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A Plea to Pastors: Don't Cancel Church on Christmas

Don’t cancel all your services on Christmas. Scale back on the nursery perhaps. Take the week off from Sunday school. Make things closer to an hour than to an hour and a half. Skip the life groups or even the second service for a day. But don’t close the church up on Christmas. Read More

I agree with Kevin DeYoung. Don't cancel all your services on Christmas. The Episcopal parish where I was senior lay reader for 15 years, while it had a service on Christmas Eve, offered nothing on Christmas Day. On Christmas Day I would let myself into the church building and read Morning Prayer. One Christmas morning a family showed up - a couple with young children. I gathered from the couple that they had not been to church for a while. I invited them to join me for Morning Prayer but they chose not to stay - perhaps because it was not what they had hoped for. But since then I have been convinced that churches should offer a service on Christmas Day. Sojourning for the past 9 years at a nondenominational church that offers no service on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day has strengthened that conviction.

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