I’m Tim, the VP of Creative here at Outreach. I came here nearly 15 years ago for one reason, to help bring more people to church. I’ve seen many of the challenges you face every week activating your community and bringing people to Christ, and we, here at Outreach, are committed to finding solutions that will work for your church.
Every season at Outreach begins with deep-dive research on the messages, designs and products churches all over America are employing for evangelism. We also partner with Outreach magazine to learn from the churches identified in the annual Outreach 100 Fastest-Growing Churches in America list — churches who are truly succeeding with, often, exponential growth.
Our ideas also come from you, the pastors in the trenches, those searching for the best ways to invite, inspire and engage their members and community. We reach out to our buyer community each season to seek their input on the designs and messages we are considering, listening for the themes and aesthetics you are looking for — and that input helps us refine our messaging and designs.
Tracking the trends
This year, Outreach celebrates 25 years serving and supporting the church. We’ve seen a lot in that time, and we closely track the design, messaging and product trends that churches use to communicate their services, to inspire their community, to decorate their halls and to brand their churches, both in person, and on the web. We work with our product design team each season to implement those trends in our seasonal products.
Messaging
This has been an extraordinary year for the Church as every church leader knows. Many of the challenges of 2020 remain, and many new ones have arisen. The trends in messaging we’ve seen most recently, address the felt need for HOPE, to acknowledge we are weary and truly need celebration, and to remember that Jesus is at the heart of Christmas.
Images
The Christmas season is rich in tradition, and whether your church’s brand is “traditional” or “contemporary” in style, we’ve found people are drawn to traditional concepts most at this time of year. Images representing Christ’s birth, wreaths, the star of Bethlehem, advent candles and Christmas ornaments remain some of the most popular visual themes.
Christmas begins Star is a perfect example of a design theme that combines a strong trending message with a traditional, time-proven design style. Outreach offers dozens of different themes specifically for Christmas, so whichever design style feels right for your church, we offer a wide spectrum of product types; banners, bulletins, invitations and more, to help you transform your church for the season.
Reaching the Community where they are
Broadcast your Christmas service times and messages to the entire community with vinyl outdoor banners to match your Christmas design theme. With unmatched quality at a low price, our outdoor banners are the most cost effective way to reach your neighborhood, and an instant reminder of a matching direct mail postcard you sent.
Completing your church’s design theme
One of the hottest trends in church decor this year is multi-set canvas prints. We’ve chosen select-design themes from this year’s product rollout and super-sized them as rich and attention-getting canvas prints that will quickly become the focal point of your lobby, halls or large rooms. This year you’ll also see several of our new designs in our popular giant 10’x8’ fabric banners for decorating stages, video areas and lobbies.
Sharing the Promise of Christmas
Each year Outreach develops a new Christmas sermon series to provide pastors with a powerful season-long series that also has matching artwork in our most popular products to help transform your decor and invitational messaging for Christmas. This year our Christmas church-wide campaign is The Promise.
This five-sermon series shares the stories of four people in the Bible who were the first to see God’s promise for a savior fulfilled! The Promise is a series that you can use for evangelism in your community and as a tool to reconnect with your church attenders during the Christmas season.
Week 1 – Simeon: Hope for a Savior
Week 2- The Shepherds: Peace on Earth
Week 3 – Zechariah: The Joy of Preparation
Week 4 – Mary: God’s Great Love
Traditional or Contemporary?
We understand that due to your specific demographics, style or preference, you may be looking for designs that are classically traditional or highly contemporary. We want to make sure this campaign will fit your church, so have created products in both popular styles. This is just another example of how Outreach is listening to our customers and striving to give you the tools you need.
Christmas Eve
Not looking for a campaign for the entire Christmas season? O Holy Night is a Christmas Eve only digital event kit that explores the first holy night when the Messiah was born. The kit includes everything you need including a sermon, social media graphics, videos and sermon slide background graphics. All available for immediate download!
Both kits will be available for download in early October – but can be preordered later this week!
Our promise to you
Last Christmas was incredibly challenging for so many of the churches we serve. At Outreach, we saw the needs of our customers change dramatically, as many churches included online services for the first time, parking lot services, or directional messaging and signage to keep their members safe. We saw the Church adapt to serve her people, and we were moved by your faithfulness and devotion to your communities. Our hope this season is that we can help you reach your communities like never before, and our commitment to you is to provide beautiful, affordable and effective outreach tools to help you bring more people to Christ.
