It seems so strange to me that regular services would be cancelled due to a holiday set aside to adore Jesus Christ. I can understand cancelling a regular service if the "Sunrise Service" has taken the place of something, but simply to cancel is bizarre to me. I know that the reasoning behind it is "so we can spend time with family." But I feel that this is flawed for several reasons:
1. The Church is our family.
2. Time spent with family in corporate worship is time well spent.
3. Christmas and the Resurrection Day are times to focus on Christ Jesus, not ourselves.
4. You have 363 other days to have family time. Use them.
Perhaps I live too close to depravity, but I fear that the cancelling of corporate worship signals that we would rather be at home than at worship. Perhaps your family actually has a family worship service when things are cancelled, but I know that this would be the exception rather than the rule. If I could get all of my family into a corporate worship service on Sunday, any Sunday, I would count that a joy far above eating leftover ham, turkey, or cobbler.
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Two Voices
12 years ago
4 comments:
What about churches that cancel a Sunday PM service? Nowhere in Scripture does it say we have to meet twice a week. Do you believe this is capitulating as well?
Capitulating to what? In point of fact, it seems that the church in Acts met daily (See Acts 2:46-47). Do you like meeting with the body of Christ or is it a chore?
It seems that more and more churches are cancelling services these days. We don't have evening services on Sunday. We meet Sunday morning, Tuesday evening, and Thursday for our prayer meeting. Sundays after church is our outreach for our church. So as it warms up, we will have events that our church will come to and the community will be invited too. Easter Sunday after church my husband and our boys sat down for hours and discussed the Bible. It was a blessing to sit and listen to them.
I don't feel it is right to cancel Sunday morning worship services, but I believe there is nothing wrong with changing or doing away with the Sunday evening service. I suppose we have to evaluate why we do what we do. Do we just do things because of tradition or do we do it because we feel it is what God wants us to do? For many years we have made people feel guilty if they didn't attend 3 services a week (Sunday AM, PM, and Mid-week). Just because a person goes to church 3 times a week does not mean they are more spiritual than a person that only attends once a week. As the Bible says, "Man looks on the outward appearance . . . God looks on the heart."
Do I think it is a good things to meet for worship 3 times a week? It certainly doesn't hurt. But if a person is coming only to please the pastor or other people, what good does it do?
Again, don't get me wrong -- I love to go to church 3 times a week. It is a great way to grow in my faith, grow closer to the Lord and with God's people.
We always preach that Sunday is a day of rest, but many times the "Lord's Day" is one of the busiest days of the week for some folks. So, I think it is time for us in the Body of Christ to take a step back and evaluate what we are doing and why we do it. Face it, the message has not changed but perhaps the way we do ministry must in order to reach a world for Christ.
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