Christmas Message from C12 Group

Dear Friends,

It’s a special pleasure to send you greetings at this time of year to celebrate the birth of our Savior!  While we know that you’ll receive many more Christmas messages, we hope that ours might stand out from the crowd by encouraging your heart and quickening your appreciation of the real meaning of Christmas.

The world has done a wonderful job of obscuring the real meaning of the most uniquely special day and singular event in all of history… the first act of God’s unfolding eternal gift to us.  In place of the birth of Jesus, our Savior and Lord, the world gives us Santa Claus, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, elves and endless other meaningless distractions.  Such holiday ‘noise’ serves to shift our culture’s focus away from Christ’s advent as God’s offering of the greatest possible eternal gift.  Instead, we focus on the materialistic and hedonistic practice of buying gifts we can’t afford for those who often don’t appreciate or truly need them.  Worse yet, by charging these purchases, we create crushing debt for ourselves and cause marriage strife when the bills come due, thereby completely missing the riches we’ve been offered.  We encourage our children to plow through a mountain of packages like crazed consumers and then, when they’ve finished, are saddened to hear them ask, “Is that all?”  Worse yet, when the season has passed, we can find ourselves asking the same question in our own hearts, “Is that all Christmas is?”

In short, the evil one has subtly hijacked what should be a joyous and peaceful celebration of the birth of Jesus and replaced it with something much, much less; a stressful, materialistic exercise that’s celebrated more for its stimulating effect on the economy (and our ‘appetites’) than for its true meaning.  For many Christians, our adversary has managed to dilute the awesome majesty of God entering the world to save it, leaving only a faintly recognizable pause in the calendar amidst the false glitter of pagan practice and cultural fable. 

Will you join us in pushing back against these distortions?  We truly hope so.  Let’s keep the second act of the ultimate gift we celebrate this Christmas in mind as we celebrate the first, remembering that the shadow of the cross lays across the manger of the Babe of Bethlehem.  The complete gift wasn’t given in the birth of our Savior.  He came to live the spotless life and die in our place.  His sacrificial gift, giving Himself to suffer the cost of our sins is the real meaning of Christmas.   What a perfect time to celebrate, reminding ourselves, our families, and our colleagues of our Lord’s truly amazing grace and gospel.

After all, it wasn’t the Grinch who stole Christmas.  It was busy and careless Christians.  This year, let’s take it back!

Yours, for a Christ-filled Christmas,

Don Barefoot                     Buck Jacobs, AfC
C12 President & CEO        Founder & Chairman

The C12 Group: Building GREAT Businesses for a GREATER Purpose
America's Leading Christian CEO Roundtable Provider since 1992
www.C12Group.com