Christmas is a great opportunity to share the gospel. Just about everyone in our society celebrates Christmas, although many don’t really know what it’s all about. At Christmas time we get to share the Good News of God coming into our world in the person of Jesus Christ to save people from their sins (Mt 1:21-23).

Every Christmas Westside holds what we call a Christmas Party. It’s based around four simple ideas:

 1) Everyone is Invited: We invite our whole community through a letterbox drop (which our members hand deliver), and through signs that we hang up at all the major intersections. We also print an extra 100 invitations and we encourage our church members to invite their family, friends and neighbours to come along.

2) Interactive Activities: We organize activities for both children and adults. We don’t do the Santa thing, but we do games, various crafts, and a petting zoo, which is always popular. The idea isn’t just to entertain people, but to sit next to people while they are doing something and talk with them.

3) Great Free Food: We provide a free meal for everyone who comes. And we don’t do a sausage sizzle. This year we had chicken and salad wraps, pulled pork and coleslaw rolls, and roast beef rolls. And for dessert we had chocolate brownie and ice-cream, pavlova and fruit-salad, and jelly and ice-cream for the kids. And of course we always make sure we have some good coffee brewing. I hope you wished you were there, because that’s the idea.

4) The Gospel through Carols: We always finish with a carols service, not for the sake of singing carols, but as an opportunity to proclaim the gospel. This year Ps Keith led the service and spoke about how God is with us in Jesus Christ. Ps Keith invited people to make a decision for Jesus, and also to come along to church for our Christmas Series ‘God With Us!’

Our Christmas Party does three things for our church:

Firstly, it draws us together for a purpose. We have a team of people who start planning two months out. We put out a list of all the things that need doing and ask for volunteers. People volunteer to deliver invitations into our community, to put up signs, to prepare food and crafts, run activities, serve food, welcome visitors, and led the music and singing. Serving alongside each other creates a real sense of community. To be honest it makes me proud to be their pastor.

Secondly, it reminds us of our purpose. Our church doesn’t exist just for the benefit of God’s people, it exists to  reach out to the lost with the Good News of Jesus Christ. We don’t see our Christmas Party as ‘our evangelistic event of the year,’ but one more opportunity to reach our community with the gospel. It’s one part of our vision ‘to reach our community with the love of Jesus.’

Thirdly, it helps us engage with people from our community. We had around 200 people attend our Christmas Party and more than half weren’t members of our church. We had the opportunity to plant the seed of the gospel, and by God’s grace we pray that we will see it grow and produce fruit.

Our Christmas Party this year was the best yet. We had more visitors than ever before, we engaged in more spiritual conversations than ever before, and there was a sense of excitement at what God was doing, not just on the night, but what He is doing in and through our church. My prayer is that your church might not miss the opportunity this Christmas to be a light in the world, and to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ in your community.

One thing that we’ve done is embed the following video onto our church’s Facebook page. It’s a little English, but the gospel is proclaimed so simply a child could understand it (in fact I’m using it for my kids talk during our Christmas Day service). I’ve included the link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfpqhhmmwl8) if you’d like to check it out.

May God bless you and your witness this Christmas.