Five Critical Mistakes To Avoid At Your Christmas Services

Christmas is just a few weeks away, and as you put the final touches on your Christmas services, there are a few things that can easily go unnoticed.

Sure, you’ve worked on the message. The band is working on the music.  Your teams are getting ready to serve. 

But there are at least five critical mistakes that, left unnoticed, can mean you miss the potential of reaching new people at Christmas.

1. Underestimating the appeal to unchurched people.

If there’s any time of year unchurched people are most likely to come to church, Christmas is at (or near) the top of the list. 

Christmas is the last remaining holiday where the secular culture echoes (at least in fractured parts) the Christian story. 

And sure, while it’s deeply commercialized, it’s important not to miss that it’s still happening. 

• Stores and streets are decorated with lights, trees, and ornaments.
• Christmas carols fill headphones and speakers (and for every Jingle Bell Rock, there’s a Hark the Herald Angels or Silent Night playing somewhere else).

In other words, Christmas is top of mind. And for many people, it’s also nostalgic. It reminds them of family, their childhood, and simpler and better times. 

It’s easy to be cynical and dismiss culture’s embrace of Christmas as crass, shallow, and commercial. And sure, at times, it is all of those things.

But, a better approach is to realize that, for a change, the culture is listening and perhaps open. The pump has been primed. 

In an era in which only 1% of pastors say their church is excellent at outreach, Christmas is an opportunity no pastor should ignore. 

2. Not fuelling your invite culture. 

In poll after poll, as many as 82% of unchurched people say they are open to coming to church if someone invites them. 

And if there’s any pressure left to go to church as a family (even extended family), it’s at Christmas. Boomer and Gen X parents bring their adult kids and grandkids to services, and spouses ask their partners to come for the sake of the kids.

Why not fuel this by making it easy for people to attend?

• Create a page on your website that’s easy for people to find.
• Offer free ‘tickets’ for your services (not just so you can estimate and cap attendance if that’s an issue, but to create a commitment to attend). 

If there is ever a time to invite an unchurched person to church, Christmas is it. 

3. Being too contemporary.

The challenge with doing Christmas services is that it’s nostalgic for many. 

A few years ago, I decided to make the service more ‘relevant’ and modernize everything—the music, the message. We basically ditched tradition and tried to express the Christmas story in fresh ways with the audience.

I thought it would go over great. Our services were packed to the brim, filled mostly with unchurched people.

I even decided to preach about my favorite Christmas story, John 1: John’s philosophical and theological approach to the incarnation has always captured me. So we did away with shepherds and angels and cradles and wise men. 

Sounds great, right?

…It bombed. I mean catastrophe-level bombed. Nobody liked it. I didn’t even like it. 

Lesson learned. 

The truth is people have expectations at Christmas. They want to hear about angels and shepherds and cradles, and they want to sing Christmas carols.

Go too contemporary, and you lose people. 

4. Being too traditional.

So you must be thinking, well, traditional must be the way to connect with people then, right?

Not so fast.

If all you deliver is the tradition of lessons, carols, warmth, and nostalgia, people miss the earth-shattering nature of the coming of Christ.

It becomes as comforting and innocuous as a warm blanket and cup of hot chocolate by the fire, and as vanilla as a Hallmark Christmas movie (maybe I’ll get canceled for saying that, but hey). 

The result, if you follow the ‘traditional’ script, is that everyone got exactly what they were expecting, and there’s no surprise, nothing to grip the mind and the heart, and as a result, no response. 

What I’ve learned is that the key is to provide the expected songs and baseline message but with a twist.

Yes — Sing O Come All Ye Faithful, but with more power.
Yes — Preach on Luke 2 (or Matthew’s account), but add emphasis on the surprising, scandalous nature of the text and the powerful application to everyday life (teen pregnancy, rough shepherds, no place for a King, or a raging tyrant, etc). 

That way, you provide what people want to hear but also deliver exactly what they need to hear (the life-altering nature of the true Gospel). 

5. Forgetting to follow-up.

If you have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of unchurched people attending your Christmas services but have no follow-up, then what you end up with is… a bunch of unchurched people attending your Christmas services.

They may be back next year, but likely won’t be. 

Most of them are heading off to family dinners, followed by a week of being around family and friends, followed by a New Year’s Eve party, followed by the slow return to work and kids to school…

… So even if they had a personal response to the message and Gospel that night, without follow-up, you risk having their response fizzle and fade. 

A better approach? Have follow-up preprogrammed into your Christmas services. 

A few simple steps can be SO helpful:

1. Have a gift for every newcomer that they get when they fill out a Welcome Card or scan a QR Code. 
2. Link the welcome card response to an automated follow-up sequence via email or text, thanking people for coming and inviting them back to your next service. 
3. Highlight the series you’re starting in the new year and specifically invite all new guests to join you.
4. Pour your time, energy, and resources into having a great first series to kick off the next year and guest assimilation process for all new people. 

A follow-up system is the best way to help people realize the spiritual spark or decision they felt at Christmas and turn it into a lived reality. 

It’s not too late.

Sure, Christmas may be coming up soon, but it isn’t too late to make some last-minute adjustments.

Avoiding these five mistakes can help you leverage the greatest time of year to reach (and keep) more unchurched people than you imagined.