Always use holidays for more than celebration at your church

God used celebrations in the Old Testament to focus on and teach about events in salvation history. The best known example is the Passover (Exodus 12-13), wherein every part of it: what is eaten, how the food is prepared, the words spoken over them, are all combined to remind the participants of God's salvation of the Jews from Egypt and to point to his final salvation in the death of the Passover Lamb Jesus.

In the New Testament, Jesus began his ministry at a celebration, a wedding (John 2), where he performed his first miracle. He often used meals as times to teach (Luke 7: 36-50) as he did when the woman poured the perfume over Jesus feet and wiped them with her hair.

Just before leaving his disciples, he celebrated with them and gave new meaning to the Passover, which they were to celebrate while remembering Jesus. Whenever we observe the Lord's Supper, no matter what our tradition, we are reminded of the story of his sacrificial death for us.

We can use them in similar ways

Celebrations force us to pause in our frantic lives and focus on something outside the day-to-day demands. We have fun; we eat special foods; we sometimes exchange gifts; we celebrate with friends and family; and for a few hours we focus on something outside ourselves.

You can use seasonal events and celebrations in your church to do more than recognize special people or have a party--though recognition and parties are wonderful and not to be left out! But in addition to these, use holiday times to help your people growth in their walk with Jesus.  In them you have an opportunity to focus on a:

• Pivotal event in the Christian story: Christmas, Easter
• Specific ministry group: Mothers, Fathers
• A Christian virtue: love (for Valentine's Day), thankfulness (for Thanksgiving Day)
• Application challenges that fit into the holiday, but that might not be obvious, such as at Halloween when you can use it as a time to help people think seriously about life after death.

Tangible communications make your focus practical

As you do these, there are lots of materials on this site that will help you. These include:

Files for all the major holidays that contain ready-to-print publications, editable MS Publisher files and MS Word files for creating postcards, bulletin inserts, website entries and any other kind of communication that you can think of. For the various holidays, there is usually something free for everyone and then a complete editable file of the more options and materials for Effective Church Communication Members, which will save church communicators many hours of work.

You go to the TEMPLATE section on this website and scan available publications and can search for any holiday and the communications that go with it in the search box at the top of the site.