Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. It's unbelievable that this discussion even has to take place.
But, take a good look at the Joel Osteen's medicine show and you get a good idea what SOME of these megachurches are all about.
If it's more important to spend Sundays at home with the family instead of worshipping the Lord for an hour, then maybe those churches that are shutting down this Sunday should stay shut down, giving their members every Sunday to stay home with the family.
Nothing has changed.
The worldly and self-important still miss the meaning and humble message of this wonderful day.
Our ECUSA parish (St. Helena's, Burr Ridge, IL, Anglo-Catholic) will be having a Christmas Eve service at 10:30 PM and a Christmas Day service at 10:00 AM. I'll be at both, and I expect greater-than-average attendance at both. I can't imagine not going to church on Christ's birthday, the coming of hope for the world.
Not cool to dis Him on His own Birthday Party.
They list the National Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul is among the 25 having "Christmas" services; the midnight service is purely pagan, mentionning all major religions except Christianity.
My Parish, I'm Catholic, had to add 2 Masses to our standard 4 Sunday Masses. An that's in addition to 3 Vigil Masses on Saturday and Midnight Mass at midnight. It never occured to me that some folks would ever consider cancelling Sunday Church Services of any persuasion.
We're having 2 Christmas Eve Services - 5:30PM (en Espanol) and 7:30PM.
Christmas Day: 10:00AM.
So if you happen to find yourselves in the middle of the Colorado Rockies and you're looking for a place to worship...
Or as my wife said recently, "Your Christmas Eve and Christmas Day sermons were so good last year...we might even see some of those folks again!" ;)
This gentleman has in fact, put his finger right on the core issue here, albeit unwittingly.
"Megachurches", sad to say, are very often just that.
Businesses.
Our 2 year-old AMiA parish, Church of the Good Shepherd in Davidson, NC, will have two services on Christmas Eve and one on Christmas Day.
Unfortunately, we will be in Northern Westchester/Southern Putnam County, NY for Christmas. Does anyone have a suggestion for a good theologically orthodox liturgical service in the area? Anglican, Catholic or Eastern Orthodox would all be fine.
Our Presbyterian Church is only having 2 services Sunday morning instead of 3. They cancelled children's Sunday School and encouraged parents to bring the children to church. Some adult SS classes are meeting, some are not. We'll see how many folks show up. I do expect the 3 Christmas eve services to be full.
"“Our worship planning committee concluded that this was a service whose population would be likely to come,” Fr. Boyd said."
I'm almost afraid to ask this, S. What's worship planning committee?
The Episcopal Church has always been more liturgical than more Evangelical churches, so it would make sense that they would observe Sunday and Christmas with divine service regardless. Having listened on the radio once to a sermon "Christmas is a devil's holiday," I'm not surprised if some Evangelical churches don't think it a big deal if there is no service on Christmas Sunday -- they'd probably think it a faintly Papist practice to worried about something like "fulfilling one's Sunday obligation."
Every Episcopal Church I have ever attended holds a 10/11pm Holy Eucharist service on December 24 and a Eucharist service on December 25 in the morning. Truthfully, December 25 is the Feast Day and church commitment would say it's more important to go on Christmas morning rather than the night before. However, as a choir singer I confess I've always been at Midnight Mass and I've never made it on December 25. Usually after all the late night of heavy singing and fellowship afterwards I'm not decompressed and ready to fall asleep until after 2am.
Back before queers and liberals ruled the church, there were always services on Christmas, regardless of what day it fell on.