This Christmas, use creative ways to engage felt needs in your community and create unforgettable experiences for children and families at your church. Amy Skinner, Children's Pastor, incarnates the passion of Journey Church about impacting the next generation of leaders, children, and families. She shares the following ideas that any size church can use in rural or urban settings.
Blue Christmas
Many people in your community have experienced job loss, loss of health, loss of pregnancy, divorce, or death. Holidays have a way of amplifying grief. Nostalgia runs high at Christmastime, and people get stuck in memories of the way things used to be.
Journey Church in Calgary cares for those who grieve through a "Blue Christmas" service for their congregation and community. For several Christmases, the pastoral staff and volunteers have held space for those needing a compassionate touch. The service is held the week before Christmas. Volunteers serve not so much as greeters but as a warm, welcoming presence in the church's lobby. Each guest to the service receives an ornament on which they can write their loved one's name and later place it on a Christmas tree.
Before the service begins, instrumental music, played capably and gently, creates an inviting atmosphere where participants can enter spiritually and emotionally at their own pace.
Prayer, Scripture readings, and Christmas Carols are interspersed during the service to provide space for reflection. A message from a pastor offers comfort and hope in Jesus. A prayer team equipped to minister to the grieving is available at the end of the service for those who want to receive prayer.
The lights of a Christmas tree are lit in memory of loved ones while those attending write the names of their loved ones on the ornament provided. Near the end of the service, participants can hang their ornaments on the Christmas Tree at the front.
A Grief Group, headed by a staff member, is offered throughout the year to congregants and is available as a follow-up to the Blue Christmas service. It allows them to connect further, but there is no pressure on any attendees to come either because that is not the purpose of this community outreach.
In newcomer gatherings, many people pinpoint Blue Christmas as their first contact with the church and have become strong supporters, inviting others to attend.
Illustrative of the influence of the Blue Christmas service is a single mom and her daughter who participated a couple of years ago. The mom and daughter returned to Journey Church the following year, connected to the community, and made Journey their home church. The mom serves on a greeting team and loves connecting with new people. Her daughter is plugged into the Children's program, which they attend weekly. She saw the value of having a church community in grief and good times.
Ideas for your Blue Christmas service can be found here.
Christmas (and Valentine's Day?) Care Packages and Giveaways
Journey Church made a habit of connecting with their families throughout the pandemic through care packages and connection points. During Christmas, the children's ministry team created fun packages for families with Christmas-themed activities and treats. This was such a hit that they decided to make it even bigger for their whole congregation on Valentine's Day! This included many cookies, coffee mugs and treats for the whole household!
You could follow up the Christmas events with Valentine's Day Giveaways or activities for your families. Volunteers bake cookies, and additional volunteers hand deliver the cookies to Christmas attendees. It's fun for the volunteers, and the cookies taste awesome. Who can resist?
Children's Christmas Production
Imagine the excitement of girls and boys when they are given the opportunity to be front and centre at Christmas time. This Christmas season, how about creating space for children in prime time for a traditional Christmas production?
Parents and adult volunteers remember from days gone by the elementary school Christmas presentations that children worked on throughout the fall semester. With those events becoming rare in public schools, there's an opportunity for churches to fill that gap and, at the same time, teach children about outreach.
Elementary-aged students make irresistible inviters. They serve as actors, actresses, and leaders to younger students in smaller roles. This kind of event is a fun way to engage children who will, in turn, engage their families, friends, classmates, teachers, and neighbours on a Sunday morning in your church. They included students from the Tweens Program (grades 4-6), many of whom are from the community and the only member of their families who attend Journey Church.
The benefits are enormous:
Leaders get to connect with kids.
Tweens grow in their leadership experience.
The children are profiled in prime time.
Preschoolers are included to sing a song or two during that same service.
Other Outreach Opportunities
Journey Church teaches its kids to take ownership and participate in many of its outreach events. Allowing the children, tweens and youth to volunteer at community outreaches such as their Fall Festival and Food Drive or the Christmas productions allows them to build the habits and mentality of being outreach-focused.
Depending on your congregation and the families that attend your church, there could be opportunities to engage with your community in different ways. One suggestion is to use Care Packages for families in your community or to participate in Operation Christmas Child. Journey Church has made this a focus in all age groups by encouraging families to pack shoeboxes and helping in the Samaritan's Purse sorting centre with different small groups. There may be practical needs in your community where those resources may be best directed to local families, in which case children can help in the process of creating care packages for them.
Involving children gives them credit for what they can do, engages them long-term in ministry, and builds them up as leaders.
There is time if you start now to prepare something special with children in your church for Sunday, December 18, 2022.
Amy Skinner is the Children's Pastor at Journey Church, Calgary.
Bob Jones is the founder of REVwords.com, an author, blogger, and coach with 39 years of pastoral experience. Bob is also an Advance Coach with the ABNWT Resource Centre. You can connect with Bob here.