Home » Ministry Leaders’ Guide to Surviving the Holidays

Ministry Leaders’ Guide to Surviving the Holidays

Published December 6, 2016

Christmas concerts. Plays. Community outreach events. Shopping. Family time. Ministry to shut-ins. Busy schedules can often turn a well-intentioned season of glory into one of major frustration.

The Christmas season can present a challenge to those of us in ministry when we try to balance the enormous responsibilities and ministry opportunities with the personal focus and need to not lose touch with the real reason of celebrating Jesus!

So, how do you keep your sanity and balance your fast-paced, packed schedule with deep, personal blessings that come with this season of hope?

As a couple, we try to remember three key concepts that give us the right perspective on ministry and celebration:  JOY – SERVE – WORSHIP.  As a couple who has been involved in leadership with various church and school ministries for over 30 years, we have tried to strike that balance between ministry time and leading our three children to enjoy the fullness of our relationship with Jesus. (Don’t forget the importance of family in all of the celebrating!)

There are four areas that we have practiced through the years that allow us to express our JOY in knowing Christ; SERVING others with our gifts and resources and WORSHIPPING the One who has made in all possible.

1. Enjoy Sounds of the Season

We love Christmas music!  As soon as the Thanksgiving table comes down, our house is filled with the sounds of Christmas.  (Actually, it starts even earlier than that.)  For a number of years, we have participated in a church singing group that does a high-quality Christmas dessert concert. This activity gives us the JOY of meditating on the great message of Christmas through music; it allows us to SERVE others with that message, and it creates a meaningful WORSHIP experience to express our thanks to God for His unspeakable gift! Music is an important means of expression of WOSRHIP, and we have carried that tradition into our home as well by often singing Christmas carols together as a family.

2. Make Time for Screen Time

Okay, we will admit it; we love Christmas movies, too – especially the old ones! Some of the favorite memories our kids remind us of are times we spent together as a family watching those Christmas movies; many times we have invited friends to join us. We do have a lot of favorites: White Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Carol (we actually have seven different versions of that one!) and The Preacher’s Wife, to name a few. While some of these movies may not have a specific reference to the biblical story of Christmas, many of them do, and they all reinforce the JOY of Christmas and the message of “Peace on earth, good will toward men.”

One of our favorite scenes is from A Charlie Brown Christmas is where Linus reads the Christmas story from Luke 2 on the stage in the empty school auditorium. This activity often allowed us to have some down time with our kids, to just “love on each other” and enjoy a respite from the busy activity of the season. It’s good to recharge your batteries by watching a good, old Christmas movie, accompanied by some Christmas cookies and hot chocolate, of course.

3. Deck the Halls

Webster defines motif as “main theme or subject for development.” One of the areas through which our Christmas motif is expressed is decorating the house, another important family activity. It starts with our tradition of the family trip to our local Christmas tree farm to cut down our Christmas trees. Then the serious decorating begins. We pull all of the boxes of Christmas decorations out of the attic and go at it full force! One of our children calls these decorations “the seasonals,” and she has dubbed me as the “master of seasonal decorations”! We really enjoy doing this together, and it reinforces that family celebration time with the spiritual concept of giving our best to display the glory of Jesus!

One of our favorite decorations is a genuine olive-wood nativity set from Bethlehem that was given to us during one of our tours to Israel. When we display that nativity set, it reminds us of viewing that quiet hillside scene outside of Bethlehem, where it was first announced that “unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

4. Remember the Message

Never forget the message of Christmas. It is the real key for us to experience the JOY of the season that Christ longs to give us. It is a message of hope, of peace, of love, of good news, of life transformation through the gift of God’s Son, Jesus our Lord. It is a message that needs to be reviewed individually, as a family, as a church and then shared with as many people as possible.

A new tradition that we started this year is to read together a Christmas devotional book each day during the entire advent season. We would highly recommend The Dawning of Indestructible Joy, by John Piper. It is a great devotional book that is helping us focus on the message of Christmas.

Another tradition, passed down to us by my grandmother, is to have one of our children read the Christmas story from Luke 2 on Christmas morning, just before we open our gifts. This is a great reminder to all of us that the real message of Christmas is that God gave . . . His only Son. This is the greatest gift that was ever given, and the JOY, SERVICE AND WORSHIP that we experience and give can only come from our hearts of gratitude for what He has done for us!

How to survive the holidays as a ministry leader? It’s not easy, but focusing on the priorities of JOY, SERVING and WORSHIP can help us achieve that right balance of ministry opportunities with personal and family celebration!

– Dr. Lee & Colleen Kliewer

Dr. Lee Kliewer serves as dean of Baptist Bible Seminary, and Colleen Kliewer serves as the director for health services. The pair met at a church in Skaneatleles, New York in 1975 when he was traveling with a gospel team from the school. They began dating the following year when she enrolled as a student. They have been married for 38 years and have three children.

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