{"id":61903,"date":"2013-12-02T06:47:03","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T06:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/ramping-up-your-christmas-preaching\/"},"modified":"2013-12-02T06:47:03","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T06:47:03","slug":"ramping-up-your-christmas-preaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/ramping-up-your-christmas-preaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Ramping Up Your Christmas Preaching"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"is-style-article-question\"><em>PreachingToday.com:<\/em> Over your years as a pastor, what&#8217;s one thing that surprised you about preaching during the Christmas season?<\/p> \n\n<p class=\"is-style-article-answer\"><em><strong>Matthew D. Kim:<\/strong><\/em> In being completely transparent, I was surprised by how difficult it was to preach at Christmas. I accepted Christ at the age of 13 and have heard my share of Christmas sermons and I preached several of them as well. The Christmas story can sadly lose its novelty and become a humdrum experience. As pastors, we&#8217;ve all heard the observation of the &#8220;nominal&#8221; Christian who only attends service once a year on Easter Sunday. He leans over to his wife and says: &#8220;This preacher preaches the same sermon every time we come to church.&#8221; Well, the same could be said of Christmas sermons from the perspective of the preacher. Preaching at Christmas can become lackluster and lose its vibrato. I found that I had to amp myself up each year to try to and be creative in how I preached at Christmastime.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"is-style-article-answer\">One of the ways that I&#8217;ve tried to get excited about the Advent season is to write Advent sermons from the perspective of those living in Old Testament times. Specifically, I&#8217;ve encouraged my listeners to put themselves in the shoes of the Jewish people who eagerly awaited a Messiah and have my listeners focus on Jesus&#8217; wondrous qualities as expressed in various prophetical books.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"is-style-article-question\">What are a few pieces of advice that you&#8217;ve learned about preaching during the Christmas season?<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-article-callout is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Preaching at Christmas can become lackluster and lose its vibrato. I found that I had to amp myself up each year to try to and be creative in how I preached at Christmastime.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"is-style-article-answer\">One piece of advice that I&#8217;ve heard is to preach a first-person narrative at Christmas. You can choose from a wide variety of persons and narrate the birth of Jesus from their perspectives. I once even heard a sermon on Jesus&#8217; birth from the perspective of an animal in the manger.<\/p> \n \n<p class=\"is-style-article-answer\">A second nugget of wisdom that I&#8217;ve retained is to preach on Jesus&#8217; birth in the context of his redemptive work demonstrated through his life, burial, and resurrection. It&#8217;s not only that Jesus came to earth as a baby but he came as a baby to accomplish the purpose of God. For example, we don&#8217;t always have to feel obligated to preach solely from the perspective of Jesus coming to earth as a newborn. That is, we can preach on a more general theological truth such as the incarnation and show our listeners how the incarnation helped to fulfill God&#8217;s redemptive plan as Jesus identified fully with his people by becoming fully human.<\/p> \n \n<p class=\"is-style-article-answer\">A third piece of advice that I would pass on is to preach the birth of Christ evangelistically. There are many who come to worship on Christmas Sunday who don&#8217;t know the gospel. We can use Christmas as a time to present the gospel message clearly concerning Jesus&#8217; birth, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"is-style-article-question\">How do you keep your Christmas season preaching fresh? How do you keep from saying the same thing over and over again?<\/p> \n\n<p class=\"is-style-article-answer\">To keep the Christmas message fresh I&#8217;ve tried to preach on uncommon texts to see if I can &#8220;throw off&#8221; the listeners. They come on Christmas Sunday expecting me to preach from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Matthew+1%3A18-2%3A23\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"answer\" title=\"view Scripture passage at BibleGateway.com\">Matthew 1:18-2:23<\/a>; Mary&#8217;s Magnificat; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Luke+2%3A1-2%3A24\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"answer\" title=\"view Scripture passage at BibleGateway.com\">Luke 2:1-24<\/a>; or even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=John+1%3A1-1%3A18\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"answer\" title=\"view Scripture passage at BibleGateway.com\">John 1:1-18<\/a>. In past Christmases, I&#8217;ve preached from Old Testament prophetical passages such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Zechariah+9%3A1-9%3A17\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"answer\" title=\"view Scripture passage at BibleGateway.com\">Zechariah 9<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Isaiah+9%3A1-9%3A25\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"answer\" title=\"view Scripture passage at BibleGateway.com\">Isaiah 7<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Isaiah+9%3A1-9%3A21\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"answer\" title=\"view Scripture passage at BibleGateway.com\">9<\/a> even non-traditional gospel texts such as the prophesies of Simeon and Anna from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Luke+2%3A25-2%3A40\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"answer\" title=\"view Scripture passage at BibleGateway.com\">Luke 2:25-40<\/a>. Although I always mention the birth of Christ and his incarnation, my goal is to offer a different perspective as I help the listeners see the Savior&#8217;s birth in many ways from the perspectives of people living with eager anticipation in Old Testament times.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"is-style-article-question\">How do you ramp up for Christmas? How do preach through Advent or the first few Sundays before Christmas?<\/p> \n\n<p class=\"is-style-article-answer\">Now that I am a full-time seminary professor, I don&#8217;t have the privilege of preaching Christmas series anymore. But, as a pastor, I found that the Advent season is an opportune time to address the topic of financial stewardship. It&#8217;s during Christmas that we experience obvious financial distress as we seek to mimic the wise men&#8217;s giving of gifts. Since listeners are more acute to their financial crunch during this time, I preached sometimes on consumerism and economic stewardship. One year, I preached a four-week series on &#8220;Following Christ in a Material World.&#8221; Several church members expressed how grateful they were to hear a sermon series on finances leading up to Christmas.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PreachingToday.com: Over your years as a pastor, what&#8217;s one thing that surprised you about preaching during the Christmas season? Matthew D. Kim: In being completely transparent, I was surprised by how difficult it was to preach at Christmas. I accepted Christ at the age of 13 and have heard my share of Christmas sermons and <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/ramping-up-your-christmas-preaching\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"tax_ctp_authors":[2472],"tax_ctp_books":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[131],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[4153],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-61903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-matthew-d-kim","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-holidays"],"acf":{"scripture_references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ramping Up Your Christmas Preaching - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"PreachingToday.com: Over your years as a pastor, what&#039;s one thing that surprised you about preaching during the Christmas season? 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