November 29th, 2007
What Are Your Christmas Plans?
Posted by Church Video Ideas under Audio, Church Media, Church video, Churches, Holidays, Ideas, Media ministry, Outreach, Random ThoughtsToday we have another meeting to plan for our Christmas Eve services. We’re doing 2 services on Sunday, the 23rd and 3 services on Monday, the 24th. We’re doing a mixture of special music, a small dramatic presentation and a message. This is a small Christmas for us, as we’re maxed out with the new building coming soon. I’m curious… what are you doing at your church for Christmas?
Also, if you did something special for Thanksgiving, I’d love to hear about it.
EXTRA:
Many of you have emailed me about the audio equipment we’re selling at my church. Tomorrow I should have a complete list of model numbers, prices, etc.
PERSONAL:
It all comes down to the showdown tonight - the Cowboys and the Packers! Wouldn’t you know we have rehearsal during the game? 
November 29th, 2007 at 7:46 am
We usually run four weekend services (Sat @ 6, Sun @ 8:30, 10:15, 12), but for our Christmas production on the 15th & 16th, we’re adding a second on Saturday evening.
Our Christmas series, which begins next weekend is called “Home.” For our production, we are doing a modern re-telling of the Prodigal Son. It will feature our Children’s Ministry (they’ll do “I’ll be Home for Christmas” with a nursery parade), live acting and scenes on video. When our Prodigal leaves home and goes to the big city. We’ll have a medley of “Wonderful Christmas Time,” “For the Love of Money” and “Dancin’ in the Streets.” We even have a Stomp-esque thing with all of our drummers doing “Little Drummer Boy.” There’s a live scene with the parents followed by “Please Come Home for Christmas.” At the end, when the Prodigal goes home, I get the pleasure of singing the ubiquitous Daughtry song “Home” (did he score big at the AMAs or what?) while the video plays scenes of his way back home, ending with he and his dad seeing each other from afar. As they run toward each other on video, it goes to black as the lights come on and they embrace live onstage. At that point, it will snow in the auditorium (gotta have the WOW factor).
Christmas weekend is always very subdued at our church. We’re all catching our breath after the production.
BTW, about the Cowboys … thank God for DVRs, eh?
November 29th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Ours is quite simple. We’ve got a children’s musical this weekend which we’ve had several dress rehearsals for.
On the 23rd, we have a big dinner planned. Then the adults and kids will split. Adults will have a time of testimony and sharing (snxxxx….sorry). The kids will go to the worship center and watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (how cool is that!!) I believe that there will be a tie in after the showing where we’ll build off the scripture presented in Charlie Brown (I’m still amazed that ABC shows it…) I believe it’s gonna be a good chance to present the gospel to the kids using the real meaning of Christmas.
Sorry ours isn’t that elaborate
November 29th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Our church has always had a very large college population, so our “Christmas” services are early - this year they are the 8th and 9th of December - so that the students can be involved before dispersing. Our regular services are blended, but our Christmas and Good Friday/Easter services are more choral.
We’ll have a large choir, plus a full band (two ac guitars, bass, drums, perc, piano/keys, flute, cello, flugelhorn). Quite fun.
Then on Christmas Eve, we always have a more intimate carol/hymn service, with a hot chocolate/cider reception afterward.
November 29th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Our church does a music program we call “A Christmas to Remember”. It’s basically a music review with blues, pop, a little rock, and sacred music. We augment our band with a 5 violins, trumpet, bone, sax, Harmonica, and a couple of guest guitars, etc. Greg actually worked on our show last year, providing lots of eye candy and video playbacks.
We’re also trying to get two extra cameras interfaced into our system for our show this year - one stage camera and one more in the back of the house. Just bought the AJA SDI converters yesterday.
O yea, we usually do something on video that contains a gospel message. Not an appeal - just “here’s what it means to be a believer and God likes you and wants a relationship with you”. This year we’re having a 10 year old girl do a live reading from Luke 2, followed by another minute or so of copy we’re writing for her.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
We usually have 500-600 people over two services on Saturday and Sunday, with the bulk of the people on Sunday. For Christmas, we’ll be having one service on the 23rd and the other on the 25th. I suspect most guests will come on the 25th, so I’m setting up a simple video feed to the overflow room.
Pretty simple program this year. More familiar carols into the worship set, a testimony, the youth will be doing a dance, a group of girls will do a ’signing’ dance to ‘The prayer’ followed by a short film version of the Lifehouse ‘Everything’ skit.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Congrats to your Cowboys on the win! I’m a lifelong Steelers fan…so I can’t say that I’m happy
(yes, a southern boy can be a Steelers fan)
November 30th, 2007 at 11:16 am
We’ve been in production mode for the last few weeks, and it continues for the next 2. We had a huge Thanksgiving banquet in our worship center with several video testimonies, live testimonies, a baptism and communion.
Now we’re gearing up for our Christmas drama/musical. We’re doing a 3 night production of a play that our creative arts director wrote… it’s similar to Nat’l Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, but it ties the Christmas story and the Gospel in nicely. We have tons of lights and video coming in, so the tech side will be crazy. We’re transforming our worship center starting next Monday.
For Christmas Eve, instead of having a service we’re encouraging families to spend that time together at home, reading the Christmas story there. It’s a nice break, especially for the staff.
November 30th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
We’re a church plant just getting into our first building project. Short on time. We usually rent a public auditorium for Christmas Eve and get about 400 to 500 people there.
I just found this site. Could any of you pass on some of your best PAST Christmas programming ideas? This would save us a ton of time just in brainstorming. I am about to scrap what we’ve started because it jsut doesn’t seem to be gelling.
Thanks
December 1st, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Richard: I love that you’re singing Daughtry’s “Home” song - that rocks. And, yes, snow is always a cool “wow” factor.
Greg: The Charlie Brown Christmas is great. I’m still amazed that they continue to play it, too.
Harry: A flugelhorn - I’m impressed. That used to be my password.
Brian: “Christmas to Remember” is always the best music show in Dallas. You guys display amazing talent each and every year.
Eric: Big props on doing “Everything” by Lifehouse - I love that song!
David: I smile just thinking about doing something like “Christmas Vacation”. It’s not Christmas for me, unless we watch that movie.
Rick: A church plant that is up to 400 to 500 is a God-thing. Exciting. You can go here: http://www.multisensoryworship.com/testimonies.htm to see some free Christmas downloads and ideas that I did last year.
December 2nd, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Hey Greg. Yeah, ‘Everything’ is like the most performed skit these days. It has a great message and I thought I’d do a take on it. I’ll send you the link when its done.
I’d like to credit the creators whom I think was the Youth Group ‘The Mission’ who performed it at Winterfest 2006-Smoky Mountains. (As far as I can tell anyway). Getting proper licensing for the ‘Everything’ song will be very difficult in asia, so end distribution will likely be fairly limited.