With just two weeks left until Christmas (eek!), you might be tempted to enter “panic mode.” Before you do––let’s take a deep breath.
Instead of running through your mental to-do list over and over again, stop for a moment and remember how much you’ve already accomplished in the past few weeks. Advent is a hopeful time of year that reminds us to be patient and prayerful as we wait for one of the most wonderful times of the year. As we near the end of Advent, try to focus on how these weeks of anticipation have given you so much time to prepare for your church’s busiest days of the year. You’ve done so much for your church, and you should be proud of how it’s all coming together.Feeling a little calmer now? Good! After reflecting on all the great work you’ve done in your church so far, you can turn your attention to the small-but-meaningful tasks that you still have time to do. We’ve compiled a short list of some of the details that you might be tempted to leave for the last-minute (or forget completely!).
There’s one weekend left between now and your big Christmas celebrations––which means you have a full weekend of “practice runs” to test and complete some of these often-overlooked details:
Last-Minute Church Christmas Tips
It’s a pretty standard expectation that you’ll know your church better than we do, but we hope you’ll see an influx of new visitors over the span of Advent and Christmas in the coming weeks! You want your visitors to receive a smooth, warm welcome to give them a good first impression of what your church is really like. If too many things go “wrong,” like not having enough seats, long silences when the choir runs out of songs, or insufficient parking, those visitors might not see the full picture of your church’s mission!
Print Extra Visitor Cards
Print enough visitor cards to make sure you can follow up with each new person who visits your church. Let your visitors know what to expect during the service, how to stay in touch after they’ve gone home, and just how thankful you are that they joined your community on such a special day. And it’s better safe than sorry when it comes to the number you print––make sure you have enough for your normal anticipated visitor count and add from ⅓ to ½ more. Paper is cheap––making a new friend is priceless.
Prepare to Fill the Pauses
Taking the time to embrace the silences can be an important moment in a busy church service. However, make sure all your silences are “on purpose.” Double check with the band or choir so they don’t underestimate the amount of time they’ll need to be playing for. Make sure they have one or two extra selections in their back pocket that would be appropriate for any moment of your service––just in case. Their musical talents should be used to fill your space with beautiful sounds, so plan ahead to avoid lengthy gaps between psalms and songs.
Know Your Capacity
You probably know what your church’s maximum capacity is off the top of your head. If you often have visitors standing against the walls or squishing into pews––that’s a great problem, but those visitors are not very likely to return. Make sure your ushers know how to take care of the overflow.
Do they know how long it takes to get extra chairs down from storage? Are they aware how they should handle handicap seating when the auditorium is already filling to the brim? Hosting a crowd is an easy situation to prepare for, but it can quickly turn to chaos when the service is about to start if your church is already snug. Make sure your team knows how to set things up.
Find Enough People
Related to having a enough chairs and putting up enough signs, is having enough volunteers. You may have heard the statistic that visitors make the decision of whether they'll return to your church during the first 7 minutes of their experience. In light of this, you want to make a good impression the moment their car turns onto your street. If you normally have a parking team, greeters, volunteers at a welcome station, ushers, etc., this is a time where you could need a few more. If you can, try to double-up. There will be an influx of new people who don't know where the bathroom is, or would be interested in learning about how your church started or how to join a small group. This is a great opportunity to have more helpful and friendly faces ready to assist. You can even have volunteers who just walk around before service and chat with any new faces or visitors who've come alone.
Optimize Your Website
You can do more than put some “holiday touches” on your church website. Updating a few photos and writing a holiday message on your homepage is a good place to start, but you should be optimizing the website experience for the surge in visitors you’ll have this time of year. Your website will get even more “extra” visitors than your services will. If you’ve done a good job of attracting new people to your service, you’re hopefully also encouraging them to connect with you online and visit your website. Give them more information and make it easy for them to join at the next level.
This means all of those new visitors will be coming to your homepage, make it easy for them to dig around to see if and how they can stay involved with your church after Christmas. Make sure your “New Here” path is strong, your homepage rotator includes upcoming event information that would be perfect for new visitors, and stories of the real people who make up your community. These new visitors should feel emotionally connected to your church even after just one visit to your website. Help them stay invested after the holidays have come and gone.
