5 Reminders for Creatives During the Crazy of Local Church Christmas.

✊ Hey! Shout out to all of the creatives putting in the extra time this month to serve their local churches and communities!

After working in local church environments for over 10 years, I consistently have to remind myself that ‘I GET TO DO THIS’. Serving in the local church is a privilege; being trusted by the Lord to share His Gospel and to be given gifts that I get to use to do so is an honour.

But believe me, I get it… In the busyness of the local church calendar, staying focused on the why behind the madness is easier said than done. As extra rehearsals and special projects turn into late nights and early mornings, it can be easy to lose intentionality and focus. The calling and passion that drove me in November gives way to the troubleshooting, last minute fixes and volunteers-just-got-diagnosed-with-COVID-itus. If I’m not careful, I wake up on Boxing Day with bitterness and resentment needing a solid 9 month break before I think about Christmas again. I’ve enjoyed many Christmas mornings with my kids going crazy opening their gifts and me still being in recovery mode after 5 Christmas Eve services in 28 hours… I’ve found a corner of the living room to sneak a quick nap in before dinner with the in-laws… I’ve realized that my wife’s Christmas presents were pretty lacklustre because I was completely consumed by work for the last 6 weeks.

*Spoiler Alert — if you make it to the bottom of this article, it’s not for the faint of heart but I offer some insight into how you can avoid feeling like the scene that I described above… *

Here are five things that I’ve written down over the years that I’ve found help me remind myself why I’m putting in the extra work.

This is a presentation.

Coming from a musician who has focused the majority of his adult life fighting a performance spirit and pursuing the art of leading worship, I’ve always struggled with special events where the music or creative elements feel like a performance. Full honesty, people sitting and watching me sing a song makes me super uncomfortable. It’s probably because 51 weekends a year it means that I’ve probably done something wrong and need to go back to worship leader training school.

“I have to remind myself… This service is not a performance as much as it’s a presentation of the Good News of Jesus Christ.”

The Good News — the beauty of the Creator of the world, now incarnate, choosing to live amongst His very creation so that He can model for us a perfect life and then be the only, ultimate, worthy sacrifice for the eternal futures of mankind. The way that we commonly arrange Christmas services may not be your quintessential worship service but that doesn’t mean it’s void of its greater purpose. We have the opportunity to tell the greatest story ever written and the most important component to that being the truth is our heart posture as the individuals blessed with the opportunity to arrange and, for lack of a better word, perform it.

You have a unique audience.

If you haven’t faced the facts yet, heart it from me… Church attendance is in rapid decline. This exodus from brick-and-mortar expressions of faith has been happening for at least 3 decades but was keenly expedited by a pandemic that found a lot of churches unprepared to make the shift away from in-person, consumer-driven experience to digitally accessible, 168-hours-a-week discipleship. Ask me how I really feel…

Here’s some good news — Christmas is still a time of the year that a large part of the world slows down and many still choose to focus on an expression of faith.

“This may be the only time that you have people from your community in your building this year.”

There are people that won’t come for Kick-Off or Mother’s Day, maybe not even for Easter, but will still attend a church service at Christmas. We may be in the last days of that perceived social expectation but we still live in those days. Let’s maximize this opportunity to share the message of ultimate hope with people who don’t know Jesus and make a good impression with people who may be at least spiritually curious.

Not every Christmas is merry.

The nostalgic elements of Christmas that we all choose to highlight in our expressions of the season are not always a reality for everyone. For some, Christmas is not a season filled with warmth and joy but a reminder of lost or estranged loved ones, fiscal lack of physical displacement. Because of the focus on family, extravagance and love it may actually be even more painful for people who have struggled in the past. Beyond that, there are people who have experienced trauma around the Christmas season who may relive those events and find traditions of the season are actually triggers for their mental and emotional health.

This Christmas will mark 8 years since my mother passed away after a 2 year battle with aggressive cancer. She died on December 21st and we held the funeral on Christmas Eve. For the first couple of years, I barely celebrated Christmas; I didn’t own a tree or other decorations, didn’t go out of my way to buy presents or listen to seasonal music. Apart from the many other wonderful things that my wife is, she is a lover of all things Christmas. Her passion for the season and willingness to help me to rediscover the beauty of celebrating Christmas was a huge part my healing. My journey has brought me to realize that you can guarantee that there will always be a handful of people in each Christmas service who are hurting and in need of someone to bring them into a healthy realization of importance of Christmas.

“Your passion and creativity can be a source of healing and hope this season.”

This is your calling.

Ok, here’s where some of that honesty that we talked about earlier comes in. If you’re still reading this far in, I feel as though I can safely assume that you’re committed and able to put on a pair of grown up creative-pants and read some hard truths.

Christmas comes at the same time every year — nothing about that should surprise you. It’s your choice to embrace the season or resent the season. It’s your choice to have a ‘have to’ mentality or a ‘get to’ mentality.

A regular source of contention is the amount of time that people working in local church spend away from their families during the holidays. While I can empathize and understand the frustration, my honest response would be to encourage you to have a hard conversation as a couple, and a family, about the shared calling that exists on your household. This is more than just a job that sometimes blurs lines between healthy work-life balance but pay is double and helps the bottom line. If your spouse is surprised or upset by the level of sacrifice that comes with busy seasons in the church that was a conversations you should have probably had a long time ago.

How do you have those conversations in a productive way, you ask? In my opinion, this is less a conversation about conflicting schedules and full calendars (although communication across-the-board is important and we know that a lot of creatives struggle with that, me included…) and more so a conversation about calling and sacrifice. To make a long story short, choosing to engage in vocational ministry within a local church context is acknowledging that your church sees the call of God on your life and is willing to pay you so that you can be fully given to the vision and mission of the church and not be bi-vocational. It’s a blessing and one that should not be taken lightly. People’s hard-earned money that they choose to invest in the local church is going to pay your bills and put food on your table. Ask anyone who has been in vocational ministry for longer than 6 months and they will all tell you this: ‘fulfilling the call of God on your life is uniquely married to a lifestyle of sacrifice.’

It’s good to work hard.

Again I say — because it feels too blatantly obvious to not repeat — Christmas comes at the same time every year — nothing about it should surprise you. Are there last minute audibles and deadline pressures that are a very real stressor for creatives as they work to serve their local church week-in-week-out and also put together inspirationally themed Christmas art? Absolutely. But is there a reality that if you continually find yourself stressed, cramming in the last hour to make something pop for your church that you did something wrong? I think so.

“Seasons like this are where the magic of creativity and talent meet the muscle of hard work and long hours.”

This is definitely my Northern Ontario upbringing coming out but… be an adult, roll up your sleeves and get to work. To make you feel better about yourself, I’ll admit it… There have been many moments where if I spent half as much time working on the project as I did complaining about it I would’ve have had half as much to complain about.

One of the hardest pieces of advice that I’ve ever received came from a Regional Youth Director that I served under in my first church. I was at the five-yard line for a Jr. High Conference that I had planned and was running around the event venue like a chicken with my head cut off. Last minute details that were actually things that should have been done weeks ago. Phone calls and bookings that I could have delegated well in advance. The Director walked in and noticed that I was going crazy and my response to him was, ‘conferences, right?’ I shrugged almost celebrating the beauty that was my insanity and he looked at me with a grin and said, ‘if this is your life right now, you did something wrong about 2 months ago.’

Here’s the honest truth that a lot of creatives need to hear… A lot of your problems are more so related to a lack of organization and efficiency. Did you really have to stay up til’ 2am making those edits or did you procrastinate so badly during the day that you found yourself working a 16 hour day and then complaining about it at coffee first thing in the morning?

*Stay tuned in January — We’re going to be talking a lot more about productivity and self-administration for creatives working within local churches.*

Let’s come back to centre… There are moments where we have to push ourselves to reach new levels of creativity and to see impact beyond what we’ve previously witnessed. That exists inside and outside of local church ministry. In some seasons, we have to audibly remind ourselves of the why and roll up our sleeves.

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What do you think? What have you learned? Drop a comment below and let’s get a convo started!