Breaking big Christmas events into manageable steps brings clarity to the season.
Humbugs beware. Even though it’s September, and for many of us it doesn’t feel like fall, it is pre-Christmas. September, October, and November are often a ramp-up of one-off events, bible studies, and other miscellaneous productions that culminate in the big Christmas… whatever. Maybe your church does a big production for Christmas, a Christmas Eve service, a pageant, or a musical. Whatever it is, I want to give you some advice to thrive in the fall ramp-up to the big Christmas “thing.”
Stay Ahead
I’ll be honest with you, here. I’m actually looking at a particularly un-notated wall calendar next to my desk. Sometimes I struggle getting ahead of events just as much as the next guy, but the principle remains—stay ahead of events and you’ll have an anxiety-free trip to Christmas.
Stay ahead, and you’ll have an anxiety-free trip to Christmas.
This doesn’t mean you need to be anxious about staying ahead; it just means that you need to know where your resources are going over the coming months. One of the things I’ve learned is that the rest of the church staff doesn’t entirely understand what it takes to pull off even a small event or bible study, so you have to take ownership ahead of time and be the person who gets the ball rolling on run sheets, gear lists, and needed volunteers.
Delegate
This is where staying ahead really pays off. If you know what you need ahead of time, you can schedule out your team so that no one gets over-taxed—yourself included.
It’s also important to give ministry away. In theory, you have a volunteer team that likes to help out for fun, which means they’re already motivated to come in and serve their church long before you ever call or email them for help. Let a willing team member own an event, even you if you could do it “better.”
If someone can do it 70% as well as you, let them.
A while back, I wrote a devo about the 70% rule, which is the basic idea that if someone can something 70% as well as you, let them do it. Will it be perfect? Probably not, but will it be good and will someone find joy is serving their brother and sisters? Yes, and that’s point. Production leaders are here to equip the saints for ministry, so we’re not doing our job if we’re not consistently giving the ministry away.
Pray
I struggle with this sometimes because prayer is immediately impractical—it’s not a magic spell that makes things work out of thin air. Over the years, I’ve become a bit more hands-on than knees-down, and that’s not a bad thing, I’ve found. We’re called to love and serve, which is hands-on work. At the same time, we’re not called to do it alone.
Without prayer, our default is often going it alone.
God is a good father who wants to work with us, and without prayer, our default is often going it alone. We start to become overly reliant on our own works and expertise, and that’s not the way of Jesus. We are called to abide in him, which will look like a mysterious mixture of hands-on work and knees-down prayer, and in a mixture that is a little different for everyone at different times and seasons.
Regardless, prayer is essential, and a little goes a long way. Some days you might need an hour, and other days you might only have a few seconds to say, “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy,” but, either way, the Lord is kind, and he hears our prayers.
I pray that you have an anxiety-free Pre-Christmas. The Lord is with you.
