I came across a wonderful evangelistic advertising tool recently while driving home one evening.

One of the churches in my local area has decked the entire front of their building (which opportunistically, also happens to sit on a corner directly adjacent to a major roundabout) with colored Christmas lights and a bright neon nativity scene. Since that night I've often traveled down that street & literally seen cars drive several times around the roundabout just to look at the beautiful display.

I have to say the church looks absolutely spectacular as it lights up our little corner of the world!

I don't know about your suburb, but where I live local families enjoy nothing better at Christmas time than a pre-bed time twilight drive or stroll with their children, to view the many wonderful, humorous, and sometimes simply crazy, Christmas light displays arrayed around the local neighborhood.

In my suburb, there's one particular street that everyone goes out of the way to visit. Every Christmas, each of the houses in this tiny cu-de-sac fiercely compete to outdo each other to win our local 'people's favourite' award for 'best and most elaborately dressed Christmas display'. Cars queue sometimes up to 40 minutes at a time just to get a peek.

So I think that little local church is on to something here. And it really got me thinking, why aren't all churches capitalizing on this great advertising and evangelistic opportunity? After all, what more could we want than, as our local families bring children to see the pre-Christmas light display outside our church they also can’t miss our notice board advertising the upcoming Christmas services! "¨Brilliant I say!

Or, we could go one step further and leaflet the local neighborhood advertising that the church will hold a 'special light display' at a particular time each evening.

Or, for the extremely mission minded, energetic and theatrical amongst us, why not go all out and advertise that there'll also be a short dramatic presentation of the nativity story each evening.

At this event we could take the opportunity to hand out a simple hand made tree decoration for each family inscribed with a simple gospel verse, as well as a postcard sized leaflet inviting them to come to our special Christmas services.

As you can see, the pre-Christmas possibilities and opportunities are endless!

So, why not get creative this Christmas and take every opportunity to declare to your own little patch of Sydney, that the "true light that gives light to every man" has come into the world! (Jn 1:9)

PHOTO: Valerie Everett