J.D Greear’s Church Closing For Christmas, Suggests He Was Inspired by Covid Shutdowns
The New York Times released an article titled O Come All Ye Faithful, Except When Christmas Falls on a Sunday, which notes the increased cancellation of church services on Christmas by Christian pastors, almost five percent fewer, and quotes several ministers giving their reasons for not having services, including SBC pastor and Summit Church leader J.D. Greear, who, to quote Eric Conn, “equated holding church to the actions of the Pharisees. He said Covid shutdowns (his church closed for a year) showed him a pattern for “exceptions” to gathered worship.”
One person featured is Mitch Chitwood, pastor of StoneBridge Christian Church in eastern Nebraska. Explaining that the last time Christmas fell on a Sunday, barely anyone attended, he posited that church elders had to be practical in light of the no-shows. “We still believe in the Sunday morning experience, but we have to meet people where they are.”
Then comes Greear, whose 11 multisite churches will be shuttered. They quote:
“Sunday is the Lord’s Day, and it ought to be a day you spend with the family of Christ,” said J.D. Greear, the church’s pastor, who was the president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2018 to 2021. “But I don’t want to be the Pharisees of this generation, where I turn it into some kind of rule that there’s never an exception for.” He pointed to the Bible’s account of Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath, in defiance of local customs about proper behavior on that day.
…Mr. Greear said the decision to close had an echo in his church’s approach to the pandemic, when the Summit closed its church facilities for most of 2020. “You could almost look at Covid, at lockdown, as a year of an exception,” he said.
*Note: A prior version of this article referred to Greear as a former SBC pastor. To our knowledge, Greear and Summit are still in the SBC.
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That’s great news! I would respectfully ask the staff writer—what’s the problem?
JD Grear is an apostate ‘emerging’ false teacher—the less of him the better.
AMEN !!