If you lead a worship ministry at a church, you’ve probably heard that phrase a lot in the last couple of weeks unless you’re packing your services full of Christmas carols. I had a conversation with someone yesterday and I told her that my fear in doing services full of traditional Christmas songs is that they sometimes come off as nursery rhymes – we just say the words and enjoy the singing but they do nothing to inspire corporate worship.

So here’s what we’ve come up with. We will be doing some Christmas songs during our services the next two Sundays (in the context of our worship services) and then a service full of Christmas music on Christmas Eve. The new thing that will be trying is that on December 16 & 23 we will also be adding 10 minutes of Christmas music before our services start. For people who love those songs and are dying for a little extra dose of Christmas cheer, they can come a few minutes early and we’ll do 3 songs that won’t be part of our services that day. After we announced this yesterday I had some good feedback from people so I think this was a good decision for us.

Now, despite what you may have thought about my previous comments, I do see some value in having these songs be part of our congregational worship culture. Although most people may sing these songs mindlessly and without much thought, I do think that they have value in helping us to remember, to understand and to communicate the birth of Christ in the context of the greater story of God. We talk all the time that “worship is more than singing, worship is more than music” and I think that Christmas songs are really a tool that can be used by Christians in their quest to be full disciples of Christ.