Why We Take Time Off Over the Holidays

Kent Bateman, the author of this post, serves as one of our pastors and our communications director. For more information about our leadership, visit our Leadership page.

During the holiday season, we do something that might seem strange to some people: we don't host Gatherings for two weeks (details here). This is something we've done pretty much since the beginning of our church, and since it's a little different, we thought we'd take some time to explain it in a blog post.

In the beginning, our church was mainly made up of young folks, many of whom scattered and traveled over the holidays. Because of this, taking two weeks off made a lot of sense. But as we grew as a church, the rhythm of taking off two weeks during Christmas became a really healthy rhythm for our staff and our church family. It gave all of our pastors and their families time to relax and enjoy the Christmas season, and helped people in our church not feel like they were missing out if they traveled over the holidays.

Church ≠ Sundays

In addition, we always like taking opportunities to symbolically remind people that the church is a family, not an event. Christmas and New Year's seems like a great opportunity to do just that. We also cancel Gatherings for Sundays like Super Bowl Sunday, in an effort to encourage people to go and be the church on a very easy day to be missionaries in our city.

While Sundays are important to what we do, they are not the whole of what we do. So although our churches will not gather corporately gather on December 28 and January 4, they continue to function as churches just the same.

What to Do the Next Two Sundays

Since there are no Gatherings the next two Sundays, here are a few ideas on what to do instead:

1. Host your own informal worship gathering.Christmas is a great time to lead your family in remembering Jesus together. Join with your LifeGroup or another family to craft your own Christmas-themed worship gathering. Get the kids together in a living room and talk together about who Jesus is and what he's done for us, and then sing a few Christmas songs together. If you'd like some resources to study Christmas and/or the Advent season together, there are great ones available from Verge Network, The Village Church, and Desiring God.
2. Be a missionary. Christmas is a great time to be hospitable. Almost everyone is in a partying mood, so invite some friends and/or coworkers for a Christmas party. Make it an event and play a game of White Elephant, or low key and just with some Christmas cookies in the oven and coffee on the pot. Our culture still generally slows down on Sundays, so Sundays end up being a great time to have people over without everyone feeling pressed for time.
3. Serve our city. Christmas is usually the hardest time of year for nonprofits in Columbia to find help, so contact somewhere like Transitions or Babcock Center about opportunities to serve. Usually, there's plenty of opportunities to be the hands and feet of Jesus by meeting practical needs alongside great organizations in our city. (Serving together as a family or LifeGroup is also a great thing to do!)

Whatever You Do, Do it Because of Jesus

No matter what you choose to do over the next two Sundays, I'd encourage you to not just do it mindlessly. If you host an informal worship gathering, remind yourself that it's because Jesus' incarnation is news worth remembering and celebrating. If you host a party for friends or co-workers, remember that the reason we welcome strangers is because Jesus welcomed us first through his humble birth and death on the cross. If you serve our city, remember that we serve others because Jesus first served us.

Every opportunity is an opportunity to remember the Jesus. So my prayer for you and your family is that you take these next two Sundays to celebrate him just as much as we would if we were all at a Gathering together. We'll see you in the new year!

We'll resume Gatherings at our Downtown and Two Notch church on Sunday, January 11. For more information about our Gathering schedule over the holidays, read this post.

We're All Worship Leaders

Songs:

How Deep The Father's Love For Us by The Dispatch

10,000 Reasons (Bless The Lord) by  Matt Redman

Just As I Am by The Modern Post

Jesus Pait It All by Kristian Stanfil

Hail The King by Citizens

Sermon Tweets

Jesus didn't serve so that people would serve him. He served because he was a servant. http://ow.ly/yHaDg 

Authority is often given to be in charge. For Jesus, authority is given to serve others. http://ow.ly/yHb57 

When we serve, we abide in Jesus, because Jesus himself was a servant. http://ow.ly/yHbeJ 

We often feel most alive when we're serving because we are identifying with Jesus. http://ow.ly/yHbvJ 

The mark of a servant is often how we respond when we're treated like one. http://ow.ly/yHbLu 

If you're serving to get noticed, you're not really serving. http://ow.ly/yHcj4 

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How We Plan Music at a Gathering

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Jay Hendricks is one of our pastors and oversees all of our music & production at the Gathering. In this post, he walks us through how he laid out the music for this past week's Gathering.

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Our desire in planning each gathering is to remind ourselves of the truth of the Gospel. We want to, as much as possible, center ourselves as a people on the foundation of truth of what Jesus has done for us.

This week we opened with a confession in the first verse of Made Alive:

I once was dead in sin, alone and hopeless, a child of wrath I walked condemned in darkness 

We taste the sweetness of the gospel by remembering our need for it.

With Come and Stand Amazed we walked through the entirety of the story of the gospel.

From the God's plan to reconcile to Jesus' birth:

See how God is reconciled! See his plans of love accomplished, See his gift, this newborn child."

To Jesus' life death and resurrection:

Jesus Christ our Lord of heaven Laid his life down for our sins Put on flesh, to save the wicked Became sin, to call us His. On the Cross, hung restoration On the Cross, our debt was paid See him buried as a dead man See him risen from grave"

Then, by singing In Tenderness, we proclaim that Jesus, even though we were still sinners (Romans 5:6-8), sought after us, like lost sheep, to bring us back to His fold:

In tenderness He sought me Weary and sick with sin And on His shoulders brought me Back to His fold again…

Oh the love that sought me Oh the blood that bought me Oh the grace that brought me to the fold of God Grace that brought me to the fold of God"

As we continue to walk through the story of the gospel we end by acknowledging, with The Highest, the greatness and glory of God, that:

All of creation cries out, Glory to God the highest

We join in creation by lifting up the name of Jesus and giving glory to our Father.

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To see the full set list from Sunday and listen to each song in its entirety, view the Gathering Recap.