Related articles and links |  1 of 18

• Related articles and links

Why aren't some churches meeting on Christmas Sunday? Why have church at all?
Whatever the uproar over closing of churches on Christmas Sunday means, pastors and pundits are sure that it means something big. For people on both sides of the argument, the debate shows what's wrong with contemporary Christianity.

The debate has become an excuse for some to compile every criticism of what they think the megachurch movement is about. (Among the problems with such a critique is that many megachurches are having Sunday services, and many small churches are closing on Christmas, too). Closing church is seen as capitulation to a consumeristic, market-driven culture, a metaphor for placing cultural style above the substance of the gospel.

For some defenders, the criticism of the closings is representative of the judgmentalism and rigid dogma that has led so many away from "institutional" churches, and is the reason that "seeker-sensitive" churches exist. Those who insist that you go to church Sunday morning instead of Saturday night, they say, are akin to first-century Judaizers and are the ones missing the freedom of the gospel.

As Weblog wrote last week, this debate really is iconic. Both sides seem to agree that the story itself is a tempest in a teapot: more symbol and indication than a major development in itself. But what it symbolizes gets to the heart of many of the current intra-evangelical debates:

What is church? Is "real" Christianity about private devotional life or about ordered corporate life? Why do we meet as churches? What is the relationship between the church and church members, church attendees, and interested non-Christians? Is a church service where the majority of attendees are non-members or non-believers still called a church service? Can worship be evangelistic? Is evangelism the church's (and the Christian's) highest calling? What is the role of the family at church? Have American Christians made an idol out of family? How "pro-family" is Christianity? What happens when we use pro-family as a synonym for Christian? Why are pro-family groups making explicitly religious Christmas greetings a priority when the issue seems to have little to do with family relations? Is the church becoming too politicized? Too polarized? If one group says that another group is not really a church because of its policies, are the two groups still part of the same universal church? What makes a group a church? What might make a group that looks like a church not a church?

Whether to skip Sunday Christmas services is not a core issue. But the issues raised by doing so are foundational.

Unfortunately, rather than use the news as a springboard to discuss important issues, the conversation has devolved into name-calling and anathematizing. It's getting particularly bad in Lexington, Kentucky, where Southland Christian pastor Jon Weece is defending the decision by claiming that Christmas is largely a pagan holiday anyway, that critics are being manipulated by Satan, and by comparing himself to Jesus battling the Pharisees over the breaking of tradition.

To make matters worse, the Lexington Herald-Leader has decided to go beyond Frank Lockwood's fair and detailed reporting of the controversy  to editorializing against the church. "The judgmental have now discovered how it feels to be judged," the paper said yesterday, and suggested that Weece really cancelled services because "this is a time when people travel to be together, lightening the collection plates."

next page... |  1 of 18

December (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49