Friends at United Methodist Communications sent me a copy of their media pack for “A Life Giving Christmas” as part of their ReThinkChurch campaigns. I thought it’d be something pretty lame that I wouldn’t want to pitch, but it really isn’t. I wouldn’t go so far as to say its the next best thing, but for a four week period of Advent this has a little bit of everything to generate some ongoing communications & hopefully transformations.
In the digital media package you receive a four week series of resources;
- Sermon Starters: Not full sermons, but a lot of ideas and add on to plug into service. Starters are also lectionary based
- Questions to Toss out into Facebook & Twitter: Those are social mediums, so doing more than being an extra version of the newsletter is best practice. You may not care for the questions, but they should remind you to have conversations digitally in the in-betweens of the week.
- PDF’s for Door-hangers, Direct Mailing, Bulletin Covers or Inserts
- Videos to show as part of worship or put online for teasers before services..
- Presentation software slides
All these things come at a cost of just $25, which, if you need something to plug into the four weeks of Advent still, then this could be some of the best $25 you’ve ever spent. I have to say it is good value for the price..
The big drawback is that we are already at Advent (one more Sunday till) and many of us have already got stuff in the hopper. So implementing this would be a hard time line to keep faithfully. However, I know many of you have plans to make plans still out there lingering. It is you who could pull that together. It might be that you want to download it now & use it next year.
Another option to check out is to look into Advent Conspiracy. “A Life Giving Christmas” has a similar social action angle.
