I had a real Christmas Journey! God took me to three very different churches:
• A church that calls Christmas sinful and closes on Christmas …
• A traditional church with a children’s reenactment of the Christmas story…
• A mega church with thousands of people at each service and Broadway level production values …
Was one of them worshiping God the “right way”? Were any of them worshiping Him the “wrong way”? Is there a lesson to be learned from my journey?
Join me on that journey. Let’s find the answers together…
If there is a lesson to be learned, I haven’t figured it out yet. But if there is a lesson, I am sure it came not from the pulpits or choirs or Christmas story reenactments, but from the people I met.
Here are their stories…
The Mom Trying to Make Everything Perfect…
“I am working hard.” said the mom to her family, “to make Christmas what it ought to be.”
It was clear from her tone that she considered herself the only one in the family working toward that goal.
There were four kids. They were all dressed up, looking exactly the way they ought to look for Christmas, even if they weren’t really acting that way. Some were too young to sit still. Some were too old to be interested in anything Mom was interested in.
None of that bothered Mom. She smoothed hair, pulled down dresses and gave knowing, well timed mom-looks to the older children. She might be fighting a losing battle, but she was fighting it all the way to the end.
The woman who had just come from the hospital…
She was helping with one of the church services. “I’m sorry. What did you say?” She asked.
“I’ve got to focus,” she said, “I just came from Dad at the hospital. He’s been there for a month. He’s not doing well. But I felt I had to come here to serve God.”
The man on his way to the hospital…
A group of three men were talking before they went into a service. “The surgeon took out a whole handful of cancerous lumps from under my arm”, said one of the men. He said it with a big grin, and a lot more laughter than he might have felt.
His phone rang.
“Got to take that.” he said. It’s my surgeon calling about the next operation.”
The tour guide at the church that calls Christmas “Sinful”…
“Our church will be closed on Christmas”, my tour guide told me.
“Christ was not born on Christmas, and if we celebrate a lie, He will say to us, “I never knew you.”
“There are 38 families in our church. There used to be more, but we’ve had a couple of splits over the years. Now we’re down to the real core of believers.
His tone was urgent. He wanted to convince me. To convert me. To save me.
“When people who go to the XYZ church meet Christ after they die”, he said, naming the church in which I grew up, “Christ will say, ‘I never knew you’ and cast them into eternal darkness. Ours is the only church actually named in the New Testament. No other church is His. We are the one true church.”
Three churches. Many people. Many stories. Many reasons we come to church on Christmas…
One thing is certain. We all need God.
Maybe that’s the lesson I was supposed to learn from my journey to three churches.
Note: there’s a lot to talk about in this post.
You might comment on mega-churches, traditional churches or legalistic churches that believe grace gives us one more chance to earn salvation.
You might have thoughts about the people I met on my travels. Were they serving God or themselves? Does it matter?
What was the lesson to be learned from the churches and the people?
Post your thoughts. As you write them, just remember John 13:35 “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
