Our church, Lutheran Church of Hope, just finished up some amazing Christmas Eve services. Truly. Here’s a link to one of the videos Pastor Mike used during the message. “Powerful” doesn’t do it justice. Lives were changed and God opened eyes.

In the midst of this, I’m finishing up “Simple Church” by Thom Reiner and Eric Geiger, a must-read for anyone in church leadership. I’m on the chapter entitled, “Focus: Saying No to Almost Everything” where the authors drop this little, challenging gem:

“[In an effort to simplify your church] Christmas services [could be] combined with weekend worship services to maximize the potential of the holiday season. Instead of having a separate Christmas Eve or Christmas Day service in addition to a regular weekend service, churches have offered one special Christmas service multiple times over several days. By doing so, more people are exposed to a typical weekend service. In addition, all energy and publicity are focused on the one service that is offered multiple times.”

At Hope, we did not use this approach. We had separate Christmas Eve services and weekend services that finished up Sunday night at 5 pm. This is one way to do it.

I’m curious to see if anyone goes to a church and/or works at a church that tried the “combined” approach this holiday season, as referenced in “Simple Church”. Did your church have separate Christmas Eve and regular weekend services, or did you combine them? What was it like? What was the feel? How did the congregation respond? The staff?

I’m curious to see what the results are. Please share. Focus, I’m finding, if fast becoming the theme for 2009. (And all the while, I remind myself that “different” is not “wrong,” “different” is just “different.”)