Christmas Consumer Orgy, Part 2

Last week I posted some thoughts on the commercialization of the Christmas holiday and how Christians in particular are responsible for the secularization of the Christmas celebration. I mentioned that some churches had decided to cancel Sunday worship on Christmas Day to give congregants "more family time." I had one reader email me (why do folks email me instead of leaving comments?) challenging me to provide evidence: here it is. This article describes how some of America's largest evangelical churches, including the largest - Willow Creek Community Church - are cancelling their Christmas Day services. This is absolutely pathetic.

This is yet more evidence for my contention that our cultural problems are not driven by the culture at large; they are driven by the utter abandonment of cultural leadership by the Church. If we want to change the cultural debate in America, it is going to have to begin in the Church. That's where judgment starts.

Also, check out Gene Veith's current article in WORLD on the myth that Christians inherited Christmas from pagan celebrations of the winter solstice. It seems it was the other way around.

UPDATE: I just re-read the article I linked to about cancelling church services on Christmas Day. Here's one quote:

"The unchurched are more reachable on Dec. 24, said Schneiders, who leads a church with average weekend attendance of 1,900 people."

This quote betrays the problem of the modern evangelical mind. How does some schmuck on staff with some megachurch know how reachable people are on what particular days? Isn't that the work of God? May Charles Finney burn in Hell! And how is it that unchurched people are more reachable by limiting, rather than increasing, the number of Christmas services? Again proving my thesis about the church, we are being led by the world rather than witnessing to the world through our worship and work. We are more devoted to our ever-paganizing culture than to Christ.

I also noticed another problem in the Worldmagblog discussion on this same article. Read comment #24, which says:

"...the church is perhaps the only organization in the world which exists for those who are not currently members of it."

Is this what passes for "evangelical Christianity" these days? What a bunch of hooey. Jesus in the Great Commission does not call us to create converts, but disciples! Conversion is His work. What does he tell Peter? "Feed my sheep." Is there no room for the Christian life and the Body of Christ anymore? Is evangelicalism nothing more than giving people the warm Jesus fuzzies in some odd, non-defined way? Lord have mercy! Christ have mercy!