Is anyone else as deeply disturbed as I am at how little our Pentecostal churches celebrate Holy Week? Seriously, judging by our actions, do we really believe in the power of Easter?
I checked around many regions of the country and here’s what I heard - almost nothing on Palm Sunday (one church did a special singspiration, several mentioned it in sermons), we don’t even know what Maundy Thursday is, I heard of only three churches doing something special on Good Friday, and are Easter musicals now the exception instead of the rule? (Perhaps they never were the rule?)
I know we don’t want to be bound by extra-biblical Catholic / Orthodox / mainline traditions, but haven’t we now flung ourselves into a weird, almost-anti-Christian opposite? Palm Sunday is not Catholic, it’s Christian and it holds great significance to our faith. Good Friday is not Orthodox, it’s Christian! By celebrating so little, haven’t we trapped ourselves into some type of non-thinking anti-tradition tradition?
The comeback I get is we celebrate Christmas with children’s musicals and the like. I would argue one huge reason we celebrate Christmas is due to our over-commercialized Christmas gift-buying culture more than because of its importance. (Think about it: the death and resurrection is infinitely more important than the virgin birth.) Is it the Christmas advertising that creates our Christmas outreach?
I asked my Sunday school class last weekend, “Doe anyone know what we’re celebrating today?” “
Is anyone else as deeply disturbed as I am at how little our Pentecostal churches celebrate Holy Week?
