[Readers with access to a recording may want to cue up Copeland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" as score to this pronouncement, or maybe a tasty rendition of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" or "The Church's One Foundation."]
SWNID understands and sympathizes with the rationale for not having services on Christmas Sunday and affirms the creative efforts on the part of churches that did make this move to provide alternatives in the form of an expanded schedule of services leading up to Christmas, guides to family worship for Christmas day, and the like.
However, SWNID would have delighted to see these churches add things like the following to their response:
- A call for their megachurch members to make it a point to visit a smaller church that is holding services and connect with some other members of the blessed body of Christ.
- A special, low key service on Sunday specifically enabling those who attend to make the statement that Christians eschew the rampant materialism of "holiday season" and want to declare loudly their subversive, countercultural belief that Jesus rose from the dead and reigns at God's right hand, utterly negating the value of every material gift except for those generously and graciously given to the genuinely needy.
And we wait with anticipation to see how many people will show up in church on the morning of January 1, 2006.
1 comment:
Well said.
The overblown contemporary services that some churches indulge in would be out of place in comemerating Christ's birth.
I must also point a slight miscalculation you made(or repeated) in an earlier post on this topic. Dec 25th falling on a Sunday is NOT a once in seven years phenomenon. You forgot to factor in the extra day in Febrauary for leap year. The last time Christmas Day fell on Sunday was 1994
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