The Church or Parish is now an integral part of the digital world community in which we live and pray. True, I might not be involved personally in this way as such, yet most of my Church attendees or parishioners are! Christmas and New Year's time is a most wonderful time to re-engage with the once-a-year attendees and to depth the engagement of the regular parishioners.

Marketing my church or parish is the most natural thing to do at Christmas and the New Year - through:

• the way we welcome or invite people into our church
• the way we make our services relevant to the modern world, but yet accepting of a variety of interests – this may be through arranging different services to suit the various demographics
• the way we inform in a welcoming and not overbearing way of the upcoming events and plans for next year
• the gentle invitation for each person to play a role, no matter how small, in the life of the Church in the upcoming year, etc.

All these are critical marketing styles, easily accessible to most key people within the Church / Parish, along with many of the other parishioners - the basic methods which need to be seriously considered.

There is a raft of other options available depending on the expertise of those responsible, as well as the budget offered.  Some of these options include:

• Internet and paper newsletters and flyers
• Church / Parish website – have a Christmas designed home page and be relevant with webpages and content offered – the website should also contain all information distributed to parishioners by paper throughout the year, even if only in an archive section, depending on relevance.
• Internet blog posts for those interested in offering their thoughts on a range of issues either selected by the parish or left open to members of these websites – this is usually a most successful method for those internet savvy people – it is not really that hard to become proficient in this skill and then become a blogger or just read what others say.
• Development of a data base for future contact though out the year – if people are happy to be informed, but not overrun with information, they will often engage more with the Church. You may even offer various levels of information giving to people the option to choose the level they wish to receive e.g. from detailed documents to simple e-flyers or reminder emails.
• Calendar of next year’s events being published as a paper copy and on the internet.

The Church Marketing Manual... e-book by Bryan Foster is a wonderful christmas gift for any parish and contains hundreds of church marketing strategies and examples. The 'Why and How Market My Church or Parish at Christmas and New Year?' blog post was written by Bryan Foster, author of Church Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (2nd ed), - the paperback and ebook manual for Church communications and marketing personnel - 304 pages of easy to read and implement summarized points, which allow for a considerably large number of quality stategies and examples to be detailed and available for church marketing personnel - with copyright remaining GDPL. Book available from Amazon.com and Createspace.com