As we enter the Christmas season, it’s important that we address our own biased lenses in how we are prepping for and programming our Christmas services.
Sometimes, as technicians, our focus becomes nothing more than a desire to make the services bigger and better than last year, or do try a really cool new “thing” that we saw some other church do online. Or, perhaps our personal preference and style becomes evident during the planning phase as we work to put our own stamp on each element.
Often, our filter could even slip into “lather, rinse, repeat” mode as we just do our best to make it through the craziness unscathed. So we end up doing the same things we did last year, just because it’s the path of least resistance and requires the least amount of work.
Instead of unintentionally allowing ourselves to become selfish or jaded, we need to instead force ourselves to exchange those lenses and biases for three other important perspectives we should consider:
The video experience.
Many churches now rely heavily on a video experience to share a service or event with a broader audience, whether that’s at an offsite campus, through a live mobile/online streaming platform, on-demand viewing online, or even in an overflow room down the hall.
As we program big events, it becomes natural to make decisions based exclusively on how things look and feel in our main room, and we can sometimes neglect to consider whether those elements will effectively translate through the lens of the camera.
If we’re doing a special musical element, or a creative piece, are our camera shots accurately telling the same story for those viewers? Are we using wider, cutaway shots to show the broader stage, the room, the audience, etc., so viewers can feel like they’re also immersed in the experience?
If not, having a narrowly focused camera experience does nothing more than remind viewers that they’re on the outside looking in and have a lesser perspective.
Our programming should always take into account how an audience will experience our service elements when they aren’t sitting in the room.
Visitors
Christmas is a perfect time of year for people to consider trying out new churches, or express a willingness to attend a different church with a friend of family member. So, our seats and pews are typically filled with a lot of people who may not ordinarily consider our church their home.
We should always be especially mindful of these people for two reasons: we don’t want to take for granted the fact that they know how we do things, and we want them to feel comfortable enough to consider coming back another time on a regular Sunday.
Knowing that visitors may not be familiar with our regular flow, perhaps we should consider extra signage during Christmas season: for parking, restrooms, childcare check-in stations, coffee, etc. There’s no worse feeling as a visitor somewhere than feeling like you are lost and are too self-conscious to ask for help.
Also, most visitors may not be familiar with our service flow or church staff. So, at some point early in a Christmas service, we should consider welcoming our guests from the stage and offering a quick explanation of what to expect: service flow and length, special elements that are forthcoming, and even an introduction of key people who will be addressing them from the stage (for video audiences, lower third, name slates on the video are crucial).
If we go out of our way to cater the presentation to visitors, and empathize with the fact that they may feel a bit like a fish out of water, they may feel comfortable enough to be willing to come back again another time.
But if it’s an unwelcome environment and those guests feel like they never know what’s going on and nobody is interested in explaining it to them, we can probably forget about having them return.
The unsaved
At its most basic level, churches exist for the unsaved: those who aren’t there yet but who need to be. The real mission of a church is one based on evangelism. Our primary focus should always be to take the message we have and try to reach as many people as possible.
For Christmas services, though, it can get really easy to build an entire experience around what many of us would consider established church traditions and practices.
We sing songs that are common in churches, we talk about a Nativity, and we may even partake in communion or other sacraments.
But we should always consider the fact that some of those in the audience don’t actually have any idea what we are doing, and they may not have any depth of church experience to rely on.
So, as we plan our programming, are we taking the extra effort to ensure that we’re explaining what we’re doing at certain points of the service and why we are doing it? Do we offer details and context that many of us “churched people” may take for granted, but could be critical information for someone who’s never been in a service before?
We never want a visitor or unsaved person to simply feel reminded that they are on the outside looking into a “cool kids club.” But the only way to fight that perception is to go above and beyond to ensure that we’re catering our communication and packaging to that audience.
Instead of falling into a rhythm of looking though a certain lens “because that’s the way we’ve always done it,” let’s ensure that we’re actively checking our blind spots and asking questions about how we can do things better and with a different perspective. That will inevitably ensure that we’re creating the best possible Christmas experience that our audience can enjoy, regardless of who and where they are.
