With many large churches across the U.S. announcing they won't be open on Christmas Day, some pastors are defending their decision to stay closed, even going so far as to blast those who question their motives.
Among them is Jon Weece, pastor of Southland Christian Church in Lexington, Ky., who received complaint e-mails from Christians in all 50 states.
"I was deeply saddened by the knee-jerk response of the Christian community as a whole to give the benefit of the doubt to the media and not a church or a brother in Christ," Weece said in his Dec. 10 sermon. "I'm still troubled that more Christians in this community specifically did not stand up for us knowing what this church represents."
(Audio of the entire sermon is available here.)
Weece blamed Satan the devil for using the Christmas issue as a distraction, prompting Christians to bicker among themselves.
"People are not the enemy," he said. "The devil is, and it is obvious that he has been at work in this situation."
Weece said the services being offered on Christmas Eve were still technically the "first day of the week" if one went by the custom of starting days at sunset, which some believe was the case in Jesus' day.
He went on to note: "Christmas began as a pagan holiday to the Roman gods, and if we were to really celebrate the historical birth of Jesus, it would either be in January or mid-April. I'm only pointing out the historical technicalities not out of intellectual arrogance, but again because of the illogical, ill-informed and even hypocritical arguments that were aimed at me personally this last week."
My two cents: Mr. Weece is ill-informed and any pastor that would close a church on Christmas should not be a pastor. If two or more are gathered in his name then you don't lock them out.
Full Story on WorldNetDaily.com
1 comment:
I know the term mega-curch is used, but they aren't the only ones closed for Christmas.
Just spreading it out - to point out it is prevalent in the Church/Body of Christ as a whole.
In any case, what strikes me about this whole thing is that it seems to me to be a business decision to close for Christmas. Many of these Churches are run as businesses, so they give 'workers' the day off and it no longer becomes cost effective to be open on that day. The facilities these Churches are found in must cost a fortune to keep up. It isn't worth it to them to be open on Christmas - if the 'paying' memebership is home.
This is what I believe is the ultimate insult to God and Christ.
The focus is on operation, not on adoration!
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