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Let’s talk about small church Christmas get-togethers!
The holiday season is a wonderful time of traditions and opportunities for your small church to build deeper relationships through moments of food and fellowship. Each region, culture, and family have special tasty treats they love to share, and we all know Jesus modeled building relationships around mealtimes and food.
Meals around the table give us time to slow down, sit, savor, share with each other, make memories, and build church family connections. Offering activities to a variety of ages encourages everyone in small churches to participate and feel valued, as well as just having fun together!
Just think, you could even host a fun Christmas-themed meal event for the men in your church. Check out the December Candy Cane-themed Men’s Breakfast idea to get started.
Bring the true meaning of Christmas to light both to your church family as well as invited guests! Try these ideas done by people in small churches.
Looking for something fresh and new for the holiday season?
Check out the Blue Christmas Pack & the Advent Worship Pack!
Christmas Get-Togethers & Meals For Your Small Church
Try Something New For Your Christmas Party
Think about your small church Christmas Party. Instead of a traditional meal or potluck dinner, why not try a Chili Cook-Off?
Participants sign up to make their best chili. Label each slow cooker with a one-line description. (Cinnamon Chili, Extra Hot & Spicy, Gramma’s Recipe, Vegetarian, White Chicken Chili, etc.)
The church provides tableware, bread, and toppings. Invite guests to bring a salad or dessert to share! What a fun twist on a holiday meal!
To choose a winner, set up one solo cup immediately to the right of each slow cooker. Give all attendees three pennies to cast their votes for their top favorites. At the end of the night, the cook who made the chili that received the most pennies is the winner.
Give added excitement to your small church Christmas Chili Cook-Off by presenting the winner with a trophy.
Flavors Of The World Christmas Party
Consider a new twist on a traditional Christmas gathering that focuses on different flavors and traditions from around the world. If you have different ethnicities represented in your community, search for people willing to join you on this project. Working together gives your small church (and community, too!) a chance to get to know them and their culture.
An international tasting festival is an exciting event to invite your community to come out and experience something new. It is also a chance to teach children about different cultures and how they celebrate Christ’s birth. If your small church supports any missionaries, include the lands where your church/denomination missionaries are serving.
Include decorations from each culture and land. Set up booths around the room. Create a festive atmosphere. Guests travel from booth to booth and experience a taste of different foods. They may participate in activities or learn about a tradition from that land. Flavors of the World Christmas Party is a perfect intergenerational event because all ages can participate together!
Invite everyone to gather at the end of the evening. Read the Christmas story. Ask people to read different languages for each part of the story. To finish the evening, offer a time to perform cultural music for a special experience.
This is a chance to celebrate Christmas together. It becomes a real cultural experience to bring your community together.
Plan A Birthday Party For Jesus
Michael and Amy Sims live in Alaska. Their church hosts a birthday party for Jesus during their children and youth night. They have games, serve cupcakes, and share the Christmas story. To top it all off, they have a piñata, which takes some planning to get a piñata in remote Alaska!
Children love birthday parties. For a children’s event, host the Biggest Birthday Party for Children’s Ministry and use it as an outreach tool. We give step-by-step directions to host your own!
Plan A Christmas Outreach Meal
Pam McCann shares how they transform a Christmas dinner party into an act of love and blessing to others when their ladies’ ministry group, J.O.Y., goes out for a holiday party and meal at a special event center.
This event center is ministry-based. All the servers are young women rehabilitating from addictions and other types of abuse. The women are all provided with housing behind the event center. They work at the event center to earn a living while they are coached and mentored to find a life filled with Hope and Jesus!
Pam’s group blesses the ministry and the women who serve there with a love-offering gift at the end of the evening. They transform a simple Christmas gathering into a blessing for this ministry!
Dinners For Six Builds Small Church Relationships
Build deeper relationships with the people in your small church with this Dinners For Six idea. Start with a dinner in December and continue into the new year. Dinners for Six works great for your couples ministry, men’s ministry, or ladies’ ministry. These dinners are easy to organize and run on three-month rotations.
Connect better with the people at your small church and host a Dinner For Six. Invite someone you might not know well, enjoy new friendships, and strengthen current relationships.
Small Church Christmas Praise & Worship Night
Arjandex and Annie’s small church takes the opportunity at Christmas time to celebrate the goodness of God for the past year. They gather together for praise and worship time with singing and testimonies. Afterward, everyone enjoys dinner with each other. They share fellowship around the tables, and continue the thankfulness and gratitude for how incredible the Lord has been!!
For basic details for a prayer, praise, and worship night, check out 3 Small Church New Year’s Events. This post gives seven elements to include in your next praise and worship night.
Tour Of Restaurants To Be A Blessing
Most of us love going to a restaurant to share a meal. We experience lots of fun, and fellowship, none of the prep and cooking work, and no clean up. What’s not to love?
Transform this fun activity into a night of serving others!
“Savor & Serve Night” is a fun event for your small group or women’s ministry. Everyone meets at the church. The evening starts with a time of prayer, asking God to open doors of communication and to help each group bless their server.
Then, participants break up into ‘manageable’ groups to go out to different restaurants in the area. The point of the evening is not only fun holiday fellowship but also to ‘serve your server.’
Each guest brings a small item to put in a gift bag with others from their group. Each bag should include a Christmas card signed by your church.
Groups go out for their meal. They make the most of moments to connect with their server. Ask questions, take an interest in the server’s life, take prayer requests, and ask if you can pray for the server before you leave.
Once the group has finished their meal, they present the gift bag to their server and wish their server a Merry Christmas. Of course, leave a very generous tip to bless them!
Groups return to the church to fellowship together with dessert and share about the connections they made with the servers. End the evening with prayer for each server and a time of thanksgiving and praise! This event is both food for the body and for the soul!
Looking for something fresh and new for the holiday season?
Check out the Blue Christmas Pack & the Advent Worship Pack!
Host A Family Night Out
5 Fun All-Church Family Christmas Events give holiday ideas that aren’t the traditional holiday parties we usually think about.
- Jingle Jammie Run Scavenger Hunt
- Tacky Tinsel Holiday Party
- Cookie Creation Stations
- The Great Christmas Kidnapping
- Twelve Days Of Christmas Caring
Family events allow families a short while to pause their schedules and just enjoy being together in a fun moment. These events are the perfect time to encourage your congregants to invite another family from their kids’ schools, or a neighborhood family.
Give Christmas Cookies To Your Neighborhood
Titumeni Titu Chirwa tells of one year when their small church distributed packages of cookies to people in the neighborhood. They were blessed with the cookies from a church member who owned a pastry shop. The church took time to make handwritten notes and attached a Christmas Story tract. They delivered the cookies, which were received with joy!
Your church can easily do the same kind of outreach by sourcing cookies from a local bakery or grocery store. Or, host a Saturday Cookie Bake-Off Event in the morning. Invite your youth or other ministry groups to come and make cookies together. If you have limited kitchen space at your church, ask members to donate homemade cookies.
We’re Just Doing What Jesus Did!
When we think about food and fellowship in small churches, we are actually following the example of the Early Church; food was an important part of fellowshipping with each other.
Acts 2:46 (KJV) says, “And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,”
Christian fellowship always had an element of food built into it. The verse above tells us they were “breaking bread from house to house.” This was not some ritual communion-type service. The words “breaking bread” come from a common Greek phrase used to describe the sharing of a meal with a time of fellowship and relaxation with friends.
So you see, God desires for us to sit and savor. Share time with your church family. Build relationships as we serve Him together.
Christmas is a wonderful time to fellowship around the table!
Read More:
Christmas Ideas For Outreach And Connection
