The folks at Lifeway have just released numbers from a survey they did among 1,000 Protestant pastors. They were asked, “Christmas and New Year’s Day both fall on Sunday this year. As a result, does your church plan to have services on the following days: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day?”
The results:
6% – Christmas Eve but NOT Christmas Day
27% – Christmas Day but NOT Christmas Eve
63% – BOTH Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
Do note what this means- 6% of churches won’t bother to have any service of any kind on Sunday, Christmas Day. And 37% of Churches will abandon one service or the other on Christmas Day. Family-olatry trumps commitment in 43% of Churches… (combining the 37% which will cut a service with the 6% that won’t bother having any).
Hum....family-olatry? I think he is coining a new term, which is very appropriate as to the issue that I have seen in the last couple of years. Christmas and Easter, are the feasts when you see less families at church!!
And if you had a look at my picture, you can see the hypocrisy, contradiction, non-sense of wanting to keep Christ in Christmas, yet, not celebrate the date.
Another blogger, puts it in another way:
The good news here is that the vast majority of Protestant Churches will be open for worship on Christmas Day (the Catholics and the Orthodox I'm sure haven't even raised the question). The bad news is that some churches have decided that the worship of God on the day in which we celebrate God's self-giving in Jesus Christ will get in the way of family plans, what Jim West calls family-olatry.
Some may think that Jim's words are too tough, but Jesus also had some difficult things to say about family loyalty when it got in the way of divine devotion (Matthew 8:20-22; 12:47-49; Luke 14:25-27).
What do you think? Is it acceptable for churches to cancel worship on Christmas Day? If so, why? If not, why not?
Go to church, follow Christ, put his kingdom first and all these things will follow,
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