Rocking Around the Clock For Your Christmas Eve Services: The Importance of Christmas Eve

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Rocking Around the Clock For Your Christmas Eve
ServicesThe Importance of Christmas Eve
Dont miss this Strategic Day for Evangelism!

• By
• Tom Cheyney

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Rocking Around the Clock For Your Christmas Eve
Services

• With the holidays just in front of us, I want
  to challenge you to not let the next six weeks
  between Thanksgiving and Christmas come and go
  without preparing for this key strategic
  opportunity. This is a unique time when you can
  touch the unchurched, de-churched, and
  non-churched individual who during this time of
  the year seeks a touch from the Incarnational
  One. Beginning with the days following
  Thanksgiving and leading up to the pivotal
  Christmas Eve services, there will be many
  unreached who will decide to attend a Christmas
  Eve service somewhere!

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Rocking Around the Clock For Your Christmas Eve
Services

• This one day (Christmas Eve) is becoming the
  most strategic opportunity to touch the lives of
  individuals of all ages. There is a sense that
  this one service is politically correct for them
  to get a glimpse of, or touch from, the Holy One
  in your church.
• Let me suggest that we learn how to Rock
  Around the Clock During our Christmas Eve
  Services! For this Key Day of Outreach, plan
  early and creatively advertise well in advance of
  your community event.

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Rocking Around the Clock For Your Christmas Eve
Services

• Why do I call it a Key Day of Outreach?
• To begin with, far too many churches settle
  for the mundane and dreary instead of the charged
  and cheery format for Christmas Eve.
• Many churches feel like they have to do
  something for the older folks so they throw
  together a service, bring out last years sermon,
  and dust it off for a rerun. The result is
  planned boredom and manufactured spirituality
  that lack any reflection of the miraculous and
  the incarnational.
• Christmas Eve is a day when many who very
  rarely come to worship will be in attendance.
  There may be as many as two to four times the
  normal amount of people you generally have when
  the church gathers for weekly worship. What does
  that mean for both preparation and your churchs
  sense of balance? Think carefully about how God's
  Spirit may be prompting your regular worshipers
  to show kindness to all.

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Rocking Around the Clock For Your Christmas Eve
Services

• WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
• Read further
• It is Christmas Eve. The doors are opening at
  your church and the celebratory crowds begin to
  rush into the worship center. What are you going
  to do?

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Rocking Around the Clock For Your Christmas Eve
Services

• May I offer you a suggestion that this day could
  be a great day of outreach for you and your
  staff? (Hope you got your Christmas shopping done
  early!)
• Instead of checking out early for the holiday,
  make this a day of impacting your community!
• How about offering a menu of Christmas Eve
  services that are planned for drawing the
  community and less for your weekly constituents?
  Even a small church plant could offer at least
  two different times or styles for the day.

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Rocking Around the Clock For Your Christmas Eve
Services

• Larger churches could offer various venues and
  styles. One option to consider is molding a
  Christmas Eve service that offers three or four
  forms that seamlessly flow from late afternoon to
  early evening. The only thing that would change
  would be those who attend. The flow would
  include times for reflection and times for
  departing while a new group of searchers enter to
  sense the incarnate.

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Rocking Around the Clock For Your Christmas Eve
Services

• As we get ready for the holidays I wanted to
  give you some things to consider as you plan
  future Christmas Eve services
• Christmas Eve is the number one time in the year
  for the unchurched, de-churched, and unreached
  individual to come to church.
• One of the reasons they are searching for a
  worship experience could be due to brokenness,
  isolation, or even loneliness.
• They are searching for that incarnational touch
  of the Holy One. There is a desire and need for
  an experience of Gods real presence.

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Rocking Around the Clock For Your Christmas Eve
Services

• Christmas Eve is rapidly becoming the most
  popular holiday in the postmodern world. It is a
  time where young and old alike desire a
  connection with the Holy God of all creation.
• It is a day and place where groups of people can
  connect to God, even if it is just an annual
  tradition for some.
• Each time the unchurched connect with you and
  your church (if you have prayerfully sought to
  honor God in this experience), you get another
  opportunity to impact their lives for Jesus sake!

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Rocking Around the Clock For Your Christmas Eve
Services

• Your Christmas Eve services are a great time to
  touch the heartstrings of those who are genuinely
  searching for God and feel more comfortable
  attending this service than any other offerings
  you provide throughout the year.
• It is also an excellent time to reach them by
  providing a challenging time for their individual
  reflection and soul searching.