Bill Easums Observations

Which do you think is the most important for the growth of your church - Advent, Christmas, or the Super Bowl?Well I rank them in this order, Super Bowl then Christmas. What happened to Advent? I wouldn’t even rank it because it is absolutely a waste of time.

Yet I bet in declining churches Advent is celebrated more than the other two combined. Why is that - because most declining churches are more focused on themselves than the world around them. Declining churches are more focused on churchy things than worldly things.  And finally, most declining churches blindly do what they been doing all along. In some odd way they think that they can continue doing what they’ve been doing and get something different than they been getting. Odd isn’t it. 

If you want your church to grow focus on the pagan calendar and forget most of the church events. That is the way to draw more people into your church. Focusing on the Church calendar just reinforces most churches tendency to focus inward instead of outward. But focusing  on the pagan calendar causes church leaders to think about what is going on in the world and what happens to be on most people’s minds at the time. 

Why not throw a Super Bowl party. Add extra worship services on Christmas Eve, wrap Christmas packages in the Malls for free during December, have a Haunted House at Halloween, throw a block party for Mardi Gras, but by all means please forget Advent. No unchurched, dechurched, or non-believer gives one whit about Advent or even knows what it  is.

Now having a Super Bowl party at your church must be a great idea because made the NFL leaders furious last year. Read the article about how the NFL forced a church to cancel their plans last year. You know it has to be a right on idea if the world wants it canceled. 

Go ahead and throw a party, have your pastor thrown in jail, and see how much great publicity you will get from it. I’m serious.The church didn’t have the party but another church in the same town decided to have the party. As a result the NFL gave churches permission as long as they didn’t charge.

Think of all the publicity those churches received when all of their papers ran the stories and there were several stories before it was over.

So, whose going to throw the first ball?