4 Things Churches Should Do Immediately after Christmas

Churches spend so much energy planning for Christmas that when it’s over, they’re ready to move on. But it’s important that your seasonal strategy includes some post-Christmas follow up. You should know how you’ll reach out to first-time holiday visitors and build on the momentum created by the holiday season.
Here are four things you might consider doing right after Christmas:

1. Communicate with Christmas visitors

You’re likely to have a lot of new visitors during the Christmas season. Hopefully, you’ve captured their contact information because it’s imperative that you connect with them again soon. Whether you plan to send an email or reach out with a postcard, this follow-up should:

• Thank them for their visit
• Communicate a desire to connect with them
• Share some of the church’s plans for the upcoming year
• Promote upcoming sermon series that they might find helpful
• Invite them to return

This communication should happen sooner than later. The longer you wait, the less productive it will be.

2. Follow up with an applicable sermon series

Like Easter and Mother’s Day, Christmas provides an influx of new visitors to your church. If you’re interested in turning those visitors into attendees, you’ll follow up with an extremely practical seasonal sermon series.

This might mean doing a series on money, relationships, or New Year’s resolutions. But it could also mean that you do a little research into some of the more pressing issues and questions in your community and address those for a couple of weeks.

Ultimately, you want to give them a reason to return. And the easiest way to do that is to offer something they’ll find interesting, helpful, and maybe even provocative.

3. Start planning for next Christmas

This is probably the last thing you’re interested in, but hear me out. You just walked through your Christmas season, and everything is fresh in your mind. Pull your staff and volunteers into a meeting and talk about what worked and what didn’t.

This step can give you a leg up on next year’s Christmas season. Once you’ve isolated some of the best and worst things that happened this year, you can discuss how to capitalize on that information. What can you do differently next year to diminish some of the weaknesses and focus on the strengths? You don’t have to plan out the services, but isolating some things to focus on later can give you a significant advantage.

4. Talk about giving

After Christmas, people start turning their attention toward tax season. They should have their W-2 forms from their employers and hopefully a giving statement from the church.

While they’re holding a document that shows exactly how much they’ve contributed is the ideal time to talk about giving. Your members can see exactly how much they’ve given (which, if they haven’t been intentional about it, is often a surprise). And you can encourage them to set a percentage goal for the coming year.
Whether you want to have this discussion from the pulpit or send out a giving email, don’t pass up this opportunity to encourage people to think about their giving habits.

Gaining Momentum for the New Year

It’s natural to think of Christmas as the period at the end of a year, but that’s probably not the ideal way to look at it. Think of it like a flywheel. With the right amount of preparation, you can use the thrust you get from Christmas to carry you into the next year.