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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS HERALD |
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SEE YOU IN CHURCH ON CHRISTMAS DAY! In one of the churches that I served I was told by the chairman of the Board of Deacons that he would not be with us for the Christmas Eve Service. (In the Baptist Churches the Chairman of the Board of Deacons is one of the highest positions that you can achieve). I asked if he and his family were traveling, only to be told that they would be at home but their family tradition is to be together as a family and not to come to the church for the Christmas Eve Service. Becoming a little frustrated, I continued to ask if they do anything like Bible stories, or a service, to which he replied: “This is our family tradition and we are not going to change it.” A couple of years later I was told by a church leader that I should not be too uptight about the traveling soccer teams. He told me that while it is true that these children are no longer in church, those families spend lots of time together. Thus worship in God’s house has been replaced by family time. Recently, some of the newspapers reported that the five largest Protestant mega-churches in the United States decided to cancel their Christmas Worship Service on Sunday. These five churches have a combined membership of almost 65,000. They will have Christmas Eve services, but because Christmas is on a Sunday, they decided not to meet that Sunday. This decision has sent shocking waves among evangelical Christians who are at the forefront of having the Christmas celebration present in the market place. The same type of people who argue that there should be a nativity crèche in the market place, and songs sung in the schools, have concluded that instead of having their members in church on Christmas Sunday, they should close the door to their churches, and give to their parishioners a gift of a Sunday off. At this time we have to pause and to give thanks to God for the Roman Catholic Churches which have always been opened on Christmas Day no matter what day of the week it happens. The Roman Catholic Churches have their midnight Masses, but also they have Masses on Christmas Day. My background of being raised as a Christian in a communist country makes me bristle at the logic put forth by some of my evangelical brothers. No matter how much I listened to their reasoning and their logic, I could not become convinced that this is a right decision. For during my childhood, one of the things that the communists wanted to take away from us was the celebration of Christian holidays. Christmas was a school and work day. In fact if we were absent from school it was considered a sign of defiance. If you were a Christian and absent from work on Christmas day you were liable to be fired from your job. Thus many Christians came to church directly from their work places. We came to church because it was Christmas. Moreover, we celebrated Christmas two to three days to proclaim that Jesus was born. As I read these articles on the subject of closing churches on Christmas Sunday, I saw the incongruity between what we want to happen in the market place and our practice. Incongruity is the kind word, hypocrisy is the correct one. The reading of these articles reminded me of a story that there were over 500 men who came to hear a US Senator talk about reintroducing prayer and Bible reading in school. All five hundred were willing to sign the petition for prayer and Bible reading to be re-introduced in school. The Senator asked them: “How many have prayed and read the Bible with your children this morning?” The story is that only two hands went up. There is something hypocritical about a church that wants to have this type of celebration in the public square and then takes a poll and decides not to celebrate Christmas because it falls on a Sunday. These churches decided that it is more important to have a family day, instead of coming together as a community of believers because it is the Lord’s Day and He is worthy of our praise.
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