[00:00:00] So they're open to Jesus, but not Christians. But if they're a little more open at Christmas, how do we leverage that openness toward Jesus? How do we draw in not just the non-believers, but the nomadic and disconnected or even disgruntled believers who maybe left church for a while and maybe at Christmas time they want to come back? And so today, Jesse, we're just talking about the things that we do every year, really, about how do we help make that happen.
[00:00:28] Welcome to episode 465. Are you ready for Mariah Carey and Christmas bells 24-7? Me neither. But there is an opportunity to reach our culture at Christmas that is unmatched. So how will your church connect the gospel to the Christmas culture around it? Here are four tried and true strategies. That's today in The Reclaimed Leader. Welcome to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast. I'm Jason Tucker. And I'm Jesse Skiffington.
[00:00:58] We're two pastors in the trenches who are passionate about church health for greater gospel impact. We share the ups and downs of ministry, strategies that work for us. And some that didn't. Best practices and practical tools for church leadership. The goal? To help all of our churches flourish. Let's get started.
[00:01:19] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast. Jesse, it is Christmas time in October. But no, it's Christmas time. That's right. Because now's the time. Man, it's like it's coming so fast, Jesse. It just feels like, oh my gosh, it's here. Yeah. And we need to make sure that we are ready and prepared because Christmas is, at least for us, it is the number one time of year for outreach. Yeah. Yeah. Because everybody celebrates Christmas. Yeah.
[00:01:48] Yeah. And so it's exciting. It's an exciting time of year. You know, if you guys, you know, listeners have never heard us around this time of year. We always hit these, these points going in because just some great reminders to be ready because it's so easy for our Christmas, Thanksgiving, Christmas schedule to just run away from us so that now we're not intentional about anything we're doing. We're just simply reacting. That's right. You know, because we don't have time. Totally. Yeah. We don't want it to be a missed opportunity, right?
[00:02:18] It's just, you know, it does. It'll be back next year. So if you don't hit all the high points this year, you know, there's always, we're going to get back. So there's some grace in there too. But yeah, it's a good opportunity. A lot of people that don't show up any other time are going to be coming through the doors or maybe through events or different stuff we're doing. So we just want to be proactive and attentive to that and ask, you know, God, how do you want to work through this season to help reach people? And anyway, so it is good. It is exciting.
[00:02:47] And it's a lot to think about. And there's a lot of work involved. So the earlier we get to it, the better it's going to go. It's a lot. It's a lot. But I'll also say that there are many people who've become, you know, regulars in the life of the church. Either they became members or just regular attenders who will point back to Christmas time as their point of entry into engaging with the church. Absolutely. Tons and tons of people. So how do we make the most of this season?
[00:03:14] And we actually put together a PDF a couple of years ago that still holds up. So if you're looking for a resource, this is something that you could download actually right now. Reclaim Leader slash Christmas. You could download it and just follow along this episode in real time and kind of make some notes because we covered just about all of these same points with a couple of twists here and there. But it's really all about how are we making sure that we are prepared ahead of time.
[00:03:42] The last thing we want to do is like throw together a Christmas message or throw together a Christmas idea or get to Christmas and be like, man, I wish we would have done. Just would have taken a little bit more intentionality and we could have connected even better. So that's the beating heart of both this week and next week's episode as we get ready for Christmas. So I always this time of year is well, it's bittersweet now.
[00:04:07] So I was talking about my uncle Phil who unfortunately just passed away. He was 86 years old and his funeral actually in real time is on this Friday. So it's pretty new. But I always think about Phil this time of year because although he was ethnically Jewish and, you know, born and raised in Brooklyn, he always celebrated Christmas.
[00:04:35] Even though he would say that he was Jewish, he would celebrate Christmas. And so it had nothing to do with his faith, but rather as just the season of hope and generosity and fun. And he loved it. He loved it. He would, you know, wear a Santa hat and he would give out presents, you know. While he doesn't resonate with church most of the year, he didn't most of the year, he would listen to traditional hymns and carols and Rat Packers swooning Christmas songs. You know what I mean?
[00:05:04] Like all about a baby born in a manger. And so there was a little window into Phil's life for the gospel at Christmastime that otherwise I don't know really existed. And so I always think about him and the opportunity we have. It's like at Easter, they used to say, you know, Christmas and Easter Christians. And I guess that's still true. But what I've noticed, Jesse, is Easter seems to be increasingly narrowed.
[00:05:32] It's not as big as a cultural outreach as maybe it once was. And it's more sort of like for Jesus followers, right? Naturally so. It's kind of like Christian homecoming is what we should have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we get families coming back and everybody's in church together. We double our attendance, but it's not necessarily a bunch of people from the culture going, oh, I think I should go to church today. I mean, there's a few of those, but not as many as there once were for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:58] And Christmastime, you know, themes about the Savior are just part of it and they feel not as threatening. It's just part of the holiday vibe. And of course, that in and of itself isn't great. But on the other hand, I think there's a tremendous opportunity. And, you know, just looking at Barna's research, one of the things that they found was when they asked Americans whether they have a positive or negative opinion of Jesus, seven in 10, 71% say they view him positively.
[00:06:25] And the data shows why people are reluctant to hold Christian beliefs with the top reason today being hypocrisy of religious people. We all know this. Yeah. So they're open to Jesus, but not Christians. But if they're a little more open at Christmas, how do we leverage that openness toward Jesus? How do we draw in not just the non-believers, but the nomadic and disconnected or even disgruntled believers who maybe left church for a while and maybe at Christmas time they want to come back?
[00:06:55] And so today, Jesse, we're just talking about the things that we do every year, really, about how do we help make that happen? So everybody who's been listening to us for a while, Jesse, knows probably what we're going to say before we say it. They're like, all right, fast forward. This is number one. And it always has been for probably as many years as we've had this podcast. Think pathways, not programs. That's it. I'm going to say it again.
[00:07:23] And I've got to tell you, Jesse, here's what kills me. I fall into the same trap of programs. Yeah. Yeah. If I'm not intentional about it, it's like, oh, yeah, we do this and we do this Christmas thing. And if we're not careful, we'll just have a bunch of sort of disjointed programs. But let's unpack this for anybody who hasn't heard about this. I first heard the idea of pathways from Tony Morgan from the Unstuck Group, the late Tony Morgan.
[00:07:49] We had him on the podcast years ago, episode 65, which is crazy. This is episode 465. That's interesting. 400 episodes ago we had Tony on. Wow. And the idea that I first heard from him, I mean, I just really resonated with and have used everywhere ever since. That the idea is that most churches have programming that exists for various reasons. So Christmas program being some of it. But some exist because they're annual traditions. And nobody even knows why we do it anymore.
[00:08:18] It's just that we do it because that's what we do. And some exist because someone started it. It had huge success. And it's been limping along ever since. Maybe it's been years that that person left the church or left this planet a long time ago. And some are really good programs, even new ones that are connecting with people.
[00:08:42] The problem is that all of these programs aren't strategic in their relationship with one another. At least not naturally. So they might each have their own desired outcome, but they compete for resources and energy and vision. And don't necessarily help people take a step toward Jesus. Not to mention clogging the calendar and having us running chaotically and crazy.
[00:09:10] So your volunteers and staff are totally burned out. So the concept is to make the programs a series of steps or calls to action that we'd like to see people take. A pathway of engagement. And again, if you download that Christmas PDF, we sort of spell this out for you and you'll see a visual of the actual pathway. But this is the question of church. How do we get engagement? How do we invite people into the life of the church?
[00:09:40] And it's not just, hey, we have our annual Christmas pageant. And I think that's where a lot of churches don't know. Like, okay, well, what do we do? I think about VBS. Yeah. Yeah. What do we do? What's the big VBS problem that churches are trying to solve? How do we get families who attend VBS to engage in the life of the church? That's right. Yeah. Where do we go from here with this?
[00:10:10] Yeah. Right. And just like anything, you need a pathway. You need a plan. They're not just going to show up to church. I mean, that's rare. I guess it does happen, but probably not just showing up to church on a regular basis. They need to be invited. Well, how do we do that? Yeah. How do we get first-time guests to eventually join?
[00:10:33] You know, instead of having programs A, B, C, and D from October to December, how do we have them strategic so that A leads to B, that leads to C, that leads to D? Yeah. So, for example, we're in the middle of football season, and I got both my boys right now playing football. If I were to first meet you, Jesse, at my son's football game, and I'm like, oh, I'm ready to get along with this guy. It'd be cool to hang out. I wouldn't just go right to, hey, you guys want to come to dinner tomorrow night? I probably wouldn't do that.
[00:11:03] I probably wouldn't say yes if you did that. Yeah. It's probably just a little too aggressive. Yeah. So, maybe we just say, oh, hey, are you going to come to the next game? All right, cool. I'll see you there. Right? Something that is just, then maybe coffee. Then maybe lunch. You get the idea. Then maybe complaining about the coach behind his back. Oh, man, you know there's tons of that.
[00:11:26] But if we could only channel the dad energy and the stands toward good, the world would be changed. It would be changed. But you get the idea. The intimacy of the ask increases in steps. Yeah. In a pathway. Definitely. And this is the same principle to create engagement in your church. So, this is how we do our pathway for Tower Hill. Yeah. We tweak it every year, but it's essentially the same.
[00:11:54] This coming Sunday, we have our first, we have event A. It's, we now call it our Fall Fest. It was once called Tower Hill Day. Years and years ago, check out how churchy this is, Jesse. I now, for the record, I inherited this name, but I didn't change it for a long time. Genesis Sunday. Nice. Wonderful. Gosh, it's so bad. What? What's wrong with that?
[00:12:22] If I'm trying to attract the most churchy of the church people ever, then that's a great outreach. But for most people, they're like, what the heck? What are you even talking about? What is Genesis Sunday? And all it meant was like the start of the new program. That's right. Your Genesis Sunday. Anyway, it's morphed and has turned into a very fun, you know, inflatables, cider donuts, and cider delivered from nearby Delicious Orchard. Shout out to them.
[00:13:14] Mm-hmm. Low risk, high fun, easy asks. And then, so then when they come back at Thanksgiving, which many of them do, then we'll say, hey, if you love this, just wait. You know, as we get started in Advent, in two weeks, we have our big Christmas on the Hill event. Yeah. And that's our big outreach. So we actually have three high fun, low risk events in a row, which is a little unusual.
[00:13:41] I don't think we do that many in a row for other pathways in the life of the church. Mm-hmm. But it just seems like this is the low-hanging fruit. Yeah. Then at Christmas on the Hill, we have this strategic moment right before we light the tree, is we have a gospel reading of the birth narrative, Luke chapter 2. We should have a kid read it, just like Linus. And then I do the invite there, because everybody's paying attention.
[00:14:11] We got like 500 people paying attention to that moment. We say, hey, we're so glad you and your family would have come tonight. This is all for you. That's why we made it free. Hope you have a great time. Stay as long as you want. And just heads up, we have a very special Christmas Eve service for young families where we do a glow stick candle lighting. It's designed for them in mind. It moves fast. And it's also really fun and meaningful for them. We hope to see you there. It's this time.
[00:14:38] And then usually we may have some flyers or postcards to hand out to remind them of the date. Then when they come back Christmas Eve, then we invite them to, hey, we're so glad you guys came. Isn't this great? This is so fun as we're celebrating. We wish you guys a Merry Christmas. And just so you know, in a few weeks in January, we're going to have this. Now, we haven't decided what that is yet, but we're going to have this that we'd love to see you come to it. And we think you're going to love it. Right. So what have we done?
[00:15:06] We've now created a pathway. And as we get toward that last round of asks, they're actually getting a little higher risk because now we're inviting them to specific sort of faith-based, scripture-based moments. And so we have worship. And then usually there's some kind of, usually the next thing is like an inviting them to be, to enroll in one of our small groups, which will launch in February.
[00:15:33] So the ask is, is a little more, and you lose people along the way. Not everybody comes with you. This is part of it. Not everybody's comfortable doing this. Some people just want to come to the free thing and you don't see them again until the next year. That's fine. Yeah. But, but for a lot, it will become a pathway where they kind of get connected. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's a really good picture. You know, I think we talked about on ramps and some people come on through an on ramp, like the pancake breakfast or the fall kickoff day.
[00:16:01] And, but they might take an exit here too and not come back on, you know, but I think it is, it is important. And the more you do stuff like that, I would imagine for some of the people that come to Christmas on the Hill even, or to Christmas Eve, it might be the only time you're seeing them right now, but they're already making that mental kind of turn towards, well, if I did have a church, this would be my church. And if I did have a pastor, Jason would be my pastor. And it's subtle over time.
[00:16:29] We have a series of concerts we do here. That's a great on ramp into the life of our church. And it's just because we enjoy doing it for our community. So we do jazz concerts on the second Sunday in the evening, 5 PM every second Sunday. And we bring in awesome musicians from around the country and stuff. And it's a free concert, donation based, but it's just like, come on in. We're glad you're here. And so the only thing we do that's church related is we hold it in the sanctuary.
[00:16:55] And I do a very brief prayer at the beginning of the event. And this last time, the gym who runs that for us, he forgot to invite me up for the prayer, which is totally fine. We had a lot going on and whatever. And so I was like, I'm giving him a hard time afterwards. And we're laughing about it. And at intermission, I'm standing out in our lobby area and a bunch of people are walking by and they're like, I can't believe he didn't invite you up to pray. I mean, these are not church people. These are just jazz live people.
[00:17:25] And having these conversations in which it's becoming clear that they're not church people, but this is their church and they're not Christians, but I'm their pastor. It's just this strange phenomenon. So there's something that we're building with these pathways that you're talking about. We're building a relationship. We're building credibility. We're building, we care for our community. We're providing this because we want to be a part of our community.
[00:17:51] So there's all these ancillary benefits, including moving people towards greater participation in the life of the church and hopefully towards taking steps to know and follow Jesus. So for our team, we often think about the pathways as a series of interlocking gears. Yeah. That, you know, if you take one out, maybe people can join down here. But if you take one out, this gear that was out front, what was it for? It's just spinning on its own. It's not producing anything down the road.
[00:18:19] And so VBS, we've had to work really hard at. How do we connect that into our fall pathway towards Christmas? And just making sure we're communicating with all the VBS participants and families about here's what's going on in the fall and here's what we're inviting you to. And we can't wait to see it. So I think there's lots of ways to do this. But really, I've heard you say this before. Maybe we're getting to this is you don't just have an event that ends without an invitation. Yes.
[00:18:46] There's always that next opportunity that we want to point to. Or even if it's just a postcard with the info on the back that says, we can't wait to see you again. Here's what's coming up. Yeah. We want to create that through line for people where the gears can connect and people, not everybody, but a lot of people can come with us along the road. So that's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's sort of like baseball playoffs right now. It's sort of like baseball. You arrange your lineup in such a way that you try to maximize the number of guys on base
[00:19:15] so that your hitters can score the most runs. I mean, you're just putting people on base with these programs and hopefully you bring them back home. Right? I mean, but that's the idea. That's it. And we had one, you know, every so often you get one that really stands out. And this last year we had a woman and her mother who came. So she's probably, I would guess early 60s, her mom's 80s. And they came to Christmas Eve and they searched online. Where's the Christmas Eve service in our area? And they ended up at Marine View.
[00:19:44] And we provided an invitation at Christmas Eve to come back for our series in January. And they did. And they have been the most regular attenders of anybody since then. They're there every week and gotten to know people and getting plugged in. And it turns out mom was a follower of Jesus or had been a church person growing up. And it's kind of reconnecting. But daughter had not been and had never put her faith in Jesus or been baptized.
[00:20:11] And so this just a couple of weeks ago, we got to celebrate her baptism in the Puget Sound. And it all started with just Googling a church for Christmas Eve. And now look how what God has done in her life as we've walked with her through that. So there's good outcomes. And also when you baptize people in the Puget Sound, they never forget because it's 48 degrees. So anyway. And there's orcas. And there's orcas. Watch out for the jellyfish and the orcas. It's perfectly fine.
[00:20:40] It just adds a little sense of adventure to the moment. Yeah. I know. You know. Yeah. But that's the hope for fruit, right? Isn't that what we're doing it for? Is that, you know? That's exactly right. Yeah. So pathways, not programs. I think the second thing is this is a great time of year to train or retrain your congregation to invite. Ah, yes. Yeah.
[00:21:04] Because, I don't know, I'm sure there's churches that have really slick social media presence and they're really great at inviting via social media. But as far as I know, personal invitation is still the reigning champion of outreach strategies. By a landslide. I mean, it's not even close. Yeah. Right. But many just don't know how to do it. Yeah. And people are just like, I don't know. I want to invite people. But I don't know. It's kind of awkward. I don't know what to do. I feel like we as a society are losing our social skills. That's a whole nother topic.
[00:21:34] Do you think we are? Or you know we are? Well, yeah, we are. Yeah. So every year in November, we order postcards with all the dates and times of the Christmas events. Yeah. From the end of November to December. And have them available at the end of worship services. And we tell our own people, we invite them in the service, say, hey, on your way out, take a stack of postcards that you can hand out to people.
[00:21:58] And so there's something about like when you hand something out and invite, it's actually easier because you, I don't know why, but it just feels easier to hand somebody something. You're like, oh, hey, hey. It's slightly less personal, right? Yeah. It's not that, hey, I want you to come. Right. It's, hey, we have this thing. I think you would enjoy it. That's, it is different. For some reason, it's less threatening for the asker. Yeah.
[00:22:27] Um, so we try to help them out. Say, okay, take some and invite people to say, hey, just so you know, this is going on. Want to make sure you knew about all the fun stuff we're doing at Christmas. And, you know, here you go. We also coach them to say, let us know if you're planning to go. We'll be happy to go with you. You can sit with us. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's important because for a lot who are nervous about coming to know that, hey, I got a friend who's willing to go with me. Yeah. They're going to help me navigate the weird church stuff if there's any of that, right? Or know where to go and what to do. Yeah.
[00:22:56] Some of the uncertainty out. Yeah. Simple and effective. Yeah. And no matter where they are in the continuum, continuing between brand new guest and longtime devoted member or elder, everyone can invite someone. Yeah. It doesn't matter. So everyone can do inviting. And frankly, some of our best inviters are the people who are newer and are all jazzed up about what we're doing. And they're excited about it. Yeah. Totally. So we actually try to get our new members.
[00:23:23] We're just we're going to bring in our new member class this week when we have a new batch of members coming in. And we always try to get them to serve on guest services because we want them outward facing to everybody coming in because they're the ones that are so jazzed up to be there. Like they're so excited. That's right. At least for now, right? Yeah. No, it's great. It's great. But there's an excitement about that newness. Totally. But it's not just about inviting people to come to services or to Christmas events.
[00:23:52] We also want our people, we want to invite them to show greater generosity. And I don't mean in their giving to the church. Certainly we talk about that because the end of the calendar year, it's just part of the thing you talk about. But we developed like a business size card to instruct our congregation to leave behind at Starbucks or, you know, Dunkin' or wherever they go and, you know, pay for coffee and, you know, pay for the person behind you and leave a little card.
[00:24:20] And it's exactly what it sounds like. It's, you know, in line in a drive-thru window, pay for the person behind you, leave this behind. Now, the card doesn't have our website on it. And the reason it doesn't is because we wanted it to feel just like a genuine gift, not, hey, we want something from you. Yeah. This is more about your people's hearts than it is about getting traction with the church, right? Yeah. Yeah. We just want to like a genuine act of kindness, which it is.
[00:24:47] But it says, and there's a copy of this in that PDF of Christmas stuff that you can get. But it says, Merry Christmas. We believe the greatest gift that God gave the world was Jesus. Please accept this gift as a small expression of God's love for you from your friends at Tower Hill Church. Yeah. Simple. That's it. And we also have stacks of these in the church. We tell people, take them and use them. And it's really cool the stories that'll come back. Totally.
[00:25:17] As a result of that. Yeah. I can't remember who we had on. And who's the guest that we were talking about this with and said, leaders need to go first with this. Oh, yeah. I don't remember. Anyway, it was a great, it stuck with me. Obviously, I'm forgetting his name. But the point was, if we're going to ask people to be inviters, we need to go first as leaders. Yeah. I thought that was so wise.
[00:25:40] So, getting those postcards a little bit early and having some of our staff and ourselves do some of those invites and then tell the story of what it was like to do it. And if it doesn't go well, what's the worst that happened? They said, no, I don't, I'm not coming to that. It's like, oh, it kind of allays some of the fears or whatever. And it shows, yeah, we're all doing this together. So, that always stuck with me. It's like, demonstrate what that's like. Yeah. Take one of those cards and pay for coffee.
[00:26:08] Take one of those cards and invite a friend or neighbor and lead that way. And then you can tell people, it was so great. I did this the other day and fill in the blank. And it shows that you are practicing what you preach. Yeah. No, it's good. Third, consider a giveaway of some kind. People love getting stuff. I think it could be a nice gesture. It just kind of depends on what it is, right? I mean, everyone loves free stuff. When you have guests during the holidays, it's nice to offer them a gift.
[00:26:37] We've done portable phone chargers. That was a little weird. But I don't know. We're just trying to think of what would be helpful. We did Gospel of John books. We did Prodigal God books. Tim Keller's Prodigal God. That's a good one. We did discounts on future youth retreats. Nice. This year, again, we're giving away Advent journals that have devotions written in them. And they're going to go along with the sermon series to help people consider God in a deeper
[00:27:07] way. And sometimes we get them from outreach.com. So I just want to just shout out to them. They usually have one that's good. The last two years, we've gone with Christianity Today's because it's a little deeper dive, which we liked. And this year's are all on the names of God. And so you can get if you...
[00:27:31] So we bought like 500 of them and are just going to give them away as a way of just helping people go deeper. And it's really nice. So in Advent, it's a lot of your people. But also, we do encourage our folks to give them to somebody. I love it. And it's nice. It's a nice kind of way to do that. Yeah. And if you're looking for... You just hinted at two great resources there. And I think that's important. You don't have to invent all this stuff yourself, right? There are great resources and things out there.
[00:28:01] We typically go through outreach.com for our postcards. We mail them to our closest 7,500 friends in our community. Occasionally, we'll get one back returned to the church that says, please do not send a mailer to me ever again. And we're like, oh. But you know... Merry Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. Every once in a while, we'll get people that show up. But we're being present in our community. But it's those personal invitations that really make the difference. It's when somebody has that to hand out. So I like the giveaway idea.
[00:28:30] Even thinking about what we're going to do. And wanted to be something fun or useful or that's devotional in nature. And just to kind of go, oh, that's just a good thing. It's kind of like a bonus around that time of year where it just helps people feel good. More content. Yeah. And then last category for today is it's always like, okay, so you got a bunch of people coming in your building that maybe aren't usually there. How do you know who they are?
[00:28:59] How do you follow up? And I'll just say this. It's good to track your guests. Just find the least creepy way of doing it. Yeah. Because that's one of the biggest challenges of engagement is simply tracking the guests. And I think just about all of us have some sort of guest connection card or something like that that we use. And that's, of course, voluntary.
[00:29:26] And people most won't fill it out, at least at first. What we've discovered is sometimes it takes people coming many times before they're even comfortable giving us their information. Yeah. There's a whole trust thing going on. Yeah. And I get it. And we should respect that. But I think there's some other ways to sort of just connect with people as long as you're upfront about it. You never want to. You don't want to bait and switch. No bait and switch. You don't.
[00:29:53] So let's say at Christmas time, so our Christmas on the hill, we do a photo. We offer photos with Santa for free. And we do, in exchange, get their email so we can send it to them. And we tell them upfront. We say, yeah, we're going to send you it. And you're going to be put on our mailing list to learn about other events that we're doing. Great. Great. You know, I don't think we've ever once had somebody like, no, never. You know, I think they would have already self-selected and not come to the event. But you got to be upfront. All right. Be upfront.
[00:30:22] Just let them know. Yeah. You're on the list now. Mm-hmm. And that's fine. On the list. But you just want to make sure there's some sort of consent there. Yeah. Totally. And transparency. So photos with Santa is a great way to do it. Again, connect cards. Make sure that you have an online version as well as a physical version. We have so many. Remember, people are checking out your church online way before they ever show up. Definitely.
[00:30:46] And many of them, if you have the Connect card and a good spot on your website that they can find easily related to them engaging on Sunday morning. You want to lead with I'm new, what happens when I visit. All that stuff needs to be front-ended on your website. Yeah. Good stuff. And then, too, Sunday school check-ins. So we do check-ins for the security of the children. That's why we do them. The benefit of doing check-ins is that now you have contact information of the households. Yeah.
[00:31:16] And, you know, that's a way to get. So every kid, whether they're new or a one-timer, they will get registered at least on, like, the high level so that we have their basic information. And then there's, like, the database, which is more like they come again. Sure. But in our check-in system, you know, each family, they get a sticker. The kid gets slapped on, you know, one. Yeah. And then the parent has one and they have to match when they do pick up at the end. Yeah. But anyway, it's a great. Wait.
[00:31:45] So when you're going to get more kids, theoretically, around this time of year. So it's a great way of tracking who's coming. That's right. Yeah. So that check-in process is one of the ways that we probably most often get contact information. Yeah. And so when someone registers, there's a little box they can select to receive our e-newsletter, right? It's like there's things that we do to kind of create that on-ramp. And I would say you do this well, too. We use a lot of permission language around connection.
[00:32:14] And so we say, hey, that Connect card is there whenever you're ready. And we'll often say, or Toby, our worship leader, she'll say something like, and when you're ready, we're ready. So if you just need to be here and just be anonymous for a while, great. But when you're ready, let us know, and we'd love to help you connect into the life of the church. So it doesn't have to be a creepy thing, but it's okay to declare our hope that you'll share your information so we can connect you in. And we're not going to spam you. We're going to just communicate. Yeah.
[00:32:42] And I say another thing you can do, we haven't done this often, but we've done it before. And that is offer some sort of value-based content that they can download in exchange for email information. You know, so create some sort of, you know, like top 10 things about parenting during the holidays or something that's genuinely helpful and useful. And that's another way that you can get email addresses or, you know, how to discipline greedy kids at Christmas. No, I'm just kidding. No.
[00:33:12] But, you know, that's... Yeah. Like, how do we do it? You can offer some. Or I've seen churches, especially bigger churches, if they have some sort of parenting seminar or video or something, you could register and sort of get your contact information. But the point is, and what do you do with that contact information is you invite them to another step in the pathway. Mm-hmm. So the pathway is the most important thing. None of this is really going to matter unless you're able to know what to invite them to. Yeah.
[00:33:42] That's good. And the truth is there's so much here to just give yourself some grace because somehow God chooses to work through the messiness of our pathways that are in process or not quite right. And yet it's providing the opportunities. I'd say 90% of it is showing up with an attempt to do this well. And some of it's going to work and some of it's not, but people are going to be like, I'm really glad that that church does those kinds of things. And we should go try it again. So don't let perfection get in the way of going.
[00:34:11] You know, just start. See what God wants to do with it. Well, and I think that's a great point because if I go down to my local park, which is maybe a mile away, and I decide I'm going to go for a walk, I don't need the trail to be perfect. Yeah. It's going to have roots growing up. It's going to be places where the grass has overtaken the trail. Yeah. It's good enough. It doesn't matter. I could still navigate it. Yeah. So it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to be good enough. But you can kind of see the path ahead. Okay.
[00:34:41] I see where this is going, right? Yeah. So good stuff. And then last one, last one. Yeah. Okay. Because I was going to add this one and this is just a quick thought. All right. Let's hear it. This is a great chance if you have a church staff to really, to just to have a moment of fun and celebration. We do our staff Christmas party every year and it's become a thing where people who even no longer work for the church want to get invited. That's cool. To come and be a part of it.
[00:35:08] It's a lot of fun and it's a great way. There's also a moment usually that we have in the staff party where we celebrate all the staff members. Yeah. That's great. And just thank everybody. It's really chill. Is it at the church? At a home? No, no. It's at a home and spouses are invited and it's a kind of big thing. Sounds like a lot of work, Jason, celebrating the people you work with. That was so funny because I think as leaders, we're like, come on, let's keep going. We got to take the next hill. And fortunately, we have people on our teams.
[00:35:38] At least I do. They're like, no, we got to stop at night, just have some fun and celebrate. So yeah, it's important and it's good. And it reminds us why we love working together and what's good about it all. And in the midst of a really kind of hectic time, it's just good to enjoy each other's company too. So good reminder. I like it. All right, everyone. I hope this is helpful. Again, you can reclaimleader.com slash Christmas. You can get the PDF that kind of covers all the stuff that we just talked about.
[00:36:06] And next week, Jesse, we're talking about what happens in the worship services and particularly preaching. We're going to talk about preaching and Advent and Christmas and making sure that we keep the story. Give them the mac and cheese, Jason. Give them the mac and cheese. I love it. So thanks so much for listening, everyone. Again, share this with a colleague if you found it helpful or think it would help somebody else. It's that's the whole reason we do this thing is to help pastors.
[00:36:35] And for us, it's a great reminder to just be intentional at Christmas. So good luck. Good luck in all of your planning and reach out to us anytime, Jason or Jesse at reclaimleader.com. Ministry is hard. It is so much better when we do it together.