January 21, 2009
Mixed Blessings
Last weekend I attended a 25th wedding anniversary where the large group of attendees were all believers. The honoree stated, “…all my friends are Christians. I don’t have any friends who aren’t believers.” After that celebration I went down the street and attended my uncle’s 90th birthday party where we visited in and around a live band playing honky tonk music. In church speak you could call it a blended celebration. There were believers, nominal believers and those with no belief at all. There’s a certain comfort in being surrounded by those of like precious faith, but add a little secular to the mix and you have some stimulating witnessing opportunities. I can see why Jesus accepted invitations to all kinds of fellowship configurations.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Your comparison of the two social events gives occasion to expose the heart of the debate between the contemporary minded brethren and the traditional minded brethren. First, allow me to expose also my bias. I am a traditional minded brother. Therefore, I direct most of my criticism toward the contemporary philosophies. The simple ground under the contemporary mindset is that the gathering of the saints must be for evangelism. From that assumption, everything regarding the nature of the services must be made understandable to those who have little knowledge of the Lord and less experience with church so they will feel welcome to come and enjoy. That anticipates a large attendance of folks who don’t know the Lord, who yet effect the church‘s culture. That seems a bit backward to me.
----- Evangelism is good. But it is not only. The whole body is not a foot. The sole purpose of the church is not to evangelize. There are also edification, instruction, counseling, helping others in need, and intercession, just to name a few of the many other purposes for which we meet together. It is not displeasing to the Lord that His people meet for a purpose more focused upon instruction, edification, or counsel. In fact, it is rather important. Even the communion that we partake as often as we do acknowledges a gathering of believers for purposes of believers. It was no more wrong for all at the wedding to be believers than it was that some at the birthday party were not believers. And it was no more wrong for those at the wedding to interact as believers in a culture of believers as it was for those at the birthday party to interact as people within a culture of people.
-----Personally, I believe it is important for believers to have a regular time they can assemble in a culture of believers for mutual support as well as worship. I do not believe it is selfish for them to want this time of focus to be the first time of the day commemorated as that of Jesus’ resurrection. In fact, making this the time for believers to meet as believers makes a statement of its own. If you wish to join the meeting, be a believer and do as the believers do. If you do not wish to be a believer, do not join the meeting. Jesus did not tell the seventy to act more like the townsfolk when they would be rejected. He told them to shake the dust off their feet and move on to the next town. Worshipping within a service having cultural aspects meaningful to those knowledgeable of the Lord is not an abandonment of evangelization. Indeed, it is a more definitive call for the importance of a new life, a different life. Refusing to replace all symbolism of faith from the church’s cultural practices with symbolism of mere townsfolk niceties is a good shaking of the dust off the feet.
-----More importantly, those fewer townsfolk who do have ears to hear and eyes to see will come to this distinct church and be believers too, rather than coming as the most townsfolk would to be at just church. The spiritual health of the church is much better maintained when the people answering the call to the new life actually step into the new life before becoming members with those who have been in the new life. But by welcoming whosoever will to come as they are and not address the issue that they must not stay as they are is to ask the church to go before the Lord in worship wearing a soiled dress. The more purely Christian the cultural elements of the worship service are, the more pure the worship of the congregation is called to be.
-----By all this I do not mean to deny the importance of meeting for evangelistic purposes. We need those meetings, too. But is Sunday morning the only time for them? They argue that it is the only time the townsfolk will come, therefore we must make it the time for evangelism and do our own thing some other time (to which the dust is eventually invited also.) They say, that since Jesus carried His message into the towns because that is where the townsfolk were, then we must do it like Jesus did. And this is true, we must do it like Jesus did it. It is exactly my point. The gospels are filled with Jesus going into the different neighborhoods of Israel, reaching out to the people; they are not filled with His going into the Synagogues of Israel changing the worship services to attract the townsfolk. Jesus did not worship on the streets, He evangelized on the streets. He worshipped in the synagogues. Since Jesus evangelized on the streets, if we are to mimic Him so closely, we also must evangelize on the streets. That is where our evangelistic meetings need to be, out in the community, not in our places of worship. Or do we lack the courage to take our evangelism into the community? Must we then make our churches giant spider-holes of cowardly squeaking to attract the dust? Or should we boldly worship in our full character, then go into the community and get our feet dusty?
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment