Lead On Podcast

On this episode of the Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, discusses the phenomenon of "Christmas creep", highlighting how the Christmas season has extended into earlier months due to cultural demand for hope and family gatherings. He reflects on his experiences in various church contexts, noting that ministry leaders must adapt their Christmas planning to fit their specific community dynamics. 

Creators & Guests

Host
Jeff Iorg
President, SBC Executive Committee

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From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.

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Jeff Iorg:

Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Orch, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. That's what we do on this podcast. We talk about the ins and outs, daily grind, ups and downs of ministry and local churches and organizations that are trying to advance the gospel. Well, it's the middle of October, and I'm thinking about Christmas.

Jeff Iorg:

Are you? It's likely that you are. Because as a ministry leader, you're well into your plans of what Christmas is going to be like in your congregation or in your ministry. And you're thinking a lot about how to maximize that season of the year for ministry to people and for outreach to your community. So I wanna talk about it today, in the middle of October, to help you think through and get ready for, either making your plans or at this point, perhaps fine tuning your plans

Jeff Iorg:

as you move toward Christmas. Now the first thing

Jeff Iorg:

I wanna say is that I invented a word a few years ago or a phrase called Christmas creep. And what I mean by that is that Christmas seems to be creeping into a longer and longer season of celebration. I noticed, for example, that there are now Christmas commercials that are on, television prior to Halloween. That's how early Christmas advertising is now starting. I noticed that on Hallmark Channel and other channels like that, that Christmas movies are now starting back in October or early November, not just during the Christmas season traditionally after Thanksgiving.

Jeff Iorg:

And I also noticed that Black Friday sales, which used to be those big day sales big one day sales after Thanksgiving that were supposed to kick off the Christmas shopping season have now been extended significantly before Thanksgiving with all kinds of Black Friday type special sale events trying to jump start the Christmas retail season.

Jeff Iorg:

Now I have to be careful here because my first response to all of that is the old man get off my yard attitude. I

Jeff Iorg:

am frustrated that Christmas has been turned into this retail spectacular and entertainment, experience that has to be expanded into October and in order to facilitate what our culture is trying to draw out of the holiday season. Well, that's my first response. My better response is to ask the question, why? Why is Christmas creep a reality? Why is it that Christmas has been expanded to include, many more weeks leading up to the traditional holiday time?

Jeff Iorg:

Well, I think there's several reasons. 1st,

Jeff Iorg:

Christmas creep happens because people are looking for hope. And Christmas is a season that's traditionally connected to hope, and people are looking for that, and they wanna look for it longer than just 1 week a year. Christmas creep happens because people are weary, and they wanna rest. I know that for many organizations and churches after the Christmas season is a is a period of rest and break, and people want that. And so they wanna try to extend that feeling longer into the year.

Jeff Iorg:

Christmas creep happens because Christmas is a time when families come together, and people want families to get together even more and more often. And quite frankly, it's also expanding because some people have a spiritual impulse that's satisfied by Christmas. They're Easter and Christmas churchgoers, and they like to think of Christmas as a spiritual season that they can expand a little longer than maybe just the one Sunday around Christmas. What I'm trying to say is that there are some things that the expansion of the Christmas season says to us about what people are looking for in our culture that ought to inform some aspects of how we do ministry during the Christmas season. It ought to inform the kind of messages we deliver, the kind of services we plan, even the tone, that we set for our Christmas season and what that's like in church ministry or church organizations.

Jeff Iorg:

So the fact that Christmas is expanding might be frustrating because you might say, well, it's only because of greed. They're just wanting more, and they're trying to suck the life out of Christmas and make it a retail and an entertainment holiday. Well, yes, there is something to that, but don't get caught up only in in that perspective. Also, recognize that this expansion of the Christmas season really is an opportunity for us to understand what's driving that reveals some needs in the lives of people that we then have the opportunity to tailor ministry messages and programming to meet as a part of the Christmas season. Now a second thing I wanna say about planning ministry around Christmas is that you really need to pay attention to your culture and how your community observes Christmas and even how your church culture observes Christmas while you're planning these opportunities.

Jeff Iorg:

Now if you've been in your church for a number of years, you've probably already learned these lessons, but if you're newer in your community or if you're a church planter in your community, then maybe there's some lessons here for you particularly that will help you to plan the initial or the early years of your Christmas celebrations and Christmas services.

Jeff Iorg:

Here's what I mean.

Jeff Iorg:

When I first moved to my 1st pastorate, I moved to a town of about 80,000 people. And that community of 80,000 was a magnet for a lot of people to move from the small towns within a 1 hour drive of that city. Even though 80,000 is not that big of a city, it was the it was the largest one in our particular region. And so these smaller communities on an hour drive in all directions were really feeder communities as teenagers would grow up, go off to school, get jobs, or wanna find jobs in, manufacturing or even in the in, blue collar occupations. They would find themselves moving to this larger city to get life started and make their home.

Jeff Iorg:

Now, I moved to this city. I become a pastor. In my 1st year, I want to plan really meaningful Christmas Eve services. And so I did what I had done in my previous ministry context. I assumed that church would be other community was the same and that the church would respond to the kind of programming that I would put together.

Jeff Iorg:

And so we made our plan, and we put it all together, and we had Christmas Eve services, and almost no one came. Attendance plummeted from the previous Sunday, and in fact, the Sunday that was on the Christmas weekend when Christmas Eve and Christmas came, that particular Sunday also was a very low attendance. Now the 1st year this happened, frankly, I I was disappointed, a little bit surprised, and quite frankly, a a little mad about it because I thought, what what's wrong with all these people that they stay at home on Christmas? Well, don't they understand how important this day is that we that we reach out to our community, and we invite people to come, and we gather as a church, and we experience this together? And then started doing a little research, asking some questions, paying attention to some situations, getting some input, and here's what I learned.

Jeff Iorg:

Because our community was a magnet for people to move to from these smaller communities around it, guess what happened on Christmas? Everybody went home to grandma's.

Jeff Iorg:

And so all the young couples in

Jeff Iorg:

our church and all the families in our church that had moved to the town and gotten jobs, gone to school, all of those

Jeff Iorg:

things, and started their lives and made their lives there. When the holidays came, they left town, and then since I was

Jeff Iorg:

a younger pastor and I was reaching a lot of younger families, the problem only got worse as the years went by. And so in my 1st pastorate, Christmas was not a big holiday in our church. It was not a high day of attendance. It was not a day that many people poured out to come to church. Instead, it was a day that we learned we needed to plan for a big exodus of people, that people were going to be leaving town to go out to their parents in those small communities around and, enjoy holidays with their families and extended families in those locations.

Jeff Iorg:

So once I had a reset of my expectations, I was able to plan meaningful Christmas services going forward that did not include these large gatherings of people on the Christmas weekend. Now, I left there and I moved to Oregon to plan a church. Here again, I went there now with my expectations. I've been in a church where everyone left town for Christmas, and I had these smaller Christmas Eve and Christmas day services, And so I moved to Oregon, and I think, alright. I'm in an unchurched culture.

Jeff Iorg:

People here don't even go to church. Why would I expect them to come on Christmas Eve or make Christmas Day a special day? So we'll plan a, you know, a relatively low key experience. But we did try to use our first Christmas in our church plant as an opportunity to reach out to the community. So, we put out some flyers and some materials and some publicity inviting people to come to church on Christmas Eve, and we told our church members to invite their friends and to, to if they were in town, to make it a priority to participate on Christmas Eve.

Jeff Iorg:

I expected a smaller crowd and frankly, a fairly casual experience. And back in those days, even as a church planter, we we we tended to dress up more for church as ministry leaders, and so I would often wear a coat and tie on Sunday mornings even meeting

Jeff Iorg:

in a church plant. Well, on that Christmas Eve, I showed up in casual pants and a Christmas sweater expecting

Jeff Iorg:

a a smaller crowd and a more casual sort of laid back type service. Boy, was I wrong.

Jeff Iorg:

I was shocked when the parking lot started filling up

Jeff Iorg:

and people started getting out dressed in their finest clothing. I had guys getting out of cars wearing suits that I didn't even know owned suits, women in dresses,

Jeff Iorg:

dressed up for Christmas Eve service. Well,

Jeff Iorg:

I learned something from that experience. Christmas Eve was, in their minds, a high and holy day, a special day that you made a special effort when you

Jeff Iorg:

came to church. Now this came out of the fact that even though I

Jeff Iorg:

was in a very unchurched culture, that didn't mean they didn't know anything about church, And so they thought, well, Christmas is Jesus' birthday. Our church is having a service. It must be a really important service. So everybody got dressed up

Jeff Iorg:

to come. No one announced that

Jeff Iorg:

they should do this. No one told people to do it. It's just what people did. And there I was in my Christmas sweater looking out over this audience of people thinking, what did I miss here? Again, it was because I didn't understand my culture in terms of planning how we would do Christmas Eve.

Jeff Iorg:

And then the other thing, in the opposite of my previous experience, we had opened our church that fall, and when we got to Christmas Eve, we actually had the largest attended service that we had had up until that moment in the history of our church, including our grand opening. The largest attended service we ever had was that Christmas Eve service, and that pattern continued into the future. Over the next 5 years, we capitalized on Christmas Eve as a major outreach service because we knew that was a day that many people wanted to come to church. And even in an unchurched culture like we were in Oregon, people poured in and wanted to be a part. So that's the second example of how culture shapes what you do in planning these special services.

Jeff Iorg:

And then I moved to Southern California, and I joined, a predominantly African American church, a large church, which was a commuter church. It was not in an African American community. It was a what I will describe as a magnet church for African American, professionals and for African American families. It was a church that was really built around the 2 focus points of the incredible expository preaching of the pastor who'd been there for about 25 years and the very high integrity, high, quality organization that the church modeled. So these two things meant the church became a magnet for African American professionals and African American families that many of them drove 20, 30, 45 minutes to come to church on Sundays.

Jeff Iorg:

Well, we joined the church, and we came up to the first Christmas, and we noticed there's no Christmas Eve services. There are no Christmas Eve services.

Jeff Iorg:

I thought that's really unusual. But as a new member, I didn't say anything. But by the 2nd year, when there were no Christmas Eve services, I asked the pastor, why doesn't our church have a Christmas Eve service? And he said, well, two reasons.

Jeff Iorg:

1, in African American families, Christmas Eve is really a family moment, and it's a time when families really get together. But he said, but even more importantly than that, we're a commuter church, and asking people to commute

Jeff Iorg:

a significant distance on Christmas Eve is counterproductive to having the kind of meaningful service we would want to have. They're already stressed about the holidays, rushing home from work or shopping, and then to add a drive trip on that particular evening is really not something we found

Jeff Iorg:

to be productive. And so our very strong, very vibrant, very healthy church

Jeff Iorg:

never had a Christmas Eve service while I was a member for 8 years.

Jeff Iorg:

Now I'm just telling you

Jeff Iorg:

that you can't have a fixed set of expectations of what Christmas and Christmas Eve services need to be like. In some churches like my first one, we had to scale down because so many people left town to go visit grandma on Christmas and Christmas Eve. And because of the location where we were working and because of the kind of young families we were reaching, the problem was there every year. A diminished attendance on Christmas, and it wasn't a diminished interest in our church. It was just the reality of the cultural context we found ourselves.

Jeff Iorg:

Moving to Oregon, planting a church there in an unchurched culture, but that did not mean people didn't know something about church or have an imagination about what church was supposed to be. Well, Christmas is about Jesus' birth. That's the centerpiece of the church. Why wouldn't we dress up for church on Christmas Eve and make it a big moment that we attend church together? And then, a third church that was a commuter style church in a different cultural context doesn't even have Christmas Eve services.

Jeff Iorg:

All I'm underscoring is, while you're planning for Christmas, it's appropriate to take into consideration your ministry context and not feel obligated to compete with the church across town or the church where you moved from or the church in a different culture or the church even in your city that's in a different situation. But instead, to really think through what's our cultural opportunity, what's our church or ministry organization opportunity, and make the most

Jeff Iorg:

of it. Now having said all that,

Jeff Iorg:

let me then conclude with some suggestions about what you can do in particular, at those Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services that will really make them, I think, the most meaningful in whatever context you decide to have them. Now, of course, if you decide not to have them at all, you can just move on from the podcast at this point. But assuming you're having some

Jeff Iorg:

kind of Christmas Eve service, here are some suggestions. Number 1, if you preach, preach about Christmas.

Jeff Iorg:

Resist the temptation to skip it or avoid it or be bored by it. Resist the temptation because you're repeating the same story year after year after year to belittle it or to move too quickly through it

Jeff Iorg:

or to not give it the time that it deserves. Preach about Christmas. There's a reason that people love the Christmas story. Don't hurry through it. Don't belittle it.

Jeff Iorg:

Don't skip it. Don't avoid it. Embrace it. Even something as simple as reading the full Christmas story as it's found in the gospels and combining them to create a reading that has all

Jeff Iorg:

of it together, even something as simple as that is powerful as it reinvigorates people with the origin story of our faith.

Jeff Iorg:

Oh, the Christmas story, preach about it, read it, savor it, revel in it. Let the familiarity of it wash over people. Don't make the mistake

Jeff Iorg:

of thinking, oh, everyone's heard this. Nobody wants to hear this again. Don't make that mistake. No. Instead, use the familiarity as an asset to bring the kind of comfort and inspiration and joy and peace and satisfaction and hope that can only come through the Christmas story.

Jeff Iorg:

Then second, while you're using the Christmas story, and you may think, well, you know, everyone's heard it. Well, try to preach one new idea each year.

Jeff Iorg:

In other words, you're holding up the Christmas story like a like a diamond, and you're turning it in the light, and each year, you wanna pick up just one refraction of the light of that Christmas story and focus in on that. I I've done this various different ways over the years. 1 year, I decided to preach, the the people of Christmas, and I picked out Mary, Joseph, the the shepherds, and I think, Herod. And I and I preached about how each person saw the Christmas story and how from their perspective it unfolded and what they we could learn about the Christmas story by seeing it through their eyes. That's one way, to approach the the Christmas story.

Jeff Iorg:

And another year, I approached it by saying,

Jeff Iorg:

let's look at how worship was a part

Jeff Iorg:

of the Christmas story. And, of course, you have Mary's incredible worshipful song that she sang in gratitude to God. You have the angels breaking in in worship and all that went on, with that. And so you can take different aspects of the worship that took place in the Christmas story and and talk about that. Another year, I I focused my new idea or my my key idea on the common nature of the Christmas story.

Jeff Iorg:

And I talked about, you know, born in a manger, denied room at the inn, and those kinds of things that just humanized what was happening in that Christmas story moment. So as you're reading through the Christmas story and preparing to preach and teach about it, don't shy away from it. Embrace it. Let the familiarity of it

Jeff Iorg:

be an asset, not a liability, and don't feel like that

Jeff Iorg:

you have to come up with 20 new things to say about something that everyone already knows. But instead, as you're reading and thinking and preparing, ask God to help you come up with one new idea or one fresh insight or one new perspective, if you will, that would help you to teach or preach the Christmas story from that angle or from that direction. A third thing I would say about it is

Jeff Iorg:

don't be negative or, quote, prophetic on Christmas. Listen. Christmas is not the day to critique people

Jeff Iorg:

for materialism or greed or selfishness or anything like that. Look, there's a day to preach on all those things, and in fact, the Bible has some pretty strong words to say about greed and materialism and issues related to, selfishness,

Jeff Iorg:

but don't do it on Christmas Day. Save that for another day.

Jeff Iorg:

Christmas Day is the day to celebrate gifts and the generosity of people who give them. Christmas Day is a day to celebrate God's gift to us and how that models for us selflessness in the face of so much selfishness in our world. Christmas Day is the day to laud or magnify or congratulate people for a year of service that comes out of their understanding of Christ and what he means in their lives, not to criticize them or put them down for what, what they may have not done during that year. Don't be negative or prophetic on Christmas.

Jeff Iorg:

Another thing is, don't be overly nostalgic or focus too much on

Jeff Iorg:

the good old days of Christmas. You know, for many people, past holiday memories are stressful and often trigger bad memories. You know, in my life growing up, holidays were saturated with alcohol. And so I don't have a lot of really happy childhood memories about holidays. Now I have a few, a few that stand out where our family did something together or a special gift was given or something like that.

Jeff Iorg:

I I have those. But a lot of my holiday memories around Christmas and New Year's and 4th July

Jeff Iorg:

and those kinds of events, a

Jeff Iorg:

lot of those memories were being concerned by what would happen as alcohol flowed freely at those events in my family.

Jeff Iorg:

And so when you talk to

Jeff Iorg:

me about the good old days related to holidays, if you're meaning the last few years of celebrating in my family today, okay, that's fine. But don't make the assumption that everyone has a lot of happy childhood memories about the holidays that you need to rekindle every time you have one of these celebrations. Sometimes, the holidays can be stressful because of what they trigger in our path. Also, holidays don't necessarily always speak of the good old days because there are sometimes that tragic events have been associated with holidays. People passing away near a holiday that happened in in my family with, my mother's husband dying on a holiday.

Jeff Iorg:

So when you think about, the good old days and getting people to think with nostalgia about the Christmas season and other holidays, just be careful that you don't put too much emphasis there because not everyone may share that trip down memory lane that you hope will be so positive. And then finally, at the Christmas season, don't be afraid to be creative. Christmas is a good time to try something new. I've done so many creative things on Christmas that, really were well received. Instead of my normal preaching style, for example, 1 year, I had a Christmas tree on the stage, and I had about 6 presents underneath it wrapped up in different, festive, you know, ways.

Jeff Iorg:

And I had placed inside each one of those boxes a, a card that was like the point of a sermon, which had a a word and a scripture that went with it and a short set of notes for me. And, I would call a child up from this audience and I would say, hey, would you please come up on the stage and just select the gift and let's open it and see what we're getting this year. And the child would come up and pick up a present, bring it to me, and I would open the pay the box. I mean, tear off the paper. Now, I had these wrapped, where they were open.

Jeff Iorg:

There there was no box. It was just an open box that was wrapped. So when I tore the paper off, I could look in the box and say, oh, look what's in this box. This box is a box of hope. And then I would read the scripture from the Christmas story about hope, and I would then talk about it for 2 or 3 minutes.

Jeff Iorg:

And I would say, that's a great present. Let's see if we can get another one. And I'd pick another child and have them come up and pick up a second box and give it to me. Oh, look. This box has a gift of peace in it that we've been given.

Jeff Iorg:

Listen to this verse, then I'd read the scripture, and I would explain how the Christmas story brought us peace. You do that about 3 to 4 minutes with 5 or 6 boxes. You've got a 20 to 30 minute message on Christmas, and you've done it in a creative way that was a way to present the topics of faith, hope, peace, different aspects of Christmas, and then having children come up and hand you the box, that was another way to get the audience engaged and give kids a sense of anticipation. Who's gonna be up there next? Will it be me?

Jeff Iorg:

Will I get to be the one? It was a really great way to be creative with reading scripture and telling the Christmas story. Another way, I another year, I I set up a a village scene on the stage. You know, we had a number of women in our church who had these ceramic villages in their homes, and I I secured, you know, 8 or 10 of pieces of that from 2 or 3 different women and put them together and made up, like, a Christmas village on the stage on a table. And I said, you know, it was a it was a village somewhat similar to this, that Jesus, came to many years ago.

Jeff Iorg:

When Jesus comes into a village like this, he comes in to affect people in all walks of life and connects with him in various different ways. And I said, for example, he came to a hotel, and I pointed to the hotel in the village and I said, here's how that happened. And I read the scripture of him being denied, or Mary and Joseph being denied a place at the inn and finding themselves in a manger. And then I said, and then Jesus moved down the street to this barn like structure here. And and I used the the the, the parallels, to this village scene that I had built to describe how Jesus had come and how he moved through various parts of the village and different aspects of life, and how he still does that today interfacing with and connecting with all kinds of different people.

Jeff Iorg:

Another a way that I've done this in the past is, just using different people to participate in the service so that I had prearranged for people to be my scripture readers or to come and lead in prayer or to do different aspects of the service in that regard. As a part of that, allow having them come forward perhaps and light a candle, read a scripture, say a prayer, something like that. And this is a good way to get 5, 6, 7, 8 people involved, using people to do these various components of your service in the in the service. But perhaps my favorite one of these was, I arranged on the stage just a blank table, and I said, today, I wanna tell you the Christmas story, and I want the children of our church to help me. Now I had recruited, a lot of help for this.

Jeff Iorg:

I I talked to a lot of different people, and I got manger scene pieces from different people. So we probably, at that point in our church, had 40 or 50 children coming. And so I had, enough manger scene pieces that every child who came was given 1. And I said and they were told by the usher, this is gonna be used in the sermon. Hold on to this until pastor Jeff asked you for it and then bring it to him.

Jeff Iorg:

And everybody that was in the service got one. Now there was only 1 Mary, of course, and 1 Joseph, but I could have and 3 wise men. We did have only 3. But I could have multiple camels and multiple sheep and multiple cows and multiple shepherds and multiple angels. So where there were these large numbers in the, possible, I was able to include every child in the service.

Jeff Iorg:

And then I got up

Jeff Iorg:

and said, let's now tell the Christmas story and build it here on this table as I tell it. And I said the first thing, and I pulled up and set up a manger, scene like a little, you know, stable scene, and I said, this is the stable that we're going to build the story around. And I started telling the story, reading the story from scripture, and then I would say, now we've come to an important part as we gather here at the stable. There need to be some animals. If you have a cow, would you bring it forward and place it on the manger scene?

Jeff Iorg:

And 5 or 6 children stood up and started walking forward. And so, I involved every child in the service at one point are bringing forward and putting it on the table. It was amazing. They came, most of them, with such reverence, carrying their person forward or carrying the animal forward or carrying their angel forward. A couple of them so excited, they jumped up and just ran forward.

Jeff Iorg:

They couldn't wait to get it there. But that kind of spontaneity and that kind of sense of togetherness was a tremendous contribution itself, even to the service. So, don't be afraid to be creative. Christmas is a good time to do something that's a little different, maybe a little unusual. You say, well, what if it doesn't work?

Jeff Iorg:

Well, people are very forgiving on Christmas. So even if it doesn't work exactly like you planned, probably still be appreciated by the church family. Well, today I've talked about getting ready for Christmas. We talked about how important it is to capitalize on the expanded interest in Christmas that people have in our culture. I talked a little bit about how to diagnose some cultural issues that may determine the kind of Christmas celebration you have on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or during the Christmas season.

Jeff Iorg:

And then, I've given you some suggestions about how to actually plan some things in a Christmas Eve or Christmas service that might be different, innovative, unique, or reminders how to do it more effectively. I know it's only October, but soon Christmas will be upon us, and I want it to be the most