The fact is people go to Church on Christmas, but many don’t return after New Years.
If your Church is not doing these 6 things, you are missing out on people who could become part of your community in the new year.
1. Collect Information
This may seem super intuitive, but you would be shocked how many Churches do nothing to engage with their guests. There are so many ways to do this, so pick the one that works best for you. We’ll get to what you do with this information in a minute…
2. Respond to comments and tags on social media
Are there crickets around the comments on your social media accounts? You should be responding to all the comments and tags your Church gets on social media. Your community is trying to engage with you, so connect with them! Show them that you care about them and they’ll be more likely to come back.
3. Create a shareable element of the Christmas service
Find a way to create a memory in your Christmas service and attach an experience to it. A great way to do this is to have shareable photo spots at entry points. Members and guests can take pictures together to share on social media. If you really want to level up your game, get a staff member or photographer to take pictures of them. You can collect their emails to send them a copy.
This experience does a few different things. 1) It attaches a strong positive emotion to the service. 2) It gives you a great reason to re-engage with the visitors later. 3) It’s a value that you are giving them. Maybe that will be the only holiday picture that family gets this Christmas and your Church gave it to them. When you reach out after Christmas, people will remember the happy experience they had and be more inclined to engage again.
4. Retarget your guests through email or social media
Facebook and Instagram are creeping on your visitors (and you) all day long. You might as well use it to your advantage. You can run ads inviting people to services by targeting anyone who has ever clicked on a watch now video across Google or watched a video on Facebook. You can send an email to visitors letting them know about upcoming events. You can get even more personal and call guests to check in. Use the information you have to connect.
5. Make next year something to look forward to
Don’t run out of gas the Sunday after Christmas. Take your opportunity to re-engage on Christmas. Schedule a relevant, compelling sermon series to start and plug it at the Christmas service. Do a small groups meet-up for visitors and get them plugged into the micro-communities of the Church. Have a kids event to kick off the new year the Saturday after kids go back to school. Give people a reason to be excited to come back to your Church.
6. Schedule a team reset meeting for January
After your team has had a moment to breathe, come together and take care of yourselves. Evaluate areas you want to improve this year. Make some concrete plans to take those steps and get accountable. Tell your team what they excel at. Build them up and pour into them, so they’re ready to pour into others. A burnt out team isn’t going to accomplish much, so make sure they are ready to hit the ground running.
Not sure what your team needs? Take our Communications Team Assessment here to find out how your Church team can be more connected and efficient.
If you’re reading this after Christmas and kicking yourself for not doing any of these things, there is good news: You can do this with any event at your Church. Use these strategies, make them your own, spread the Kingdom of God.
You can do this.
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