Planning your Christmas outreach and feeling uninspired? Here’s what a few of our partner churches and organisations are getting up to this Christmas season to help make Jesus known in their communities.

CityGates Church in Norwich are running three different carols events this year, each with a different style and focus.

• Carols in the Park – “We book the bandstand in our local park and have carols and a ‘no rehearse nativity’. We take loads of costumes so any members of the public can come and dress their kids up and take part. We also take a load of flasks of hot chocolate and serve them under an event shelter, and give out invitations to our other events and give away books.”
• Carols for Kids – “A raucous(!) service with games (and sometimes a tiny bit of craft) incorporated. It has more of a feel of a Holiday Club with a sketch running throughout the service which does all the teaching. We also get our toddler group to do a song in the middle as a way to draw that community in.”
• Pub Carols – “One of our local pubs invites us each year and we take a pianist (we’re blessed with someone who is brilliant at improv and jazzes everything up) and a pile of carol sheets and people make requests. It is rammed every year. Not our best opportunity for high gospel content (other than the words of the carols of course), but gets us known in the community.

Carrubbers Church in Edinburgh are running a few different events and services over the festive period, including collaborating with another church to run outreach events.

• Christmas Services  – “We are basing our Christmas theme around Bear Grylls’ book “The Greatest Story Ever Told” as a sort of hook, then our services will be from Luke’s gospel.
• Craft Events – “We are joining with another church to do a wreath making event with Christmas message and an advent candle making event.”
• Carol Services – “We do a “nine lessons and carols” event to appeal to the traditional Christmas carol service lovers.”

Faith in Kids have produced a resource called “The Adventure of Christmas” to help children and young people hear about the meaning of Christmas.

Each of the 4 lesson documents contains lesson plans for under 7’s and over 8’s, a script for a kids slot and an outline for an ‘All Welcome’ service based on the same content.

You can use the lesson plans as a Sunday School series or in an after-school outreach program during Advent. Use the ‘All Welcome’ service outlines as the basis for services suitable for everyone – young and old, church family and visitors alike. 

You could even combine elements from different weeks to create your own whole-Christmas-story extravaganza (e.g. a Christmas festival service or outdoor Nativity Adventure).

What are you planning for Christmas? Let us know at info@apassionforlife.org.uk