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WASHINGTON
— On the last Sunday in December — which happens to
be Christmas Day this year — Mount Olivet Lutheran Church
in Minneapolis will hold four services instead of the usual six.
Other megachurches, including Willow
Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL, won’t be
holding services at all.
When Christmas and Sunday occur
on the same day — which last occurred in 1994 — what’s
a church to do? At a time when evangelicals have criticized retailers
for ignoring the religious reason for the season, this December
dilemma raises a broader question for Christians: Should Christmas
Day be a time for faith or family, or both?
For Tom MacNally, chief operating
officer of Mount Olivet, there is no question church doors should
remain open when Jesus’ birthday falls on a Sunday.
“It’s a Sunday ...,
for one thing, and the second thing is we know that a lot of our
members are going to want to go to church on Christmas Day,”
said MacNally.
He said he was “totally surprised”
to learn that some churches aren’t planning services. He
wasn’t the only one.
Cally Parkinson, a spokeswoman for
Willow Creek, has attempted to handle the reaction to news reports
that her church won’t be open. She points out that tens
of thousands of people are expected to attend eight services leading
up to Christmas Day.
“I’m getting e-mails
from people who just think we’re shutting our doors because
we’re lazy,” said Parkinson.
She said the last time Christmas
fell on a Sunday “we didn’t get very good attendance
on that day, at least not for us,” so they opted for a DVD
that would carry the “God With Us” theme of their
pre-Christmas services into the homes of those who attended.
Parkinson said the church has never
offered Christmas Day services, except for the last time it fell
on a Sunday, 11 years ago. Turnout was lower than usual.
Sociologist Scott Thumma said he
has heard of half a dozen megachurches not holding Sunday services
on Christmas. This comes during a year in which retailers and
public schools have been targeted by evangelicals, including the
Rev. Jerry Falwell, who says he must “protect Christmas
from the secular Grinches” trying to take Christ out of
Christmas.
“How much is Christmas a secular
reality and how much is it a religious holiday?” asked Thumma,
based at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. “There are going
to be plenty of open churches that are going to be mostly empty.”
At Catholic churches, crowds are
expected to be larger than usual on Christmas Day — considered
a holy day of obligation. Thumma and other Protestant researchers
expect the numbers to be far lower than usual in Protestant pews.
One reason is the liturgical calendar,
which Catholic and some mainline Protestant congregations follow.
Christmas is a prominent date. Non-liturgical congregations, including
most evangelical and nondenominational churches, may have more
extended Christmas celebrations that occur on days other than
the specific holiday.
Thumma noticed in a non-scientific
online search that of 26 small and medium-sized evangelical churches,
five were closing and those having services were reducing them
from two to one, and canceling Sunday school or evening services.
“How many kids do you want
to drag away from the house while their presents are still under
the tree, wrapped or unwrapped? How many husbands are you going
to drag away from the football game?” asked Thumma.
Honoring family time is a primary
reason cited by churches that have chosen to not have a Christmas
Day service.
“We have large, involved Christmas
Eve services the day before so we decided not to have Christmas
Day services on the Sunday so we could offer our members time
to spend with their family and celebrate through family,”
said Penny Greenwood, director of communications at Bent Tree
Bible Fellowship in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton.
When Christmas falls on another
day, the 4,800-member church has not held services.
Southeast Christian Church in Louisville
decided to hold five services on Christmas Eve and one on Sunday
— compared to the usual two on Sunday and one Saturday service.
“Part of the reason ... is
it takes about 1,500 volunteers for us to pull off a service,”
said Cindee Coffee, administrator of the church that usually draws
18,000 over the three services. Volunteers serve in such roles
as parking lot attendants, ushers, greeters and nursery workers.
“If you multiply that times
a family of four, in theory you could be impacting 6,000 people.”
Christmas Day plans at Southeast
call for 1,700 people to be accommodated in the fellowship hall
and overflow seating in a chapel. That will require about 30 volunteers.
Normally, the church meets in a 9,000-seat worship center.
Some churches view a Sunday Christmas
as a double blessing.
“It gives us an opportunity
the same day to celebrate the birth and the resurrection,”
said Mike Buster, executive pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church,
a Southern Baptist congregation in the Dallas suburb of Plano.
The church will have three identical
services, two on Christmas Eve and one on Christmas Day.
For others, theological reasons
are mixed with a desire to satisfy congregants’ expectations.
“We don’t have a Christmas
service if it falls on a Tuesday, but being that it falls on a
Sunday, my goodness, we definitely will have a service,”
said Donald Iloff, spokesman for Lakewood Church in Houston.
He expects a total of 25,000 to
30,000 to attend the church’s one Christmas Eve service
and three Christmas Day services compared to the usual 40,000
on a weekend.
Despite this drop-off, there was
no consideration to nix church altogether, he said.
“We would have to answer if
we didn’t have a service on Christmas Day,” he said.
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