I am surprised at the number of churches that don’t do Christmas Eve services.  Christmas Eve services are the second most attended services of the year, the first being Easter services.  There are quite a few people who only come to our church on Christmas Eve.  There are also some people who come all the time now, who used to only come on Christmas Eve.  The Christmas Eve services have also been an entry point for several of our regular attenders.  I have talked to Pastors who like to take vacations at Christmas time, but it is such an opportunity for Church Growth that I try and recommend alternatives.  When my children were younger, I would take off the week two weeks before Christmas.  We would have an early Christmas as well as a regular Christmas.  This became a very special time for our family and allowed me the opportunity to make the most of the Christmas season and the openness of people during the season to the church and the Gospel message.

We put almost as much effort in to the Christmas Eve services as we do the Easter services.  We start by decorating the church and adding a lot of lights and poinsettias in the sanctuary.  We begin to talk up the services on the first weekend of December, encouraging our church to invite their friends and neighbors.  We include invitations in our bulletins for them to hand to people as they invite them.  We also do a candy give away the weekend before at our local strip mall and invite people to the services as well.  We do two services, one at 5:00 pm and one at 7:00 pm.  Having options for people helps to bring more people.  We will sing some Christmas Carols, have a couple of special songs, present a 5 minute message on the reason for the season, and then do a candle lighting service.  The services last about an hour and fifteen minutes.  Every year, we see new people come to our Christmas E ve service who show up for a weekend service shortly there after.

This year at Church Growth Consulting we found a new source for candles that we wanted to pass along.  It is called eChurchDepot.  Their prices on candles were the best we had ever seen by about 30%.  It is still not to late to pull together a candle light Christmas Eve service if you get started NOW.