This is a report on a little-seen part of our work as the Shining Lights Trust.

It has three parts.

• An overview.
• Some secondary descriptions to give a little detail on the nature of engagement.
• Then a list of the common objections to our faith from the public – imparting important perspective on where the ‘front line’ of the faith conversation still is for many.
• Beyond this, there is attached a PDF with images of some of our engagements within online conversations, to demonstrate the nature of how we engagement within conversations that are catalysed.

As an introductory comment, a media advertising specialist and proactive social media manager together recently affirmed again the uniqueness of what Hope Project is pioneering in the online media space in New Zealand. There is nothing else like it, giving profile to the Christian faith and NZ Church before wide-reaching audiences.

They commented also on the uniqueness of the detailed analysis that goes on with specific regard to Christian messages in the public square – fine-tuning the nature of engagement with professionalism.

With 14 years of continuous online media experience, including numerous funded campaigns, a unique expertise has developed as a result of interrogating both data and anomalies within it, to understand how things work and why in a fast-changing landscape, to achieve audience.

The result has been both ‘bang for buck’ with a unique spectrum of messaging, endearing positive audience participation within which perspectives are encouraged in small steps toward Jesus.

Here is a summary report on the Christmas 2025 campaign.

Campaign Overview

The Hope Project Christmas campaign aims to keep Christian messages visible during key seasons of the Christian faith. Its primary goal for all audiences, both public and church, is to make nativities more visible. By encouraging their display, we seek to normalise nativities in public spaces, emphasise Jesus’s significance at Christmas, challenge negative perceptions, and spark public curiosity.

This year, to address questions and myths about Christmas, the ‘A Minute in History’ series covered 10 topics in video format (10 vertical and 10 widescreen versions created). These videos were used across both parts of the Hope Project Christmas campaigns on YouTube and Meta.

The 2025 Christmas campaign had a one-third increase in budget as compared to 2024.

Defined Objectives

The 2025 Hope Project Christmas campaign included 27 pieces of content across Meta and YouTube. The content was organised around five key focus areas. The number of items primarily aligned to each category is shown in brackets, although several posts also supported secondary objectives.

1. Promoting the visibility of the Nativity to keep it in public view (9)
2. Sharing the gospel story of Christmas (3)
3. Encouraging attendance at a local church (2)
4. Promoting Nativity products for wide sharing (3)
5. Addressing questions and myths about Christmas (10)

The 2025 campaign reached nearly 1.9 million users on Meta, a 24% increase on last year, and generated 348,911 views on YouTube. While reach and view counts are measured differently across platforms, we estimate that more than 2.2 million people were reached over the Christmas period, with content viewed a total of 7.6 million times.

It is noted that numerous posts concurrently promoted ‘visiting a church’ as their action step. The two posts for this was the only message were boosted in the lead-up to the Sunday before Christmas, achieving a combined audience of 759,000.

The campaign delivered outcomes significantly stronger than any previous Christmas or Easter online media campaign.

DATES AND STRATEGY

As in prior years, the campaign was intentionally launched late November, starting with a focus on Nativity products to involve public audiences in celebrations that include the use of nativity-related imagery and stories. The focus shifted from 7^th December to bringing visibility of the Nativity in public view, and then to the gospel story from 14^th December.

Distinct from this, the 10 A Minute in History Christmas reels were distributed and boosted across the full 30-day campaign period.

IN SUMMARY OF TRENDS

While comments and shares continued to decline, there was a significant increase in link clicks during this campaign generated 18,484 link clicks – to investigate more, up from 5,222 at Christmas 2024.

Google Analytics recorded 10,710 page views on the Hope Project website during the campaign with 7,039 coming from a social media link. This demonstrates strong platform effectiveness.

The newly refreshed Hope Project website is a valuable gospel tool.

REGARDING GOOGLE SEARCH ADS

These underperformed, with 7,780 impressions, down from 60,213 last year, resulting in an 82% decrease in clicks.

Unexpected changes like this are reflective of the fast-changing nature of the online media space. Discussions are now being undertaken to understand the reasons for this. There are anomalies in data like this every year.

REGARDING GOOGLE YOUTUBE ADS

Ten topics were developed for the A Minute in History Christmas series, posted both as vertical videos for YouTube Shorts, and as widescreen videos for standard YouTube viewing.

Performance:

• YouTube Shorts: 326,025 views.
• Widescreen: 22,886 views
• Total views: 348,911

With very little organic reach this platform remains largely ‘pay to play’, though with significant audience reach if the associated search words and topics have very little competition. (It costs more to gain audience for ‘products’ where there are many businesses competing for the same audience. As very few are promoting Christian messages, this makes our economical by contrast to other ‘products’.)

A further challenge is the sometimes-restrictive nature of the platform when delivering Christian messages. This requires constant monitoring, because careful adjustments can yet achieve audience. (So it is noted, a first layer of restrictions is not always detrimental for our campaign. For example, Google marks religious-natured content with a basic restriction so it is categorised for exclusion from nations in which Google is not permitted to promote those messages. This first layer of restriction doesn’t therefore affect New Zealand audiences.)

WHAT INTERESTED YOUTUBE AUDIENCES 

The top three videos were

1. Episode 10 – How Saint Nicholas joined Christmas: 119,155 views
2. Episode 3 – How did Christmas and Easter become cultural festivals, and what does that mean?: 31,581 views
3. Episode 6 – Did Christmas borrow its date and themes from the Winter Solstice?: 29,364 views

The above is valuable information in that it reflect the nature of what interests public audiences. How topics are approached and the wording of titles also significantly affect the size of audiences reached. It’s most-definitely not just about good content.

The YouTube audience in the campaign was 2/3 male, while in terms of age, 25% were aged 25-34 and 18% aged 34-44. Summarised, 43% were under the age of 45, with the remainder evenly spread across the older age ranges.

A STRATEGY ENGAGED

It was with intentionality that we ‘front-footed’ a few issues in the 2025 Christmas campaign – raising common objections ourselves so we could address them. This undermined the ability of sceptics who typically presuming to know more than our churches, who repeatedly make claims like how Christians stole their festivals from prior pagan festivals (which doesn’t stand the test if investigated).

Debates around these matters were far less common or vigorous as a result this year, while very simple (1 minute) NZ-made resources for ‘injecting’ into these repeat-objections now exist for ongoing use.

This creation of 10 x an ‘A minute in history’ Christmas series is an example of a strategy deployed in response to prior data, with a positive effect.

WHAT ARE THE MOST-FELT ‘FAITH BLOCKERS’ IN NEW ZEALAND?

In social media, people sometimes become quite unguarded. They say what they think and feel bluntly. What are the objections to the Christian faith held by our local New Zealand online audiences?

Regarding the number of comments made in the Christmas 2025 campaign, having prioritised ‘reach’ (size of audience) over ‘engagement’ (comments and shares), comments decreased by 32% compared with 2024. This was a strategic decision, with sizeable audiences reached as a result – even while with lesser comments.

It’s important to note that many comments were positive and complimentary. However, for awareness and learning regarding the ‘hot topics’:

Comments possibly from anti / agnostic / atheistic view:

• General abusive comments / accusations of lying in the content
• Deluded about Mary being a virgin
• Christmas only comes from pagan holidays / pagan celebrations
• Religions are evil / Christianity is the coloniser / questioning the history of Christianity
• No evidence for Christianity and gods / Science disproves gods
• The bible carries abusive teachings / there is no moral good in it
• Religion claims but doesn’t have answers / The issue of suffering / Prayer doesn’t work

Comments possibly from unhelpful believer’s / distracting viewpoints:

• Christmas date is wrong
• Christians stole pagan festivals
• Christians let people down
• Questioning the use of ‘Aroha’ as a politically correct word

Comments from prior campaign that were not as common this year:

• Placing blame for injustices in NZ history upon Christians
• Abusive comments related to race – only the odd few comments
• Abuse in churches, comments about the poor and how Christianity is to blame.
• A high level of ridicule against Christians when they comment within a chat / conversation.

To note, we have settings in which Facebook and Instagram automatically hide obviously abusive comments. We also have protocols within which we click to hide some comments when too abusive, cursing, blaspheming or racist. Audiences never see this more radical end of hate and abuse.

Examples of our own interactions

Copies of half a dozen of our own ‘interjections’ into conversations can be found within a PDF here. These show you the nature of conversational our own engagement. We engage only where we see gaps within conversations – otherwise letting conversations play themselves out without our involvement.

We have repeatedly highlighted in our annual reporting the distinct lack of intelligent Christian engagement in the social media space around faith issues. However, our subjective impression is that things have improved.

In closing: The Shining Lights Trust Board’s Comments

In viewing the report, the Shining Lights Trust board affirmed again (January 2026) its commitment to continue to this area of work with intent and intelligence, to bring Christian messages to public audiences via social media. Social media engagement is highly significant in our society. ‘Front-footing’ Christian engagement is rare. Unique audiences are being reached. Objections to faith are being consistently addressed. The audiences to conversations we initiate and engage with are also known to be many times greater than the numbers visibly participating. If Christians do not speak in defence of their own faith when accused or maligned, mistruths then take root in culture and public opinion. The Christian faith is being profiled and also defended in these efforts in a positive and invitational light.

Regarding future innovation, we intend to soon network a core of 5 ministries in New Zealand, each of which is now engaging more intentionally within the social media space with Christian messaging – for public audiences. We do not see their work as competition but instead as a subset of ‘our work’ because we are, together, representing God’s Church and message in New Zealand to the public in this space. We hope to be able to catalyse learning among this group, to enhance total reach and effectiveness with Christian messages for public audiences.

Like other areas of our work, this networking will take place behind the scenes for strategy purposes, purposed to enhance the work of each ministry in view of the potential effect. This type of background strategic work is one of the unique contributions the Shining Lights Trust is able to bring to the table in service to the wider body of Christ of which we are a part.