Funmurphys: the Blog

Empty Churches

The latest controversy to roil evangelicalism is the decision of several megachurches to not hold services on Christmas Day this year because it falls on a Sunday. We actually discussed this yesterday during my Adult Bible Fellowship Class (otherwise known as Sunday School) because we have two teachers and they got off track about who was teaching what. So one of the teachers through this is out as a topic of discussion. Personally, I'm of two minds here, because yes it is crazy to cancel Christmas services because they fall on Christmas Sunday, but why not since everybody was just in Church the evening/night before for a Christmas Eve service. OK, the Murphy Family at this point is planning to be in the pew at our church on Christmas morning following being in the pew at my Father-in-Law's church the night before (just as we have for the past 17 years).

While I'm not going to fault the churches that decided to skip a Sunday, I'm going to agree with the position of a pastor who appeared on a TV show to discuss as relayed by my ADF teacher: "We made the decision a long time ago to hold services every Sunday of the year regardless of circumstance - whether it was Christmas, we lost power, whatever". I think that's the right position - it doesn't matter how many show up, the doors will be open. I know, easy for me to say, since I all I have to do is show up and maybe help serve communion.

The Internet Monk has big roundup on this subject and is also spot on in his analysis.