jeff Henderson and I are doing a free live training outlining how to turn Christmas into your best outreach opportunity of the year. Jeff takes all his learning from Gwinnett Church (#ForGwinnett) and I take mine from Connexus Church and hand them to you.

It happens Tuesday October 24th and you can register and join us for free here.

So why can Christmas become your very best outreach event of the year?

It Only Happens Once A Year These Days

As our culture becomes more and more post-Christian, we’re seeing far fewer times when the holidays of the church and the holidays of culture sync. I remember about a decade ago hearing a Toronto DJ refer to Easter as “the first long weekend of summer” (in Canada Good Friday is a holiday and schools still take Easter Monday off…a relic from Colonial days). Good Friday and Easter were completely lost on him. It was simply time off.

Christmas is completely different.

Our culture still loves Christmas. Sure, the motives are commercial. But Christmas is the only time of year when you’ll hear malls belt out explicitly Christian songs like Charles Wesley’s “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing:”

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased with us in flesh to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel

If you follow a lot of Christians on social media leading up to Christmas, you probably have noticed how many people lament over the culture’s disregard of Christ.

Well, you can see the obstacle. Or you can see the opportunity. I choose to see the opportunity. There are so many connection points with our culture you’ll miss if you only see the glass as half empty.

This is no time for the church to be more cynical than the world, which still remembers something is different at Christmas, even if they’re not exactly sure what it is.

Stop complaining about the world. Reach it instead.

As the general population thinks less about the Christian faith, Christmas provides a unique opportunity to reach people who no longer ordinarily attend church.

What’s surprising is that many churches don’t really leverage Christmas to make the impact it could.

At Connexus Church, where I serve, our Christmas service wins hands-down every year for both overall attendance AND attendance by unchurched people. Although from a theological viewpoint, Christmas will never be bigger than Easter, when we think of it in practical terms, our Christmas outreach is always bigger than Easter simply because the culture is paying more attention.

Our culture pauses for Christmas in a way it pauses for little else in the year.

TV and film celebrate Christmas in all of its expressions. Almost everyone decorates their homes, businesses, and cities.

On December 24th and 25th, the Western world comes as close to stopping as it ever does.

I’m not sure there’s any better time than Christmas to connect with those of your friends and neighbors who rarely, if ever, go to church.

Here are 11 ways to make Christmas your best outreach of the year.

Christmas is no time for the church to be cynical. Stop complaining about the world. Reach it.Click To Tweet

1. Design an event for your community, not for your members

So what’s the biggest mistake many churches make each Christmas?

Simple. Too many churches hold a quiet Christmas Eve or Christmas Day service for members and leave it at that.

Others will do little to nothing special.

That makes Christmas the biggest missed opportunity of the year.

Unchurched people want to celebrate Christmas. Why can’t your church help them?

Here’s a hint: if you design your services with the community in mind, your members will love it too. Especially if their friends come and it changes their lives.

Unchurched people want to celebrate Christmas. Too many churches fail to help them do it.Click To Tweet

2. Brand the event around the community, not your church

One of the best decisions we’ve made in the last few years is to take our church’s name off the main branding for our Christmas services.

We simply use the names of the cities we’re in. So for Barrie, Ontario, we’re Christmas in Barrie. In Orillia, it’s Christmas Eve in Orillia etc. Sure, we let people know it’s hosted by a church, but people are looking for a place to celebrate and we want them to know we can host them and their family at an event designed for the city.

We’re expanding our Christmas outreach this year into four cities that are within an hour of each other (which makes specific theming more difficult), so we’re using Christmas Eve in the City as a larger brand.

You can see the way we designed it here. (Note: this is last year’s site. The 2017 site goes live on November 1st…but you can get the idea anyway).

3. Build a special website

If someone has to click through 15 pages of your website to find your Christmas services, they’ll probably give up. And even if you put it on the home page of your website, it’s still a church website.

We started building custom sites a few years ago for our Christmas services and have been thrilled with the results. Here’s last year’s version.

Again, people have Christmas on their mind, and when the site looks like Christmas and there are free tickets available (see below), it’s easier for people to say “I’m in.”

Sites like this don’t have to be expensive. Get a teenager in your church to design one. Or, for a thousand dollars or so, you can have a basic site put together.

Find an easy to remember URL (like ChristmasEveInTheCity.com or ChristmasInYourTown.com) that makes your site more findable, local and shareable.

4. Experiment with multiple service times

Not everyone can make it to your ‘one’ service. This year we’re doing 8 services over two days (the 23rd and 24th) in four cities.

Yes, those are long work days for staff and volunteers, but you can reap a harvest all year long from that investment.

We always offer more than one service time, because the reality is that different families have different needs. Young families seem to prefer earlier services so they can get their kids to bed early or have dinner together. Retail workers need a later service.

This year at our broadcast location, our services will run at 1, 3, 5 and 7 p.m. At our three other locations, we’ve picked the middle to later service times.

The reason? Providing multiple service times gives multiple families lots of opportunities to attend and to invite their friends.

The investment you make in your Christmas service could reap a harvest all year long.Click To Tweet

5. Stretch Yourself and Experiment

To be honest, pulling off Christmas services in four cities is going to stretch our team. But it’s a good way to test out new venues, new places and new communities in which you might one day have locations.

Sometimes stretching yourself calls out the very best in people, challenges them to invite, and it can bring your church into communities in brand new ways in a season in which people are already looking for events to attend.

Sounds like a great combination to me.

6. Give Your Congregation Invitation Tools

Did you know that 82% of people would come to church if a trusted friend invited them?

Yet in a typical year, only 2% of Christians invite a friend to church. Heartbreaking.

Create some full-color cards with details on it which people can hand to their friends.

Last year we tied candy canes to Instagram-like cards to make them easier to hand out to friends. This year we’re also doing business-size cards and some full-size posters. The posters pop up all over our cities in places like Starbucks, hockey arenas, community centres and more.

It’s easier to invite a friend to something like Christmas than to a regular Sunday morning.

82% of people would come to church if a friend invited them. Only 2% of Christians invite friends.Click To Tweet

7. Use social media

Sure, maybe you don’t have the bandwidth to build fresh websites. Just do it for free using social media. Create a Facebook event or promoted posts. Use all your social media channels and get the word out.

Encourage your people to share with their friends. They are your number one source when it comes to promotion because they’re already invested and engaged.

This year we’re doing a Photo Booth at our campuses that will create some fun Instagram moments with dressed up kids and people holding a “Join us for Christmas Eve” signs.

8. Distribute (free) tickets

Why not ticket your Christmas services? Free tickets, of course, but tickets help create demand.

They have also helped us manage fire code. Eventbrite is an inexpensive and easy solution.

Plus, having tickets drive decisions and commitments to attend.

9. Love your community

This year, we’re attempting to give double the amount of money we normally give to our community partners like the local food bank, right before Christmas.

We’re also participating in local Christmas parades and community events in ways that show our community that we’re for them and that God is for them.

Love makes a pretty irresistible force when it’s unleashed on a city. And generosity makes an impression on unchurched people.

Love makes a pretty irresistible force when it’s unleashed on a city. So love your city.Click To Tweet

10. Invite them back

Every year, without hopefully sounding like a commercial, we invite people back for January.

They get a card explaining the new series and dates, times and locations. Last year we even played the trailer for our January series during the services (here’s our 2017 kick off series promo), even though it was anything but “Christmassy.” Because our January series dealt with a felt-need (people don’t like their jobs and find life overwhelming at times), it created a huge buzz and many guests returned in January simply because they saw the trailer.

I know inviting sounds basic, but you’re dealing with unchurched people. Think about it, you would never go to a party unless you knew you were invited.

Unchurched people don’t know they’re invited unless you invite them. So invite them.

You would never go to a party unless you knew you were invited. So invite your community to church.Click To Tweet

11. Plan a call to action

God’s grace is sovereign. We’ve had people commit their lives to Christ during volunteer events and during series about tithing. So God can do anything.

But you need to do your part. Don’t let people walk away bored or with just a big warm fuzzy. Challenge them. People will leave mostly unchanged unless you create a different expectation.

Almost every year, we give people an opportunity to surrender their lives to Jesus… and it’s amazing how many people do. And when we invite them back and offer them steps to take in the new year (like beginning Starting Point), Christmas starts a journey for them that often ends with them surrendering their lives to Christ.

Join Jeff Henderson and Me

Want more?

Join Jeff Henderson and me Tuesday, October 24th for a special live training where we share even more insights and details. AND give you a chance to get in on the Christmas series we’re doing at Connexus Church and Gwinnett Church this December. Imagine having your Christmas series DONE before Halloween and having a fresh strategy to reach your community.

It happens next Tuesday and you can register for free here.

Hope to see you Tuesday.

In the meantime, anything helped you reach your community? Scroll down and leave a comment!

The post 11 Ways To Make Christmas Your Best Outreach of the Year appeared first on CareyNieuwhof.com.

Source: 11 Ways To Make Christmas Your Best Outreach of the Year

The post 11 Ways To Make Christmas Your Best Outreach of the Year appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Do These 5 Things Now to Give Your Christmas Services More Impact

Patrick Bradley — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 09:00:50 +0000

by Rich Birch: Christmas is a really big deal at your church. It’s the time when we celebrate the birth of Jesus and it also represents some of the largest services you may host all the year long.

From this vantage point, all these weeks away from the crunch time, we’ve pulled together 5 things to do, in order to give your Christmas Services more impact than ever before. Typically, these services represent your best time of year to reach people who usually don’t attend any church. Here are just a few ways to ensure that these services have as much impact as they possibly can!

Get Your Services Listed Online

Don’t wait to get your Christmas Services listed online. There are websites that list local events that you need to ensure your services get on-board. It’s not the best idea to leave this to the last minute because the longer they are listed, the better chances they have of being seen by people. Also, the longer they are listed, the search engines accord them more authority.

A few places to make sure your Christmas services get listed on are:

Your Own Website // Start by ensuring your church website has a page with all the required information about your Christmas services listed on it. Link back to this page from across the web when you list the services on other event sites.
Facebook Events // Two billion people use Facebook every day and all of those users are no more than 3.57 connections away from each other. [ref] Although you might not be an active user of the Events tool on Facebook, the audience is just so large that you need to make sure you’re listed here, to promote your services!
Hyper-Local Sites // Undoubtedly your community will have a site focused on local school board politics or talk about potholes on the main street. These hyperlocal sites typically have an events section looking for content to fill in. Patch is the leader in this space with over 900 active local sites. Nevertheless, browse through and you might see someone else offering this service too.
Government Sites // Check your town and country websites because they often provide event listings about what’s happening in your community. These services are seen as encouraging local businesses and can offer a great source of community connections!
Google, It // Finally, drop by Google and just enter your city name and “local event listings” and you’ll find more places to get your services listed.

Buy Your Volunteers a Gift

Serving at your Christmas services is a sacrifice. Typically, your volunteers are away from their family during this busy time of the year. In addition to it, these services are some of the busiest of the year, which means that they are stretched during these experiences. If you act now, you can get a gift for them at a relatively low cost, as a token of gratitude.

Here are some ideas for a small gift for your Christmas volunteers:

Custom Printed Christmas Ornaments from 4Imprint (same from Alibaba)
M&Ms with your logo on them!
Everybody loves a cool swag … a classic!

Go the extra mile and “merchandise” your gifts to your volunteers in such a way that it communicates how special they are. Roll the t-shirts and put a simple thank-you note on them. Set up a table in a special area that highlights the gifts for your team. Wrap the gifts like a Christmas present to give them an extra pop! You’ve invested to pull together this gift, now present it in a way that attracts your volunteers’ attention.

Plan Your Recall Strategy

Christmas presents an amazing opportunity to have those people who generally stay away from the church, attend the services. You might indeed have a higher percentage of your audience “unchurched” during Christmas than any other time of the year. But the question remains. How can we get those people to return to your church in January? The answer is simple. In a very real way, the ‘success’ of a Christmas service is what happens to the attendance in January. Now is the time to plan out your recall strategy in an attempt to encourage as many of those people to return, as possible.

Here are some elements of an effective recall strategy for your church this Christmas time:

Collect Guest Data // Offer your guests a great gift in exchange for their contact information. If you don’t have the contact information of your guests, it’s very hard to follow up with them.

Thank You Email // Send a quick email shortly after the service to thank people for attending your service. Make this as “content rich” as possible with videos from the service, links to social media and other goodies. In this also include an “advertisement” for the January service.

Narrow the Announcement Focus // During the actual Christmas service, work hard to ensure that you aren’t “over messaging” people. The primary goal is to get people to come back in January. Hence, reflect on that during the announcement; show a trailer for January – requesting people to attend.

Hand Out an Invite Card // As people leave the service, hand them a reminder card about what would be happening in January. Ask them to take it home and put it up on the fridge, and refer to it again after the busy holiday season.

Bonus: Bribe Them // This might be over the top for some churches but Hal Seed from New Song Church in California shares how his church has seen great returns rates by offering a “free t-shirt Sunday” in mid-January that they talk about at their Christmas services. They have their volunteers wear the shirts during their Christmas Eve services and let everyone in attendance know that they too can get one for free them if they come back in January. So, great! What free gift could you offer to your people to encourage them to attend in January?

Set Up FREE Tickets

Christmas Eve continues to be critical times for churches to reach out into their community. Many leading churches will use some form of free tickets for these big days to encourage people to register ahead of time for the event.

The scarcity of tickets and its being ‘sold out’ encourages the community to invite their friends early so that they can get their desired service time. It also helps if your church members ask their friends for a confirmed commitment as the scarcity of the tickets projects a need to essentially register their intent.

Free ticketing also results in the church receiving the contact information of every registrant before the event occurs. You can use this contact information to plan your follow-up with guests, even before the actual start of the event.

You can also manage service times better with tickets – as the most “popular” service time fill up and “sell out”, people can be redirected to a different service time. Often, people can shift the service time to a different time of the day and obtain tickets can make that selection process seamless.

Finally, using a service like Eventbrite, your services will be “cross-promoted” with other Christmas events happening in your community!

Add a Service Time

Remember all the work your team put into pulling off the Christmas service last year? Your team invested time, effort and energy to make it great … So why not offer another opportunity for people to experience your Christmas services? You need to make this decision now because it will require some leadership and logistics planning, to pull it off.

Here are 3 reasons you should add another Christmas service to your lineup this year:

Attend One | Serve One // At the core of all the churches which make an impact, are thriving volunteer leaders who are fired up to make an impact in their city. By adding another service time, you are making it more likely that your amazing volunteers will actually be able to attend the services this year!
More Options = More People // If the timings are shifted around even by an hour, more people in the community might be available to take part in the Christmas services. By simply adding more service times, you are making the service available to more people who are caught in between a busy ‘life and work’ schedule.
Stewardship // Your team has invested to make the service great and by adding another service time (even if it’s not full!), you are leveraging that investment to reach more people. It honors the work your team invested into making it all happen, by attempting to get more people experience it.

BONUS: Rest

Lastly, take some time to rest. What if this was the Christmas season that you want to fully enjoy with your family and friends, rather than being totally worn out? Is there a way to slow down now and take some time to rest and reload before the commencing of this busy season? Can you take some time off for a few days and just relax? What rhythms could you build in for this season to lend you the energy needed to give everything you can to this season?

Take some time now to rest before the season starts to heat up. Find time to unplug and take care of yourself and family.

Unplug.

You’ll need to unplug, in order to get ready for what’s coming next!

Download PDF Article

Source: Do These 5 Things Now to Give Your Christmas Services More Impact – unSeminary

The post Do These 5 Things Now to Give Your Christmas Services More Impact appeared first on Passion for Planting.