Some Churches Closing on Christmas Day

Many large churches around the country will be closing their doors on Christmas day, and I can't blame them. My own church will only be doing one service instead of the usual four, but that's after about a dozen Christmas Eve services which will be held in the preceding days.

Of course, some Christian leaders are upset about the idea of closing a church on Sunday.

This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several megachurches around the country. Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day.

Critics within the evangelical community, more accustomed to doing battle with department stores and public schools over keeping religion in Christmas, are stunned by the shutdown.

It is almost unheard of for a Christian church to cancel services on a Sunday, and opponents of the closures are accusing these congregations of bowing to secular culture.

"This is a consumer mentality at work: 'Let's not impose the church on people. Let's not make church in any way inconvenient,'" said David Wells, professor of history and systematic theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a leading evangelical school in Hamilton, Mass. "I think what this does is feed into the individualism that is found throughout American culture, where everyone does their own thing."

There are some practical considerations to running a large church that the critics seem to want to ignore:

Cindy Willison, a spokeswoman for the evangelical Southland Christian Church, said at least 500 volunteers are needed, along with staff, to run Sunday services for the estimated 8,000 people who usually attend. She said many of the volunteers appreciate the chance to spend Christmas with their families instead of working, although she said a few church members complained.

If your church has only 100 people, it's not hard to open the doors and accommodate whoever shows up. However, if you are going to have many hundreds or thousands in attendance, there's a corresponding number of workers and volunteers who have to be there to keep it all working. Scaling back when Christmas is on Sunday only makes sense to me. Many people, including your volunteers, are not going to show up.

I remember some years ago Christmas was on a Saturday, and I received a call from a pastor in San Diego County who wanted my quartet to come down and do a concert in his church on Sunday night, Dec. 26th. He actually told me on the phone that he didn't want to plan a sermon because so few people would be there. In other words, he wanted me and my group to drive 100 miles to sing to nobody so he wouldn't have to work. I turned him down. He was one of these guys who couldn't imagine canceling a Sunday service, so I hope he had a good time with the 5 people who showed up.