Why I Won’t Take A Christmas Eve Offering

Over the past couple of weeks I have started looking ahead to 2012 on the calendar. This involves printing a hard copy "master" calendar for the church and keeping track of services, meetings, fellowships and other church activities. While I’m jumping forward, I am also polishing up our December calendar of Christmas events.

This week I received a request from a well-meaning organization to promote giving hope this Christmas by donating three dollars to send a Bible to needy countries around the world. In the introductory letter for the promotion, one of the suggestions was to dedicate our church’s Christmas Eve offering to their cause.

I didn’t think about what was being said the first time I read the letter. But when I looked at it again today, I was shocked. My concern was not that I should give extra funds to this cause, but that churches make a regular practice of taking offerings on Christmas Eve.

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