Church Planter, Christmas isn't Everything

Christmas is here. Those words provide a level of excitement and dread for most pastors. The time is filled with holiday parties, staff get togethers, church programs, and it is busy. The Christmas season will create momentum in your church and community. People naturally come together to celebrate the holidays. Because of that, Christmas is a momentum builder in the church. As a church planter, you want to make sure you leverage the season and momentum well.

Do a Christmas series with a Christmas Eve Service as the finale. Make sure you invite your neighbors and community to come and enjoy the evening together. Sing Christmas carols, eat your fill of cookies and drink lots of hot chocolate. Find a way to bring some of the best family traditions into the church celebration. In our community, having a Christmas Eve service was always a local favorite.

My favorite Christmas Eve service was held in the movie theater while simultaneously movies were being shown all around. We got permission from the theater management to give out free Christmas cookies to people coming to church or going to a movie. It provided a great opportunity to connect with people in the community who would never think about coming to church. We witnessed people on our guest service team talk people out of attending their movie and joining us for a Christmas Eve service.

I love the Christmas season. However, in all honesty, I actually began to dread the time of year. After doing six Christmas Eve services, my family was beginning to dread me on Christmas. It is a challenging season in which we minister. Here are a few things I learned along the journey and my hope is they help you in yours:

• Make family a priority. What does that look like? First, make room in your schedule to attend school Christmas programs, to go shopping with your spouse and to bake and decorate cookies as a family. Refuse to bump those family times and memories. Communicate clearly and early with your family about the church schedule and don’t require them to be at every program and activity.
• Be prepared. During the fall work ahead on the Christmas series and Christmas Eve service. It comes around every year and having done much of the prep before it arrives will allow you to enjoy the season that much more.
• Cancel all unnecessary meetings in the month of December. They are always poorly attended. Everyone is overbooked with parties and family commitments. Love your family and your volunteers by giving them the month off of meetings.
• Preach the Christmas story. Don’t be anxious about having to be overly creative and having to put a new spin on Christmas. Christmas is God’s story. It is powerful and beautiful the way that it is. People will value you for telling and retelling the Christmas story. Some of our best moments during the Christmas season happened when I just took time to tell the story of Christmas with low lighting and music in the background.
• I know this one sounds crazy but consider canceling the Sunday service between Christmas and New Year’s Day. That Sunday is a probably the lowest attended Sunday of the year. Instead, create a devotional that families can download and do as a family at home. The demand on volunteers are so high in a church plant that your volunteers will love you for giving them a week off. And trust me, some people will tell you the world will end if you cancel a Sunday service. It won’t.

This Christmas season be careful that you don’t lose sight of the star of wonder. Sometimes ministry has an ability to drown out the power and majesty of what God actually did in the Christmas story. Take time this season to lay down the professional perspective of Christmas and connect personally with the love story of God. Christmas is about a Holy God stepping into time, space, and history so that you could be reconnected into a right relationship with Him through Jesus. Christmas is nothing short than incredible.

Have fun this Christmas season, and may your bells have extra jingle. Let these words of Isaiah be a place of comfort this season:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this” (Isaiah 9:6-7 ESV).

Church Planting the Kingdom

Do you know what the first commandment in the Bible is? The very first command in the Bible is “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:22). God from the beginning intended all living things to reproduce, that is, “according to its kind.” For lions that meant “reproduce lions.” For plants that meant “reproduce plants.” For Adam and Eve that meant “have lots of children.”

Throughout the New Testament, we see the church described as a living body. Just as everything that is alive will grow, mature, and reproduce, the same is true for the church. A church does so by starting another church.

This is all a part of God’s Kingdom work. God is passionate that His kingdom will encompass every community, every tribe, and will reach every person.

Fred Herron adds to this thought in his book Expanding God’s Kingdom through Church Planting (pg. 19):

“God intends the church to proclaim and demonstrate the kingdom so that his kingdom will spread to every people group on the earth. The passion in God’s heart for the expansion of his kingdom is a desire for all nations to glorify God the eternal King. He has given the church a kingly commission to go into the entire world and make disciples who are loyal worshippers of the King. The heart of God for kingdom expansion is the foundation for planting new churches.”

With this in mind, church planting becomes more than a novel idea. It is through the planting of new churches that God’s kingdom and God’s reign are extended into communities around the world that are under the reign of darkness.

We fulfill both the first command of Scripture and the Great Commission by multiplying churches. By planting churches we take Jesus into the lives of needy people, we become partners with God’s mission, and we actively expand God’s kingdom. God’s heart beats for church planting and so should ours!

Maximizing your Digital Presence

Connecting with people is important for any business, let alone the church. The challenge is connecting in a personal manner that is also non-obtrusive. For years, most churches have used paper connection cards to gather guest information and to track church attendance. In many contexts it still works and is the most efficient and cost effective way to connect with people. But the game is starting to change.

Mobile devices are changing the way people think and connect. Here are some ways to leverage our digital world in the church today.

Ask people to check-in on social media during the service

The key to this is having someone manage the social media outlets for the church and then send a thank you note to those who “check-in."

Create a digital program versus a paper program

We made this move and it saved our church money.

Not only did it save us money we found it was easier for people to stay connected because paper programs get thrown away and digital programs could be located all week.

Utilize online giving avenues

Make it as easy as possible for people to give to the church. People are regularly doing online mobile banking. Encourage them to do the same when it comes to regularly giving to the church.

Create a church app

There are many great app developers out there that can create a solid, workable and useful app for the church. This serves as one more extension for the church and its people to stay connected.

Consider taking the paper connection card and making it available online

When I was pastoring at Harvest we moved everyone to filling out a digital connection card. It took hours of planning and work to figure it out but it became a huge success. Instantly, our connections went up and it saved us time and money. Furthermore, it added a wow experience for our guests. You can take a look at our creation.

Encourage people to interact with the service via social media

A great way to maximize this avenue is by using hashtags that are specific to a series or sermon. Be creative and come up with a hashtag that people will want to use and that makes sense in how it connects to the church.