Don’t MCU Your Christmas Services.
When it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I am what you would call a late bloomer. While I watched several of the early movies: Captain America, Thor, etc., the MCU never really clicked for me until I watched Black Panther on a plane in the summer of 2018. Something about that ridiculously good film on a ridiculously bad 8 inch screen was enough to make me go back to the beginning for a summer-long marathon.
That marathon led to multiple re-watches with my daughter (she’s a big Chris Evans fan, obvi), and together we’ve anticipated the movies and series that are new to both of us: WandaVision, Captain Marvel, Secret Invasion, and lots of others.
But here’s what I know about Marvel movies: when I jumped in back in 2018, I only had about 18 other movies to catch up on. Yes, it took me an entire summer, but I managed to make it happen.
Now, however, if I want to understand – let’s say – Loki’s obsession with He Who Remains, I have to head all the way back to his oversized ego in 2011’s Thor, see him die in 2018’s Infinity War, check out his alternate timeline in 2019’s Endgame, discover the deal with the Tesseract, interpret which infinity stones do which things, meet Thanos, see Thanos die and come back and die again, do some wibbly-wobbly time stuff, encounter a few Loki variants, encounter a few He Who Remains variants, deep dive into whether He Who Remains is actually The Watcher, discover nah maybe they’re two different people, wish that the Lokigator got more screen time, watch the god of mischief get in touch with his kinder gentler side, and finally see him become the hero we don’t deserve.
In other words, if I were going to jump into Marvel now, I probably wouldn’t, because nobody has that kind of time or dedication. (I should note here that there’s even a new book out called The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline. I started flipping through it at Costco and became so overwhelmed I had to make a return trip to the sample stations and calm myself with quiche bites.)
I give you that crazy-long introduction for a reason: we shouldn’t make an MCU timeline out of our Christmas services.
Think about it: Christmas Eve will likely be one of your highest-attended services of the year. People are showing up who have either never been to your church or rarely attend your church. We need to steward our first-time or irregular guests well if we want them to have a sense of place, of “I belong here,” of curiosity. If we drop them into business as usual with no contextual placement, we confuse ’em. If we don’t tag our Christmas message with “what’s next,” we lose ’em.
Here are three timeline “anchor points” that we should focus on for Christmas Eve:
1. Where we’ve been.
If you are using your Christmas Eve services to culminate a weeks-long or year-long series (which we’ve done before…highly recommend), catch your guests up. Give a brief recap of the timeline to draw them in, to give them insider knowledge, to prevent them from feeling like they’re reading someone else’s mail. You don’t have to take more than 5 minutes out of a 35 minute sermon to do this, but you should do this.
2. Where we are.
One of my main pet peeves is when pastors call out the poinsettia and lily crowd. I’m fascinated by our frustration with larger-than-normal crowds, and horrified with our apparent need to shame people for showing up.
Instead, let’s give our guests a sense of welcome, an assurance that we’re thrilled they’re there, no matter the reason. And let’s nudge them towards the reality that this day was a part of God’s grander timeline in their lives. While it may be a day that they showed up because Grandma guilted them, it can be the day that the Holy Spirit opens their eyes to the beauty of the gospel.
3. Where we’re going.
Finally, we should give a nod to what’s next. Announce your new series coming in January. Give a glimpse of the big vision or ongoing initiatives of the following year. Talk about the normal rhythms and routines you offer for families and first-timers.
Your Christmas services are a big Sunday for your church, but they’re not the only Sunday for your church. In the midst of the festivity, give a sense of normalcy. Invite the first-timers or irregulars to a future spot on the timeline.
Our Christmas Eve services – like all services – are a stewardship of our guests’ time. Let’s steward our timeline well for the sake of their timeline.
