Now is a good time to start preliminary planning for your church’s Christmas program. Pastor Steve Poludinak describes the program used for outreach by Tri-County Baptist Church last Christmas:
Dinner/drama theater/choir cantata
A Christmas Dinner was served quickly by our choir members and support personnel. Various small caroling groups strolled during dinner and sang carols in Victorian period hats, bonnets, and capes. The choir performed a 45-minute presentation, Let All Heaven and Nature Sing, which was supported by CDs and our own PowerPoint imagery slide show. Preceding the choir performance, a ten-minute monologue was given by an “inn keeper,” which set the stage for the events of Jesus being born in Bethlehem. The monologue drama pulled the guests into the setting two thousands years ago in a vivid way to prepare them for the choir’s story in song. Pastor J.O. Purcell closed the evening with an invitation to consider the gift of Jesus Christ. Follow-up response sheets were available for all guests at the tables.
Our facilities had a maximum space for 200 so we “sold” tickets to insure reservations for both nights of the program. The $5 ticket covered expenses for the meal and program. We did not advertise this event because our people invited many neighbors and friends. We were sold out both nights with half of the attendees being non-church guests.
Key things we experienced:
- Major areas of responsibility were delegated to people who took control and enjoyed taking the initiative in their gifted areas, including music, drama, dinner, service & clean-up, advertising, decorations, costumes/crops, or tickets/reservations. Nearly 25% of our church was involved.
- Our people saw this as a unique opportunity to introduce friends and neighbors to our church as we were approaching our 1st anniversary in our new building near The Villages, Florida. For example, one lady bargained to go to a Jewish friend’s Passover meal if she would consider attending her first Christmas event, and another couple had a total of 17 guests.
- We kept things as simple as possible, but we tried to have the best quality as possible. It was a smoothly run event and we had favorable feedback from our guests.
Steve Poludniak, administrative pastor
Tri County Baptist Church
Lady Lake, Florida
See RBP’s new Christmas children’s program, Ready for Christmas.