Point to Jesus this Christmas Children's Ideas and Resources
If you’re looking for ideas and resources for reaching children with the good news about Jesus this Christmas, you’re in the right place!
We’ve brought together the ideas and suggestions from our Point to Jesus Webinar (you can watch the full event here) for you to read over and see what would work for you.
Let’s get started with the ideas!
Children’s Outreach and Evangelism Ideas
Live Nativity
These can be a great opportunity to help bring the real meaning of Christmas to life, as volunteers act out key parts of the Nativity story. Live animals always have an added draw! As with all Christmas activities, try to stick closely to the biblical account of Jesus’ birth, avoiding any myths or inaccurate details which have crept in to secular retellings.
School Assembly
Schools are often happy for church leaders to take an assembly in school, and an assembly about the real meaning of Christmas will also meet the RE curriculum too. You may need to have a DBS check, so make sure to ask ahead so this can be sorted. Check if you can also advertise your Christmas family events through the school’s own channels.
School PTA Events
Many local schools will be running fundraising events in the run up to Christmas, and offering stalls for local businesses and organisations. Could your church run a free bookstall, or a games stall where everyone is a winner, taking away a Christian book or pencil, along with an invite to your services or weekly clubs? If they don’t allow outside groups to their fairs perhaps you could donate some books for prizes?
Christmas Parties
If your church runs a Kids Club, I'm sure that they'll be running a Christmas party. Think through how you can be using that event to be sharing the gospel, making sure it's clear, and also send them away with something that's going to remind them of the gospel after that party.
Kid’s Carol Service
Graham Albans from Grace Church shared his experiences of Kid’s Carol services:
“Over the last few years, we've run a kids carol service, the idea being that during the week our church runs quite a few different children's groups, from toddler groups right through to tweens, primary age and teenagers. We really do meet a lot of people in our community that way. It’s thought that 85% of toddlers in the UK are connected to a church-based Toddler group, which is an amazing statistic. So, we wanted to do something that feeds them into something we're doing with our church services at Christmas, and we started putting on a Carol's for Kids. It’s essentially a cross between a panto, carols, some crafts, games, quizzes, a video and we'll weave the gospel message into the narrative of the play and we'll send them away with a little pack. The aim is to be super fun, and it gives us that pathway from all our kids clubs into a church service. There are around 50% non-Christians coming to those services now.”
Listen to more of what Graham said about these services on the video now.
Christmas Eve Boxes
Mel Lacy from Growing Young Disciples shared her idea of using Christmas Eve boxes to point back to the true meaning of Christmas.
“Christmas Eve boxes are becoming more popular in the UK. You’ll see loads of Christmas Eve boxes available to buy in the shops, but why not do boxes with spiritual content, with some hot chocolate packs and some sweets, and a devotion for the family to do on Christmas Eve preparing them for the next day. It can be as simple as a gift bag to add to a bigger box, but will allow children to go into Christmas day with the focus on Jesus. I suggest putting the key Christmas day passage in, nicely printed out, and some prayers to use as a family, perhaps a small craft to add to the Christmas tree, and some small treats. You can leave the new pyjamas to the parents!”
Suggested Resources
Story Books
Whether you’re giving away books at your evangelistic event, to your Kid’s Club or Sunday School, we keep our prices as low as we can to enable the gospel to go out widely.
Books are available from £1 when ordered in bulk quantities.
When Santa Learned the Gospel has a free, 6-minute, read-along video from the author on YouTube. It’s free, you can just go to YouTube, and use that during your service.
The King and the Shepherd Boy has an accompanying service pack which can be bought through GoChatter.
Love Came Down has a series bundle available, a storybook, board book and even an activity book. If you've got a variety of age ranges that you cover with your children's clubs this would cover all those.
The Star Maker, The Longest Wait and Sshh, Don't Wake the Baby are all designed to tell the Christmas story but in a very simple way. suitable for toddlers.
Board Books
Designed with simple words, short phrases, and a really robust design we have a variety of Christmas board books that are available from just £2 a copy when ordered in larger quantities.
Christmas First Words, Love Came Down, The Nativity, and this year’s new book, God’s Rescuer are all perfect for toddler group giveaways.
God’s Rescuer also has a 3-minute toddler sing-along video available for anyone who buys 10 copies of the book. It’s perfect for a toddler group Christmas party, and you can read through the story together. Listen to a taster here.
Activity Books
For those who may have already given out some of the giveaway books in the past, or maybe you've got multiple opportunities, maybe consider alongside the book to give an activity book, available from just £1 a copy.
Toddler activity books include The Unexpected Gift Activity book, The Characters of Christmas Colouring book.
Activity books suitable for infants include the craft-based Tracing Glory Ornament book, or Love Came Down Activity Book for colouring, wordsearches and spot the difference type activities.
Activity books for the top end of primary school would be the Nativity activities, which is a mixture of puzzles and activities, but also telling the Christmas story.
Our brand-new children’s book is The Night Before Christmas, a parody on the poem of the same name, where we are taken back to the first Christmas. These are larger than our usual giveaway books and may be better suited for gifts for family, friends, and church families. These would be a great alternative Christmas Eve read.
What God Wants for Christmas.
Mel Lacy also recommended What God Wants for Christmas, a Family Life resource. It’s a small box of resources, but you can download a printable version and a scavenger hunt which is good for families to do on Christmas Eve, or in the run up to Christmas.
