Christmas is a great opportunity to celebrate with our local communities, and to invite others to discover more about Jesus. Below are a few highlights from Christmas events across the charity.
Carterton Community Church:
“We started Christmas in the best way we know, by singing carols with our community on Christmas Eve! We were joined by 300 or more people from around Carterton who made Carols in the Square part of their Christmas tradition and what’s more the weather was dry! We had a super time ushering in Christmas with singing and sharing a message of Christmas Hope.”
Monster Turkey Youth Event
“Monster Turkey was great fun. We had 164 young people come for the evening, and 30 leaders across our family of churches helping serve them.
We had the usual giant inflatables, tuck shop etc but added in a silent disco, a new escape room and some other smaller activities. We look forward to seeing how we can develop and grow the event in the future.”
Wantage Community Church
“We held a Christmas Reflective Worship session, and a Kingsgrove Carols and Christmas Tree lighting event. Around 200 people from the community gathered to sing carols, read some of the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke, hear the local school choir sing, and enjoy switching on the Christmas Tree lights at Kingsgrove.”
Lifehouse Community Church
“On 11 December we held a Christmas Extravaganza in our Bicester location. This was in a similar style to our regular Community Sunday events but with a short talk about Christmas, encouraging people to ask questions, try an Alpha course and come along to the carol service the following week.
On 18 December we held two carol services, one in the morning in our Banbury location and one in Bicester in the early afternoon. These included refreshments and carols, a story and crafts, and a short talk.
Over the course of these outreach events we had a substantial number of guests attending, most of whom we had prior connection to through other missional outreach throughout the year.”
Oxford Community Church
“We hosted a Christmas concert in partnership with Tyndale Community School and the Tyndale Community Gospel Choir. Despite competing with the England vs France World Cup Quarter Final, we gathered over 400 people, many of whom don’t regularly attend church. We had a great evening of carols, games, readings and performances from the adults’ and children’s choirs. The following Sunday we held our regular church carol service, where we gave out postcards of a piece of art Bev Jones had created based on Isaiah 9.”
Oxford Christmas Lunch
“The King’s Centre was used on Christmas day for a city-wide Christmas lunch for anyone who wanted to come, staffed by volunteers from the community.
They made a heart-warming video of the day.”
The King’s School
“At the end of term we celebrated Christmas with a variety of school events. All the year groups came together in their family groups at a Christmas lunch. The Early Years and Infants did a wonderful nativity performance telling the story of Christmas with some joyful songs. Mr Cripps, our Principal, took his puppet friends to visit our Early Years class for their Christmas party. The children (and staff) thought it was hilarious! Greg Downes, local evangelist and parent at the school gave an inspiring talk at our Christmas whole school assembly. Many children made a prayer of commitment to Christ.”
