I love the Christmas Eve service. Greenery, candles, acoustic music, liturgy, a message of hope for the world... For me, it transitions Christmas from being about the shopping, food and decorations to being about the birth of a Savior.
And yet...
For the pastors, worship and technical teams it means a lot of long hours spent in preparation, execution and clean up--on a night when it would be preferable to be nestled all snug in their beds.
Church teams have to work harder than most to create the time to unplug. It isn't enough to choose "not" to do something; that just creates a vacuum of time that is easily filled. It has to be about proactively carving out space to "do" something. About blocking the time on your calendar, then treating it as if you were meeting with a rock star. (Assumption being that you wouldn't blow off or miss it.)
Creating margin in a marginless world is hard.
But if you can give yourself permission to make it happen, it is well worth doing.
