Church Marketing Sucks

Leading up to Christmas, we’re highlighting several Christmas videos on Fridays because videos on Fridays are fun. Plus Christmas videos that don’t suck might be useful for your church. If you like Christmas videos, today is your lucky day. We’re not waiting until Friday, because we’ve got 57 Christmas videos your church can use.

Christmas Video Lists

While we’ve been scouring the web for Christmas videos, there are a whole bunch of great lists out there. These folks did all the work and we’re going to enjoy their spoils:

• Our friends over at Communicate Jesus offer their Ultimate List of Christmas Videos (45).
• Across the pond, Robin Ham shares his list of Excellent Videos for Christmas and Advent 2014 (10).
• And last year Robin shared the Best Christmas and Advent Short Films of 2013 (15)
• They don’t need lists down under. Steve Fogg has the Best Church Christmas Video of 2014 (1).

That’s a lot of videos (we didn’t count the duplicates and came up with 57). Enjoy. And read on to see some of our favorites.

How Can My Church Use Christmas Videos?

Other than your own personal enjoyment, how can your church use these videos? That’s a good question and forces us to actually justify what we’re doing here. Fine. We’ve got a few ideas.

But first, a copyright reminder. Some Christmas videos are free and available for anyone to use. Others will require purchase and come with restrictions. So read the license agreements and fine print. Just because it’s on YouTube doesn’t mean you can show it to your church.

Here’s how you can use those Christmas videos in your church:

• Pick a video that fits your theme and show it during your events.
• Use one as a lead-in to your sermon to tee up an idea or put people in the proper mood.
• Play a short one as a “commercial” between worship songs.
• Share one with your small group to jump start a deeper discussion.
• Make one part of your sermon. Sometimes a visual can be another way to engage people (i.e., keep people from falling asleep).
• Post the videos to your social media accounts as extra content to help put your congregation in the Christmas spirit. It also gives them something uplifting to share with their friends and family.
• Play your favorite Christmas videos as pre-service entertainment, a bonus for anyone who shows up early.

Oh yes, there are a lot of ways you can work a Christmas video into your Christmas events. And if you can’t? Well, they’re still fun to watch anyway.

Free Christmas Video

Don’t forget to check out Gary Molander’s thoughts on Christmas (presented in a video of course), because at the end he shares a code for a free Christmas video download. Score.

While you’re soaking up Gary’s wisdom and freebies, you can also check out twice-checked list of Christmas ideas for church.

Our Favorite Christmas Videos

OK, enough stalling. More watching! Here are our favorite Christmas videos:

(We picked just 7 out of 57, which is a shame. There’s a lot of brilliant videos in those lists above. Of course embedding all 57 will make some of your browsers implode.)

Immanuel

Traditional “Immanuel” meets hip hop flair:

(Watch on Vimeo)

Santa vs. Jesus

A little Christmas poetry:

(Watch on YouTube)

Come Thou Long Expected Jesus

From Genesis to the Gospels in artistic blur:

(Watch on Vimeo)

Tommy the Tiger

Here’s Steve Fogg’s pick:

(Watch on YouTube)

Bethlehemian Rhapsody

We’ll save the best for last. A parody song is highly questionable (unless you’re Weird Al), but puppets? Puppets!

(Watch on YouTube)

More Christmas Ideas:

• And we’d be remiss not to give a nod to 2010’s The Christmas Story and last year’s Instagram Christmas . We never get tired of those.
• More more Christmas resources, check out our Courageous Storytellers membership site.
• Check out God Rest Ye Stressed Communicators: Planning Christmas for Your Church for help with Christmas.
• For more Christmas help, the church marketing elves have been making a list (and checking it twice) of Christmas ideas and resources.