Skipping Christmas

Maybe you've seen the uproar over the decision by a number of large churches not to hold services on Sunday because it's Christmas day. I think that's a very poor decision, but as usual, my buddy Dan Burrell said it much better:

Multiple people sent me the press releases on the “mega-churches” that decided en masse to cancel Sunday services on Christmas day and wondered what I thought of it. As you might expect, I have several thoughts. First, I think it is shockingly absurd. Yes! Let’s have a celebration commemorating the birth of our Savior! But let’s not let it interfere with really important things like watching our kids open a vulgar amount of mindless toys and then stuffing ourselves silly before collapsing on the couch to watch the Seinfeld Series DVD’s we got for Christmas. IMHO, I think this is just fairly typical of what has made this generation’s church slovenly ineffective. We want a faith that costs us little – therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised that it accomplishes little. We can gussy it up by having Christmas Eve services or designating the day as a "celebration of family", etc…, but in the end, we KNOW what the real motivation was. Selfishness. Would it have been too difficult to have a one-hour celebration of Christmas sometime during the day that is actually set aside to commemorate the birth of Christ? I also find disturbing, the report that the leadership teams of a conglomeration of mega-churches apparently dialogued privately before making the decision as a group. So, let’s get this right, trendy churches are now setting trends for what should be embraced by the rest of us, right? Nah, that’s why I’m an “Independent” Baptist.