The Church
Christmas 2005 Dust-up

Remember last Christmas when many mega churches canceled Christmas services because Christmas fell on Sunday. This was as big a story as secular culture banning Christmas symbols from the public square. However, the “church canceled” movement was justified on good old “family values.” You know…Christmas should be a family time together. So, we closed the doors of churches on the Lord’s Day on the day we celebrate the birth of He after Whom we name the day. Odd. But, odder still is the idea of choosing between family and worship.

I used to decry the folks who dropped their kids off for Sunday school and failed to attend themselves. It was like church school is for the young and immature. It is for those who can’t read the Sunday paper. Many believe the old commercial: Sunday is made for the NY Times. There is a fundamental flaw in the thinking of modern American Christians. Worship and family go together. Worshiping corporately as a family does not interfere with families. Worship is the ultimate family time.

Remember how the mega-churches distributed videos to look at between package unwrapping and Christmas dinner? It was the substitute worship you could do at your leisure without having to interrupt your family time by going to church. Another misconception and error of the contemporary church. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that private worship is the same as public worship. While trying to placate families the church is unwittingly helping to make the local church a thing of the past. Is that not aiding and abetting the secular culture that intends to privatize faith?

Thankfully Christmas is on Monday and not Sunday in 2006. Maybe the church will not be joining the culture in marginalizing the Incarnation and keeping Jesus out of the public eye. But, we will have to wait and see. The capacity for the church to stray from true faith and practice seems to be unlimited these days. Stay tuned.