Honestly, I don’t remember ever going to a Christmas Eve service until I became a Student Pastor, strange right? Our family’s Christmas Eve tradition from my earliest memories had us at Grandma and Grandpa’s crowded house with all the out-of-town cousins enjoying laughter, food and getting hyped up about the next morning and the presents.

As a vocationally employed minister, specifically the Youth Pastor or Associate Pastor, I often found myself covering the Christmas Eve service for the out-of-town Sr. Pastor, who was traveling to be with his extended family. I mean, what could go wrong with handing the responsibilities off to the “junior staff member?” All that was expected was Christmas Carols and reading the Christmas story from Luke, right? That’s like hitting the ball off of a tee-anyone can do it.

Fast forward a few years later. I found myself serving at a church where Christmas Eve was a “high church” celebration (i.e. Choir Robes and Handbells.) As the Student Pastor I wasn’t asked or allowed near the stage or a microphone.

Fast Forward once more to a very contemporary church where the Christmas Eve Service had been deep sixed by the lead Pastor after a scheduling mix up (A former Assoc. Pastor planned the details and then had to be out of town or was ill-don’t remember) leaving the SP alone to serve communion to the entire congregation which took a long time-interrupting his own Christmas eve plans with his immediate family and friends. That was legend-it also led to its cancelation.

At that contemporary church I was asked to bring back the Christmas Eve service (not involving the lead pastor-who didn’t even have to come if he didn’t want-and often didn’t.) Over the next several years CE developed into something pretty big-eventually leading to multiple services, readings, a skit/drama and children's singing. 

Fast forward one more time. I served a normative sized church which was Replanted. Our Christmas Eve services were  very simple, some years (especially the ones that fell on alternating years for our young families to be out of town visiting the other relatives) meant that we would have almost as many on the stage leading the service as those who were watching it in the audience.

Christmas Eve during COVID19 provided another chapter-one I'm thankful only lasted a year. Our local governance mandated that our occupancy indoors could only be 25% of our building’s capacity. That meant we could host around 37 people, do the math, we have a small building.  So, what to do? An outdoor Drive-in Christmas Eve service in 30 degree or below temperatures.

Now my Facebook feed is regularly flooded by many incredibly creative and highly produced services being promoted by the larger churches in our area. I’m amazed at all the great creativity. 

This past week I attended an area Christmas Service and it was awesome and amazing, the church was packed, songs sung, gospel shared. I loved every minute of it. I'm for that absolutely. 

I'm also for something very different. (It is possible to be for two very different things)

Why should a normative sized (under 199 in attendance) church do a much less sophisticated and less impressive service?

Because that’s exactly how the first Christmas was.

On a cold dark evening, in an out of the way place, glorious news came to Shepherds who were watching over their flocks and looking into the night sky. A baby, not just any baby but the Son of the living God had been born into the world. He was lying in a feed trough surrounded by animals not a soft bed in a palace. This humble spot, unimpressive as it was is the place where God chose to make his entrance into the world. Immanuel, God with us, was born to be our Savior and take away our sins.

The most important and impressive happening in all of history took place in a setting no one would have ever expected it to occur. The medium is not the message. So, a highly scripted service with paid musicians and their original compositions and professional level production values is something to behold for sure. But it’s not the point.
The most amazing thing we celebrate on Christmas Eve is that Jesus entered the world.

So Replanter/Normative Sized Pastor, hold your service this Christmas Eve, focus on the message of Christ-it’s amazing and wonderful and beautiful. 

​I talk to Pastors.

Let me share something with you.

Many of them are tired, really tired.  

Not the kind of tired that a day of rest or a down weekend with no preaching responsibilities will remedy. They are bone aching, mind numbing, dark soul of the night exhausted. 

How did they arrive at this threat level midnight echelon of fatigue? Truthfully, it’s not just one thing, it’s a compilation of a lot of things, little things and perhaps a few big things too.

Why are the Shepherds tired?

• Demanding ministry schedules
• The close of a church budget season with more expenses than resources
• A wife who is tired (of ministry, being pregnant, battling sickness, managing the children alone, the critical whispers of the naysayers in the congregation, of not having enough money to meet expenses or purchase Christmas gifts or travel home to see family) 
• Conflict among church leaders (staff, deacons, trustees, finance committees, elders)
• Because the church down the street looks like it has it all together, at least on their socials and his church feels like a mess
• The internal nagging sense that what they are doing, at least how they are going about it, isn’t what they actually thought ministry would be about.

There could be more…there probably is.

Let’s add in Christmas and all that comes with it.

• Multiple services
• Music programs
• Christmas parties
• Family pressure

Seems that the ones who are there to remind the flock of the “good news of great joy” struggle to believe what they might be saying….or at least only feel like they can ascent to its truth mentally, certainly not emotionally and perhaps not spiritually. 

Dear Pastor, remember this….  

The silence from the close of the Old Testament gave way because of a slow trickle of good news that may not have seemed like good news at all.

• A betrothal interrupted by an unplanned, unforeseen and miraculous pregnancy.
• The wrestling of a noble man who considered the putting away of the woman he was to marry - interrupted by a divine assurance, God was in this.
• The whispers of the town residents as a pregnancy began to show-they could do math and it wasn’t all adding up, or was it?
• A difficult journey demanded by a civil magistrate with no exception clause for travel - and all to be counted for tax purposes.
• A crowded city and no room for a wife to bear her firstborn.

This is the first Christmas, this is also your Christmas.

Perhaps our Pastors and their families struggle in this season so they can experience all the emotions which were experienced at the first Christmas. So they can know that in the uncertainty, chaos, pain, disappointment and feelings of loneliness and rejection, God is still working.

So they truly understand….

“Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people:Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11

Fear not Brother Pastor, Christmas is about the good news of a baby born unto us, about the  breaking the grip of sin, the power of darkness and the certainty of redemption.

Rest in that, be refreshed.

Merry Christmas.
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I love Christmas time, I really do. But what you are about to read is likely to make you think I’m a descendant of Ebenzer Scrooge or the Grinch.  

So, Buckle up Buttercup.

I became a youth pastor at a very traditional and affluent 125 year old (at that time) church in the deep south. It was an awesome church in many ways but also one which was struggling with the fact that it was no longer what it once was in terms of effectiveness at its location. 

Granted, it supported missions, church plants, one of which was succeeding wildly at reaching the community in which it was planted, and that daughter church was about to sponsor its own church plant. The granddaughter church would grow to eclipse both the grandmother and mother church in years to come-but I digress.

I was called as the Student pastor and rolled into town with a few years of ministry experience under my belt, a seminary degree, a young family and the pragmatic sense to know that if you are having to manufacture energy to do some ministry activity, if people weren’t volunteering for a ministry initiative, if a ministry activity you were doing was overburdening your people, exhausting them, causing everyone who spoke about to roll their eyes and….that activity which was creating all this was not bearing fruit it might be time to rethink doing that activity, it might be time to shut it down, say goodbye to it or at least deep six it for a while and do a very very critical evaluation before ever bringing it back.

All that being said….

I killed the Youth Living Nativity, not actively mind you…just through some important questions and observations. 

Even more true, I don’t think I killed it actually, it was mostly dead when I got there. 

Every time someone would reference the Living Nativity they would….

• Roll their eyes
• Say; “did you hear about the time the donkeys ran away?”
• Remark; “It’s really difficult to get volunteers.” 
• Laugh about the volunteer who struggled to put ointment in the camel’s eye and was almost bit each time.

I asked a few simple questions; 

• Why are we doing it then? 
• Why is it fully on the student ministry to lead the Living Nativity?
• Isn’t it or shouldn’t it be something the entire church does? 

Something wasn’t adding up, people eye rolled at its mention, no one wanted to volunteer and we really couldn’t point to lasting fruit or impact…Why were we doing this?

Enter a church deacon with the taped together news article copied on a well worn paper.  I’ll call him “The Advocate.” He was a really nice guy by the way.

Apparently at some point in time, some place in US America, a depressed and suicidal man during the holiday season drove through a living nativity, he listened to the cassette tape he was given which guided a participant through the Live Nativity experience. The man was so moved he decided not to end his life, he wrote a letter to the local newspaper of his account and the Advocate clipped the article, and this source document became the yearly justification for the Youth Living Nativity. 

First, praise God that the man found hope and help through a ministry of the local church, I’m for that. Let’s not ever forget that there is hope in Christ and ministry to be done in reaching the hurting, especially during the holidays.

Second, accessible public ministry where random passers-by can engage?  Again, all for that, but let’s also recognize the sovereignty of God in orchestrating all the variables that December night for this despondent man. 

Third, that it happened once doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen every year, nor does it necessarily justify a yearly commitment to one specific ministry. 

What are we to do? 

• Repeat something over and over because it worked once, sometime, somewhere?
• Be manipulated into continuing a specific ministry program because of a success story that took place years ago-and not even at the place God has located us as a church?
• Only do things which are guaranteed to be fruitful?
• Keep burdening God’s people during an already busy season and never or rarely evaluate if we should keep a ministry going?

It’s not simple, although we want it to be.  Here’s my suggestion.

Listen for the guidance of God, through the Holy Spirit as demonstrated in the people of God, together. 

The clipped article, presented by the Advocate, had assumed the place of authority-it was directing our ministry, it was telling us what we must do, had to do, even when passion and support was waning in the body. 

And a little additional information…like it is in many places, The Advocate was no longer offering to organize, lead or volunteer to make this happen, he wanted it done, he wanted me and others to do it, but he wasn’t offering to help.

Did God want us to continue the Living Nativity? I didn’t think so based on what I saw and heard from the body.

So we stopped doing it.

Hear this, I was not against doing a Live Nativity. What I was not for was it being something that only the student ministry shouldered each year. I was against propping up a program that people thought was nice but really didn’t want to volunteer for and I was not for allowing a paper clipped article determine the direction of our ministry.

By the way….the church I’m talking about, they’re doing the Live Nativity again.  And I for one, hope that it reaches someone in need…that the volunteers are enthusiastically serving and that the Camel doesn’t bite anyone.

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