Intranet System / Yammer

During the advent season why not retell the Christmas story on your intranet system. This could be videos, written words, someone from your group reading the story from the bible. You could use an Advent calendar for this and knock on a virtual door to reveal each day's contribution!

What does Christmas mean to you?

Videos of staff sharing what Christmas means to them. Encourage a mix from your group and all staff especially those from other cultures to share to encourage diversity and inclusion. It's a great way to learn about other cultures . Endeavour to ask senior managers to join in if possible. If you are organising an online Christmas event, let people know their videos will be shown at the event to encourage them to log on and join your Staff Christmas event.

Testimonies of what you do at Christmas

This is an important one as many people from other faiths or countries may think that because we live in the UK we are automatically Christians. It's a great opportunity for all to learn about Christian based Christmases.

Work Calendar

If you haven’t done so already, ask HR / Diversity and Inclusion managers if your organisation will allow religious festivals to be highlighted on your work calendar with pop up boxes explaining what the festivals are about. This is a great opportunity for all staff to learn about other faiths from their colleagues. Ask if you as the Chair / Leader of the Christian Group could write the information about Christmas and Easter. Make sure there is a link to your Christian Workplace Group in the pop up information boxes so staff can connect and receive support from your group.

Give outside your Christian Workplace Group

Encourage food banks
Christmas hampers for the low income households
Toy appeals
Tackling debt - help your colleagues by publishing 10 top tips for staying out of debt this Christmas (we can provide these for you).

Christians Against Poverty free debt help

Sharing a Word from the Bible

Ask a local church leader if they would pre record a 4-5 mins message

Could someone from your Christian Workplace Group pre record a 4-5 mins message

Invite the leader of a different staff network group, LGBT, Disability, BAME group to do a Christmas reading – give them the text.

Speak Life Christmas Resources

Speak Life website

Christmas Prayer Tree

You are not forgotten. Add your name and any need you have to the Christmas Tree this year and we will pray for you.

Tree image on the organisations website with a simple form field for their prayer request (on a star or bauble).
OR
If people are actually working in offices – ask if you can bring in a real or artificial tree, cut out stars / baubles with string and encourage people to write their names and any issues for prayer on there.

Online Quiz

Great idea to have fun online quiz and also bust a few myths about Christmas. Make sure you have a fun pressie for the winner.

If you’ve already created a quiz are you able to share it with Christian Workplace Group leaders so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel? If so contact office@transformwork.net 

Try and include questions that relate to your organisation or seniors as it’ll be it more personal and fun.

Christmas message / word from senior managers

Always worth asking your CEO / senior managers if they would be prepared to give a 2 minute message to all staff this Christmas time to encourage and give hope.

This is a great way to engage with your organisation and make your group known but also to align your group with seniors is a great endorsement / validation for a Christian staff network group.

Community Cohesion

Encourage the local school choirs to record a carol for your Christmas event

Encourage the local mayor to give you a 2-3 mins pre-recorded word for your Christmas event

Christmas song in the style of The Blessing

Pre-recorded, from members of the Christian Workplace Group to the whole organisation.

If your organisation has a choir ask them now to pre-record a carol / song to play.

Live performance songs

If there’s a member of your Christian Workplace Group or in your organisation with a gift/talent for singing…

Christmas Carols

If you don’t have staff who can sing, don’t worry, there are plenty of carols and Christmas songs you can view on YouTube or download.

King's College choir YouTube playlist
King's College choir download options

Daily advent songs

Daily advent music, artwork and devotionals from the Biola Advent Project.

Be inclusive

As a group discuss and pray about how you can be inclusive. There are many forgotten people at work, those that live on their own, the cleaners and security night staff who start work when everyone else has gone home, those from other people groups – reach out and go beyond your normal conform zone to share the love of Jesus this Christmas time who took the initiative to come into our world.

Be relevant

Don’t do ‘church’ in work but make it fun and relevant by including items about your organisations and key senior people. You may want to interview the reception people as everyone will recognise their face… etc…

Be Invitational

Before: If possible build up to your Christmas event by having a quiz beforehand, or testimonies or reading of the Christmas story and after each entry on yammer… invite colleagues to your event.

During: if you would like us to pray for any need you have please email office@transformwork.net and we have a team who will pray for your now.

After: At your event make sure you say if you’d like to know more about the Christian faith, as a staff network group we’re running a 5 week course to help colleagues discover more about our faith. And then list the topics. Can you believe the bible is true? Why did Jesus die on a cross?

Be Prayerful during this Christmas season

'Our prayer line is always open’ - encourage prayer - please email prayer@transformworkuk.org.

We would love to hear from you about what you have done in your workplace at Christmas. Contact us with any ideas that have worked well at office@transformworkuk.org

Christmas Hampers

Chris, who is involved in running a Christian Group in an international software company, wrote to us to tell us about the exciting workplace initiative that the group launched at Christmastime. Chris writes:

“The Christmas Hamper idea came from my involvement with Besom. Besom regularly ask Churches to either prepare whole Christmas hampers or provide luxury items of food and presents to be added to hampers and given to those in need over Christmas.

I thought that our Christian work group could collect enough items for a couple of hampers so that’s all we decided to do. Members of the group dropped off items (mince pies, puddings, crackers etc.) into my office. The items built up and then were noticed by work colleagues who asked why I had all this “shopping” in my office. They too became enthusiastic to bring in items for this worthy cause. The first year we collected enough for 5 or 6 whole hampers and this was without any advertising. The following year we posted notices and asked for donations (signed by the Christian Fellowship group) and we collected enough to fill 14 hampers (see picture)

There were significant benefits arising from this initiative:

• It raised the profile of the Christian group at work.
• The initiative attracted several new additions to our group.
• We re-emphasised the Christian context of Christmas at a time when many of the staff are focused on sales targets.
• We helped some families in need with goodies they wouldn’t normally buy.”

This is a great story of how a Christian Group can really make a difference in the workplace. Do you have any similar stories to tell us that we might be able to share and encourage others?

Organising a Christmas Carol Event

This is a great opportunity, as it is easy to set up a Christmas carol service that links into the Christmas cheer. This is not something you can easily do at Easter or Pentecost!

1) Preparation: gather all the Christians at work to team up and take on individual roles:

• Service format and sheet
• Welcome (by the group leader, key senior manager, diversity representative?)
• 3 thumping and familiar carols
• Readings
• An enthusiastic and gifted Pastor to give a direct, good 10 min message
• Only brief and topical prayers, by a fellowship member
• Christmas blessing (Pastor?)
• Obtain agreement of your managers/HR department to what you are planning to do

2) Think creatively about promoting the event (invitations in the company) with supporting activities, tapping into the ‘Christmas Spirit’:

• Organising a departmental ‘Decorating’ competition, with the best decorated department winning free coffees or something
• Getting people to buy anonymous presents for deprived children (NSPCC or local charity) or gifts for developing countries (World Vision, Oxfam, etc..)
• Giving out free advent calendars

3) Make sure the event is timed, and finishes on time (30 mins sharp?).

4) For music, get your own band or the Salvation Army (one company used a small gospel band which proved very popular!).

5) Prepare Invitations / Posters

6) Think about providing food (mince pies & coffee?)

7) Think carefully about the meeting place (e.g. the company atrium or entrance hall)

8) Invite a management representative to read the lesson (? John 1.1-14), provide food afterwards and mingle with his workforce.

9) Tell any important folks’ PAs to put it in the bosses diaries

Christmas Cards for Every Employee

One very simple idea at Christmas is to give a Christmas card to every employee. This both highlights the existence of your group, and shares a message of hope.

There are a wide range of cards available on line. One group used the card shown which has a powerful message of hope about the true God of Christmas, but was not too pushy with the gospel.

You might choose something a little more direct, or perhaps not so direct. Remember to discuss what you plan to do with your manager/HR department first.

A great way to make this have even more impact is to personally sign every card. You can preprint some labels saying “Happy Christmas from the Christians Fellowship Group” but signing them shows you have taken some effort.

It is good to pray over the cards before distributing them to everyone in a suitable way.

The specific card shown is available from the Christian Publishing and Outreach website cpo.org.uk.

Give Away a Testimonial DVD

If your Christian Workplace Group has a budget available, or can be supported by a local Church, then why not consider giving away a Christian DVD to every employee? Remember to discuss it first with your HR department/manager. A great example of this is the More to Life DVD produced by Viz-aViz.

Wrapped in Christmas paper, what a brilliant gift at Christmas! One group prayed that it would act as if they had wrapped up Jesus and given Him to everyone!

One testimony received from this Christmas gift is incredible:

“Returning from the Christmas holidays I bumped into the MD’s secretary. She was German, and one of their traditions is to open a gift on Christmas Eve. She chose to open our Christian Workplace Group’s gift. She then told me how she sat with her whole family and watched it together – amazing what God can do!”

Mugs for Christmas

What’s a good way for a Christian Workplace Group to get across the Christmas message to others in the organisation and at the same time raise the profile of your group? One tried and tested approach is to have some tea/coffee mugs made with a Christian message on them, along with the name of the Group and a contact number and then send them out as gifts at Christmas.

Apart from being received by individuals you can guarantee that they will get left all over the place in kitchens and on desks, etc. This is very effective in communicating a simple Christian message and raising awareness of the Group in the organisation. Give away one mug and many others will use it and get the message!

Christians in the Audit Commission (CiTAC) gave away mugs with their logo on and had a number of people make contact with the group as a result. This approach can also be used as a means of advertising forthcoming events which your Christian Workplace Group might be organising such as a speaker event.

You will find many suppliers are able to provide mugs with the words you want placed on them. Do shop around as there are usually discounts for larger quantities.

This is a great and simple means of Christmas outreach, but just one thing, don’t forget to get permission from your managers or HR department first!

Collecting Tinned Food for a Local Charity

Below are some details of an activity undertaken by the HMRC group at Reading. Group members collected food tins, which were then passed on to the needy in the town through a local charity. Although this event was done at harvest time, it does not have to be.

Transform Work are keen to encourage all Christian Workplace Groups to consider organising this activity in the lead up to Christmas. This is a fine example of a group working together with others in the organisation to show God’s love to those in need in the local area. It is also something that all staff can easily be encouraged to join in to help support local homeless charities this winter time.

Great idea, what do we do next? Here’s a few tips…

1. Suggest this idea to your Christian Workplace Group. Brainstorm the local homeless charities you could support, perhaps someone in your group already volunteers in a homeless charity or has good contacts with a local charity already.
2. Once you’ve chosen a charity, contact them and see if they would like your support. Ask them exactly what they need.
3. Next, seek permission from your employer to use the company email to advertise your activity.
4. Advertise and galvanise participation from all staff, be creative and have fun – it is Christmas!
5. Set a closing date for when all the cans need to be in.
6. Don’t forget to write a report / article and take pictures that can be used on your company web site & tell Transform Work too – we love sharing good news stories across workplaces!
7. Last but by no means least… pray through every step, for your chosen charity, your colleagues as they get involved and employer too!

Operation Christmas Child

Fill a child’s life with joy this Christmas!

Imagine being a child and not receiving a single present at Christmas. Now imagine being able to bring joy to that child by simply wrapping and packing an empty shoebox with lots of little gifts. This little miracle happens each year.

Operation Christmas Child brings the true meaning of Christmas to needy children around the world through gift-filled shoeboxes packed by people like you. Since 1990, over 113 million gift-filled shoeboxes have been distributed to children worldwide who have experienced the love of God through these simple gifts.

Operation Christmas Child is a great workplace activity – for bringing colleagues together, for getting out into the community, for fulfilling corporate social responsibility – it’s amazing what shoeboxes can do for your workplace. Get involved with Operation Christmas Child and order your FREE resources to get started.

Many children who receive Operation Christmas Child gift filled shoeboxes will have the opportunity to participate in The Greatest Journey, a voluntary 12 lesson discipleship programme enabling children to interact with the Gospel, through Bible stories and Bible teaching. The mission of The Greatest Journey is to help local churches overseas reach children with the Gospel, to establish them in their faith in Jesus Christ and to equip them to pray for and share the Gospel with their family and friends.

Starting a Choir

Several Christian Workplace Groups have started choirs. A Whitehall choir started in the Department for International Development and grew to be Whitehall-wide with members from a range of Departments. A choir was formed for Christmas 2014 at the Passport Office in Peterborough and was the centrepiece of their Christmas event.

If you have a choir teacher then learning songs will be easier, but it is not necessary to have an expert, trained, choir master or mistress! As long as you have someone with some musical knowledge, who knows the music and can bring a group of people together, then you are away!

Invitations to join the choir can be extended widely round the office, and certainly do not need to be restricted to Christians. If the purpose of the choir is to further the aims of the group, then songs relating to the Christian faith can form the backbone of the music the choir sings. But the music repertoire need by no means be entirely spiritual! A choir is an excellent way to get to know colleagues away from work, and as we get to know people better, Christian values can be imparted, and invitations to the group can be extended.

Apart from someone to lead the choir with some musical experience, all that is needed is a room to rehearse (think of the transmission of sound), a musical instrument or a CD/MP3 player for background music. When the choir is ready, invitations to short performances can be extended around the organisation, with the events being held perhaps at lunchtime or immediately after work. If a comfortable venue is available nearby, then so much the better.