TGC Op-Ed Defends Cancelling Christmas Day Services For This Stupid Reason
Christmas is falling on a Sunday this year, and a new article by The Gospel Coalition writer Fletcher Lang titled Why Our Church Canceled Christmas Day Services seeks to defend skipping service and honoring the Lord by breaking his commandments.
Lang, who is an SBTS grad and the lead pastor of City on a Hill Church in Somerville, Massachusetts, argues that his church’s ‘context’ makes it too difficult and burdensome to have a Sunday service. Therefore they’re canceling it in favor of a candlelight gathering with another church the day before.
Arguing that “context is key,” Lang says that he and his church plant of 100 people live in an extremely transient and secular city and that getting things ready is extremely troublesome and labor intensive.
Like many church plants, we meet in a shared space. We can’t just roll up on Sunday, flip a few switches, and be ready for a church service. We need to put out chairs, set up sound equipment, and place signs outside. While we have less work to do than many church plants, there’s still a considerable amount of setup required. Many churches in our context meet in public spaces where meeting on Christmas Day is just not an option.
He goes on to note that “The transient nature of our city also means many of our most committed members are traveling around the country or world for Christmas and are unable to set up chairs and run sound” and that “The problem is around 80 percent of our church travels for Christmas.”
This is the fatal flaw. Having only 20 percent of the congregants attending would make having the service much, much easier. If only a fifth of the people are around, they can easily have church in someone’s house, therefore negating the need to set up chairs and a sound system and all the burdens he just decried. In what world are these prerequisites for celebrating the Lord’s day, especially with such a small flock?
Lang concludes by pointing out that “the secular nature of the city also means our neighbors are uninterested in visiting our church on Christmas morning.” This is utterly irrelevant to whether or not they should have a church service, and if he had a proper ecclesiology, he would know that church is for believers, not unbelievers.
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About Author
This blew up on Twitter yesterday. It is utterly pathetic that people whine like two year olds because Christmas dares to be on a Sunday once every 7 years. I have served in church music for almost 40 years and it has happened several times that instead of heading home after my church’s Christmas Eve service, I had to wait until the next morning and my family just held up everything until I got there. I knew there would be an outcry of rage that how dare churches want to hold worship services on the day we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior. Reading the comments on the one Twitter post about it just made me hang my head in dismay at what has happened to the American Church. Just remember the rot starts from within and reading those comments shows a direct result of the rot that started over 30 years ago.
Fun Fact. Christmas won’t fall on Sunday for another 11 years.
You lost me at “The Gospel Coalition.”
If I wanted to keep abreast of the servants of Satan, I’d just go to the source – the Church of Satan – instead of wasting time on these greasy wannabes.
Next story.
TGC is always ridiculous
Christmas is loved by heathen, wayward evangelicals, and Roman Catholics. Idolatrous popish trash never practiced by the Apostles and never authorized by God. Casting off the 1st and 2nd reformations is the way of the modern schismatic unfaithful church. I’m glad I left it by the grace of God. What a load God lifted off my shoulders.