Christmas Card Outreach
Aim: To invite people who live or work in your parish or local community to an event that will help them to encounter Christ over the Christmas season.
Project Outline
This Christmas card outreach gives your parishioners an opportunity to love their neighbours by inviting them to come closer to Christ this Christmas. We would like to help your worshipping community create and deliver Christmas cards to a new housing estate, or the whole parish. By adding some key information to the design of your Christmas card it can be transformed from well-wishing to an invitation that could begin a transformative journey.
There are a few key elements to get this project off the ground:
- Someone willing to coordinate the different elements and recruit others to help;
- Someone to edit our template Christmas Card design or create your own;
- A budget of up to £600 to spend on professionally printing Christmas cards;*
- This will vary depending on the number and type of cards you order;
- An event to which those receiving Christmas cards are invited.
*This amount will vary depending on the number of cards you want to produce. However, the more you print, the cheaper they are per cards. It is worth shopping around for the best price as quotes can vary a great deal.
The Extra Mile
If your parish regularly runs Alpha, Sycamore or another course in the New Year, having invites ready at your event would give those who connect through this project a clear next step.
Getting Started
There are five distinct phases to this project:
1. Plan or identify a parish event for people who are not practicing Catholics to attend, e.g. a carol service or nativity play;
2. Attracting volunteers and involving key people to complete the project;
3. Card production stage: design, printing, stuffing, and sorting;
4. Card distribution stage;
5. A giveaway or Christmas gift for those who attend your event because of the Christmas card.
Whilst your primary aim is to invite people to an event at Christmas, this project could be connected to an evangelistic project in the new year such as a course, book club or follow-up event. It is worth deciding on this now, so your giveaway includes an invitation to the event in the new year. To explore this possibility further please email teresacarvalho@rcdow.org.uk
Resources and Support
If you have someone with a flare for design, they will be able to put a personal touch into your design. But please don't worry if that's not the case as we have a card template with a simple image on the front you can use. Below are two links that will take you to templates on Canva where you can add the information specific to your parish and the event to which you are inviting your neighbours.
Blank Card Design - for you to insert an image of your choice.
Card Design - this template already has an image on the front.
Once the design has been created and the cards are being printed, your coordinator can focus on recruiting volunteers and allocating roads for card delivery. He or she will need a map of the parish and list of the roads contained in your parish, or the area you would like to cover. This will enable them to allocate roads to volunteers and track deliveries.
This is a great project to connect with new volunteers who may be interested in other volunteering opportunities after this outreach. You are welcome to use your regular methods for volunteer sign-up and gather contact information and permission to use it. However, if this is not yet in place, you are welcome to use the volunteer sign up sheet below:
Get connected
Whether you have run a similar project in the past or are starting from scratch, Teresa Carvalho our Evangelisation Coordinator would love to hear from you so that we can offer you support and highlight the good work you have done so other parishes can be inspired by your efforts.
Preparing for a Christmas Outreach in 2024
If you haven't begun this project already, it might be worth getting things in place for Christmas 2024. A great way to begin would be to hold a Christmas card competition where the winning 3-5 entries are printed for this outreach and to sell in your parish shop. Again, we would love to hear how this goes and see the designs you have chosen.