Another year gone.

So here we are 2007, Christmas is over and soon all the decorations will be put away and everywhere will look bare again. I just can’t help wondering if every year we (as in the whole church) misses an opportunity. It seems to me that every year many people get Jesus out of the box along with the other decorations, they do the Church thing over Christmas because it’s a nice traditional Christmas story (even if the traditionally story is possibly largely based on bad interpretation, see my post from last Christmas). The problem comes about now, when Jesus goes back in the box with the decorations, and back in the loft to be forgotten about until next year. The question then comes as to what we can do during this brief period when people are actually thinking about the person of Jesus and wanting to remember him, whether out of quaint family tradition or a deeper desire to find more meaning to life and the Christmas season. Somehow during this period we need to challenge people to think about what the Christmas message is, taking it from ‘nice traditional story’ to a life changing historical event, we need to move them from leaving saying “wasn’t it nice to sing those carols” to saying “there was something about that, something there and I don’t know what it was but I want to find out”. I sometimes wonder if we have got so bogged down in the tradition ourselves that we have almost forgotten the Gospel. I remember Mike Yaconelly at Greenbelt talking about the church being full of the people it’s not meant for, Jesus himself said ‘it’s not the healthy who need a doctor’. Are we missing an opportunity so keen to offer the nice traditional Christmas services that we focus on this baby being born and we forget to tell people that he was born with a purpose. If you look at the web address above you will see the domain name ‘notashamed’ coming from Romans 1:16 ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes’. Is this true for our services over Christmas if like Paul we are not ashamed then we need to show it, we need to tell people the gospel and Christmas is a major opportunity to do so, yes lets talk about the nice story of the first Christmas but lets put it in the context of salvation and the worlds need for it!

End of rant, hope you did have a good Christmas and pray that you might find peace and grace through the knowledge of salvation this year. God bless