Christmas Eve Recap ... at The Creek

I grew up in a wonderful, healthy environment in the Upstate of South Carolina. I attended a mill village church where we looked forward to celebrating the holidays. I always remember "Christmas Sunday" because the church gave out bags of fruit and candy to the children and elderly. It was a big day. We had our own traditions, but there is one thing that we just never did and that is, celebrate the holidays with a Christmas Eve Service. In fact, I have never attended a Christmas Eve service before we initiated them at Stevens Creek.  

In the mid 1990s, I followed the inspiration of Willow Creek Church in Chicago and introduced the Christmas Eve service at our church. It began with a single service reaching a little over 100 people. We discovered early on that there is something very, very special about joining together and celebrating Christmas Eve.  


Through the years, this service has grown into a much anticipated service. There are more un-churched people in this service than in any other service during the year. They are there to hear the message of the nativity. Along with that message, many of them are there to hear April Sturgell sing "O Holy Night". For the last fourteen years, April has concluded the service with the singing of this traditional carol. There is no one that compares to April on this song. This service is filled with heart-felt programming produced by Todd Sturgell and his team. It's amazing ...year after year.  


As you may know, this service has grown from the original single service a multiple service format. At Christmas Eve 2009, we had four services (three at Stevens Creek Road and one at Grovetown High School). Our combined attendance for these services this year was [b]2,136[/b]. People were everywhere. The miracle is that our auditorium seats 500 people. We had people in chairs and offered a video venue that was filled in two of the services. It was an amazing time. The Christmas Eve service ushers in Christmas for me.  

Patty and I were talking about this service on our drive to Cleveland, TN on Christmas day. We could not ever imagine not attending a service on Christmas Eve. In neither of our family traditions did our churches offer Christmas Eve services, but now having experienced it, we don't want to go back.  


On a side note, people are very generous on Christmas Eve. We collect an offering at this service. We ask people several weeks in advance to consider giving a gift at Christmas to Christ and His Church. People responded and are still responding to this special offering. This year's offering is in the neighborhood of $120,000. That set a Christmas Eve offering record. Honestly, it came the right time.  

This year has been a good year, but like most churches, Stevens Creek has been affected by the economy. We launched Grovetown and expanded the staff to accomplish this missionary endeavor and we ended the year needing an infusion of cash. We thank the generous people at Stevens Creek for their continued support.  


If you are reading this post and your church does not celebrate the holidays with a Christmas Eve Service, let me be one to encourage you to do so.