The Magic of Christmas

It's the most wonderful time of the year! The Christmas season is here and with it comes a sense of awe and wonder. At Stevens Creek, the holiday season brings energy, excitement and great enthusiasm. It hasn't always been like it is today. Through the years, we have learned how to maximize this holiday season in order to make the message of Christ attractive (Titus 2:10). In the early days of our church, we had a special service the Sunday before Christmas, but that was basically all we did.

Our second step was to add a weekend Christmas pageant and later we added a Christmas Eve service. The popularity of these two events soared in the community. In fact, Stevens Creek became known for it's Broadway-like productions. People would begin calling for tickets earlier and earlier each season. At the height of it's popularity, we even had corporate sponsorships for the events. The money we raised during this time helped us fund some of the equipment that we use in our weekly ministry today.

Then, everything changed. We read the book Simple Church and started to examine everything that we did as a church. We re-shaped our focus and began concentrating on the mission of Jesus: To love God, love people and serve the world. This emphasis caused us to look at how we do Christmas at The Creek.
We discovered that the way we were celebrating Christmas was not advancing the ongoing ministries of Stevens Creek Church.

We drew huge crowds and received large donations, but when we were honest with ourselves we realized that these people came from other churches and when the last song was sung, they went back to their local church. Not only that, but we discovered that our own people did not attend our Sunday experiences during the holidays because they were simply too tired after investing all of the energy in preparing for the production. You see, practices for the Christmas production began in August. The extra practices for the show affected our on-going ministry. We had to ask the question: what's more important ... a Christmas show or the week-to-week ministry of our church?

Several years ago, we pulled-the-plug on the Christmas Show. People complained, but that goes with the territory. We still had an intense desire to celebrate Christmas but we wanted to do it in a way that would enhance our local church. Todd Sturgell and his incredible team came up with a solution that would strengthen the week-to-week ministry, create enthusiasm in the congregation, increase attendance and honor the season in an appropriate way. What is it?

Today we use the three or four Sundays during December to carry a consistent Christmas story. Instead of a one night drama with three or four scenes, today we present one scene or one act during a weekend service. Then, we tie a message from the Bible to provide a spiritual foundation.

We have discovered the magic of Christmas once again. When you present one act per Sunday, the people in the audience connect with the story line of the drama and they come back the next week to find out what happened. If we can hook them on the first Sunday, then we have them the rest of the month.

We stumbled upon this concept three years ago with the Northpoint series, Christmas with Grace. Then last year we did Velma's Diner. This year, we are going back to our roots and presenting The Gospel According to Scrooge (our signature drama) over a four service format.

This past Sunday, we did the first act and I presented a message on how to handle difficult people. We played off of Scrooge's difficult personality and how all of us will occassionally run into a Scrooge-like person along the way. It was a very special day. We had 1540 people in church on Sunday. This probably represents a 10 - 15 % bump in attendance.

Not only does this increase attendance, but it is easier on the volunteers that we rely on. In the old economy, we did the show and then had to turn around and create Sunday experiences. This method was very tough on our tech team, music team and drama team. The streamlining of our Christmas ministry has made life more bearable for these teams.

What's the end result? Sunday services are better, attendance is up, and our volunteers can enjoy Christmas. The magic of Christmas has returned!

-- Marty Baker