How to wreck a good Carol Service

Two gripes following a Carol Service that I attended just before Christmas…

Firstly the violence being done to some of our greatest hymns in the name of accessibility.  Changing ‘thee’, ‘thou’ and ‘ye’ into ‘you’, for example, is basically dumbing down – it implies that the people singing the carols don’t understand what the words mean, which is both wrong and patronising.

Worse is the changing of phrases such as, for example, ‘sing choirs of angels’ into ‘sing all the angels’ (you’ll know the carol).  This changes the meaning to an extent – if the words are ‘sing all the angels’, to how many angels we are referring?  Three, four?  More than this?  But ‘choirs of angels’ implies tens or hundreds, much more impressive. Everyone knows what a choir is, why change the word?

Secondly, and more importantly, we were about 30 seconds into a lengthy sermon when the subject changed from nativity to crucifixion.  Now I fully acknowledge the centrality of the atonement in the Christian faith (and will be posting a full blog item early in the New Year), but Christmas is about the wonder of the incarnation.  I think the problem here stems from Paul’s statement that he was determined to “preach nothing but Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23 and 1 Corinthians 2:2).  In my experience, many Evangelical preachers have taken this to mean that they should only ever preach on the crucifixion and nothing else.  So it is my common experience to find every sermon, whatever the text, contrives to reach this topic as soon as possible.  Brian McLaren has noted the problem that many preachers jump straight from the beginning of the Gospel to the end, missing out everything in between. (I’m sorry I don’t have the reference).

But for those who come to church maybe once a year for the carols this approach has missed out on ‘who He is’ (the incarnation), so what He has done becomes much less relevant - and a lengthy sermon, when carols were expected, is a missed opportunity to say something short, meaningful, and really engaging.