You’ve barely recovered from the half-term light party and somebody has the audacity to mention Christmas plans. It’s only the start of November!
But November is when there’s still time to think and pray. To ask what your children and young people actually need spiritually this Christmas-time. Not just what will keep them entertained. Not just what worked three years ago. Not whatever idea is currently doing the rounds online.
You know what December is like. The costumes, glitter and endless logistics. By the third week of advent you’ll be ready to activate survival mode. Which is exactly why you should think about it now, while there’s still some oxygen in the room.
Beware of engaging autopilot
So often, the same programme gets wheeled out, year in and year out. The same scratch nativity. The same crib service with the same old songs.
Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels, sheep, and we’re done for another year!
Of course traditions matter and familiar rhythms help the very little ones feel safe. But when did repetition become the same thing as discipleship?
We need to ask, honestly, are we layering their understanding of the incarnation year on year, or just trotting out the predictable cartoonified pageantry again? There is a world of difference between a godly rhythm and ministerial laziness.
Then there’s the copy-and-paste problem. We see a clever Christmas idea online, lift it in one go, and drop it into our programme as if ministry were flat-pack furniture. It might have worked beautifully for a large, well-resourced church in a nice commuter town, with dozens of available volunteers, parents who can be there midweek, a tech team, a lighting rig and a building that seats 300 without anyone balancing on a windowsill. But that’s not your context. Your church hall is small. Your team is tired. Your families are juggling shift work. You’re already running at capacity on a normal Sunday.
An event idea can be a gift. But if you don’t ask whether it actually serves your people, in your place, it’s not ministry. It’s imitation.
Remember that panic planning is not pastoring
Here’s what often happens. Mid-November arrives and time is running out. The vicar wants to know what’s happening for the children and young people over Christmas. Something gets thrown together quickly.
No prayer. No reflection. No proper thought. It’s just serviceable.
Don’t our children and young people deserve better than serviceable? And you are not an events coordinator. You are a minister of the gospel to children and young people, and your primary concern should be their spiritual maturation.
Who are you actually pastoring?
This one might be hard to hear. But Christmas in many churches has exclusively become about the visitor. The seeker. The family who shows up once a year and might, if we’re lucky, come back at Easter.
Of course we want to welcome people warmly and proclaim the gospel clearly. But when did the whole of Advent and Christmas become an evangelistic event that sidelines the children who are already there every week?
Those children have been hearing about Jesus all year. Many of them are asking real, weighty question. They are ready to go deeper. And then Christmas comes and we hand them flannelgraph Jesus and pop a tea towel on their head. Again.
If we’re not very careful, we risk starving the faithful while chasing the hypothetical.
Bring them deep into the incarnation
The incarnation, if true, changes everything.
God became flesh. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14 NIV). The eternal Son, through whom all things were made, stepped into our world. Not as a concept or as a feeling, but the eternal Son truly taking on human flesh.
That should blow their minds. It should reshape how they understand the triune God. He is not far off. He is not indifferent. He comes near. He moves into the dirt and ache of human life. He does this to save sinners, not to provide a great story for the end of term.
This is what your eight-year-olds need. This is what your fifteen-year-olds need. This is what we all need.
And yet we often shrink it down into something cute, safe, predictable. Little ‘baby Jesus in the manger’ theology that freezes them at five years old and never invites them further into wonder, majesty and awe.
Now, nobody is saying ditch the nativity. Nobody is saying less of the shepherds and angels. But teach richly and purposefully what they mean. Name the mystery. Let them feel the strangeness. God with us. God like us. God for us. The Holy One wrapped in borrowed cloths, because he came to be the Lamb who would be slain.
Use the next few weeks well
You still have time, so make good use of it. Take an afternoon to think and pray properly.
Ask: what do the children and young people entrusted to my care need to hear about Jesus this Christmas? Pray for the children and young people by name, considering the spiritual growth of each one.
What emerges might actually mean stripping the regular programme back. Doing less, but with greater depth.
It means looking at December and deciding, for your actual children and young people, what truth about Christ must land this year. It means planning Christmas not as a string of events to survive, but as a season of intentional discipleship.
You shape what you teach in the crib service, the all age carol service, the Christmas Eve slot, the youth celebration, so that it all points in one direction and says one profound thing about Jesus.
It also might mean layering it differently. Use Advent to walk the young people through the prophecies about Jesus. Show them that Christmas is not a random miracle that just occurred in a stable one night. Show them it is the fulfilment of centuries of longing.
Help them to know that Christmas isn’t sentimental. It is cosmic. It is the hinge of all history.
This is holy work
High and holy days matter. Christmas. Easter. Pentecost.
These are not just bigger Sundays with better biscuits. These are the moments when the church remembers who we are and why we’re here. They are chances to form the next generation in robust truth.
And yet strangely, those are often the very moments when we give our children the thinnest diet. Shallow when we should go deep. Entertainment when we should disciple. Safe when we should take risks.
Let’s change that and plan intentionally.
Cry out for wisdom. Petition for courage. Ask for tenderness.
Then, when December arrives and the chaos begins, you will already have done the heart and hard work. You will know what you are doing and why. You will be able to look at those children and know, with a clear conscience, that you have prepared something to feed their souls, not just fill an hour or two.
The incarnation is astonishing. May your Christmas reflect that.
