Now that the fur has flown and the dust has settled a bit, we do need to ask what we have learned from this flap about the church closing on Christmas. A few things are important in terms of ground rules:

1) There is absolutely nothing wrong with Christians dialoguing or debating with one another about issues important to the faith as long as it is a matter of speaking the truth in love, and is not mean spirited. This in no way falls into the category of the “judge not” provision of Jesus which had nothing to do with such critiques— witness his own critiques of the Pharisees. The “judge not” statement of Jesus should not be used as some sort of security blanket to make one immune from any sort of constructive critique. This is just being defensive and not really entertaining that one may have done something inappropriate.

2) The Body of Christ exists locally, and should be held accountable locally by fellow Christians. When Paul speaks of the various limbs or members of the body of Christ in 1 Cor. 12 he is talking about all of the house churches in Corinth making up one full expression or microcosm of the body of Christ in that locale. “The Hand can not say to the foot, I have no need of you.” Congregations, whether mega or otherwise, are accountable not only to the Lord but to their fellow Christians and should be held accountable where they live. Each congregation is but a part of the larger body of Christians. Churches should check with one another locally and ask probing questions if there is an important issue, like church closing on a Sunday, that might affect the larger witness of the Christian Church in that locale. It is not enough to check with other similar sized churches in other parts of the country as there are definitely regional differences in the situation and the clientele.

3) No one should suggest that the critique of mega- churches closing on Christmas Sunday is due to ‘envy’. For one thing much of the critique has come from other large churches and large denominations. For another thing, one should not assume that simply because one’s church is large this is a sign of infallibility or that all one’s decisions have been pre-blessed by God. One should not even assume that it is necessarily the case that the size of one’s church is a clear sign of blessing from God. This is not necessarily so. Sometimes its just a sign that your church mirrors the larger values of the culture, and so many people naturally feel comfortable there because they don’t have to change much to be a part of such a fellowship. This may say more about the cultural captivity of the church than about its being blessed by God.

4) Attributing the critique of church closings on Christmas to ‘Satan’, besides being enormously defensive, makes no theological sense at all. It is Satan who wants churches closed, and especially on days when you might have more visitors than any other time of the year!

5) Perhaps, just perhaps, after Christmas when the dust has really settled, maybe we could all have a major talk about being more conscious of the fact that the world is indeed watching, especially on our holidays, and so we bear extra responsibility for what kind of witness we are presenting to the world on such occasions. Perhaps we could all do with a time of looking in the mirror and asking ourselves, what is wrong with this picture? In what way would God be displeased with our behavior? In what way are we behaving in self-centered ways that are a bad witness to a lost world? We should all think on these things.