How can we make our Christmas Services better?
With just a few days to Christmas, and while some of us are well planned, some of us are still scrambling around putting things together.
Whether it’s Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, or a kids gathering, carols or Gingerbread and Wreathmaking...
What are the pitfalls we can fall into? How do we avoid them?
James Galea is senior minister of Freshwater Anglican Church.
Dave Jensen will be working next year with the Sydney Anglican Churches Evangelism and New Churches team to encourage best practice evangelism.
http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/improving-your-christmas-talk
--
Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.
How can we make our Christmas Services better?
With just a few days to Christmas, and while some of us are well planned, some of us are still scrambling around putting things together.
Whether it’s Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, or a kids gathering, carols or Gingerbread and Wreathmaking...
What are the pitfalls we can fall into? How do we avoid them?
James Galea is senior minister of Freshwater Anglican Church.
Dave Jensen will be working next year with the Sydney Anglican Churches Evangelism and New Churches team to encourage best practice evangelism.
http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/improving-your-christmas-talk
--
Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.
It is the Pastors Heart and Dominic Steele. And how can we make our Christmas services and talks better with Dave Jensen and James Galea? Just a few days to Christmas now, and while some people are well planned and totally organised, there are some of us who haven't really started thinking about our Christmas Day services or our Christmas Day address, and lots of staff teams are going to be working this week on planning and structure, whether it's Christmas Day, christmas Eve, kids Service, carols. What mistakes have you seen made at Christmas gatherings and how might we avoid them? James Galea is the senior minister at Freshwater Anglican Church and it's his first Christmas in that senior minister role. Dave Jensen is finishing up at EV Church on the Central Coast and will next year be working in the Sydney Anglican Church on a roving brief to come alongside ministers, lay people and churches to work with them encouraging evangelism and helping people do evangelism better. So, james, thanks for coming in, if we can start with you and your Pastors Heart as you come to your first Christmas at Freshwater.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, I love Christmas. I think I just love the familiarity, I love the lights, I love the food, and so we are just the abundance. I think what it is is the abundance of Christmas can be overwhelming, but on Sunday just gone, we had a Thanksgiving service where we just shared all the things we're thankful for. And so for me, stepping into this first Christmas, I'm just amazed at how much God has blessed us again and again, not only as Australians, but also as believers, and so, just when you stop and think about that, it is overwhelming, and so I'm going in with the expectant heart to seeing what God will do, overwhelmed by His goodness and that outpouring of thankfulness. So, yeah, David Jensen.
Speaker 1:As we come to plan our Christmas services, what should be the goal? What's the outcome we're looking for?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a really great question. The first one is to have a goal, so to actually step back and, with wisdom and thought and honesty and clarity, come up with a goal and a desired outcome, that I think there's two parts of this that are critical. The first one is that it's realistic. It's not based on fantasy, on nostalgia, on some sort of data-less dream.
Speaker 1:But actually no, this is going to be feasible, starting with the suburb we live in and starting with the resources we've got.
Speaker 3:There is that, but rather, starting with how people are actually engaging with the gospel in our culture, what are the ways that people are most likely to become Christians? And then, secondly, what are the ways in which our people are engaged? Our Christian people are engaged in evangelism and mission, and so, when you come to Christmas or any evangelistic endeavor with a realistic outcome in mind, I think that can allow you to then make plans about how to actually achieve that outcome. And this is huge consequences for us at Christmas, because I'm persuaded that Christmas, in particular, of all the things that we do during the year, is probably the event that is most filled with fantasy and with nostalgia and with a desire to see something happen which actually very, very rarely happens, and so we need to approach it with a different mindset, a different way, have a realistic goal that we can aim at Okay, we've got to have a realistic goal.
Speaker 1:What's your goal for Christmas carols this Sunday at EV Church and for your preaching Christmas Eve at EV Church?
Speaker 3:My goal. I think the primary goal whenever we preach the gospel has to be the conversion of non-Christians. And now this may be I'm not saying that carols are a gingerbread night is the night that you do a full call to respond, nothing like that. I'm not saying that. But whenever you preach the gospel, you do it for the benefit of the non-Christian person who hears the gospel. However, almost equal in Christmas, particularly Christmas, the goal is to start the mission engine revving for the year to come.
Speaker 3:So you don't run Christmas as the culmination of your year's mission. You run Christmas with the mindset that this is the starting block of the coming year's mission. So you're telling your people every Christmas as you look at December, you look at the year to come. You just beat in a drum saying mission, mission, mission, mission. The outsider and of course this is so easy for us through the gospels Luke, chapter two Jesus has, you know, the angels declare he is the savior, he's on a rescue mission, and so when we have that mindset, that means we're aiming much of our outcomes desired outcomes at Christmas towards our Christian people. But that only works, of course, if we have plans in place, steps in place that they can take hold of for what happens after Christmas. So I like to view Christmas as the beginning of the year, not the end of the year.
Speaker 1:It's a time we, when we gather our stuff together and press forward and that's quite a different mindset between, if you like Christmas and then I turn off and go on holidays or Christmas and I start.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah it is. I think we need to face reality, and reality is hard to face the reality, particularly around Christmas. We can often come to Christmas services carols, gingerbread house, whatever it is and make an events with the idea that this will be a way that we really effectively engage non-Christian people, and we think that because non-Christian people do respond positively to Christmas invitations. But that's fake news. It's completely, completely provable that really very, very few non-Christians either get converted through Christmas, have our first entry into church through Christmas. In fact, many non-Christians who do attend every single year to Christmas services are actually the people who are least likely.
Speaker 1:Almost inoculated.
Speaker 3:They're inoculated to them. They're just coming for whatever motivation they have. So that means if we view success at Christmas, as all the church is full, but we don't see people converted through the year, we don't see more non-Christians coming to hear about Jesus, we don't have any plan for what happens next.
Speaker 1:It's just I don't want to say to waste. So how are you putting all of that into practice, James? How are you thinking, how do you react to what David just said? Then?
Speaker 2:Well, that's hard, because the reality is like the psychologically the year does end for most people mentally Christmas, everyone goes on two weeks and you leave, and so there's that and a lot of it ever goes into Christmas and so even a lot of passes go away at that time. So then going back into energy and sort of that January series of like that mission heat that you have to almost go against physiologically All right, I've got to go in it again, and so that's just the reality of that, but I think it still can be done, I think. But also do you go from one of your busiest Sundays or Christmas times to say the Sunday of early January and is one of the quietest ones, and so, but then it builds up.
Speaker 1:Well, we find the Sunday between Christmas and New Year next to no one's here. The next one, the first one of the year, still pretty quiet, but by the 15th of January we are back to normal numbers in attendance. However, our members aren't there, it's visitors. We actually find out some of our biggest Sundays of the year in terms of visitor attendance is late January, first part of February. Comment on that, david. Yeah well.
Speaker 3:I certainly think the perspective that we bring to bear as we approach this is crucial. So we invest a lot of emotional energy, often into Christmas, into carols, into all these activities, believing we're engaging with non-Christian people in the hope they'll become Christians. It doesn't work, doesn't happen very, very rare. Does that mean we don't run them? No, no, no, no, not at all. We run those things. It's great to run those things, but the primary benefit of those things is this is our opportunity to get right in the mind of our people for the year ahead to say we're a church on mission, mission, mission. And we tell them hey, in January we're gonna be doing X, y and Z. Now it might be that for the first two weeks of January you don't. You do a quietest Sunday, the equivalent excuse expression of an acoustic service. You know like the drum is away. So you've got that, but by you know your context of your area. But by that third week you go boom we're on and this isn't acoustic session anymore.
Speaker 1:Because people are, and that's across the board, because people are trying out the kids programs and all these things are interrupted.
Speaker 2:So practically for us. We'll do that. The first two Sundays of January will be quiet and then 14th onwards we've got a series of Y. If I live in freshwater do I still struggle with one week purpose, next week, anxiety. It's third week, happiness. And I've done that mainly because I don't wanna do the default Summer Sam series, which I think a lot of churches do, because it's just the easy one to roll out, particularly as preachers. Well, I preach on that Sam, I can just roll it out and warm up, but it forces me. Okay if it's in the calendar, if it's blocked in our communicator with church. We're actually doing an outreach event where we're trying to engage with our local area of that disconnect between I live in a beautiful place and yet there's still stroke for like something's missing.
Speaker 3:Well, that's the design of the goal.
Speaker 3:But here's the thing that I wanna offer into that space. Even so, I wanna say yes, in fact I would have recommended the same thing. I think that's brilliant. But even then the non-Christian who comes to those services, they might connect, they might come to something next, but it generally won't be a straight line. Non-christians very rarely follow the path that we have for them. They bounce around the place. So even those services from week two of January onwards, who are they? You're getting in the mindset of your people, you're setting the compass for the year Mission, mission, mission. How are you doing that? Well, you're doing an outsider service, an apologetic service, whatever. But all of this is bunkum. It's for naught If, by term one, you don't have the punchline to the joke. And for us in our culture in Australia, in this particular season, that is generally an evangelistic course.
Speaker 1:In 20 years time it might be an AI something else, but at the moment it's that we run an evangelistic course every term and we find our term. One-one is generally our highest attendance one, yes, that's correct.
Speaker 3:But, what's interesting, we have the same and this is not just at EV, but EV is the fourth church I've worked at. This has been replicated at all of them. This is what's fascinating Most of the people who attend the evangelistic course in term one have not come to Christmas. They have not come to the Sunday services and the lead-up. So where are they coming from? They're coming because our people, by that point, have had eight weeks of mission, mission, mission, and because they've got confidence in the course, or whatever it is, and because you've done a good job of the pre-evangelistic activities in December and January and the evangelistic services.
Speaker 1:So it's all a bit higgledy-piggledy about how they got there. But if you didn't do some of those things, Well, it is higgledy-piggledy, but no, I disagree.
Speaker 3:I'd say it is almost exclusively true that the people who come to evangelistic courses come as a result of invitations from people they know at your church. So these things that you're doing across December and January are building the confidence, flexing the muscle, getting in the mind of your Christians to say mission, mission, mission. Now that means for us, for example, we don't start advertising the term one course in Christmas. We advertise the summer series in Christmas. We don't bait and switch.
Speaker 3:I don't think it's a huge drama to do it, but we don't do that because we just want people to come to the next thing that's on the calendar. We don't have things happening all at the same time. They're very clear. But we also know, in term one, even though there is a huge influx of people who come, 90% of those people have not come to the Christmas activities. They've come because our people have been captured with the eternal realities that we get to preach on every Christmas the reality of heaven and hell, of eternity, the encounter, all these things that come through. And so, as that comes through, they then like oh, you know what? I can invite Bob or James to whatever introducing.
Speaker 1:God or whatever. James, do you want to respond to?
Speaker 2:that I think with, at the very least, christmas is a beautiful moment of giving members of church confidence to invite and seeing someone say yes to that, and so that gives them confidence to do that. I think that happens on Christmas Eve. My gut is most Christians are doing Christmas Eve services. Christmas Day is sort of like an open to the community of come. I'm just realizing how many blockers there are for most people coming to church, like I was thinking the local mosque, if I, well, I would never go to local mosque, I'm not Muslim and so. But if there was an open day at the mosque I would go. And I think Christmas Day is the open to the community or the one day where people can come without the invitation, and so they do enter, yes, without an invitation, but every other Sunday it's I need to be invited, because there's so many walls that alienating people from coming.
Speaker 3:Well, for some people I'd say we found post-COVID there has been a big sort of influx of non-invited, non-christian visitors. I think some of the walls we think are there. They're in loud parts of our society but not in most or not in many segments. But I agree with what you're saying. I want to say that the mission muscle that is flexed in December is for our people to have an easy invite and they can say to their whoever hey, come to Christmas, that's normal, hey, that's a good, and I get off of confidence there.
Speaker 3:But it's worth us knowing that that doesn't mean the non-Christian who comes at Christmas is either going to get converted or be the non-Christian that comes at life. It may be strategically that John Christian invites Judy, non-christian, to Christmas three years ago and she comes and he builds up confidence. And then three years down the track he invites someone completely different to life, but he's built up or sorry, the Evangisic course, but he's built up that muscle during December. But more than that, it will only come as a result of his heart and soul being captured with the eternal realities that we preach at Christmas. And so that's what I will get to preach in 90 momentarily. But that's why I think Christmas is a wonderful opportunity for us to preach to, yes, non-christians, but also to our Christian people, about the missional reality of Jesus Christ's Incarnation at the birth.
Speaker 1:What other ingredients do you make sure are definitely in the service? I mean, we try to put in an adult testimony of someone who's come to faith in the last 12, 18 months. What about you, james?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think for me, with Christmas services we were talking about it before but the strength of Christmas is its familiarity. It's people just want the same. They want the same salad by their auntie, they want the same lights, they want the same traditions, and there's a beautifulness in that, the familiarity. And so when people come to a service, to be honest, they don't want Hark the Herald Angel done alternatively Like Hark the Herald Angel, they just want it straight up. They want because that's that's strength of it, I think. So for me, putting together this Christmas service, that familiarity look, you could just do the same thing each year and there's a goodness to that. And as people come, that's what they love about Christmas. I don't think you can do that any other time of the year, but you can do it. You can't do it with a sermon, which we'll get to in a moment, but that familiarity, I think, is a good thing and play into that. Don't feel like you have to reinvent the wheel every Christmas, you know, and doing it.
Speaker 1:We know we want to do Silent Night on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 3:We know we want to do. Oh, holy Night on.
Speaker 1:Christmas Eve. We know we want to do Joy to the World and come to your faithful on Christmas.
Speaker 2:Even the most young people like on one contemporary services. They become traditionalists at Christmas. You know, everyone becomes traditionalists, but it's like you know, the idea of not even doing a Christmas, celebrating Christmas biblically. I don't think you have to do it, but it's a great opportunity to do it. But it's amazing how as many young Christians are like, oh no, we have to do this because everyone, I think, loves that tradition of Christmas and gathering together.
Speaker 3:I'll just add to that. I couldn't agree more. It also, if we change things around too much and this isn't the preaching as well it really can affect the confidence of our people in what we do. So they've worked really hard, they've got this invite, they've invited the person. We know that that person, just statistically, is unlikely to really heavily engage with what's going on in the way that this person might want or they may. Yeah, we don't know. But the worst thing we can do is go hey, well, it's Christmas, but let's do reverse Christmas this year and I'm going to preach on, you know, ezekiel, and we're going to do this and we're not even going to talk about the birth of Jesus and we're going to do all these non-Christian carols and whatever. Have you seen that? Have you seen that happens?
Speaker 3:I have seen a kind of rejection. Well, no, it's not a rejection, it's a desperate desire to engage creatively, thinking that what will engage with non-Christian people is excessive creativity. I've seen that kind of thing and I think the familiarity is a great strength of ours, of course, but not only for the non-Christian, because it will help them engage. But again, a lot of the visitors at Christmas, you know, aren't likely to return, but summer, but more so that our people when we offer them a hamburger, they know what's in the hamburger. We say we're doing Christmas service. They're like oh, I can invite my X, y and Z and then they turn up. Well, that's what they're going to get. They're going to get this sermon on Jesus' birth.
Speaker 1:Okay, what are you aiming for in the sermon? Well, Christmas Eve. Christmas Day Well you're preaching Christmas Eve and you're preaching Christmas Day as well. Yeah, what are you aiming for on that sermon?
Speaker 2:In some ways I want them to leave, wanting more Mm. Hmm. So it's not going to be too long, it's going to. I know most people coming there, coming with their expectation like this is it's going to be familiar, but it's not going to be relevant. And so to preach in a way that to show them Jesus Christ, from His Word, to say actually, you know, in Luke 2 it says today's Savior has been born to you for them to say, oh, maybe this Jesus fellow who put us aside, thinks they're relevant, actually has something profoundly to say to my life. And so if they can leave that building with that, that's a win for me, because it's just a warmth, the positivity of like, okay, this Jesus actually has something to do with my life.
Speaker 3:I agree with that. I would say one of the one of the opportunities I think we have at Christmas is to really clearly preach to both Christians and non-Christians explicitly. And I think it's important that we engage Christian people with deep, profound and sometimes not new information in the way like we're making things up, but rather offer perspectives of Christmas in ways that they haven't considered before, in a way that can be very helpful. So I you know one of the a few years ago. The passage we chose was Philippians 2. And I remember at the time thinking, ah, that's not, that's a bit of bleak care to what? But of course it's not. That is the story of Jesus becoming nothing.
Speaker 3:Now that gives you the opportunity very clearly to preach the birth of Jesus, and in an engaging manner. And this is, I think, one of the key parts of the non-Christian is to be engaging. Remember, they're listening-ish many, but they're also feeling, and so they will vibe things as much as listening with clarity. So I want to be engaging, I want to be funny, I want to get them like that, but I also want to be very helpfully preaching to Christians. And so it's not the 10 minute youth group, you know. Jesus born blah, blah blah. I'll figure I'll have your lunch, but actually no, no.
Speaker 3:The birth of Jesus has profound implications on the life of Christian people who've been Christians for 60 years, but obviously also the non-Christian people, and I don't think those things are enemies. I think we should be doing that every Sunday, but I that's what I want to offer. I want to say you can do things for Christians, you can preach to Christians in a way that can even better capture them with a mission mindset. And so to talk about the mission, jesus is on. Does that have consequences for how the Christian will view 2024? Well, of course it does.
Speaker 2:So that's what I feel like, when people at the end of the service say, oh, thank you for your Bible speech, kind of thing. And I say I think in there say, oh, it was more relevant, like it was more practical than I thought it would be For me. I say, well, that's the spirit of work, because they come with a presumption. This is not relevant for me. There's going to be boring over my head and then, preached, expository applied and compellingly it's like oh, okay, maybe there's more here than I initially came with.
Speaker 3:And this ties in with the bigger picture strategy of how Christmas works. I think because what we've noticed in culture, of course, is that the reason evangelistic courses are working in our context but not so much in America is because we are so nominal.
Speaker 1:So people are starting. In fact, they're not working in America, sorry.
Speaker 3:I think in America they'll be hot the shot in 20 years time. I think, courses, they will flourish in America. But at the moment evangelistic rallies are still a huge way of seeing people converted in America the Billy Graham type crusade, which I don't think has seen its day completely in Australia, but it's still a predominant way of seeing people converted because of the largely not well still they're nominalism, much more nominalism than here and then their nominalism is active and largely evangelical, sometimes much more than ours.
Speaker 3:But our courses are connecting with people because people are starting further back Now. I don't think that means we need to start the course 10 years away from the gospel. I think we can still start the course at the gospel. But the courses work because they give people the opportunity to engage, to ask questions, to learn from the Word of God, to wrestle with things over a period of time. And when we view Christmas in that way, as I think, like the first week of a course, we're saying to people hey, the birth of Jesus is actually for you because you are lost and give people permission.
Speaker 2:It's okay not to know, because a lot of them like, let's say they're further and further back, like this Christmas I've done before. I'll start with the Panatoni. You know the Italian cake, and for me I've seen them everywhere in Christmas and like, but I never know what they are like, why do you have them? But they're stacks of them, and for me, for a lot of people, jesus might be like a Panatoni. You're seeing around, there's an activity you know, there's a carol or two about him, but you actually don't know what's the purpose of this. Why is there shoes everywhere? And so come with me as we explore the two and see how Jesus is far greater than a Pantatonic and more relevant to you, because for me it's a lot of people, it's like I don't actually know, and then for the Christian it's to be reminded of the wonder of Christmas, to know again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love that and can I say, on that one, it comes to preaching and that ties in with exactly what you're doing and implying. Just fight against being boring. I know that's hard for many of us who are boring, okay, but I think in a general Sunday we should fight against. Sorry when I say fighting is being boring, let me wheel that back a bit to say we need to fight, to be engaging. We can't assume people are on the bus ready to listen Every Sunday. They're not there. But on Christmas they're especially not there. Now, that doesn't mean we need to be like chapeau and have that bigger than life personality, so we're gifted in different ways, but I do think we do need to consider carefully. As you say, assuming people know nothing.
Speaker 1:There's a difference between when I'm speaking to the regular group and there's actually a trust built up that there's a confidence that I'm gonna be interesting. There's a good will. And when I come to this, whether I go out as an itinerant or I come to this particular Sunday, this particular day, christmas day when there's a whole lot of people who don't usually hear me, then I've actually got to start doing. I've got to work much harder to engage.
Speaker 3:Well, this is one of my challenges as a preacher that my boss has been speaking to me about is that I can often forget that exact thing that I've been at the church. I've been at it now for three years, so I don't need to start with the big story and the big sort of hook every week, because they trust me, they'll listen to me, they'll answer the people there, of course, with a non-Christian crowd, whatever. Well, it is necessary, they're not on the bus. You need to go anywhere. Yeah, who are you? Now? I would still offer that, even if you walk up and you begin your sermon without an intro, you just get straight or your intro is just. Well, we're going to continue our series looking at still work on how do you say that You're engaged on Christians and Christians, but at the same point, I think it's right.
Speaker 2:Because I find, with the Christmas sermon because, as I said before, christmas is so familiar it comes to those familiar passages and as a preacher, you think what am I going to say, like that excitement of because that overflows into the way you preach and that I think, if you're desired to be engaging, comes from excitement and actually there's truths here which I want people to know. That fuels creativity and how can we engaging? But what I found is with Christmas, why is Christmas exciting? It's because of other people and we've got young kids. Why is Christmas exciting? Because you sit through their eyes and you can't but help. That's infectious.
Speaker 2:And so what I found with preaching is I get a Christmas advent devotion written by, like Alistair Begg or Christopher Asher or anything like that. And as I'm reading that, I found that personally, from my own heart, I start with me as a child of God, like how can I see and reread these passages and see things that I've not seen before and that has, in life, in my soul, excited me? And then when you know something, you just you want to share it and so when it comes to it makes the Christmas sermon a lot easier because the word has spoken to me and I've done it with someone else and they're excited about Christmas. That's fueled me, and so that partnership I found the last couple of years has helped me not make Christmas sermons to stale.
Speaker 3:Mm, yeah, that's right, and I think part of all of this has to tie in with the biggest strategy of realizing if Christmas is our major evangelistic event of the year, so this is where we hope to see people become Christians or connected in with their church. If that's working where you are, praise God, keep it going, but please let me know how you do it, because it's generally not how it works, as, not you know, the data would show that's not what happens. So, if that's the case, what that frees you to do at Christmas is to, yes, preach evangelistically, but not to be stale. But, as you say, and Christmas is for predominantly Christians, so that we can celebrate and rejoice, and it's that infectious joy that Christians are shaped by at Christmas that separates how we view Christmas from the shopping center Santa Claus, and I think that's something that we want non-Christians to view and witness anyway.
Speaker 2:One thing I've just noticed personally is you know the shepherds? I didn't realize. I was reading Even Better Christmas by Matt Chandler, and the shepherds obviously were outcasts, but their testimony apparently wasn't valid in a court of law. And yet God used, in His sovereignty, them to be the declarers of the rival of Christ and how similar that is to the women at the resurrection whose testimony wasn't valid in a court of law. And I just think that for me, I'm going to this Christmas with that wonder is that God has used the insignificant to proclaim the news for His arrival in resurrection.
Speaker 1:James David, thanks so much for coming in. My guests On the pastor's heart James Galeer, the senior minister of Freshwater Anglican Church, and David Jensen. He'll be working next year with the Sydney Anglican Churches Evangelism and New Churches team to encourage best practice evangelism. My name is Dominic Steele. Next week we have Joe Gibbs and Graham Fuller with us and we're going to be talking about how to do ministry teams really well. Thank you.