Wouldn't it be great if just one fantastic church service, event, or sermon could assure that unchurched visitors would come back to your church, learn about Jesus, come to know Him, and become a member of your church? When we create our invitations to Christmas and other special events, we silently hope they will help do just that.

Though we work hard, hope, and pray for great spiritual success, we know one great communication or the event it points people to probably won't do all we wish it would.

Eugene Peterson described the Christian life as "a long obedience in the same direction" and I think successful church communications fit that description. We want to bring people from outside the church into it, involve them with the life of the church, help them to come to know Jesus, and grow to be a mature disciple. It takes many communications online and in print to do that.

Getting people to the Christmas eve or day service or other special event is great, but making sure they come back is even better. To make that happen you need more than the invitation that got them there.

To help you do that, we have a number of communication ideas and free templates that can help. Some will help you get contact information, others will inform people about your church, others challenge them to think about Jesus as more than a baby.

Following are descriptions of essential Christmas Communications along with strategies for using them. The ZIP files below each example contain ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files. You are free to use them in any way you want and to pass them on. All the artwork and text are copyright legal. Or you can use any part of them for inspiration and create your own or pull out the text for digital or social media sharing.

Christmas Event Sign in and Registration Card

One challenge with special events is how do you get people to give you their contact information so you can follow-up. Especially at events where people are moving around, they probably don't want to sit down and fill out a card. Here's an idea we've used these very successfully when we host a Christmas or other holiday event--we do drawings for great door prizes!

One Christmas we had big table at the door and an assortment of wonderful gift baskets. Some had food, others pampering items, all were gorgeously wrapped. One church I know has Target gift cards they give away at all events for when people fill out their information for a drawing.

We are always upfront with people about why we are doing this and what we want the information for. Following is the message on the card; you can also take this message, enlarge it and put it in a literature stand by the cards, when we do that, we have no problem at all with people signing up:

We are so glad you’re here! Please take a minute to fill out this card so you can be entered into our door-prize drawing and so that we have a record of your attendance and a way to contact you about future events for your family. Be assured this information will not be shared or used outside the church office and you can have your names removed from the list at any time by calling the church office.

Following are images of the templates that we have. [Read more...]