I recently called a pastor friend of mine who lives in another state and I asked him, “Are you having a worship service on December 25 as Christmas falls on a Sunday this year?” To my surprise, he replied, “I cancelled church when Christmas fell on a Sunday years ago.” Then to add to my surprise, he went on to say, “And it was a decision I’ve since regretted.” My friend shared with me that he experienced what most clergy do during the Advent / Christmas season (much like what we experience during the Lenten season) – extra long hours, fatigue, the stress of the holidays, etc. I get it. I remember one year when Christmas fell on a Sunday and our boys were still very little. We had a wonderful church service and then ended up having lunch at Jack in the Box because it was the most expedient way to unwind after a long holiday season. Pastoral ministry involves sacrifice. Yet we must not sacrifice what is our most basic and fundamental task of leading worship on the Lord’s Day. Because, as my friend who I called told me, there is no circumventing the blessings that come from worship even while active in ministry for the sake of others, especially the lost. The unchurched and nonbelievers intuitively know that Sunday is “church day.” Imagine someone coming to church on Sunday, December 25 seeking solace, hope, forgiveness, redemption, worship, fellowship, hospitality, etc. only to find the doors locked.
The first time I heard of a church canceling services, not because of inclement weather but because Christmas fell on a Sunday, was in 2005 (if you are aware of a church doing this prior to 2000, I would be interested in hearing from you). In my research, this was unprecedented and a novel idea from a larger, non denominational church in the Midwest, USA. They wanted to give their staff time off for the holidays while anticipating a high percentage of their congregation not being in Sunday worship because they had attended one of several Christmas Eve services hours earlier. This idea picked up steam among other Protestant churches in 2011, 2016, and now in 2022. Interestingly, you won’t find Catholic and Orthodox churches following suit. This is predominately a Protestant trend, primarily among white, Evangelical churches in the USA. It will be interesting to see if this trend is mimicked in churches outside the USA.
Ecclesiology is the study of the doctrine of the Church and why the Church exists. We know that the church in Rome began formally celebrating Christmas [Christ's Mass] on December 25 in AD 336 during the reign of Constantine. But that’s not really the point. More significant is the fact that the earliest followers of Jesus began gathering for worship on the first day of the week, Sunday, because, as the Gospels declare, Jesus was raised to life from the dead early Sunday morning. This was their impetus for worship. The resurrection of Christ is the cornerstone upon which the Church exists. Since the resurrection of Jesus, Christians have faithfully gathered on Sunday to worship the resurrected Lord.
December is a busy month for churches with all the parties, activities, special services, outreach efforts, etc. However, what must be understood is that all these are addendums to our primary task of leading worship on the Lord’s Day. If someone were to get “saved” at a Christmas Eve service on Saturday afternoon, they would most certainly want to be back in church the following day to worship the Lord.
Pastors, we hold the keys – figuratively/spiritually and literally. Jesus gives the ordained the authority to possess “the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 16:19). And we hold the physical keys to our churches. An intentional decision to deviate from the norm and use those keys to lock our church doors because Christmas falls on a Sunday for the sake of preferential accommodation is a dereliction of our most basic pastoral duties to hold a corporate worship service, both as a theological expression of our professed faith and as a public entity to our communities. Our idolatry of preference and comfort stands in stark contrast to the harsh difficulties faced in the Christmas story of the Gospels - the hardships Mary and Joseph faced, the slaughter of babies in Bethlehem, the journeys the shepherds and wise men made to worship the newborn child, etc.
If the current structures we’ve built for worship preclude us from having church on Christmas Sunday, then the current structures are not Biblical or holy. In other words, if the way we do (or produce) church services make it too difficult to have a simple worship service on Christmas Sunday, then we are doing church wrong.
Those of us in the Wesleyan tradition would do well to remember the words of John Wesley from his sermon entitled “On the Sabbath” where he emphatically states that God never repealed the command to worship on the Sabbath, which Wesley understood to be the Lord’s Day.
Those of us who are Nazarene clergy perhaps do not realize that our founder, Phineas Bresee, used to hold Christmas Day services every year in his church in Los Angeles regardless of what day of the week Christmas was on.
Most troubling are churches who held worship services on Sunday, October 30, 2022, and then turned around and had Halloween activities the very next day on Monday, October 31, 2022, but claim it’s too much to have Christmas Eve services on Saturday, December 24, 2022 and then have a worship service the very next day on Sunday, December 25, 2022, so the Sunday service gets discarded. This is where ecclesiology becomes warped and twisted and we betray our calling as ministers of the Gospel.
Let me address a couple of possible objections. First, that I am being legalistic. I am not. For this is not a matter of earning God’s salvation but rather one of being faithful in “assembling together” as believers have done every Lord’s Day in some manner since the very beginning.
Second, that I am heaping on guilt. That is certainly not my intent. I have people in my church who really do only attend church twice a year – on Christmas and Easter (otherwise known as Chreasters), and I love them no less than those who faithfully gather to worship week in and week out. I deeply love my neighbors and friends who never attend church! I realize full well that due to the holidays there will be those who will be traveling or choose to do other things with their time, and there is no guilt associated with that at all. I try very hard to let people in our congregation know that when I reach out to them because they’ve missed a week or two or three of services it is not to make them feel guilty but instead to see how they are doing from a heart of love and concern. Attending church services is a means of grace, as John Wesley put it, and when we do not gather for worship, we miss out of the grace that God seeks to give. For those who cannot make it to church on Sunday, December 25, you are loved and we wish you a hearty Merry Christmas! For those who refuse to ever attend church, you are valued by God more than you will ever know and His love for you will never stop seeking to draw you nearer to His heart. And for those who want to worship on Christmas Sunday, the church doors will be open on this special and holy day.
Third, I’m just a small church pastor who doesn’t understand the complexities of running a large church and so I’m out of touch with current trends. Perhaps. Perhaps not. My only concern, regardless of size of church, is striving to be faithful to our Christian witness, my calling as a pastor, and the faith passed on to me.
Finally, are there extenuating circumstances? Of course there are. I know of one start up church who is renting a facility for their Sunday services but are simply unable to secure their location for December 25, and so they are making other arrangements. We know that many churches wisely stopped gathering for months due to the COVID pandemic. Canceling church for inclement weather is always a good idea. But to deviate from the norm to accommodate this recent trend, however well intentioned by well meaning pastors, is not an extenuating circumstance.
By the way, if you want the phone number of the pastor I talked about at the beginning of this post, I don’t think he would mind talking to you about his experience. But you may want to wait until after Christmas as he is busy preparing for Sunday worship at his church on Christmas Day!
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