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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