Hi all

It’s November, which means that Christmas has officially begun, in a commercial sense.

What are your ideas for using this period well for gospel proclamation?

My friend Ruly in Indonesia thought that Christmas and Easter were the most wonderful times for evangelizing Muslims. Even though evangelism was not on in a highly Islamicized culture, parties in your house at Christmas and Easter were fine. And, lots of Muslims became Christians because they realized that something significant was going on in the lives of people whose parties they got invited to.

So that’s one idea.

I’m also really hoping that Kel Richards’ Christmas Wordwatch, (see here ) takes off. I edited it, and Kel just does a great job of explaining Christian Christmas words in a way that makes sense.

If you were going to have a Christmas party, now would be the time to be thinking about it. But what other ideas do you have?

I mean, what is a Christmas party anyway, as opposed to a party?

Or you can put a specially designed gospel explanation in a Christmas card. See the current edition of Southern Cross or download here

Gordon,

I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t thought this far in advance and its November. I’m genuinely grateful for the kick up the pants I felt (ouch!) when I read your post.

What to do? It’s ladies bible study tomorrow so I’m going to suggest we brainstorm your question:

What are your ideas for using this period well for gospel proclamation?

Just to mind, I’ll send my teenage god-daughter, who lives in Sydney, a copy of australian stories for teens, which I recommended a little while ago on these forums.

Angela

Why can’t Matthias Media or some other Christian group design a T-shirt with a simple in-your-face Christmas message? I would happily be a walking billboard for the gospel as could my kids.

Angela,

I can’t see what would stop you taking the A4 version of the Anglican Media poster at and either printing it onto a T-shirt transfer on an inkjet printer and ironing it on, or being more professional, taking it to a screen printer.

We did this last year - with permission - with the cover of the Matthias Media tract “While Shepherds washed their socks”. We wore these t-shirts as we handed out 500 sample bags at Wollongong train stations. These sample bags included a fair trade tea-bag, a candy cane (with the legend of its creation), a postcard advertising our service times and the Matthias Media tract.

We plan to do a similar thing this year, maybe with a CD with a Christmas sermon on it. Does anyone know if you can put an audio CD and an MP3 version of a sermon on the same disk to allow people to play it both ways?

We are completely open to people using our designs for any evangelistic purpose they want. That’s exactly what we want!

I suspect FEVA may be open to the same idea.

At the end of the day we are all just trying to use our creativity to bring glory to God!

Sandy,

Superlatives fail me.

I really like how your church went out to the people rather than waitung for them to come to you. Very biblical.

I’m making a hard copy of your post to challenge our ladies bible study group. But really your idea and example is worthy of whole church participation. I really like the practice of encouraging everyone’s participation. It’s my guess that our kids and youth would be witnessed to just as much as the person on the street.

Thanks for sharing such a brilliant idea!

cheers
Angela
PS Jeremy, I’ve just caught your post, thank you.

If churches want to do a Christmas showbag like Sandy suggests then I have boxes of the SC Christmas lift-out as extra run-ons sitting on the floor of our office. This means a full-colour glossy A3 hand-out with gospel explanations by Michael Jensen, Dominic Steele and John Dickson + testimonies all in an especially Christmas themed presentation. Give me a call and we can come up with good rate for purchase and delivery.

[quote author="Sandy Grant"]
We plan to do a similar thing this year, maybe with a CD with a Christmas sermon on it. Does anyone know if you can put an audio CD and an MP3 version of a sermon on the same disk to allow people to play it both ways?

AFAIK, not possible, unfortunately.

cheers,
Andrew

[quote author="Sandy Grant"]
We plan to do a similar thing this year, maybe with a CD with a Christmas sermon on it. Does anyone know if you can put an audio CD and an MP3 version of a sermon on the same disk to allow people to play it both ways?

Very doable (sorry Andrew :))

The burning software that came with my laptop’s CD Burner (Roxio Easy CD Creator) has an option to make a mixed-mode CD.
Instructions for using it are on the screen.

I imagine it is a fairly standard option in most CD-burning software and someone in your church is bound to have it available. Just put the mp3 file in the data section and the normal audio on the other. Easy done :)

I’ve been getting mixed-mode CDs for a long time (but haven’t burned any myself). Lots of CDs have music in a CD player, but then have data on the CD like a video clip or two and some wallpapers etc.

Sandy,

Your great idea has been taken to heart by our women’s evangelistic team. We are investigating putting together a Christmas bag for each woman who attends our upcoming evangelistic dinner in early December.

Many thanks

cheers
Angela

Hi guys,

I’ve had a number of enquiries about buying bulk copies of our Christmas evangelistic lift out ( check the PDF out here ) for handing out at Christmas events.

Anyone else interested while I’m in the process of working out postage costs?

Hey Sandy.  You know, a great Christmas ‘song’ might go down well on your CD sampler.  In fact, I might just know of one such song…

www.myspace.com/mikerayson

Click on the link ‘Hey Joe’ in the music player box.

Send me an email if’n ya might be interested and we can talk cold turkey… because lord knows its too warm at Chrissy for hot turkey (although I’ll be eating a hot Chrissy dinner this year being as I’ll be in the USA and all!!). - mike@mikerayson.net

Actually, ‘scuse me for drumming up business via Anglican Media, but if any one else is interested in using my song in such a way, sendeth me an email.  I only had the idea, because a church in Illinois approached me and asked to re-produce 2000 copies of my song to give out as Chrissy presents to all the folk who attend their services on Chrissy eve.  And I reckon if you listen carefully to FM103.2 or any other Christian radio station in Oz you may here it played again this Christmas season.

Merry Christmas and ho ho ho and all that stuff.

Mike

Sandy said :

We did this last year - with permission - with the cover of the Matthias Media tract “While Shepherds washed their socks”. We wore these t-shirts as we handed out 500 sample bags at Wollongong train stations. These sample bags included a fair trade tea-bag, a candy cane (with the legend of its creation), a postcard advertising our service times and the Matthias Media tract.

What times did you hand them out ? Is evening (going home ) a better time than morning ( going to work etc ) ? I’m not sure how you would measure the effectiveness of such a venture - but were there any observable results of your efforts ? Any hints about anything to avoid or do better/different in future ?

We plan to do a similar thing this year, maybe with a CD with a Christmas sermon on it.

Is it worthwhile having advertising for several churches in the region - not just your own ? Or do you just ‘do your own thing’.  These are questions I’m thinking about at the moment.  e.g. If other neighbouring Anglican churches want to do something similar, do we all get together and produce one leaflet/invite with everybody’s details listed - showing a united approach - or just have our individual details ?

We’re all looking to grow our individual churches - but I was just wondering about those commuters who actually live some distance from where your church is located - and are just ‘passing through’ the station area going to/from work.

If anyone has any ideas how to help someone endure Christmas who has loathed it every year since her father died in 1982, I’m all ears.

I understand my wife is not alone in loathing Christmas. Over the past 23 years I’ve grown less and less keen on it myself.

And ...Mike thanks for the link to your site. I have never visited before. Great song.

Kevin,

It works for us to do it in them morning, when commuters head off to Sydney. They are about to sit on the train for 60-100 minutes, and many of them read. Let’s give ‘em something more interesting than the newspaper. That’s also why we are exploring the CD option for everyone with laptops and MP3 players.

In the arvo/evening, they are heading home to dinner and are not about to start reading what’s in the sample bag. Also they come out in a stampede and it’s harder to hand them out. On the way into the station, they come in dribs and drabs, although at higher volume closer to trains.

You need to ensure you don’t break any laws. The railway station manager was concerned that we did not do it on State Rail Land and so we complied as best we could by standing on the edge of the road or on the opposite footpath. He was actually very impressed we were giving stuff away for free and that it was a non-commercial venture.

You need multiple hand-er out-ers** And train them. (Go to mission thinking and Stuart Robinson’s article on how to leaflet.) They need to be willing to stand patiently around in the slower times between trains.

In regards to sharing advertising, you could do that. We did it last year at a joint outdoor carols event which also included the info of the Christmas service times for all the participating churches. But that’s not always possible or practical. Also it’s important people really own the thing for it to work, and we tend to own what we trust, and what we trust most (generally) is the congregations we meet in locally.

Edit: **The reason is that people come to the station entry from multiple directions.