Can you believe that Christmas is only 10 days away?! Or maybe even closer if you’re reading this in the future. With one of the craziest weekends for churches quickly approaching, we wanted to create a list of five (free!) ways you can promote your church’s Christmas services so that more people can hear the good news of Jesus this holiday season.
Talk About It!
This might seem like an obvious one, but it’s the most important. Your team needs to be talking about your Christmas services from the stage on a regular basis. Simply put, if your pastor and staff is not excited about something, then chances are your congregation isn’t excited about it either. Having your pastor show visual excitement and build hype around an event (i.e. your Christmas services) will go a long way in getting your congregation to buy in.
Social Media
Whether you like it or not, social media is one of the most effective ways to share information. With one click, you can reach thousands of people with your message. Make sure you are promoting your Christmas services on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can even get creative and come up with a fun “campaign” of regular posts that are both humorous and informative. Maybe that looks like a funny photo of your team rocking their best “we are so hyped on life right now!” face and a caption that says “These guys are excited for [your church’s] Christmas services….are you?” People love a little humor, and a little humor combined with important information will definitely be helpful to your audience. Additionally, you can ask members of your congregation to share information about your Christmas services on their personal social media pages. If just 20 people with 500 friends each share about your services on Facebook, that’s up to an additional 10,000 people who can learn about your church.
Tell a story
Is there someone in your church who was deeply impacted by a past Christmas service? Tell their story! This could be a blog post, an interview on Sunday morning, or a video that you share on your app, website, and social media pages. Ask them questions like, “What was going on in your life before coming to church?”, “How did God speak to you during the service?”, and “How has God used this community to draw you closer to him?”. Being transformed by the love of Jesus is truly the best thing that could happen to someone this season (that’s why we want people to come to church, right?), and sharing tangible stories about that transformation is a great way to connect with people on a personal level.
Push Notifications
Like we mentioned above, you need to be building some hype around your Christmas services from the stage, but unfortunately some (or let’s be real….many) people will go home from church, become busy with their daily tasks, and forget that important call you made to share your Christmas service info with their friends. Push notifications are a great way to follow up announcements made from the stage. If you have a Subsplash app, you can easily schedule out a few friendly reminders for people to invite their friends, and share the event on social media. If there is an action item someone could do from their phone, make sure to include that in the notification as well. Push notifications have a much higher visibility rate than emails, and your congregation will be able to respond immediately.
Make it easy to get connected
So Christmas comes and you have a great service. Lots of people show up, hear the gospel, and want to get more involved in your church. What’s next? Following up with clear communication. This may seem like another obvious one, but it will be the difference between those new people getting connected to your church or never coming back. Make sure that any resources about becoming a part of your church are easy to find an readily available. If you have a connect card, make sure to have it available both during your service and in your app so people can fill it out at any time. If your church has small groups or service teams, make sure that information is easy to find in your building, on your website, and in your app. Any next steps for newcomers should be clearly communicated and readily available.
As Christmas quickly approaches, our team here at Subsplash is praying that this season would be fruitful and that God will use each of your churches to forward the gospel. We love serving you and can’t wait to hear your amazing stories of God’s grace over the next few weeks!