If you drive past Rupert United Methodist Church over the next few days, you’ll see a sign outside for a Chrismas Eve Eve service.

It’s not a misprint. We, like most of the Christian world, often do a Christmas Eve service. After the hustle and bustle of the season, it’s nice to stop, worship and recenter ourselves spiritually before Christmas Day.  For many Christians, it’s the only service besides Easter they attend each year and it is a time that the church family can reconnect. But this year, our organist was not available.

What to do? We could have not done one this year. After all, the Congregationalist Church just up the road does a community service on Christmas Eve and we could go there. It’s a nice service, a bit of Currier and Ives tradition. Lots of friends around.

But our congregation wanted to have a chance to worship together one more time in the Christmas season.

I get that. We almost went our doors a couple of years ago. Discouraged, in debt, with very few people coming regularly, it seemed like this church, once so much a part of the community, had fallen victim to what has been happening to small rural churches over the past few decades.  Closing the doors actually made a sad kind of sense.

In the end though, that’s not what we did. The people here recommitted and embraced the idea of doing church a little differently. I was called to preach there, and later to be the pastor, but in some ways, I’m just another parishioner, albeit with some extra theological education.  We chose to be an intentionally healing church, a safe place where people who were on their spiritual journey, where ever they were on that journey, would be welcome, embraced and simply loved.

You have no idea how hard that is. Mine is an older congregation. Older often means conservative, staid, stuck in our ways…. and judgemental. To make the choice to be a safe place for all people, the congregation  had to commit to working hard to focus on love, not opinions, love, not rules, love, not harshness.  We had to conciously choose to quiet our prejudices, whatever they might be, and learn to simply look at people as pilgrims on the same journey they were on. Try it sometimes. It’s dang hard.

They also had to do church a different way, working together and not counting on a pastor to do everything. (which is pretty much how most small churches work.).  Because while I have the title and whatever that means, I get paid only as a supply pastor – you know, like that guy who comes in when the main pastor is out of town and does a sermon and you never see him again. Yeah, I get paid that way, by my choice. I have another job that pays the bills and it’s more important to me that the church stay viable.

But because I get paid that way, and because I have other, paying work that I need badly to pay the bills, and I have a son to raise and all that stuff of life, we had to drop that whole “Everything depends on the pastor.” idea, also ingrained by generations of example, and people had to figure out how to be the church, not go to church.

It’s not an easy path. It’s been a major learning curve for all of us. We’re not “there” yet. But we’ve come a long way. The church is financially viable. We average twenty few most Sundays (an amazing percentage of them in the choir.). We’ve rediscovered church family and community and the simple joy of our faith.

And so, worshiping together is important to us. And sharing our worship is important to us. In the discussion, someone suggested we do a Christmas Eve Eve service. And that’s what we are doing. We’ll do something a little different than the traditional service they are doing up the street on Christmas Eve, but it will be a time of slowing down, refocusing, and allowing us to be filled with the real spirit of Christmas.

We’ll do something a little different than the traditional service they are doing up the street on Christmas Eve just so you won’t be bored if you do both, but it will still be a time of slowing down, refocusing, and allowing us to be filled with the real spirit of Christmas.

Maybe it’s a dumb idea. Maybe it will just be us. And if it is, that will be OK. We love each other. Or  maybe we were inadvertently brilliant and all those people who don’t go to Christmas Eve services because they have last minute shopping, or a complicated thing to put together that night, or 4 parties they can’t miss will still want to stop and worship the birth of Christ and we’ll be full up.

I have no idea.

But I know two things. One, we’ll be there and it will be a worshipful night of song and scripture. And two, that sign on the fence is not a typo.

Be well. Travel wisely.

Tom