“Each Xmas I have helped different charities and have managed to get our clients to contribute to give as well each year! This year I personally want to help 3 different families in our area locally that need some help this year. I would like to arrange a hamper for each family and hopefully I can get clients to donate gifts & goods to the chosen families. I was told that your church would know who would benefit from this.” 

This is great on so many levels:

• Partnering together to care for those in need.
• Its a great thing for those in need to receive this Christmas.
• We both cross promote each other, as we let people at church know and they let their clients know about the venture… awareness of both groups grows. Mutually beneficial.
• It’s an encouragement to know that we have a reputation in the community of “doing good” and would know people in need this Christmas.

So this Salon will do up some hampers and then we will distribute it to 3 people we know who would welcome such a gift this Christmas.

Check out post 1 and post 2 in this 3 part series

Some do’s and don’ts in connecting & serving businesses:

1. Pursue mutually beneficial partnerships - Don’t exploit local businesses. Often churches only approach businesses to get something out of them or assume they ‘should’ help churches out and donate to our cause or allow us to put posters up … but what do they get in return.
2. Seek their prosperity. Think of things that might bless them, help their business to thrive. What things can you do to help them build new connections, clients or customers. (This can still be ‘beneficial’ to your church also – wait for the next post in this series for an example.
   
   
3. Lead the way on important issues. Demonstrate to your community how we ought to repsond to tragedy, disaster or poverty around us. Although our motives my be different, I think it is good for the church to be the leader in mercy activities. Help unbelievers care about other people and perhaps include them in to your already established structures that contribute to those in need

This is a video they created for Christmas 2010

This is the website for their Christmas Carols Event, Glow: Simple & Effective website.

Are you going to be exploiting the festive cheer to preach the good news of Jesus Christ given unto us?

Ideas for Christmas Outreach:

1. Community Carols Event
2. Christmas Festive Market
3. Anglicare Christmas Appeal – Toys and Tucker
4. Blue Christmas (church service for those grieving)
5. Free Community Christmas Day Lunch
6. Kids holiday program
7. Letterbox drop
8. Christmas Hampers for those in need in the local area
9. Music / Concert / Recital
10. Gingerbread House making night
11. Nursing home visit with caroling
12. Street Christmas party
13. Apartment block Christmas party
14. Outdoors large Nativity scene
15. Nativity Play
16. Church Christmas Tour
17. Youth Band Night
18. Additional Church services to the normal weekend
19. Carols by Candlelight
20. Midnight Mass Christmas Eve
21. Family Christmas Service
22. Christmas movie night screen “The Nativity Story” (bit old but…)
23. Operation Christmas Child, invite community to take part.
24. Christmas Shopping Child minding… look after kids while people shop. Have gospel content… Christmas craft etc.
25. Christmas tree delivery
26. Bible / Scripture giveaway

Audrey Assad has a beautiful voice. This song evokes in your heart a tone of reflection of our Christmas exceptions… Jesus came as a humble little baby, dependent, fleshly, weak and vulnerable… yet was God, clothed with all righteousness and power.

Could’ve come like a mighty storm
With all the strength of a hurricane

….You came like the winter snow
You were quiet



There’s a reason that Christmas peels back the layers of life and shows community in a unique way. We celebrate Christmas in honor of Jesus Christ being born a baby in a manger, of God being made flesh. One of the many beautifully painful things the incarnated Christ did was to knit together a patchwork of people from very different cultures into His church. Just look at the motley crew of apostles—a tax collector, a couple hardheaded brothers, fishermen, a former Pharisee. Even within the “homogeneous” land of Israel, this ragtag group became the builders of the early Church.

Click Here to read the rest of this article…. from Relevant Magazine