[00:00:00] Speaker A: One of the things a lot of pastors struggle with each Christmas season is feeling like I've preached these messages about Christmas so many times before. It can be challenging to do new message series year in and year out. And in today's conversation, we're going to unpack five sermon series ideas for Christmas this year that will help you engage new visitors. We hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow.
You're listening to the Reach Right Podcast, the show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way. Hosted by me, Thomas Costello, and with me, as always, is my co host, Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow.
Well, hey, guys, welcome to the Reach Right Podcast. My name is Thomas Costello and with me, as always, is my co host, Ian Hyatt.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: What's up, Thomas?
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Hey. Not much, man. Excited to talk. Today we're going to be talking about five Christmas series ideas for churches that will help churches engage new visitors. That's the important part I really want to key in on here is that, you know, if you've been in ministry for any length of time, you've preached on Christmas or your church has preached in a Christmas season, an Advent season, and I've been in ministry and pastoring churches. I don't know, I probably have had to lead a Church through 16, 17 different Christmas series over the years. And sometimes you start to feel like, oh, my gosh, I feel like I just said this. Yeah, I don't have anything new to say. And in reality, that's just something that we feel like as pastors and church leaders, I think, is that, you know, I tell you that people don't really remember what you said two weeks ago, get alone last year, it alone five years before.
So there's, it's not like you're at risk in most cases of someone coming up to you. It's kind of like this fear we have that people will come up after service, say, hey, I heard you preach this message already. Like, you've already told us about Herod and you've already told us about, you know, what happened with the shepherds, and I get that already. But in reality, just to put you at ease, church leaders, people don't do that. That's not something that I have ever had happen in my ministry.
I suppose, you know, maybe there's an outlier where that has happened once before, but in reality, it's not something we really have to worry about. That's not to say that you can just recycle the same four Christmas messages every year that you do in December. Don't do that.
But I know sometimes we get into this kind of fear that we're gonna be kind of caught in that rut of preaching the same thing over and over again. So we do this episode here today because we want to help you break free of that. And I want to key in on the second part. We're helping you with some series ideas to help you engage new visitors.
So this is one of those things I think that's really key for us to be thinking about. Whenever we're planning some kind of a series, we need to be asking that question, is someone who's coming to our church new, which happens a lot around the Christmas season, how will they react to this? You know, it's obviously going to feel fresh to them. They haven't been at our church before. Yeah, but how. How is this going to make. How is this going to feel to someone who's there for the first time? Is this something that is going to be relatable to them and.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Will they be able to easily engage with it? Some of those kinds of things. So those are the things we're wrestling with when we come up with this list here.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's good. And I think that that's the key is, I think, as you mentioned, we can get in a rut. We can find ourselves stuck kind of preaching about the same things each Christmas. And I think also to that end, we can sometimes get a little internal and kind of, you know, be tailoring our messages repeatedly for our members more even without trying. It just happens. So I think that this could be a good refresher, give some new insight to make it focus on the visitor first, which is this is a key evangelistic time. So that's good. So why don't I kick us off. The first one is, I think, very relevant for new visitors. Christmas is about hope for the world. So your Christmas message should be about hope. Boy, are we in a time where people need that more than ever. And we're hit with, of course, devastating news daily now, almost. And so.
And so.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Not almost.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: And so I think that we need to be reminded that this is a time of hope. Jesus coming to this earth, dying for us, being raised again. That is, has everything to do with hope for that person that doesn't maybe know him yet and has not experienced that hope yet. So I think that that's a great reminder. You can tailor your series around that.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: Yeah, we're coming. We're recording this year, a couple days after the midterm elections of 2022.
And, man, it's like, it seems like all we hear, especially in, like, these political ad season, which, praise the Lord, if we don't live in Georgia, at least this is over for you for at least. At least a few months, until the presidential one starts kicking off here, I guess. But every political ad I was struck with is like talking about how if you don't vote for me, like, you will have no hope. Right. It's like reminding people of that. Every political ad is that here's how bad everything is, here's how terrible. And that's just kind of the way it is, is that fear is a better motivator and motivator than. Than promise of good things. But really, this is what's so important is that we need to realize that people that we're preaching to, whether they're in our church, but especially someone that isn't yet, we are bombarded with messages that kill hope like that are kind of made to harm that and build fear in us.
Jesus is the antidote to that. The message of Jesus, the message of Christmas is something that is hopeful. And so it's a great sermon series you could build around this. Now, we didn't mention this at the beginning. We probably should have, but each one of these we're going to talk about here, we're going to give you kind of a concept for it. But each one, we actually have three sermon series titles. Graphics. All those things down there, they're linked in the show notes here. So if you're watching this on YouTube or on our site, if you're listening, I don't have anything to show you or to tell you a site or anything, but you can check it in the show notes still. But take a look there we have graphics again and series titles and all those things to build around this, But I think one around hope, which is so lacking in our world, it's going to really do well.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's good. That's good. Why don't you tackle the next one?
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll do next one is kind of a who is Jesus? I think this is an important question that a lot of maybe newer people to faith specifically, but even newer people to your church, they want to know who is Jesus? Or what does your church teach about Jesus? And there are a few times better than about to learn about who Jesus actually is than right around that Christmas season. That's why Christmas is so important. I think the rest of the gospels, like the, like, you know, most of the Gospels, the story of the birth, especially in Luke and in Matthew, it's detailed in the first few chapters of both of those books there. And so I think those two, they really get to the core of who is this person? Like, who is Jesus? The rest of the Gospels are full of his teachings and what he did, his actions, but kind of establishing that story of who is Jesus, why he matters and why he matters to me, that's what we can uncover in this Christmas season there. So I think a series built around who Jesus is is going to really work well.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And of course, that that ties to new visitors or people that don't know who he is yet as. As savior at least, or they may have an idea of who he is. But I think that you hit the nail on the head. You know, scripture and what we usually preach on around Christmas, they really do focus on his identity as the son of God and why he came and all of that. So it's kind of built in right there to be able to have something visitor geared for.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Sure. So absolutely.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: The next one is you can tailor your series around holiday season traditions. This one's kind of creative. I think it's cool. You know, it's not just a time of year because of presents, hot chocolate and holiday movies and all of that. Those are part of the traditions and all of that. And you can kind of tailor that around the story of Christmas as well. So what maybe you're. You take some of the common traditions, I think, that people can relate to out there, that most people can easily relate to, and tailor that around the message of Christmas.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Yeah, this is a good one because everybody. Well, I say everybody, but most people in the United States, this is where most of our audience is, or most of the Western world, we have Christmas traditions that are kind of the same from family to family. Now. They'll be different in different places. In my family, we have Thai food on Christmas Eve. You know, we go surfing a lot of times on Christmas afternoon because we live in Hawaii. And that's not something you could do basically anywhere else in the world. Right. So that's just something that we do here. So we have our own traditions. But there are some traditions that are common to most people. So exchanging of gifts, having a tree, singing carols. If you do those kinds, there's these things we're at least familiar with. And so I think these series that are tied around traditions that everybody's familiar with, they're great for your members, but I think they're especially strong for someone who's coming for the first time because there's that little kernel of relatability.
They'll feel like, oh, yes, I am familiar with this idea of gift exchange, obviously. And it's something that you can talk about the gift that God gave us in Jesus. And you kind of have those natural ties that we see there or the gifts that the wise men brought. You have these kinds of things. So I think anytime you can tie it in with a tradition that everybody's familiar with, I think it adds a certain credibility and makes it more approachable for people that are there for the first time.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: That's good.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Awesome. Next one is Waiting on Christmas. Kind of that feeling. I think this would be kind of like an Advent themed type of a series here. So maybe it's geared up for four different ones and kind of building that anticipation for Christmas.
Who doesn't remember that as a kid, right? Remembering what it was like, just like kind of that countdown till Christmas, like when you're waiting for. For that day. And you know, for us, as when we were kids, it was all the presents that we're gonna finally get on that Christmas morning. Or like, maybe we. Maybe it's not that. Maybe it's. You actually remember Christmas morning. In our family, every Christmas, we had the tradition of we would usually open our stockings, but then to open all of our other presents if we had any, you had to wait till after breakfast. And so for us, that, like, breakfast was the longest breakfast because mom wanted to have a big breakfast and bacon and eggs and pancakes. And as much as I love all those things, opening my presents was my chief concern on Christmas morning. So this deep sense of anticipation, I think everybody can at least somewhat relate to that. And I think that's the idea behind this. For a visitor or someone that's a part of your church, this kind of this anticipation, this waiting.
And I think that's something that obviously is taught in scripture as well. This kind of the world was in waiting for a messiah, for a savior, and along comes Jesus and changes everything. And it really plays well to that whole sermon series idea. So we have lots of. Again, we have three different series and graphics that kind of go along with this waiting idea. But I don't know, I think that's a really good one. This idea of this Waiting on Christmas theme.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that kind of gives you a buildup too, to be able to deliver a. When we're speaking of new visitors, a really good gospel invitation, you know, at the end, you know, of course, when you have that. That build up, it could be a lot more impactful whenever you do give that final invitation, if you do that or whatever.
So I think that's funny. And throughout that, Thomas, you reminded me of the, you know, the Christmas vacation movie with Chevy Chase, which I think a lot of people know of. But there was that each day they'd show the little house and you open the window. It was like on December 18th and then the 19th. And so, yeah, anyway, little visual that popped into my head.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: So that's a good transition. Actually, talking about a Christmas vacation movie.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: It is, because the next one is actually something that my church has pretty much done almost every year, which is, you know, having a. Maybe it's Christmas at the movie. So it's something that's music and I'm sorry, movie and music themed.
So obviously, we know that that's a big tradition that a lot of families have. Probably most, I would guess is that there's going to be those staple movies you gotta watch every Christmas. For me, I just gave away one of those that is Christmas Vacation for me. And there's other ones, and I've actually really enjoyed this, as my pastor's done this for years, is that they'll take a movie and kind of the story and the theme of that movie and kind of tie that to what scripture teaches about Christmas and, you know, finding those similar parallels. And it also kind of gives you some neat juice for production. If you can play some of the scenes of the movies, you'll get people engaged with laughter and funny scenes and those types of things. So it's been a big hit for us and it's relevant again, getting back to new visitors. Relevant for new visitors. Because if you're using common, commonly known movies, that that's going to relate to them.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I think this might be a dying phenomenon in some ways. I think it's a liquidity and it works. Here's why, like, we used to live in a time where everybody, like, watched the same movies and the same songs that were on the radio. And now we're much more segmented as an audience. Right. So that's true. Things that, like, you know, when I was a kid, it was Seinfeld. Everybody watched, even us high school kids. When it was on, we would watch Seinfeld and you'd come to school and you'd talk about what happened in that show when you came back to school.
Now, you know, even with movies like, there's some that a lot of people see, but you cannot count on half of your church having seen any movie?
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess so.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, with. With Christmas songs, I think it's another one. You kind of build it around a set of Christmas songs. I think that's something that also, you know, it's. We have such a segmented thing because we all have our own Spotify playlists. And you're right. Listen to what we want to listen to. And radio has gone away in a lot of cases. So I think 20 years from now, this might not be great advice, but I think today it does still work. This kind of idea that everybody can relate to a certain set of Christmas songs, a certain set of Christmas movies. We all kind of know them. So what's your favorite Christmas movie, Ian?
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Man, I guess it has to be Christmas Vacation, of all of all things. So that's very spiritual of me. But yeah, that's come to mind. Elf. Elf might be a close second.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Elf is great. Yeah. I have to earmuff my kids at that one part with Chevy Chase at the end of Christmas vacation. There. There's a few with Cousin Eddie and all those things there every year at our house. So I think, you know, Home Alone, it's a great one to watch with my kids. I love watching that. Like, we can. I can do that every year. Christmas Story. I heard they're doing a new Christmas Story. Like I heard about that one where he's going to be an adult, I guess. Same guy. Yeah. So should be interesting to see. But you have a favorite Christmas song.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Man, I'm old school with all of that. I think it's Silent Night, you know, just Silent Night. Yeah, I mean, really good. Just. I remember as a kid that getting sang to me late Christmas Eve and. And. Or hearing the. The song before bed and it just stuck with me.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: So, yeah, we're doing old ones, I think. Okam. Okam. Emanuel is probably my favorite of those. So you always struck me as a last Christmas kind of guy, though. I thought that would have been your.
Your favorite.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: That one did not come to mind. Honestly.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: No, I didn't get that. Right. No. No.
Figures.
Maybe I was thinking more of like the All I want for Christmas is you, Mariah Carey. That might be more up your alley. I think so.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Who knows?
We digress. Anyway. Well, I hope this has been helpful to you. That's. Again, we have notes and I hope you take us up on this here because we've done our job to link to different resource providers. They have graphics, titles, all kinds of things. So it's basically your Christmas series in a box ready to go. You have to write the messages still, but it's ready to go for you there. All the graphic side of things there. So check it out on the Show Notes or on the Retwrite website. If you find this podcast episode on there, you can get all those details on there. Do take advantage of that. If this has been helpful to you, it would mean a lot to us if you would rate, review, subscribe, let us know in the comments what you think. Also, if you've listened or watched to this point, let us know in the comments what your favorite Christmas movie is. We'd love to hear what your favorite Christmas movie is and if we haven't seen it, I'd love to check it out. So thanks guys for being a part of the Reach Write family and we'll catch you next week.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: See ya.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Reach Right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way. Looking for more resources for your church? Check us out
[email protected] if this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us if you would rate, review and subscribe on itunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.
Y' all ready to get funky?
