Category: great commission

Planning for a Children’s Christmas Outreach

Karen BurkettLeave a comment

by Guest Blogger Alvin Gan

WeihnachtskugelnMost churches report that their highest attendance takes place at their Christmas and Easter services. While many of the kids who joined you for VBS and fall festival may have gone missing-in-action in-between, there’s a good chance they will turn up at Christmas if you give them a little nudge. So why not put together a fun outreach event this Christmas?

Start Planning Early

It’s never too early to start your planning for Christmas outreach, or any outreach event, for that matter. In fact, the best time to start planning for next Christmas is right after this Christmas! The earlier you decide on your theme, the better. You will then have more time to gather resources, ask around for well-loved items that you can re-use and take advantage store coupons and discounts. As you are preparing, executing, and evaluating this year’s event, take note of ideas that: you would have shelved, of what went well and what didn’t, and of what you wish you had done differently. Write them all down before you forget! They are all helpful tips for next Christmas!

Don’t Do It All Alone

Rather than doing everything yourself, invite others to join in your preparation and in running the event. Chances are you will end up doing a much better job at planning, promoting and executing your event as a team. Perhaps more importantly, you will have more people praying alongside you for the event.

Be Creative

Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ, but that doesn’t mean the theme for your outreach must be limited to the nativity scene or Bethlehem. Just google “birthday party themes,” and you will find lots of fun ideas, ranging from “under the sea” to “up, up and away!” Why should Jesus’ birthday celebration be any different? With some out-of-the-box thinking and creativity, there is no reason why we can’t think up a fun theme for our Christmas event – one that honors Christ and that kids would love to join in!

Ride on What’s Trending

One good way to get people excited about your event is to ride on the buzz of what’s currently trending. Find out what child-friendly movies will be released around Christmas and plan an event related to that movie. For example, Spies in Disguise is to be released in December 2019. The world is facing a disaster and counting on the nerdy Walter Beckett along with his partner Lance Sterling, (whom he accidentally turned into a pigeon), to come to its rescue. While not knowing much else about the movie, you can still plan an event with fun games involving heroes saving the world. Think spies, gadgets, and birds, and wrap it up with a Gospel presentation about Jesus Christ, the true Savior of the world! Alternatively, if you are uncomfortable basing your event on too many unknowns, plan an event based on a more well-known movie. Perhaps a film like Star Wars, which incidentally has another planned release in December 2019: “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”

Or Stick to Something Traditional

If you prefer something more traditional, below are three themes you may like.

1. The Greatest Christmas Gift

Play a variety of games involving gifts. For example:

  • Pile Up the Presents – Players stack presents to form the tallest tower.
  • Elf Challenge – Whoever carries the most gifts across the room wins.
  • Oven Mitt Unwrap –Try your hand at unwrapping a Christmas present while wearing a pair of oven mitts.
  • Christmas Left Right Game – A story is read aloud, and the parcel gets passed to the left or right as directed by the story.

Detailed instructions for these and other delightfully fun Christmas games can be found here.

To wrap up the event, bring out a huge, eye-catching gift-wrapped box for an object lesson on why Jesus is the greatest Christmas gift.

2. Twas the Night Before Christmas

Written almost 200 years ago, “Twas The Night Before Christmas” remains the most popular Christmas poem ever. Many of our ideas about Santa Claus, for example, how he enters homes on Christmas eve through the chimney with a sack of gifts, originate from that poem.

Sadly, Santa Claus and Christmas trees have overtaken the nativity scene as symbols of Christmas, and “happy holidays” is becoming more commonly heard than “merry Christmas.” Recent surveys show that, although most people in the United States still celebrate Christmas, it has become more of a cultural holiday rather than a religious one.

Rather than sweeping Santa and the Christmas tree under the carpet, why not throw a party involving these popular festive icons before bringing up the true story of Christmas?

You can play a variety of games involving these Christmas symbols. For example:

  • Christmas Bingo – Featuring colorful festive illustrations of the nativity scene, baby Jesus, the wise men, Christmas trees, gingerbread houses and more!
  • Who Has The Ornament? – Don’t get caught with the ornament in your hands! Players sit in a circle and pass a Christmas ornament around behind their backs while someone standing in the center of the circle tries to guess where the ornament is.
  • Christmas Tree Dress Up – Use paper and other materials to transform a teammate into a Christmas tree.

You can find detailed instructions and download beautifully designed free printables here to play these and other Christmas games.

3. Christmas Scavenger Hunt

There are many ways to conduct a Christmas Scavenger Hunt. Here are some ideas:Christmas Scavenger Hunt

  • Christmas Party Scavenger Hunt – If you are playing indoors or with a large group of young children, you may like this version of a Scavenger Hunt. Instead of hunting for physical objects, players look for 40 Hidden Cards.
  • Christmas Scavenger Hunt Bingo – Combine the fun of Scavenger Hunt with Bingo! Each player gets a unique Christmas Scavenger Hunt Bingo Card and hunts for items found on their own card. The first player to Bingo wins!
  • Christmas Treasure Hunt – Just like the Magi followed clues that eventually led them to baby Jesus, players will look for various clues that ultimately lead them to the Christmas treasure.

Detailed instructions along with beautifully designed free printables for these scavenger hunts can be found here.

Keep Christ at the Center of Christmas

It is important that every child goes home with a reminder of the true meaning of Christmas. You can do this by giving each child  The True Story of Christmas Animated Tract at the closing of your event. It’s an affordable stocking stuffer and unique Gospel childrens-gospel-tract-5201-main-atract. It has captivating, moving animations, and kids will be intrigued by how the images can move without any batteries. Or buy any small gift and pack them in this YOU Are The Reason For Christmas! Box-Tract that opens up to reveal the gospel message.

Christmas is one of the most important days in the Christian calendar for outreach. Remember to keep Christ at the center of your event, and also at the center of your preparations. Pray, pray, pray! Christ loves all the little children of the world, and he wants to see your event draw the little ones to Him!

Click here to learn more about the plan of salvation for kids.

About our guest blogger, Alvin Gan:

Alvin Gan is the father of three noisy (but lovely) teenagers and founder of two websites that provide creative evangelism and discipleship resources.

Child Evangelism
LetTheLittleChildrenCome.com specializes in unique child evangelism tools and resources to help convey the plan of salvation for kids effectively.

BibleGamesCentral.com develops Bible games for youths, kids and even adults to teach spiritual truths.

Something New

Karen BurkettLeave a comment

My Find Christian Links website and this blog have been sadly neglected . . . my apologies for that. It goes back to not enough hours in the day! But God prompted me this last week to get busy.

I started this website many years ago. Actually the first several years it was ChristianConnectionsUnlimited. My goals at that time included providing Christians with one website where they could find all kinds of Christian links . . . and to build a little extra income with affiliate sales. Through the years the site name changed once. The look has changed multiple times. And the purpose has expanded. I gradually added more information about Christian happening around the world and ways for believers to reach out and make a difference . . . and that became the strongest motivation.

Now I feel God wants me to take it to a new level. We are seeing last day prophecies fulfilled one after another. I believe Jesus is coming soon. His “soon” could be five years or fifty years, but we see the scene being set. As Christians we need to grow stronger in our faith so that no matter what challenges and persecution come, we will remain faithful. We need to be there for one another. And we need to focus on sharing the good news with everyone possible. And . . . I believe FindChristianLinks.com needs to focus on those very issues.

In the last few days, I’ve added a new look to the site and this blog. I’ve restructured the site. And the work is just beginning. It needs a lot of updating right now–and continually.

I need your help! I hope you will follow the blog to keep up with changes–and to give your input. I welcome your ideas. Tell me about topics and specific links you’d like me to add. Ask questions and offer suggestions. And tell me your story! What outreach have you or someone you know been involved in that has made a difference. Are you willing to share the details to help others do something similar? You can submit your thoughts through comments on this blog or by completing the information here.

Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24-25 NLT)

 

Sharing Your Faith by Chris Webber

Karen BurkettLeave a comment

Do you ever hear the stories of missionaries who were able to travel the world and share the Good News of Jesus Christ and think, “I want to do that!” Back in the summer of 2010, the Lord blessed me with the opportunity to travel to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to minister to His sons and daughters there. And what an amazing experience it was—it is actually still-to-date the best week of my life. But throughout that trip, and in the time since I arrived back in the states, God has been moving in my heart and mind, revealing a truth to me and showing me personally what this truth looks like in my own life—you don’t have to travel the world in order to share the Good News. (Please don’t get me wrong—there are many areas in the world that desperately need to hear the Good News, and that is why God has called some to be missionaries in other parts of the world. But what He has continued to show me is that there is also a need for the Good News to be shared in our own backyard, wherever that might physically be.)

While this truth might, to some, seem obvious, it is nearly impossible, given the large number of unbelievers found in a country that is allowed to be open about the Good News of Jesus Christ, to hide the fact that we have failed to accept the responsibility to do the very thing that Christ has called us to do in Matthew 28:19—“go and make disciples.” With the knowledge that we can be missionaries to those we come into contact with on a daily basis, why is this number still so staggering? Are we “too busy”? Do we have “more important things” to do? Do we believe it is someone else’s responsibility—possibly because we believe we aren’t “good enough” to be used by God? Or is it even possibly that though we might physically say we don’t care, at our core, we are still worried about what others would think of us if they knew we were “Jesus freaks”?

I remember going to a Trip Lee concert back in February of this year where Trip told a story that hit home with me, and I’m sure it did with many others as well. During the rise of his career, Trip was on a plane, and upon finding his seat, realized he was going to be sitting by a man who was not only a well-known rapper, but also someone that he admired as a child. However, Trip knew that this man wasn’t living a life for the glory of God. And as he sat there, he battled with wanting to share Jesus’ love with his childhood hero, but he also worried what perception of himself that would give his idol. Several hours passed, and Trip eventually realized what he was doing—“I realized that I was so worried about my reputation as an up-and-coming artist—that I was actually more worried about it than I was about this brother’s salvation, and eternity.” It was after a revelation from God that Trip realized his priorities were out of order. Eventually, Trip heeded the call that God placed before him, and shared the love of Jesus Christ (and the things He had done in Trip’s own life) with this famous rapper.

No matter what, we are more than the name given to us when we were born, or even as so many college students can attest to, more than the number that professors know us by. We are more than the clothes we wear, or the car we drive. We are more than the person we date, or where we live. We are more than our job, the sport we play, or even our worldly status, which is simply defined by all of the above. We are sons and daughters of the CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE, created in His image–that is where our true identity is found. We are blessed to even be here, and even more blessed that we can spend eternal life with Him. But while we are here, we have been given a commandment—to share the Good News that we have with others. Is it going to be easy? Not always. Is it going to be comfortable? Not necessarily. Is everyone going to accept what we have to say? Probably not. But our job is not to attempt to change people’s hearts on our own—we could never do that. Our goal is to share the love of Jesus Christ and what He has done in our lives with others, and watch God change their hearts—on His timing, and for His glory!

Guest Blogger Chris Webber
Guest Blogger Chris Webber

Chris is Karen’s grandson. Chris says this: “I’m currently a junior at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Business Administration. I am thankful for the many blessings God has poured out on my life, and pray that I use the gifts and talents He has blessed me with to bring glory to His name.” 

Respond to Chris’s blog by emailing him at chris@findchristianlinks.com.