So a lot of my friends have stopped going to Sunday morning services at my home church; and that has made me really sad. Yes, I can understand some of their complaints: the preaching is by no means phenomenal, the worship is predictable and boring at times, ect...but it's really made me think, is that all there is to church? Why is it so easy to just stop going to church on sunday with no second thought? And so here are my thoughts.
Church needs to be a vital part of the believer's life. A center of community. Meaning the believer should be at church multiple times a week doing various activities (food distributions, prayer meetings, small groups, and so on). In this way, church becomes a place of community, a place where those of us who have been freed from the power of sin through Christ's sacrifice can share life together. A church needs to be extremely local. The implications for the local church then is that it must facilitate an environment where it can become a place where believers share life. In other words, it must have prayer meetings, small groups, and food distributions.
When the church is only what we do and where we go on sundays, then it becomes really easy to stop going if the preaching is bad or the worship is boring. But if the local church is a major part of one's life, then not going on Sunday isn't an option. Also, the worship/preaching takes a secondary seat. It's no longer what we focus on because we realize that church is much bigger then sunday mornings. It's living life together and therefore re-presenting the Body of Christ to the world.
Church is not optional. When we are saved we are brought into new relationships, a new family. My prayer is that we as the Church can reclaim that view and begin to realize the huge implications of participating in God's salvation through Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.
7 comments:
I agree with this post but I have a couple of little issues...
1. Where is this church you speak of? The church you speak of is straight biblical and is the ideal version of the church that we all long to live in today.... but where is it? I fully understand that the point of the post is to illustrate that the church is not about the physical setting and not about the building but this does mean that there is a readily available community of believers living solely for God, and doing activities that reflect this multiple times a week. I don't know of many people that wouldn't LOVE to have this community to be a part of, but the sad matter of fact is that these things do not represent the current state of most churches. Our 21st century WASP churches concern themselves mainly with sunday morning and wednesday night services.. some churches will further this in to small group study for it's community but those groups may only reflect specific demographics of the church (i.e. young marrieds, over 60 women, elders...) Even more rare still is a church with consistent homeless outreaches, ones with service projects, missionary opportunities... all I am trying to say is that I don't see the current state of our churches reflected in your idealized view of how churches should be. If I found a group of people who lifted each other up and multiple times a week was living outside of themselves I would ecstatically be in attendance as much as I could.. but frankly, I just don't see that most places. I think the same is true with many people.. we would all love a place like that, a group like that, but all we get are sunday mornings because that is where churches put a major emphasis. If that is where the major emphasis is, and thusly, one of our only choices for the week, if the worship is awful and the preaching is bad.. can you really blame the average person for growing tired of their church?
2. I see the same things happening with many of our friends too... no desire to go to church and things like that. As far as that all being blamed on worship services and preaching... I think those reasons are just serving the purpose of scapegoat to the much bigger issue of religious apathy. College aged students are notoriously the most under represented group in churches.. why? I think it has a lot to do with being free from the constraints of parental authority, having a lot less time on one's hands, what with work, school, relationships.... there simply is less time to get to church multiple times a week. Others will find themselves not attending anymore, simply because they don't believe, which goes far deeper than the pastor not being great or anything like that. I find that personally I don't have free wednesday nights, and I certainly don't have any mornings available with classes and such. This does not mean however that I don't wish to attend church. I would love to go to Downey every week, I am just limited in this due to my pocket book and often times a homework schedule.
I don't know.. I just, have a couple of issues with the way churches are currently run. I'd like to attend, but my choices are limited. I'd like to be part of a community, but one can't fault someone for not being able to get somewhere multiple times a week... I don't know, these are just some rough thoughts.
Wanna hang out some time this week, if you're still off...
Regarding your first point, i agree that there are a lot of churches that only focus on sunday morning and wednesday night services. And that it seems like my idealized view is way off from the current state of things. But there is a change that has been taking place. The 24-7 prayer movement "founded" by Pete Grieg that has been sweeping the world is doing exactly what I wrote about. They have prayer meetings everyday of the week and do various sorts of out reach projects within their community on a weekly basis. Prayer rooms are popping up in your everyday churches where for weeks at a time the church body takes shifts and prays non-stop. Churches are becoming places where life takes place and is lived out. For proof, read the book Red Moon Rising by Pete Grieg, it has been extremely influential to me.
Now, that's not to say that a majority of churches still don't have that sense of community. So I guess the main reason I wrote this blog was to encourage the "lay-people" to start creating that kind of environment. The church leadership can only do so much. But I'm sure if people came up and asked to hold a prayer meeting every night, they wouldn't be opposed to it. And I know, for example, food help could probably use dedicated volunteers. It's up to us and not just the pastoral staff to create this kind of Church that we all long for.
In response to your second point, you're right, some people just cannot dedicate hours upon hours to be at Church. That is why I think it is so important that church must be local. If you're driving 45 minutes to get to your home church, then it has become a commuter church for you. It takes a lot of time and money just go to, so going multiple times out of the week is out of the question. But if the church you go to is 5 minutes away, then going twice or even three times a week is much more doable. And even though time commitments will vary from person to person, I still think that even a small time commitment from every church goer could radically change what it means to be a church in America. (those were all universal "you's" by the way. I wasn't calling you specifically out).
But now I will talk specifically to you. I know you can't make it out to DFCC all the time because you live in Fullerton. So what if you made your college campus your local church. You have chapel, so why not start small prater session a couple nights a week. Join a ministry that is involved in community outreach and really live intentionally within your dorm. I truly believe that a Christian college campus is the best place to begin living like the Body of Christ. What if we all implemented what we're talking about into our dorm and college life? I mean, how much more local can one get than his or her own college campus!
Thanks for the comment!
I'd like to point out, too, that church isn't about a specific building. We all know that. It's about the people who make up the community. It's about us living out our purpose with the people we already spend time with anyway. So we can't put a label on or limit our "church activity/participation" to just the time we spend AT church. we should be the church whenever we're in community.
i think that means that if we're not able to get down to the church building a few times a week to pray or help out with food distribution or whatever our church is doing to serve...then what about deciding with our friends (especially when we live in a specific community such as a college campus) that since we hang out five nights a week playing video games/going out to eat/hanging out in someone's room anyway...why don't we one night a week, instead of doing what we always do, go take a care package to someone who's having a rough time, or go take some canned food to a homeless shelter or food distribution place, or go find someone who needs food or a jacket or whatever, and meet that physical need. or...why don't we still hang out, but spend a while talking about some bible passages together...or i don't know, whatever.
my point is, being part of a church doesn't have to be just about going somewhere to make the church alive and real. it's just about being the church when we're in community. i think it is important to actually show up at church too...but we're more likely to do that when we're already living out the church's purpose in our fellowship of believers, right? i think so.
Awesome post Gudy. Love it. I definitely agree.
One of the reasons why I personally love the idea of going to church (as in the place) is because of the diversity. We've got people of all ages and races and so forth showing up every Sunday to meet and greet.
I'm not trying to discount the idea of church being where ever you are having fellowship with other believers. That is just as important. I just think it is also important to interact with believers that are possibly outside of our own little social circles normally as well as interacting with people who are a lot older and wiser than we are. It's good to have an outsider's opinion.
Honestly, I think the right attitude is pivotal. We should be students drooling over every little tidbit and quotation that drips from a rabbi's mouth so to speak. If this means we have to endure 20+ minutes of Shoeke(sp) jokes, so be it. No one said learning and growing was always going to be easy and enjoyable after all. If you want to be entertained while learning some important life lessons, go play on the freeway. (I am saying these things in general of course.)
I'm not an A+ student (or C+ for that matter) when it comes to going to church and actually paying attention to sermons, but I do know we aren't going to get anywhere if we sit around and twiddle our thumbs day dreaming about what could be instead of making it happen.
This is a subject that doesn't get discussed enough. I'm glad someone brought this up. So there's my 2 cents, even if I rambled a bit and may not have presented everything coherently. I think we can go on and on about this too, but I think the bottom line is church and fellowship is what we make it.
Cory, I love what you said about the need to interact with other people besides those in our own social circle!
Last year I went to the women's Bible study on wednesday nights for the four or five months of the study, however long it was...and instead of sitting at the table with the girls my age, I decided to sit at the table where my mom's best friend was sitting. I ended up in a discussion group of women my mom's age for the next four months and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made! I gained so much perspective and wisdom from listening to what they had to say. Not to say that sitting at the other table would have been a bad experience. I just think it might not have been as rich.
You're absolutely right about needing diversity. And that is a very important reason for the church.
You know, during the Summer, I was pissed off at DFCC. I was NOT getting anything out of church. There was Sunday after Sunday when I went out of habit. I was fed up and I just wanted to leave. I told everybody that I was angry and I was ready to leave. Then I talked to Dave Smith.
I'm not gonna get into a lot of detail about our conversation, but he did tell me that Church isn't always about getting something out of it. That's where I want to disagree.
Since then, I've had a complete turn around. I've been on a spiritual journey trying to figure out why the heck I'm here.
The funny thing is that ever since that time, I have been getting a lot more out of church. Even though I don't always like the preaching.
I don't know if I helped any, but if you ever wanna talk, I'm here man.
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