Christmas, Take Two.

This was a big week: the first blizzard of the year snow, showing winter is seriously here to stay. I'm lining up the final Vespers set for the semester, and I've been searching for a good handful of Christmas hymns to finish off with.

I love this time of year. The Christmas spirit is in the air. Vacation is in sight. NFL teams have worked out the kinks and really start to shine. I even enjoy winter- at least the beginning of it. (And when there is minimal wind!)

Lately, I've felt like the Grinch. I did my Christmas shopping; my gifts were the first ones wrapped, even before the tree was set up at home. I bought candy canes several weeks. My cupboard is bursting with sugar cookie ingredients and festive cookie cutters. N*Sync and Point of Grace Christmas CDs have been promptly rotated from the back of my cd collection to the front.

For some reason, this year feels different than others. Maybe I'm finally growing up. I feel like a kid who found out Santa Claus isn't real this year.

I looked up 'Christmas' on wikipedia and there I learned that the letter X (chi) is the first letter of Christ in Greek. The similar Roman letter X has been used as an abbreviation for Christ since the mid-16th century. Therefore, Xmas is often used as an abbreviation for Christmas. People freak out that the X is taking Christ out of the holiday.

And that word: holiday. I love saying happy holidays. It's not that I want to be politically correct. I'm just too lazy to say "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year." I think that's actually what a lot of people mean when they use that word. Could it be that when people extend a happy holiday greeting.

I wish I knew a Jew. I wonder if I would wish them Happy Hanukkah because that's what they celebrate, or a Merry Christmas because that's what I celebrate. Why is Happy Holidays such a bad thing?

Christmas.

One year my high school youth group took a trip to a warehouse in Minneapolis to help in preparing shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child. We watched a training video, spent a few hours checking and re-packing shoe boxes, and sorting them out on different pallets. There were thousands upon thousands of shoe boxes crowded all over the open warehouse - it was amazing to see so many gifts from so many people. Thinking of all the kids that would receive these boxes gave me my first vision for what God might be doing around the world (and I would not become a Christian for 2-3 years).

For the last several years I've been putting together a shoe box for OCC, a division of Samaritan's Purse. I love the organization, and the idea that I can help out in a small way that will actually mean something to someone.

This year, I vowed to purchase items for two shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child before I did any of my own Christmas shopping. I found that starting out the Christmas gift giving season remembering those around the world who don't have much really put my personal shopping into perspective.

I love gifts. I love receiving, but I do generally love giving them. I enjoy seeing recipients of my gifts smile when they open the package, and it makes me feel good to brighten someone's day, or to show them how much I love and appreciate them. I can't help but feel at least a little disappointed when I've put a lot of effort into a gift and I don't receive any response from the recipient.

Because of this, I tend to want to overspend on gifts, especially at Christmas. This is the only time of the year in which my whole family comes home to the farm. I always want the holiday to go perfectly, because it's the only time we're together all year, but I think I end up putting way too much pressure on my family. A lot has changed for me in the last year, so I think this Christmas will be quite a bit different. I've come to realize that family is family, no matter our opinions, values, priorities and beliefs. I'd really like to just enjoy my time with them this holiday.

Another Church Myth?

This post is one of those topics that old coworkers of mine loved to talk about, and one in which I usually defer to other Christians to settle. It's also something I'm thinking about lately upon finishing 'The Irresistible Revolution' by Shane Claiborne.

I've never considered exactly what a church should do with their tithes/offerings. I could dig up my current church's budget information and take a look at that. But I wouldn't even know how much should go to whom.

So I am unsure what to do with Shane's opinions and research on tithes and offerings in the Scriptures. In his words, he discovered tithes and offerings as "unmistakably intended to be used for redistributing resources to the poor and not to go toward buildings and staff for the church."

"An average of 85% of the church offering is used internally, primarily for staff and buildings and stuff to meet our own needs...no wonder most church going Christians give only less than 3 percent of their income to the church and find other ways of giving money to the poor."

I think my current giving to my church, four single female missionaries and a child-sponsorship program is appropriate considering my income level. But I struggle with giving to the homeless and poor in my community, due to many things- I don't see the need in my day to day life, I am not challenged to give to this segment of society, etc. To be honest, sometimes I feel like it's not my responsibility as a Christian to give- can't the government get their act together and do something?

These excuses are not valid, but they are there nonetheless. When I do feel moved to give to the poor in my community, I don't give to my church. There are local organizations that help the homeless that I've given to in the past. And there are other churches in Vermillion that offer tangible help to those who need it, so I give my time and organization skills to help once in awhile.

I understand the need for churches to spend their money on their own programs and staff. Support for their denomination...I'm not sure how I feel about that yet, because I don't know much about it. I'm not satisfied with what Claiborne wrote, or my own presumptions on the topic of giving to the poor and church tithes. Look for more posts on this in the future.

The Church's "Multiplication Myth"

Sometimes multiplication can divide and subtract instead of the ultimate goal of extensive addition.

We want the Body of Christ to be reaching out and multiplying their faith. But as we grow larger, we divide into subgroups and become introspective. We divide over politics and ways to 'do church' and end up subtracting from the Body. Our goal is to add in such large numbers that we multiply and grow exponentially.

But that doesn't always happen. Shane Claiborne writes about this problem in his book, The Irresistible Revolution. It has been very thought-provoking, and has really challenged the stereotypes that I believe, and those that surround the Christian sub-culture today.

Near the end of his book, Shane explains what he calls the 'myth of multiplication.' "The pervasive myth is that as we grow larger, we can do more good. But there is little evidence that this is ever realized. My own research and experience would suggest that as congregations grow in terms of staff and property, their giving to causes outside of operating expenses decreases dramatically, especially money given directly to the poor. (A recent study shows that) rich people are significantly less generous (proportionately) than poor people, and that large congregations give proportionately far less to people in poverty than do small ones...as we build our buildings, human temples are being destroyed by hunger and homelessness."

I've seen a lot of things in the Body of Christ that don't make sense. Typically I just go along with the crowd because I assume other people know better than I do. I'm starting to question more and more motives and actions in the Church and Christian circles today, due in part to hanging out with a lot of non-Christians. For the first several months at my part-time job in college, I avoided discussing church and other religious topics because I considered myself to be above my coworkers.

But after a few months, I started to really listen to them. Their opinions became really important to me; I tried to dispel the untrue beliefs they had about the church. But after awhile I started to realize that maybe they were right. They weren't persuading me to change my beliefs, but they had a lot more experience in dealing with Christians and the Church. They were legitimate concerns and hurt feelings underneath all of the blown-out-of-proportion opinions.

"Amid all the super-sizing, I want to make a modest suggestion: our goal should be not to get larger and larger but to get smaller and smaller. I think of the Kingdom of God as bubbling up from the bottom rather than trickling down from the top," writes Clairborne. I don't exactly know what this means, or how to go about this as one person in the Body of Christ, but I like the idea. And I'll keep thinking about it until I figure it out.