In planning for 2005, churches have had to face a problem for the first time since 1994 - what to do about Christmas - what is a church to do when Christmas falls on a Sunday? Actually, the question churches have to answer is, what will the congregation do when Christmas falls on a Sunday? Remind me to wax eloquent on the relationship of leadership and followership sometime. Anyway...
You know the conclusion we reached at Grace Church, we will have three worship services, two on Saturday night at 6 and 8 p.m. and one on Sunday morning at 10:45. All three services are identical Sunday worship services; will function like our regular worship services with greeters, friendship team, ushers, count team, worship teams and every other group that supports our regular services. There will be childcare up through Kindergarten for all three services (children grades 1 and up can worship with their parents). ABF classes are cancelled. The Saturday evening services are not traditional Christmas Eve services. And to state the obvious, the 9:00 a.m. service on Sunday, December 25 is cancelled, there is only a 10:45 service on Christmas Sunday.
Here's what we tried to navigate...
- We considered looking at what Grace Church did in 1994, the last time Christmas fell on a Sunday, but a lot has changed over the past 10 years. Though we did not investigate further, we couldn't believe that Pastor Young would cancel a Sunday service. We don't close for blizzards, let alone a holiday!
- In the past, attendance at our traditional Christmas Eve service has been very high, so we figured we would need to add a second Christmas Eve service anyway.
- We assumed that Christmas morning is a special part of Christmas Day for family celebrations.
- If every other year we add a service for Christmas Eve, on the year that Christmas falls on a Sunday, why would we take one or more services away?
In 2007, December 23rd falls on a Sunday, then what are we going to do?
My point exactly.
