6 Christmas Event Ideas for Your Church

Engaging with your church congregation and community around the holidays is extremely important. Many people may be visiting, some might be looking to get more connected, or others might not have the resources or outside family support that everyone else has. This creates ample opportunities for your church family to step in and meet people where they are and help them with what they need (food, shelter, emotional and spiritual support, etc.).

Today, we want to look at six great church Christmas event ideas you can get started setting up today at your church. In addition, we’re going to talk about how the Event Espresso platform can be the perfect companion to help your event be a success. Efficiently executing events will help you be successful in fulfilling the mission of your church.

Group Serve Project

While the holiday season is a happy time for many people, it’s also a time of great need for a lot of groups around the globe. A great way to both serve your community while building up fellowship among your congregation is to participate in a group service project.

Whether it’s serving a meal for the less fortunate or disenfranchised, or building a ramp for a disabled veteran or a handicapped person in need, there are plenty of projects out there you can get involved with.

And if you’re working with a third party who already knows the ropes, they are going to want to know how many people you’re bringing and what their strengths may be. The Event Espresso platform can help by giving you an easy way for people to register, input their skill sets, complete waivers, and get information about the project. Additionally, it creates an incredibly easy-to-use line of communication between you and your volunteers.

Potluck Dinner

Food is certainly a major staple of the Christmas celebration and a great way to meet needs and connect with people. One of the most classic Christmas ideas out there is a church-wide potluck dinner. The event gives people the chance to show off their cooking while creating a perfect environment for lots of love, laughs, and fellowship.

You can then launch a Christmas outreach aiming to share whatever food the congregation has made. But if you’ve ever set up a potluck dinner, you know the toughest part is coordinating to make sure you don’t end up with 10 green bean casseroles and nothing else. 

The Event Espresso platform gives you the ability to register attendees and learn what they’re planning to bring. This allows you to get out in front of an overflow of green bean casserole and provide a more balanced meal for your guests.

Christmas Concert

If your church has a choir, praise band, or music department, or wants to bring in some outside talent, you can reach a lot of people with a Christmas concert. Nothing says Christmas more than Christmas music like carols and hymns while singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

A good problem to have you may run into with your Christmas carol is more people wanting to come than you have room for. And whether you are selling tickets to raise money or it’s a fellowship event, this is a problem you need to get out ahead of.

Thankfully, the Event Espresso platform allows you to take online registrations (paid or free), set a limit on the number of tickets available, and even showcase multiple showtimes. It’s like having your own event planner and coordinator all rolled into one.

Nativity Reenactment or a Christmas Play

Probably the most iconic Christmas event idea many churches do annually is a live nativity reenactment or a Christmas play. This is a great way to showcase the story of Jesus Christ and bring the text to life for your congregation. You can reach out to your church’s childrens ministry for volunteers for the play. It will make the play more special.

Since these events are extremely popular among your congregants as well as community members outside of the church, it’s important to have a system in place to manage your attendees and different showtimes. Event Espresso is fully equipped with all of the capabilities you need to make this happen. And the best part is it’s user-friendly and easy-to-use, which means you won’t be spending hours trying to sort through technical jargon to get started.

Candlelight Christmas Eve Service

A great Christmas event idea that is quite popular with churches around the world is a candlelight Christmas Eve service. Generally, churches offer a few nightly services on the 25 th of December that share the Christmas story and a hopeful and forward-looking message for the coming year. Concluding these events with a candlelight ceremony is a nice way to add a moving and emotional touch to the service.

Christmas Eve Dinner

A powerfully effective way to connect with your congregation during the Christmas season is through food. Many churches around the country like to prepare a Christmas Eve dinner for their congregation, those in need, or those in the community that might not have a local family.

If you’ve never hosted a Christmas Eve dinner or a similar event before, you may not know just how important it is to know who is coming and how many people they are bringing. Attempting to cook food for an unknown number of people usually results in way too much food or not enough.

This is where Event Espresso can step in to help. The platform lets you create an event page right at your church website for your dinner and take reservations from church members or those in the community. Additionally, it lets you set attendee limits if you’re limited on space and resources, and it also lets you know exactly how many people someone is bringing.

A unique function churches with limited space will like is the ability for people to get on a waitlist. That way, if you happen to have someone cancel before the dinner, you can open up a slot for someone on the waitlist and avoid the empty chair.

Putting It All Together

As you can see, there are so many Christmas activities you and your church can choose to connect with your members, those in need, or the community during the Christmas season. In a time when people are looking for ways to connect, it creates the right opportunity for the church to grow and strengthen.

If you’re looking for support in having your Christmas event be a success, consider letting Event Espresso assist. The event management software is easy-to-use, doesn’t require a lot of technical knowledge, and has all of the features you could ever want or need to make any church event like Christmas service or fundraising event happen.