Christmas Day Worship

Like most of you, our Sunday morning Christmas Day assembly was the three W-s: Worshipful, Wonderful and Well-attended. Sure, not everybody came. But we still had a full house (we do, um, have a small house…) and 20 of us stayed for a Christmas Day meal together.

This is in contrast to the growth-minded, large churches I read about on the USA Today site a few days before Christmas:

Cally Parkinson, a spokeswoman for Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., said church leaders decided that organizing services on a Christmas Sunday would not be the most effective use of staff and volunteer resources. The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday was 1994, and only a small number of people showed up to pray, she said.

"If our target and our mission is to reach the unchurched, basically the people who don't go to church, how likely is it that they'll be going to church on Christmas morning?" she said.

I just finished Frost and Hirsch’s book, The Shaping of Things to Come. They write: Christology determines Missiology which determines Ecclesiology. Then they continue:

If we get this the wrong way around and allow our notions of the church to qualify our sense of purpose and mission, we can never be disciples of Jesus, and we will never be a missional church.

I think I get their point. I’ve just always considered worship, even corporate worship, as what those who have offered themselves to God love to do (or to be). Even on Christmas.