the post-modern diaspora
Christmas is a time of togetherness, a time of community, a time of gathering. Traditionally as one of the key Christian holy seasons, church attendance swells as fringe people join in to celebrate and reflect on this special time.
However, our experience in our new model congregations has been at odds with this. We have three congregations of gen x type people, mostly young adults, young families. And we have consistently struggled to have a gathering of our saints close to the Christmas season.
The problem is that in the weeks before Christmas, a whole bunch of our young adults bugger off interstate or to the country to spend time with their families, or take the opportunity to go overseas in university or school holidays (for the teachers amongst us).
When we first started our gen x congregations, we planned elaborate Christmas alt worship events specifically for our gen x-ers as a part of our church’s advent services. And our attendance was pitiful, because our community had dispersed.
And now we are in a place where we have our special advent service for gen-x-ers halfway through December and our congregations meet only for community events (such as Christmas dinner and a New Years Eve celebration). This is particularly annoying because being seen to “take a break” for the holiday period is one of the things that people take as an indication that these are not real church.
I guess the lesson in this is that despite our best intentions, we let our expectations of what church is dictate the way that our new congregations function. It would be really nice to be able to create a unique gen x worship event on christmas eve or similar, but in the context of our own community, that is an impractical expectation.
So now, a blessing on our disparate community as it scatters to engage in Christmas rites and rituals in different parts of the country and the world.
May you experience the song of Mary
The silent wonder of Zechariah
The gut reaction of Elizabeth
The astronomical impact of the wise men
The angelic message of the shepherds
May you each, in your different places
and in your difference ways
be impacted by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ
The boy, who became a man, who became a saviour
Merry Christmas.
December 18th, 2003 at 4:03 pm
I think this is not unique to gen-x congregations, but to the age group of young parents. We are traveling out of town at christmas to visit grandparents who live far away. At our more traditional church, there are older parents who have children coming in for the holidays.
You just don’t have (m)any of those older parents to draw in another crowd for your unique worship services.
Truth be told, it’s probably a blessing in disguise. Getting ready for those holiday productions can be a draining experience.
December 19th, 2003 at 1:41 am
Maybe Christmas would be an opportunity for a wider combined kind of event - that way you offset the absences?
December 19th, 2003 at 3:45 pm
we do offer wider combined events - we see times like Christmas and Easter as opportunities for our whole Church to come together.
However, the issue was more that many genx people (families too I guess as Bryan indicates but we don’t have many of those) don’t have an opportunity to celebrate Christmas with their own faith communities because they are away at this time.