Why Should You Go to Church on Christmas?

 If you're unaware, Christmas is on Sunday this year. The timing of the biggest celebration of the year couldn’t have fallen (like a snowflake) on a worse day for many pastors.

Christmas, the time the church celebrates the birth of Christ, is preferred to cancel him. Pastors are frantically rewriting their vision statements, calling their richest tithers, and creating moral justifications for why we can take the Christ out of Christmas.

Enter pastor Fletcher Lang (MDiv, DMin, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and pastor of City on a Hill Church in Somerville, Massachusetts). In a recent article that trended on the Gospel Coalition website, pastor lang offered a two-fold reason that his church in a “transient” and “secular” city would not meet on Christmas morning.

The churches context

According to pastor Lang context is key. The fact his church shares a building with secular businesses, and 80% of his congregation will be gone to other places, is reason enough to cancel Christmas services.

I don’t like this misguided moral justification for a few reasons.

• The first reason is obvious. If we can create a justification to skip Christmas services, what is stopping us in the future from skipping others? It would be one thing if Nancy the back-row Baptist grandma made this justification, but the fact it’s the lead pastor and elders is alarming.
• The second reason is the ‘smelly’ pragmatics. Pastor Lang thinks, that because  80% of his congregation won’t be there, is reason enough to cancel the service. What about the other 20%, are they worthless? Aren’t they worth holding the service for? It makes you wonder what is the algorithm in this pastor's head, that justifies holding a service or not? Would he cancel a service again if 80% were gone? would he cancel if 50% were gone? To be quite frank, I don’t think Pastor Lang should ever use numbers to justify anything.

Every pastor has an obligation to hold church services every Sunday throughout the year. IT’S THEIR JOB. Pastor Lang is being lazy and irresponsible. As a leader in the church myself, I feel responsible for correcting and admonishing this behavior.

Misunderstanding grace

Like a good legalist and moralist, pastor Lang goes to the Bible seeking to justify himself. He pinpoints the biblical passage, he assumes, his detractors will question him on. The passage is Hebrews 10:25,

not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

His point is that you’re not violating this text if you skip one Sunday. Of course, he is right. If you skip one Sunday, you are not “giving up”. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that Pastor Lang senses he has to justify himself. He senses that he has to find a reason, to justify his actions. Anytime you sense you have to justify yourself; you have violated your conscience. Don’t ever violate your conscience!

Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason-I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other-my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen. — Martin Luther

Pastor Lang is doing what every unregenerate person does every day. They are bound by their conscience, and since they are, they create moral justification to appease it. They must find a way to be right when they know they are wrong.

To throw a stone

Pastor Lang says, “let him who has never missed a church service throw the first stone”, to which I say, “It’s not throwing a stone, to tell the truth”.

If we waited to be perfect, to tell the truth, the truth would never be told. The day would never come, and that’s precisely why pastor Lang should be in the pulpit Sunday. Proclaiming the truth, that there is nothing we can do to justify ourselves. That we are saved by grace through faith because a baby boy came into the world. Isn’t that what Christmas is all about? So, why on earth would we cancel our church services?

I guess, pastor Lang will be at home with his family, like the rest of the world, bound by conscience and wondering about life’s worries. Meanwhile, I’ll be in a room with 20% capacity praising our Savior. It is never about numbers. It’s never about pragmatics. It’s never about preference and moral justifications, it’s always about Jesus. Merry Christmas!