This is part 5 of the series, “Is it too early to start planning for Christmas? Or is it too late.” Feel free to start here. Or, go back to the beginning of the series.

If you have been following along with this series and have done everything you can to plan, invite, and prepare, you are almost ready for Christmas Eve. If you have done that hard work of inviting people or, if your church historically sees a lot of guests on Christmas Eve, you will likely be seeing some new faces and the faces of people you haven’t seen for a while. Some churches make the huge mistake of labeling these people as “Christmas and Easter Christians” and just assuming they won’t be back again. That is wrong for so many reasons that it would take another post even to begin to go into it. Let me offer the short version.

Everyone who joins you on Christmas Eve is a beloved child of God. God yearns for a deeper relationship with them and, whether they know it or not, they yearn for a deeper relationship with God. Their experience with us on Christmas Eve has the potential to change their lives forever.

I hope you are already planning for an excellent worship service on Christmas Eve. In my previous post, I listed some resources to help. Now it is time to think about how we can make guests feel welcome and a genuine part of the worship experience.

Discipleship Ministries offers a great piece called Christmas Eve Hospitality: Twelve Ways to Welcome.

This is a great article that you can share with your team, especially those involved in planning or leading worship. I am not going to rehash everything covered in that article. Instead, I just encourage you to read it.

The one word I want to share is this: intentionality.

On Christmas Eve, we need to be intentional about welcoming guests. If we think about the Christmas Story, it kind of makes sense, right? If we think about our mission to make disciples, it really makes sense.

Let’s be intentional about greeting, welcoming, making our guests comfortable, and offering them something that will cause them to want to come back for more.

Check back for my next post where I will share some ways we can make sure they know that they are welcome to come back and worship with us again.