Ideas For a More Effective Christmas Ministry

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the importance of tailoring Christmas ministry to fit the unique schedules and needs of your community. He offers practical tips for making holiday services more impactful by fostering positivity, finding fresh insights for a familiar message, and meeting people in both joy and pain during the Christmas season.

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Host

Jeff Iorg

President, SBC Executive Committee

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Jeff Iorg: 00:55

Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention carrying on our continuing conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Today on the podcast, I wanna talk about Christmas. No. I haven't lost my mind.

Jeff Iorg: 01:12

I know Christmas is several weeks away. But frankly, I may be a little late in the game with this podcast because I wanna talk about some ideas about making Christmas ministry most effective. I jokingly said to the person who helps me develop this podcast and produce it that I was going to break into song and sing you all a Christmas carol just to get us all in the right mood. But he said if I did that, he would turn off the podcast right in mid song. He must have heard me sing before.

Jeff Iorg: 01:43

Anyway, well, let's not do that. But instead, let's talk about some ideas about making ministry around the Christmas season most impactful. The first thing I wanna say is that as you're thinking about Christmas and the Christmas season and Christmas ministry, give some serious thought to the scheduling of what you're going to do to make sure that it fits your community and that it really has realistic expectations to make a real impact in the lives of people. Now, I learned this, like I've learned a lot of ministry lessons, the hard way. I came from a church where I was mentored as a young pastor, and in that church, we had certain ways of doing things about Christmas.

Jeff Iorg: 02:33

But my first pastorate was in a far different city, a different church, totally different location. But I tried to do the very same things I had done in the church where I had been mentored and what had worked so well in my past. The first Christmas in the new location, my first pastorate did not go well. Now, it didn't go well in the sense that we had a lot of conflict or a lot

Jeff Iorg: 02:57

of upheaval. It didn't go well in the sense that the participation was very poor. That puzzled me.

Jeff Iorg: 03:07

And so I started asking why and thinking about what was happening, with the events that we planned, and then looking more carefully at the community that I was trying to minister to and connect with. In the place where I was pastoring my first pastorate, I was in a city of about 80,000 people. And many of the members of our church were people who had grown up in the rural areas on the farms and small towns around this larger city, but then for one reason or

Jeff Iorg: 03:40

the other had moved to this, this town of 80,000 for their adult life, work, etcetera. But what did they do on holidays, especially Christmas? They went home.

Jeff Iorg: 03:58

They got in their cars,

Jeff Iorg: 04:00

and they went to grandma's, which meant they were not going to be present for Christmas events that we planned. So for example, in the church where

Jeff Iorg: 04:11

I had been mentored and where I came up in ministry, Christmas Eve was a big service. And we had a really robust and meaningful experience of worshiping together on Christmas Eve. So as I moved into my first pastorate, what did I do? I scheduled a major Christmas Eve service, thinking that I would have a attendance similar to what I had on a typical Sunday morning

Jeff Iorg: 04:34

that had been my experience in my past location. And then about one third that many people turned out on Christmas Eve. I was so surprised.

Jeff Iorg: 04:51

But then I started thinking about it and asking questions and talking to people, and I realized that what I was experiencing was this phenomenon that on Christmas in this particular community, everyone went home, which

Jeff Iorg: 05:02

meant they went to grandma's in the country, and there was simply no one to come on Christmas Eve services. And because of that, I thought, we've got to reformat this. We've to think this through in a different way.

Jeff Iorg: 05:17

So I asked some more questions. When do you leave for Christmas? And a lot of them said, well, we just go up on Christmas Eve. It's only thirty minutes or an hour or two hours out to there, and my parents like for us to come. And even though we live pretty close and we could get up early on Sunday on Christmas morning, we don't really wanna do that.

Jeff Iorg: 05:35

And so, we just, you know, load the kids up in some sleeping bags and some other kinds of things, and we just go out there on Christmas Eve, and we spend the night, and we have Christmas morning and Christmas day with our family, and we usually come home late on Christmas or maybe the day after. Uh-huh, I thought.

Jeff Iorg: 05:51

I've gotta find a way to have a meaningful Christmas Eve experience interfacing with this travel schedule that's just been described to me. So here's what we did. We decided to have what we called

Jeff Iorg: 06:07

come and go Christmas Eve. Come and go Christmas Eve. And in order to do this, I thought this is also a good opportunity for me to train some other people in worship leadership. And so we put together a a simple service that involved scripture reading and prayer and some time of reflection and the observance of the Lord's Supper and a reflection on, the Christmas Eve experience and the coming of Jesus. Now we put this service together so that it would take about thirty to forty minutes.

Jeff Iorg: 06:43

I trained the deacons of our church to actually lead the service. Now that meant we we scripted it out. Here's the scriptures. Here's some prayers. Here's what you say.

Jeff Iorg: 06:55

Here's how you do it. We had a training session for them, which we walked through this. These were mostly men who had been involved in leading worship in different ways, different aspects, so they were comfortable doing it. But at the same time, it was a new thing for them, and so

Jeff Iorg: 07:10

they needed training in how to do it well. And we announced

Jeff Iorg: 07:14

that we would have a come and go Christmas Eve service that would start every hour on the hour at 02:00 in the afternoon till 8PM in the evening. And you could come at any hour, experience the service under the leadership of our deacons, and celebrate Christmas Eve on your way out of town or in whatever way fit into your family's schedule on Christmas Eve. This turned out to be an incredible, incredible success for our church. People came in large numbers, but only in small groups. So we had the services at two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.

Jeff Iorg: 08:00

And in each one, we would have 10 to 25 people come. And we had about the same number of people come through those services as were typically coming to our church on a Sunday morning. Not only did they come for these services, but we were able to have soft lighting, candle lighting in the altar area. People came together and sat on the front rows of the auditorium or then stood together in a circle with our deacon as he led the service at the front of the room. We were able to, with soft music and other things, really set a Christmas Eve spirit and Christmas Eve tone that was beautiful.

Jeff Iorg: 08:41

And another really good thing happened out

Jeff Iorg: 08:43

of this. Our deacons, the confidence they had in their capacity to lead the church and to lead worship was enhanced. And

Jeff Iorg: 08:54

they invited people to come to their particular hour that they were either reaching out to or that they were having a relationship with or that they had some special connection to, which meant that we had people come on Christmas Eve who might not have ever come otherwise. This turned out to be one of the best kinds of Christmas experiences we'd ever had, and we repeated it year after year during the time I was pastor. Again, we designed it this way because it fit the community that we were and it connected with the schedule that families had, and it interfaced well with all of that while at the same time elevating the leadership of our church. Another thing that was very meaningful to me, I would go to the church for the whole time,

Jeff Iorg: 09:48

and I'd sit in the back of the auditorium in the shadows watching the services and reflecting on the people who were coming and praying over them.

Jeff Iorg: 10:05

Brings tears to my eyes right now to think about it. I mean, I would see couples come, and

Jeff Iorg: 10:10

I would realize that their marriage had been saved during this year. They'd had a child born during this year. They'd launched a child off to college during this year. I have people come, and I would think, his dad died this year. Her mom got cancer this year.

Jeff Iorg: 10:30

And it became a pastoral reflective time for me that frankly was very moving emotionally. As I sat in the back watching my deacons lead the services, these small eight to 25 people services, scripted yes, guided yes,

Jeff Iorg: 10:49

but nevertheless meaningful as they read scripture and prayed and observed Lord's Supper and talked about the Christmas story and the coming of Jesus. And me sitting in

Jeff Iorg: 10:58

the back, reflecting, praying, and thanking God for the awesome privilege of having the pastoral responsibility for those dear people.

Jeff Iorg: 11:08

Well, that is what I mean when I say design your service to fit the needs of people and the culture where you're serving and the schedule that you find yourself, able to meet. So I finally left that church and moved to

Jeff Iorg: 11:22

Portland, Oregon to plant a church there. And this will really encourage you, I made the same mistake over again. I moved to Portland, and we got there and opened the church in October. It was coming up for Christmas Eve, and

Jeff Iorg: 11:38

I thought, okay. We need to try something here for Christmas Eve. But because we were meeting in a rented facility, the come and go idea wasn't gonna work because they won't let us in the building for two hours. So I knew that I needed to have a defined time for a service, and it was probably only gonna be one service. But I thought, okay.

Jeff Iorg: 11:55

Based on my past experience with this, I probably were having about a 100 people on Sunday morning. By this time, the church was only two months old, so

Jeff Iorg: 12:02

we had about a 100 people coming. And I thought, well,

Jeff Iorg: 12:07

probably be like 50 show up for Christmas Eve. I mean, you know, it's a new church. It's in a rented facility. You know, probably not gonna be that great of attendance. And so that's what we planned for.

Jeff Iorg: 12:20

Well, two things happened that I wasn't expecting. Number one, people came and that Christmas Eve service turned into the largest service we had ever had, including the grand opening of our church in its first three months of existence. The first Christmas Eve was the largest service we ever had up until that point. The second thing that surprised me was people came dressed up. Now this was the Pacific Northwest.

Jeff Iorg: 12:49

Okay? The Pacific Northwest is cargo shorts, sweatshirts. That's it. That's dressed up. And yet on that Christmas Eve, people came, women in dresses, men that I didn't even know owned a tie, were wearing a tie, jackets.

Jeff Iorg: 13:10

I'm like, what is this? I wasn't dressed that way. I went wearing a sweater and some maybe some slacks or something, but no dressed up, no jacket, no tie, no anything.

Jeff Iorg: 13:22

And I realized it as I talked to people that a lot of the people who came, they weren't even Christians, but they knew how important Christmas was. And they knew that

Jeff Iorg: 13:32

if they'd ever been to church at any time in the past, how high and holy Christmas Eve service could be. So they came dressed up. And again, I was caught off guard because I didn't understand the context and the culture in which I was trying to do ministry. So we retooled. The following year, we capitalized on Christmas Eve.

Jeff Iorg: 13:54

We made it a a spectacular service. I came wearing a suit. Everybody understood what we were trying to accomplish, and we reached out aggressively into our community. And once again, had Christmas Eve as a tremendous surge of reaching out to people in our

Jeff Iorg: 14:09

community. As you're thinking about Christmas this year,

Jeff Iorg: 14:14

think about it in fresh ways. Ask yourself the hard question. What kind of Christmas Eve or Christmas Day experience should we create that really connects with the community we're trying to reach and really services the needs of the Christian community who are part of this particular church family? And just because you've always done it a certain way doesn't mean you have to keep doing it that way. And in fact, if you ask some of these questions of people that are part of your community and part of your church, you may find that they will even say, yeah, It would really be better for us and for our family if we did something different to celebrate Christmas this way.

Jeff Iorg: 14:55

Now when I moved on from those churches and moved to to California and then

Jeff Iorg: 15:00

on to Southern California, I had an entirely new experience. We joined a

Jeff Iorg: 15:06

church in Southern California, a vibrant church that was predominantly African American, and soon came around to the first holiday season. And I noticed that in all the publicity that was being circulated, there was no Christmas Eve service.

Jeff Iorg: 15:22

I thought, why aren't we having

Jeff Iorg: 15:25

a Christmas Eve service? Then I looked further into the information and discovered that we were not having a Christmas Eve service, but we were having a Christmas morning service at 11AM on Christmas day. I thought, how unusual is that? I asked the pastor about it, and he said, oh, that's not unusual. He said, Christmas Eve and morning are family times, particularly in the African American families in this community.

Jeff Iorg: 15:52

But on Christmas

Jeff Iorg: 15:53

morning, after you get up early and your children open their presents and you put on your new Christmas clothes, you wanna go

Jeff Iorg: 16:01

to church. And so after the family celebration is complete, then the church celebration takes place. I thought, I wonder if anybody will come. And they do, and they did. And I saw again that here was a model of a church that was really in touch with its families and really in touch with its community and had structured its holiday schedule to really fit into and meet their needs most effectively.

Jeff Iorg: 16:27

Now, obviously, when you're making this kind of a plan, you're not ever going to be able to meet everyone's schedule and everyone's needs and do it the right that everyone needs it to

Jeff Iorg: 16:36

be done. But I'm asking

Jeff Iorg: 16:38

you to take seriously the idea that you're gonna do holiday planning not based on tradition, not based on nostalgia, not based on the needs in the last place you ministered, but really asking yourself these questions. What can we design in a holiday services around Christmas Eve and Christmas that will really connect with our community and will really service the needs of Christians who are part of this church family? And whatever answer you come to, have the courage to try those things differently than maybe you've done in the past and to have the most meaningful Christmas experiences possible. Now, having said that, let me give you a few other thoughts I have about how to make your Christmas celebrations most meaningful. The first thing I would say about that is don't be afraid to preach or teach about Christmas.

Jeff Iorg: 17:26

Resist the temptation to skip it or avoid it or be bored by it or be bored by repeating it year after year after year. I remember one time, I went to church with my wife on Christmas Eve, and the pastor was getting up to speak. And I leaned over to my wife and said, I think I know how this is gonna turn out. And she gave me the stink eye and said, you be quiet over there. I know what was coming on Christmas Eve.

Jeff Iorg: 17:52

He knew what he was gonna say. I knew what he was gonna say, but that didn't mean it didn't need to be said again. You know, the Christmas story is so unique. God has come among us. It deserves to be told over and over and over again.

Jeff Iorg: 18:09

And just because you've told it before, you've preached it before, you've shared it before, doesn't mean that it doesn't need

Jeff Iorg: 18:17

to be done all over again. And remember, if you're in a healthy church, there are gonna be people who come for Christmas Eve services that are hearing all of this for the very first time. So when it's Christmas, don't be afraid to preach and teach about Christmas. Don't skip it. Don't avoid it.

Jeff Iorg: 18:40

Don't be bored by repeating it. Just tell the story of how God has come among us in Jesus Christ. Now in doing that, one of

Jeff Iorg: 18:51

the things that helped me over the years is while I was willing to repeat the story, every year, I tried to find one new idea about the Christmas story to focus on either in my one Christmas message or perhaps in the whole season of Christmas with several messages leading up to Christmas.

Jeff Iorg: 19:15

I tried to find one new idea or one new angle, if you will,

Jeff Iorg: 19:22

or one particular emphasis that I could bring out that particular year. And typically, in just reading through the Christmas story and prayerfully reflecting on it, meditating on it, that new idea would bloom out of the text and I would say, yeah, I've never seen that before or I haven't thought about that in that particular way before or I've never really emphasized that aspect of this Christmas story before. So don't try to come up with, you know, a a whole new approach to Christmas, but ask God to help you to have one new idea that you can really hone in on or that you can really focus on during the Christmas season. Now another thing I would say about that is when you're preaching and teaching on Christmas, not only focus on one new idea, but really focus on being positive. You know, it's tempting around the Christmas season to be negative or prophetic, as they say.

Jeff Iorg: 20:17

And Christmas is a time when there's obviously, materialism, greed, self focus, all of that. And while it's appropriate to mention those things and to even highlight how our culture has become captured by them, etcetera, etcetera, I wanna strongly encourage you not to camp down on those things as the negative or or prophetic message that you're trying to primarily deliver at Christmas. Christmas is a time to be positive, to make a affirming statement about God and the gospel and Christ coming among us and what it means for us in our

Jeff Iorg: 20:58

lives. So let's work hard to preach and teach about Christmas. Don't skip it

Jeff Iorg: 21:05

or avoid it or be bored by it. Ask God for one new idea that you can share about Christmas or about the Christmas story or one new angle or one new approach or one new theme that you can develop if you're using more than one message. And then work toward being positive. Not negative or prophetic, as they say, but using the Christmas message and the Christmas story to make a positive statement about God coming among us and what that means for us. Now another aspect of Christmas ministry and particularly your messages and what you do around the Christmas season, don't be overly nostalgic or focused on the good old days of Christmas.

Jeff Iorg: 21:50

Remember for many people, holidays are stressful,

Jeff Iorg: 21:56

and they trigger bad memories. And so making the assumption that Christmas is only a warm and cozy holiday, and it only brings up happy, fulfilling memories, is an assumption that undermines what you can really accomplish in the lives of people during the Christmas season. When I say that Christmas can be a difficult or stressful time for people or trigger bad memories,

Jeff Iorg: 22:27

what what do I mean? Well, I'll use my life as an example. I grew up in an alcoholic family. And for me, most holidays involved an overwhelming concern that at some point I was gonna have

Jeff Iorg: 22:41

to deal with a drunk father. Wasn't sure what day would happen. Wasn't sure when it would occur. But holidays for him meant celebrating, and celebrating meant drinking even more. And that meant that the rest of us had to deal with it.

Jeff Iorg: 22:58

So for me, most holidays had some stress built into them when I was a child, and I brought some of that with me into early adulthood. And I and I reflected on that experience, and it helped me to remember that not everyone has all these happy family memories that you can make as a part of a nostalgic look at Christmas. Another reason that Christmas can be a negative or challenging time is it's often the first holiday after a person has experienced some life trauma. For example, it might be the first Christmas after a person's mother or father has passed away. It might be the first Christmas after a a child has gone away to the military or gotten married and moved to another state.

Jeff Iorg: 23:44

It might be, the first Christmas after a divorce or something like that. All I'm saying is that when you come to holidays, it's often, the first time someone has had to live through a holiday in the light of a traumatic emotional experience during that year, which makes it very challenging. This also, however, creates a remarkable opportunity for ministry. Few years ago when I was working as a chaplain with the San Francisco Giants, a player who was not actively involved in chapel and who I had a very limited relationship with, his father died right about the end of the baseball season, which would have been

Jeff Iorg: 24:25

about the October. Well,

Jeff Iorg: 24:30

I reached out to him by text and said, I'm praying for you in the in light of the fact that I heard that your father died. He texted me back, thank you. Please pray.

Jeff Iorg: 24:39

On Thanksgiving morning, I woke up and texted him, first holiday since your father died. I'm still praying for you. He text back, pray hard. I waited until Christmas morning, and I text him again. First Christmas since your dad passed away.

Jeff Iorg: 25:00

I'm still praying for you. He texts back, thank you so much for standing with my family in this very hard time. Well, six weeks later, it

Jeff Iorg: 25:13

was time for spring training. I walked in the clubhouse. This player was seated, looked up, and saw me, stood up from his locker, walked over, threw his arms around me, embraced me, and whispered into my ear, thank you for praying for my fam. That's the kind of emotion that people are sometimes feeling around Christmas. And for you to acknowledge that privately as I did, but perhaps even publicly by saying as a part of your Christmas messages that you're preaching about Christmas because God has come among us.

Jeff Iorg: 25:48

And while that's a day of hope and grace and and, meaning for many of us, the whole celebration of Christmas is often caught up with some deep pain that comes into our lives as well. And highlighting some of these things and then talking about how God can meet us in these points of pain is a very good thing to remember during the Christmas season.

Jeff Iorg: 26:10

And then finally, when you're planning Christmas worship and Christmas activities, don't be afraid to be creative. Now I've talked about these on some past podcasts, so

Jeff Iorg: 26:22

I'm not gonna go into great detail about them today. But I'll just say that around Christmas time, especially Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Christmas Sunday, if it's not a if Christmas is not on a Sunday, these are good services to be creative, to try something new, to do something that's a little different in the worship service. So so for example, one Christmas Sunday, I had a Christmas tree on the stage, and under that tree, had five or six boxes wrapped up. And I had them wrapped carefully. They were boxes that were open on one side, and so I could just push my hand through the paper and tear it open and have the box open.

Jeff Iorg: 26:57

And in the bottom of each box, I taped a card. And in that card was a scripture and two or three points of comment that I wanted to make on that scripture. And I simply said, today, we're celebrating Christmas, and many of you will have either received or given gifts today. And, of course, God has given us his greatest gift, the gift that he gave us in Jesus Christ who came among us and made salvation possible for all of us. But there are also other gifts that God has given us today.

Jeff Iorg: 27:26

Let's review some of those. And I picked up a present from under the tree and tore open the box, looked in it and said, wow. God has given us the gift of and I read a scripture that talked about God's gift that he was giving us of something. And then I talked about that and I said, that's a great gift from God. Let's see what else we got under the tree.

Jeff Iorg: 27:42

And I picked up another one and opened another box and said, look, here's another gift that God has given us. And I read the scripture and I made the applications. I did that four or five times and each one was three or four or five minutes and I've preached twenty, twenty five minutes and I've preached a topical message on gifts that God gives us using scripture that I had taped into the bottom of a box. And every time I opened one, I just read and made my they were my sermon notes. I just read the scripture and preached the notes that were in the bottom of the box.

Jeff Iorg: 28:07

It was a great way to bring some creativity to a message about God's gifts that he gives us that we celebrate during Christmas. Another thing that I did was, I had a a manger scene on the stage. I had a just a stage with table on the stage with just a simple manger scene on it. And and as I collected from people in our church a lot of manger scene components, and these were things that people I didn't collect the crystal ones. I collected the ones people would let me borrow that kids could handle.

Jeff Iorg: 28:37

And I had a Mary and a Joseph and a Jesus, and I had a bunch of shepherds and three wise men and a whole bunch of animals. And I made sure that I had enough for every child who came to the service to have one handed to them by an usher. And they simply said, pastor Jeff wants you to have this. He'll ask you for it during the service. Bring it up to him when he asks you that.

Jeff Iorg: 28:56

And at that time, our church had about 200 people coming. It was during the church plant days, and I probably had, you know, 20 or 30 children there that day,

Jeff Iorg: 29:04

and they all got a little figurine. And then I got up

Jeff Iorg: 29:06

and I said, let me tell you the Christmas story today. And I read some scripture, and I preached a little bit, and I said, now the first people we have in this story is a manger scene. And in that manger scene, there's gonna be some animals. If you've got a camel, would you bring it up here? And five or six kids brought forward little camel figurines.

Jeff Iorg: 29:21

And then I called for the horses, and I called for the donkeys, and I called for the sheep. Then I asked if you've got shepherds, then I forgot if you've got angels, and if you've got wise men. And as I'm reading the scripture and telling the story, I'm asking children to bring these things forward, and kids are just sitting on the edges of their seats waiting to come. And they bring them forward and put them on the manger scene, and pretty much we built the whole manger scene out on the stage. And then I had the end of the Christmas story sermon with all this in front

Jeff Iorg: 29:45

of me. That's what I'm talking about when I say be creative. There's a lot

Jeff Iorg: 29:50

of other simple things you can do, like letting people share the scripture readings with you and read scripture as part of your sermon or using video or other things to bring some highlights into your message that you might not otherwise have done from something related to the Christmas story or some videos that you may use from different Christmas movies and Christmas bible stories that have been done. You get the idea. All I'm saying is this is a good day for you to step out of your routine and do something creative, innovative, a little bit different. Well, I've dropped this podcast about Christmas and hopefully far enough in advance that it influences some of what you do this year. Think about how you can maximize the Christmas holiday season both for reaching out to your community and for connecting with your church family And think about how you need to design your schedule and your approach and your programming to really fit that into it well.

Jeff Iorg: 30:40

And think about some of these ideas I've given you today and think about some another other ideas that you may have and other churches may be doing that give you the way to think about how to do this effectively in your church in different ways. And then as you're actually doing the Christmas service, don't forget to preach and teach about Christmas. Ask for that one new idea and focus on that. Be positive as much as possible, not negative or prophetic on that day. Don't be overly nostalgic.

Jeff Iorg: 31:04

Don't just talk about the good old days of Christmas or try to take people back to something that may not have been real in their lives. But recognize that Christmas can be a point of pain for people, but you have ministry to offer in that pain. And finally, be creative. Don't be afraid to try something new. Christmas is coming.

Jeff Iorg: 31:22

Maximize it for the best impact possible. Do it well as you lead on.