What you need: A manger and 'baby Jesus' doll, clothes to dress up like Mary, Joseph, angels, shepherds and other Christmas characters, some publicity for your church's Christmas services and other activities, a gazebo (optional), other trimmings to give your nativity scene character

How it works: Invite people to dress up as characters from the nativity story then take a photo for them using their mobile phone. Wish them a "Merry Christmas", share with them some publicity for other Christmas events and offer them the opportunity to share their pictures to your Facebook page.

In practice: This approach has been used to great effect by local mission partner MINE as a build up to another event they run, 'The Byker Nativity'. Read all about it on the Newcastle diocesan website. (NB They have called it 'Star in the Stable' but it's the same thing!)

Neil says: "For the past few years at my church we have run a Christmas Party for all the families with children that we have built contact with through toddler groups, outreach events and so on. In fact this has been so popular that we haven't even been able to risk publicising this on our Facebook page or elsewhere."

"However, the big question we have had to ask ourselves is how we share the message of Christmas in this context. We found that simply sharing the message from the front of church during the event did not work as it was just far too noisy!

The Santa Pause was our solution to this dilemma and since launching it several years ago it has gone from strength to strength.

The basic idea is simple. As part of the party, children are invited to go and see Santa Claus and to receive a gift. As they wait to do this we gather together three or four families in a gazebo at the entrance to Santa's grotto and there we share with them the Christmas story.

In recent years we have developed the idea further by incorporating Guardians of Ancora into the Santa Pause. We hook a tablet up to a projector or TV screen and show the start of the 'Messages from Angels' quest which tells the story of the angel appearing to Mary. We then continue to tell the rest of story using a wooden nativity set. Having told the story we provide some more tablets set up ready to play the same quest while smaller children can then play with the nativity set as they wait to go and see Santa.

We also give out Guardians of Ancora character cards and another give aways such as the Guardians of Ancora Christmas comics or other booklets. This year we used 'The First Christmas' booklets. Our hope is that having enjoyed the Santa Pause they will go away and engage further with the story when they get home."