Home Christian News Candlelight Hair-Fires Are Common—Church Leaders Tell Ed Stetzer Their Most Humorous Christmas...

Candlelight Hair-Fires Are Common—Church Leaders Tell Ed Stetzer Their Most Humorous Christmas Service Memories

“We did cantatas years ago. I was part of the orchestra. One story was that the gentleman who played Jesus (our youth pastor…so a little unrealistic) was on an actual horse and the horse was startled. They were at the front of the church and the horse took off like a shot towards the back doors, with him on the horse and very little clearance at the back door. Fortunately, he managed to shimmy his way to the side of the horse or he would have been shorter.”

“Me as a pre-teen acolyte: I was carrying a banner out of the sanctuary while everyone was singing, and my banner got caught in a ceiling fan. I looked up just in time to see a fan blade fly off the fan and go careening across the auditorium. Everyone started giggling.”

“We planted in 2020 and [were] excited for our first Christmas Eve. I had the bright idea of inviting all the kids to the front at one point and having the Children’s Director read the birth story from the Jesus Storybook Bible. I thought it would take 4-6 minutes and we’d move on but the CD took her time, paused and asked questions, shared her own thoughts, and literally took 20 minutes! The adults were so bored, I was holding the mic for her and my arm was dead, and our children (in front of everyone) were on the floor wrestling and we were so busy we couldn’t correct or help them. Did I mention we were also live streaming from my iPhone? A total disaster on all fronts! I’m just glad we didn’t include candles that year.”

“One year we had a live nativity. As we lit our candles in silence our pastor led us in a procession outside to the nativity where we would sing Silent Night. However, the procession was so long that many of us were still in the silent sanctuary when those outside began singing. We only know this because the pastor left his mic on and all we heard was his really off-key solo breaking the solemn silence of the sanctuary. We’ve never let him forget it!”

“We had a Christmas party for our after school tutoring program. After we told the manger story, a child asked her tutor, ‘Exactly what time was Jesus born?’ The tutor brought her to me since I was the pastor. I said ‘Honey, the Bible doesn’t say what the exact time was.’ The child said to me, ‘Google it.’”

“We do carols broken up with scripture reading and candle lighting in a senior’s home. At candle lighting #2, midway through the scripture reading, a deaf old gentleman (I think he thought he was whispering) yells out, ‘Doesn’t that woman ever shut up? I just came here to sing!’”

RELATED: Ed Stetzer Asked Pastors Share Their Most Embarrassing Baptism Experiences—The Responses Will Bring You to Tears 

“We were visiting a different church one year for Christmas Eve because we know the pastor there. They’re a small church and don’t have their own pianist so my wife had volunteered to play the piano for the service. She was playing a song during the offering that she could loop to cover the correct amount of time, but the piano was not set up to be able to see the collection happening. When the ushers finished the collection they took it straight to the church office but my wife was expecting them to bring it back to the front where she could see them (that’s what would happen at our church). She looped the song an extra 3 or 4 times after the collection was finished before someone let her know. Everyone was just sitting silently waiting for the song to be over.”

“We had the sweetest little boy last year who couldn’t contain his excitement so he charged the stage to hug the Christmas tree during Silent Night. Adorable.”

“On a Sunday just prior to Christmas, a massive light fell from our ceiling, hitting our youth pastor while I was preaching and knocked out four of his front teeth. After doctors and dentists escorted him out, I didn’t know what to say so I said ‘Christmas IS all about the light coming down, just not like that!’ Nobody knew if it was appropriate to laugh or not…even though the youth pastor laughed about it later….when he had 4 new teeth for Christmas.”