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Last Minute Christmas Eve Idea
This year in my Christmas Eve message, I'll try to get people to feel and experience the power of Christ's coming in a very simple way.
I'm teaching on how Christ came into a dark world to shine a light. Not exactly a metaphor that will surprise or shock anyone....we've all heard it before.
The message opens in complete darkness...and 10 seconds of complete silence.
People will actually think something malfunctioned...and that's exactly what I want them to think.
I'll break the silence by saying this, in pitch black darkness:.
"Merry Christmas. Well, this is uncomfortable. You probably think the cameras have broken or the projector has failed. Or that the tech crew hasn't done its job. That's not true at all. Everything's working perfectly well. There's only one thing missing." Then I'll strike a match and say "...Light".
I'll light a candle and some Christmas lights will come on in the background, but it will still be difficult to see me or the rest of the stage for another few minutes as I talk about how it's impossible to imagine darkness in a brightly lit world, and that all of us have only known a world with Jesus in it.
As a result, we take light and Jesus for granted. You only miss the light when it's gone.
At that point the lights will come up, but hopefully the discomfort and tension will be memorable enough that people never quite hear the metaphor of light and darkness the same way again. And of course, at the end, we'll invite people to receive Christ as their Saviour.
The point?
By feeling and experiencing the metaphor, people might be better able to hear the message behind the metaphor.
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