Advent, Christmas, or the SuperBowl
Which do you think is the most important for the growth of your church - Advent, Christmas, or the Super Bowl?Well I rank them in this order, Super Bowl then Christmas. What happened to Advent? I wouldn’t even rank it because it is absolutely a waste of time.
Yet I bet in declining churches Advent is celebrated more than the other two combined. Why is that - because most declining churches are more focused on themselves than the world around them. Declining churches are more focused on churchy things than worldly things. And finally, most declining churches blindly do what they been doing all along. In some odd way they think that they can continue doing what they’ve been doing and get something different than they been getting. Odd isn’t it.
If you want your church to grow focus on the pagan calendar and forget most of the church events. That is the way to draw more people into your church. Focusing on the Church calendar just reinforces most churches tendency to focus inward instead of outward. But focusing on the pagan calendar causes church leaders to think about what is going on in the world and what happens to be on most people’s minds at the time.
Why not throw a Super Bowl party. Add extra worship services on Christmas Eve, wrap Christmas packages in the Malls for free during December, have a Haunted House at Halloween, throw a block party for Mardi Gras, but by all means please forget Advent. No unchurched, dechurched, or non-believer gives one whit about Advent or even knows what it is.
Now having a Super Bowl party at your church must be a great idea because made the NFL leaders furious last year. Read the article about how the NFL forced a church to cancel their plans last year. You know it has to be a right on idea if the world wants it canceled.
Go ahead and throw a party, have your pastor thrown in jail, and see how much great publicity you will get from it. I’m serious.The church didn’t have the party but another church in the same town decided to have the party. As a result the NFL gave churches permission as long as they didn’t charge.
Think of all the publicity those churches received when all of their papers ran the stories and there were several stories before it was over.
So, whose going to throw the first ball?
November 8th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Bill,
Here is how we are handling the “Advent” Season—first of all we aren’t focusing on calling it Advent, but rather counting down to Christmas Day. For a long time—the clergy and churches has decried the early start of celebrating Christmas. We are taking the strategy to join the culture in celebrating Christmas during the month of December, culminating in the Christmas Eve services.
We are having a special service and a dinner and Christmas Music program with Carol Singing on December 2nd and have called it. “Come Home For Christmas.” We are going all out to invite people to come be a part if it. We will be sending out Christmas Cards to prospective guests and also inactives and semi-actives. We are encouraging our active people to not only send the cards but then to make a person contact and invite their guests for that Sunday worship and for a catered dinner afterwards followed by the musical program.
I will also be preaching the following sermon series based on J Elsworth Kalas’s book “Christmas From the Backside.”
Les Peine
Maybe I am way off but we are going to try this, this year. So the schedule will look like this.
Dec 2 “The Scandal of Christmas”
(CHRISTMAS DINNER 12:15 AND PROGRAM FOLLOWING 1:15 PM)
Dec 9 “Three Votes for an Early Christmas”
Dec 16 “Christmas Comes to a Back Fence”
Dec 23 “Celebrating Christmas In a Hotel”
Dec 24 “How the First Christmas Happened”
(5:30 PM CONTEMPORARY CHRISTMAS EVE CELEBRATION)
(7:30 PM CANDLELIGHT CAROL SERVICE)
(9:30 PM CANDLELIGHT COMMUNION SERVICE)
Dec 25 12:00 NOON “What’s Up?”
(CHRISTMAS DAY COMMUNION SERVICE which will be a version of a Blue Christmas for those with little or no family and who won’t be gathering together with others this day)
Dec 30 “Christmas and The Impossible Dream”
November 8th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Oh and we have done SuperBowl Parties for about 12 years now–I have gotten some hate phone calls on the churhc answering machine but none from the NFL
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:11 am
Nice blog, i have added it to my favourites, greetings