Congregations make plans for Dec. 24 outreach effort

By Rachel L. Toalson
Staff Writer
For Lake Travis UMC, Lakeway, Christmas means a new beginning.
Though the 1,012-member congregation has offered Christmas Eve candlelight services in the past, this year marks the first time leaders will take part in the Home for Christmas campaign, an eight-week outreach effort across the Southwest Texas Conference.
“I’ve been in this church since the second time it met, and I can honestly say that there’s never been a really strong, evangelistic outreach,” said Cheri Stringer, a representative from Lake Travis’ communications committee.
“But when I saw this program, I thought, ‘We’re stupid not to be using it.’”
The annual Home for Christmas evangelistic campaign, which began Oct. 29 this year, uses Dec. 24 candlelight services as special events to which church members may invite unchurched friends and neighbors.
The effort follows a step-by-step plan of prayer, invitation and follow-up. Publicity-generating tools, such as promotional signs, news releases and advertising, support the invitation effort.
Stringer said Lake Travis is trying to use all the free publicity it can because no budget was set aside for the Christmas Eve outreach effort.
Church leaders are using a bulk e-mail service called Constant Contact instead of mailing letters to members. Through the program, members will receive an online form, on which they’ll list three names of people the church will personally invite to Christmas Eve services.
The church has about 315 active families, Stringer said. Organizers hope that at least half will respond with names and addresses of three people each. That would give the church 450 nonmembers to invite.
Leaders plan to place yard signs throughout neighborhoods near the church, listing the 5, 7 and 9 p.m. services Dec. 24.
Stringer said she has submitted news releases to the local cable TV system for the community information channel.
“We’re eager to see how things will turn out,” Stringer said. “We’ve never really used these publicizing methods. What we’re hoping for is that, even with limited resources, (church leaders) will see enough of a response that they’ll fund it next year.”
Pharr UMC plans to use door hangars and traditional door-to-door canvassing to let people know about its children’s pageant at 5 p.m. and candlelight service at 7 p.m.
The congregation plans to send bilingual mailers to people named by its 136 members, said Carole Lahti, youth and Christian education director. Both services are to be translated into Spanish.
The church also will be hosting a Christmas dinner at church for anyone who needs a place to go.
“We have a lot of winter Texans here and people who don’t have any family in the area,” Lahti said. The dinners began about three years ago.
Christmas Eve attendance at Pharr UMC increased last year because of the Home for Christmas outreach effort, Lahti said.
“At Christmas, people are more inclined than at other times in the year to go to church,” she said. “And if they haven’t been to a church in a number of years, this is a great time to invite them in.”
First UMC, Corpus Christi, plans to celebrate Christmas with the release of its contemporary worship team’s newest album. The group, Cross Tide, had a release party Nov. 19 at the church, said Jeannie White, a member of the group.
The CD features a song called “Coming Home for Christmas,” written by White. The lyrics embrace the essence of the annual outreach campaign:
“There is nothing like gath’ring with God’s family/A sheltering rock in a thundering sea/Accepted, welcomed, here I belong./Sharing God’s love, coming home/Coming home, coming home for Christmas./There is no sweeter place to be./We’ll sing joyful hymns in harmony/Together with the family./Take my hand, come with me, coming home.”
“I wrote it a few years ago,” White said. “I had heard about the Home for Christmas campaign, and I thought, ‘What a neat song that would make.’”
The Christmas compact disk, called “Cross Tide Christmas,” has 13 songs on it—eight originals and five classics, such as “What Child is This,” “Go, Tell it on the Mountain” and “Silent Night.”
All money from CD sales will return to the Cross Tide account, which will possibly be used for additional CDs in the future, White said. CDs can be purchased at the church or online at www.crosstide.org.
The Board of Discipleship has sponsored the Home for Christmas outreach campaign annually since 2000. Campaign plans are detailed in a 146-page Igniting Ministry Campaign Workbook for the Southwest Texas Conference. The Communication and Public Witness Office prepared the book in 2002.
Home for Christmas is one way the Southwest Texas Conference tries to empower ministries in local congregations so they can offer Christ to all.