How to make a Christmas Eve invite your church will actually share

Somewhere in your church, a person has typed "we have a service on Christmas Eve if you want to come," looked at it, and deleted it. It felt like asking a favor. A good invite takes that weight off them: a finished graphic with the day and time on it, and one friendly line of their own on top.

You can make that graphic without a design background. It comes down to a few decisions, made in the right order.

Why the invite is the one Christmas design worth getting right

Nearly every Christmas design you make stays in the building. The slides, the lobby screens and the announcement loop all talk to people who already know where you meet.

The invite leaves. It lands in a group text, a neighbor's messages, a feed you'll never scroll, in front of someone who has never walked through your doors. That person decides in a second or two whether it looks like a place they'd go on Christmas Eve. If you only get to one Christmas design before the weeks get away from you, make it this one, because it's the only one a stranger will ever see.

What makes an invite shareable on a phone

An invite gets read on a small screen, usually while someone is doing something else. Build it for that moment.

• One clear line: pick the single sentence that tells a stranger what this is, something like Christmas Eve at [Your Church Name], come as you are. Keep it to one line.
• The day and time, big: Thursday and the hour, set large enough to read at arm's length. If a person has to hunt for when, they'll scroll past.
• The church name: put it where the eye lands second, so the friend receiving it knows who it's from.
• One image idea: a single picture carries more than a collage, and a crowded invite is harder to forward. A lit window on a dark street, or a porch light left on. Choose one.
• Room to breathe: empty space around the words makes the invite look calm, and calm is what a first-time guest wants to see before they commit to a night out.
• Sized for where it will live: a tall version for phone screens and a square version for a social post. Ask for both at the start, because stretching one to fit the other on a Friday night never looks right.

Hold the finished design at arm's length on your own phone. If you can read the day and time without moving it closer, it's ready.

The details people forget

You know your building. Your guest doesn't. They don't know which door to use, or whether they can bring a four-year-old without getting looks.

• Every service time: if you run more than one on Christmas Eve, list each of them. Someone choosing between a family dinner and your 7:00 needs to see that you also have a 4:00. You'll be in the building for every one of those services, and your guest shouldn't have to text you to find the one that fits their night.
• The address: someone who has never driven there needs the street address, even in small type.
• Whether kids are welcome: a parent deciding whether to bring a toddler wants that answered on the invite. Say it plainly, as in Kids are welcome, or name what you offer for them if you actually offer it.
• Parking: where do people park, and is there an overflow lot? A guest circling the block at 6:55 with a coat over one arm is how a first visit starts badly.

If all four won't fit without crowding the image, keep the day, time, name and address on the graphic and put kids and parking in the caption or on the page the invite links to.

When to have it ready

Christmas Eve is a Thursday this year, so count back in Sundays the way you already do: the 20th, the 13th and the 6th.

Aim to have the invite ready by Sunday, December 6. That gives you three Sundays to put it on the lobby screens and in the announcement slides, and three weeks for people to think of a friend and work up to asking. An invite finished on Saturday night, December 19, gets one Sunday and a handful of days. One that slips past that weekend often never gets posted at all.

There's a second reason to finish early. The Friday and Saturday nights before a big Sunday run late, and everything else lands on them. Get the invite off your list while the calendar is still quiet.

How to ask for it in one sentence

A good request fits in one sentence with four parts: what it is, the day and times, the feeling, and the image.

The requests below are examples only, written to show the shape. Swap in your own details.

Example request: Create a Christmas Eve invite for Thursday at 4:00 and 7:00 pm, warm and simple, with a lit window on a quiet street.

Example request: Create a Christmas Eve invite for [Your Church Name], Thursday at 6:00 pm, kids welcome, with a single porch light and lots of space around the words.

Example request: Create a Christmas Eve invite sized for a phone screen and a social post, with the day and time big, our address underneath, and a calm winter evening behind it.

None of them mention a font or a color. If what comes back isn't right, say what to change in one more sentence and ask again.

Where ChurchCreate fits

ChurchCreate creates screen graphics for churches: social posts, service and projection slides, lobby screens, website images, and invite graphics built for people's phones. It's trained on a library of 300,000 designs going back to 2015, real designs our team made for churches. Our team has served more than 3,000 churches since 2017, so we know what a Christmas Eve week looks like from inside it.

A free ChurchCreate account makes one design a month. It also gets you the Weekly Drop, a fresh set of finished designs to download every week, and you don't need a card for any of it.

If you'd like room for the rest of the season's slides and posts, first-time subscribers can start from this link. CHRISTMAS50 applies automatically at checkout through Saturday, October 31 at 11:59pm Mountain, which makes each of the first three months of Pro monthly $48.50, then $97 a month. Any plan has a 7-day full refund, and a church can cancel any month.

Spend your first design on the invite while there are still three Sundays to show it. It's free at churchcreate.com.

David at ChurchCreate