A foremost proponent of Christianity, the New York Times (yes, that "proponent" crack was tongue-in-cheek), did a story on churches and Christmas entitled, "O Come All Ye Faithful, Except When Christmas Falls on Sunday." This Christmas, as they note, falls on Sunday, and not a few churches have decided not to compete with family. Christmas morning is a family tradition and, in today's American Christianity at least, church on Sunday only takes second place. Why? Because "practically no one showed up for services" six years ago at the last coincidence of Christmas and Sunday.
I'm having a hard time with this. Jesus said, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:26). Okay, sure, we all agree that "hate" here means "esteem of lesser value" (cp Matt 15:4, for instance). Elsewhere He puts it much more gently. "Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me" (Matt 10:37). So we all feel better about it ... but I'm having a hard time laying these truths alongside canceling worship for a family get-together. In what sense does "Family gets priority over worship" a satisfaction of Jesus's demand?
It's not so much the church members that disturb me as it is the churches. Apparently, "teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Matt 28:20) has fallen on deaf ears. Apparently equipping the saints for the work of ministry (Eph 4:12) is not really a priority in too many churches. Asking believers to take up their cross is too much. So we go with a "kinder and gentler" concept ... which isn't Christ's version. That's just plain embarrassing. And too many churches (one is too many) are putting that out there for the New York Times to mock while we're supposed to be celebrating Jesus. Seems wrong to me.
2 comments:
I struggle with this as well on several different levels.
1. I agree with you that churches should hold services on Christmas when it falls on a Sunday, for all the reasons you've given.
2. As the spouse of someone in local church ministry, I well understand the sacrifices that staff make at Christmas, and am sympathetic to the desire to allow families to celebrate Christmas together.
3. I also understand the reality that a Christmas morning service will not be well attended.
4. You could make every one of those arguments for not cancelling services during a hurricane, or massive winter storm such as we're bracing for this weekend.
5. Most churches who cancel Sunday morning services, will have already had at least one, maybe more Christmas Eve services.
As I said, I'm torn and can see valid reasons on both sides, but I'm sympathetic to having services on Christmas. My natural inclination in these situations is to give those I disagree with some grace because I don't know everything that went into the decision. FYI, our church is having a Sunday service. I'm not sure if I'll go or live stream it. Some of that will be determined by the weather as well.
As an afterthought, you could make many of these same arguments to demonstrate that we in the 21st century are doing church wrong because we aren't doing X,Y, or Z the way it was done in the first century.
I think that the problem inherent in this issue is the larger failure of The Church as well as individual believers to hold a high view of worship and of the importance of gathering to worship. I believe that if the members of these churches were asking for a Christmas day service, that it's likely that there would be a Christmas day service.
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