Christmas is usually a time of increased attendance, with many “first-timers” and “occasional participants” showing up in church for Children’s programs, Concerts and Christmas Eve.
Will you have some “invitational events” to help them return after Christmas? What simple “low threshold” steps do you provide to encourage them to come back and give you a follow up look? What personal invitations can you offer?
After the Christmas activities crush, many churches take a break, using the normal lull of activities to let the staff and volunteers recuperate. Some “time off for good behavior.”
But to do so would be to miss an important transition time for congregational members as well as the many lonely neighbors who live around the church.
Our commercial society doesn’t pause after Christmas.
Instead, it rushes us into after-Christmas Sales, entices us with New Year’s Eve celebrations, the Dr. Martin Luther King’s Holiday, and the Super Bowl as we are wearily packing away holiday decorations for next year.
It’s also a time when people nurse their wounds from the holiday damage done by angry encounters, unfulfilled expectations, over spending and the absence of persons from the family celebrations.
In addition, New Year’s resolutions are talked about, although surveys tell us that on average, 80% of New Year's resolutions fail by the second week of February.
Good habits, especially drastically different, are hard to get started and even harder to keep. (And on average, it takes about two months to “set” a habit.)
With a little preparation, the covenant community of Christ, the church, can offer a safe and healing place, a place to start over again and incorporate important changes in our lives. It can a place where life can move closer to God’s dream for all of us if we can help it be that way.
Here are some ideas that could “fill the hole” many people feel.
- Personally contact every visitor and infrequent worshipper. Call everyone of them. Write a sincere, hand written thank you. Send a “doorstep gift.” Be as present on social media after Christmas as you were before. Send a welcome video via email.
- Epiphany is the “Aha!” season when we realize the transforming power of Christ in our lives, who brought heaven’s realm into the world and now invites us to live on the “Porch of Heaven”. (Matt 1:14-15, et. al.)
- Watch Night New Year’s Eve Service: Once a staple of Methodism, it can be a much-needed quiet place of contemplation and reflection in the midst of a consumerist world. A place of re-evaluating values and setting priorities.
- Congregational Renewal of Baptism (On the Sunday after Epiphany) A great time to invite congregational members to renew their Baptismal vows and to preach on the meaning of Baptism entrance into the Kin(g)dom/Realm of God/Heaven being real and with us. (Phil 3:20)
- Sermon series on Prayer, especially Centering/Contemplative Prayer. It’s the real “power for their resolutions” that helps them focus and strengthen their priorities.
- Announce New Small Groups / Classes for Adults starting soon after New Year’s day. Short term, Mid-term or Long Term support groups, workshops or classes on relevant topics: Weight Loss, Prayer, Racism, Grief, Addictions, Parenting, Singles etc.
- Sermon on “Improving your Relationships” with spiritual insights into Honesty & Repentance, Confession and Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Healing.
- A Marriage Covenant Renewal Sunday/Service on the Sunday before Valentine’s Day. A sermon on marriage and what it takes to have a good marriage could be offered. (NOTE: This is a very powerful time for many couples, however individuals in marriages who have recently lost a partner - within 5 or more years? - may find it very difficult to attend. This service needs to be announced and done with sensitivity to never-marrieds, hope to be marrieds and those in difficult marriages as well.)
The beginning of the year is a great time to reach out and remind people about the higher purpose of the church. You actions can carry the "Christmas Spirit" of Christ with us into the new year.
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