Grace Weekend Service Team

Christmas: Here's the Plan

Only four days away from our Christmas Eve services!  Since we're getting down to the wire, I thought I'd pass along a bit of info for this coming Saturday.

The doors to the school will open for us at 2:30 pm.  At that time, we will be able to come set up our equipment and run through sound checks.  We will also have some folks decorating the stage area with lights and what not to give it that Christmasy feel.

Grace Cafe will be moved to the back of the worship center where our video guys are seated every week.  They will be moving their workstation next to the audio board.  If any of you want to wear a Santa hat or anything, please feel free.  Yes Brad...you can wear one too. :)

I'm looking forward to this weekend and hope you all are too.  I recieved an email yesterday from someone who got one of our mailings.  They were very interested in Grace and were considering a visit either this weekend or next.  I know it's just one email, but that's one soul that could be impacted for Christ through the work we do.  Please continue to pray for the services this weekend and for Tim's message prepping.

-Ben

Mailers a Plenty!

Every year Grace sends out a mailer to our local community during the Christmas season.  Typically it is a simple invite to our Christmas service.  This year presents a unique opportunity to utilize the mailer as a way to get the word out about our upcoming facility at 159th and Antioch.

We are sending the mailer to 29,000 homes within a five mile radius of our church building.  WOW!  The most we've ever sent is 9,000.  Quite a jump from previous years.  If 10% of the homes we send them to visit Grace on Christmas Eve, then we would have an opportunity to reach 2,900 additional homes.  Could you imagine?  Now that's probably a bit more than what the reality of our marketing results would be.  If 1% of those homes visit, that would be an additional 290 homes attending our weekend service on the 24th!  That's a small church right there!

This is an incredible opportunity to reach out and win people for Christ.  Please pray for our Christmas services that God would bring people to Grace that need Jesus.  Please also pray for each of our teams within the WST as we gear up for Christmas and beyond.  It's going to be a wild ride from here to the building.  After that, it's going to get even wilder!

-Ben

Christmas Times Announced

Drumroll please..........the Grace Church Christmas services will be.......on Saturday, December 24th.....at 4:30pm and 6:00pm.  We will have a 50 minute service each and a 30 minute break in between services. 

Please note that we typically are able to leave our setup during the Christmas vacation week since there's no school. 

Thank you all for being a huge part of the Grace Weekend Services. 

Christmas Survey Results

The results are in.

1. Saturday, December 24 at 6pm - 26 Marked as first choice
2. Friday, December 23 at 7pm - 23 Marked as first choice
3. Sunday, December 25 at 10:30am - 14 Marked as first choice
4. Saturday, December 24 at 2pm - 8 Marked as first choice
5. Saturday, December 24 at 4pm - 8 Marked as first choice

Please note, this was NOT A VOTE.  This was a voice for those in our church to let us know what service they would be more likely to attend. 

-Ben

Churchwide Surveys on the Way

We will be having our weekend service for Christmas weekend on either Friday the 23rd or Saturday the 24th.  Based on the feedback we've recieved and discussions had over the past week, we will have two identical services at different times.  In order to help us figure out what turnout we could expect, we will be distributing a survey in the Worship Guide asking people to rate their top three Christmas service times from this list:

• Friday 12/23 @ 7pm
• Saturday 12/24 @ 4pm
• Saturday 12/24 @ 6pm
• Saturday 12/24 @ 8pm
• Sunday 12/25 @ 10:30am

The two services will be  a "Family Celebration" which means no children's classes will be available allowing all to participate in service with their families.  So here's the question for all you WST folks.  Which three service times would you prefer?

Christmas 2005

I know, it just doesn't seem right to be talking about Christmas, but when you look at the calendar, it's just 3 short months away.

This year presents a unique situation that we've never dealt with.  Christmas day falls on a Sunday. I've been looking at what other churches have elected to do in this situation.  Most have made a decision to not have services on Christmas day but have a service on Christmas eve instead.  Our concern at Grace is that we may be very shorthanded in ministries throughout the church on Christmas due to traveling and spending time with their families.  So why not do something unique this year and have a Christmas eve service on Saturday?  So far we're looking at possibly having a service from 4pm-6 or 6:30.  Maybe a large single family service? 

This is where we're at right now.  If you have any thoughts, please drop a comment on this post.

Thanks!

-Ben