Pastors who close their churches on Christmas day this year are committing malpractice. So what if only a few show up? Doesn't the Bible say, "where two or three are gathered." So what if you have young kids? Doesn't the Bible tell us to raise our kids in the "fear and admonition of the Lord?" Family is a gift, not a god. Yes, it will mean a delay in all the usual festivities. But the usual festivities should not be deemed more important than the Festival itself. I want my family to know that we rearrange our schedule for corporate worship; we don't expect corporate worship to be rearranged for us. That is one of the primary failings of the modern church – they ignore Scripture in favor of their own opinions and personal feelings. They prefer instead to cater to the crowds, deceive one another with phony ecstatic experiences and faked tongues, "female pastors," and every other manner of falsehood.
As Kevin DeYoung so aptly said: It's Christmas, for crying out loud! It's the day we celebrate the incarnation, the birth of the Messiah, the entrance into our world of the second Person of the Trinity. Don't we want to sing? Don't we want to celebrate? Don't we want to preach and praise and pray?
Christmas on a Sunday is an extra benefit for the church community to come together and worship Christ our Lord on the Lord's birthday.
On second thought– maybe it's okay that some churches close on Christmas. It is one less day for them to "tickle itching ears." Perhaps we should pray that they never reopen?!
