Letterman Style for fans of late night…..

10. What would happen to the Homily professors?

9. We wouldn’t be able to pick on Joel Olsteen

8. Women could actually participate more when the Church meets

7. What the heck are we going to do with all the pulpits

6. The worship team would have to prepare longer

5. People will be upset because they would actually have to study their bibles instead of paying someone else to do it

4. People will be bored with an extra 45 min to an hour of Worship Service time (15 minutes if you go to Lakewood)

3. Heresy is inevitable if the sermon was removed

2. The Pastor will no longer be edified by his bible study and sermon prep

and the number one reason………

1. What in the world would we pay Senior Pastors for?

No, I am not asking are you in “church” this Sunday, I am asking are you doing what should be done when the church meets.

You see I have come to the conclusion that for the most part, I won’t get much out of a Sunday service from most churches. I have also come to the conclusion that neither will you, and most of us, will sit in a pew Sunday after Sunday becoming more and more atrophied until what is abnormal become normal and we go through the redundant weekly “service” and convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing. Now this may sound odd, but so would it to a man who has been convinced that he is paralyzed when he can slam dunk.

The Spurring

The purpose of the coming together for those who received, read and or heard the letter to the Hebrews was not for them sit and be passive consumers. It was for them to spur one another along. Lately there has been a good amount of writings on this subject, mostly through post but also a few publication. Some would argue that 1 Corinthians 14:26-32, was probably the most detailed look inside a regular church meeting, others believe this was only a descriptive peep that has no bearing on the church today. As you can tell I am of the former rather than the latter.  The biggest reason is that I am hard pressed to see what goes on today in church buildings having even a remote similarity to what went on in houses 2000 years ago.

Now you might say that was 2000 years ago and since that was an infant church, which had many struggles, that this is not to be the regular meeting of the church and what we have today is really what should be going on. I beg the differ for one big reason. It seems that the meeting, again at least from the writer of Hebrews, was to spur one another along and my friends, 1 Corinthians 14:26 looks much more like a spurring meeting than does our consumerist model today.

Consume, Consume, Consume

Here is another point. Our models today build consumers of gatherings and very little does it develop contributors. Here is what I mean. Today people argue about the “seeker sensitive” churches or even more recent “the consumer driven church”. This usually comes from the mouth of people who believe their preaching is more “biblical” than say Joel Olsteen’s preaching thus they are not consumer driven they are Christ Centered because they preach better sermons and have “biblical” membership. Hogwash my friends, hogwash. People go to Piper’s, Driscoll’s, Sproul’s and MacArthur’s church to consume! Yep I said it. They just go to consume a different type of product. While the product at Joel seems to be great worship music and encouraging messages, the product at the afore mentioned churches are good sermons, that make you fill tingly all over, sprinkled in with some greek usage, theological terms and clever wording. Again in neither church is there much of any spurring going on amongst the body, the stage and its occupants  in both instances are doing all of the spurring while those in the audience (especially in churches where sermons are cabled in) are passive consumers, ready to do it again next week!

Even if we look over the corriders of history we see quite easily this consumerism has always played a part and the person with the best product wins. From Llyod-Jones to Spurgeon, from Olsteen to Jimmy Baker (not putting the two in the same category), it doesn’t matter come, sit give your money so that we can entertain you again and if you give some special money we can even entertain you and your kids better, we will give them their own pastor   . And we start our children off with this consumer Christianity and they will only perpetuate the norm.

So What Do You Contribute???

So often the only time anyone else beside the paid professionals are allowed to contribute is doing money time. You have practically sat passively by consuming a product (rather good sermons, music or a combination of both) but now you are called forward to “worship God with you giving”. As if the other stuff you were doing was actually worship.

You see the one/two gift domination is not contributing to the growth and development. It is true that they may can do this much better, shoot they should they are paid for it, but to substitute the responsibilities of all members encouraging, building up, and spurring while the church meets for success in the short-run seems to undermine the Holy Spirit who has indwelled every believer in order that they may be responsible to helping others grow up into the Head! Here is what David Norrington says on the subject of the sermon:

Many church-goers enjoy sermons and may become connoisseurs of sermons wedded to one particular form. Others, through lengthy exposure and internalization of ecclesiastical dogma, accept the sermon as the only valid form. yet others enjoy the passivity and anonymity of merely listening and would find more active methods threatening……God’s people frequently misunderstand deliverance when it is offered and prefer the familiarity of bondage to the uncertainties of liberation; the emotional security of institutionalized immaturity to the rigours of responsible adulthood (To Preach or Not to Preach, pg 91)

You Were Really Called To Be A Priest So Function As One

Look, you are really a priest and much like all priest function in some capacity and contributed at some capacity so should you and I. We only have one high priest and his name doesn’t begin with pastor, reverend, doctor, nor any other title. His name is Jesus to Son of God. He is our one High Priest and now calls us to function together for the good of His Kingdom.

I know this may sound overly simplistic, or even outright heretical and I am ready to engage with both responses immediately upon posting this. But I think the reason people move from group to group is not because there is something particularly wrong with that group, it is the because that person consumption changes and when you are only use to consuming when you have eaten one field bare and the land is no longer stable to yield fruit people just go to the next one.

However, I believe if that person is in tune with the Spirit and has opportunities to contribute while simultaneously being edified this musical chairs church thing would become much less frequent.

Anyway I will end where I started. Will you be wasting time consuming this Sunday or will you have an opportunity to be a contributor/edifier? If the former ask your pastor can you contribute to the teaching this Sunday and if not why? If it is the latter how?

My sheep, my church, my people……. I hear this stuff all of the time and it makes me very uneasy, okay it actually chaps my hide!!

Here is the fundamental question. Whose sheep are they? We can easily answer that question two ways. First, how does the person speak of the group of Christians they have been called to serve? If it is in the possessive we know. Secondly we can see by how easily the person turns a group over to Jesus so that He may be the head of that group.

In the talk with church, pastors, membership, obedience and submission, it all boils down to the afore mentioned question. You see if we are part of one church, have one pastor, are members of one church and obedience and submission is to Jesus as Head and Lord of the Church, all of this other stuff becomes part of a mute conversation my friends.

Over the past two weeks I wrestled with all of this stuff even the Gospel. I wondered if all of this church stuff is important, does really carry any weight, ultimately does it effect the way I respond to Jesus and it does. We can see that loyalty to denominationalism often causes division with others who are accepted by Christ, we see how our loyalty to cult personalities are diminishing our own discernment and own willingness to approach the throne of Grace boldly, we can see how our loyalty to “our church” often causes us to overlook the needs of others often ignoring them because we have fulfilled our duty to “our church”. We can see how a small band of the educated has almost complete control over the mind of others to the fact that people seek their approval and cloak it in the language of being “submissive”.

So over the two weeks I have discovered that this church stuff is very important and I will continue to write about it and scream from the roof tops, though as humbly and loving and patient as I can. A bunch of 500 year old books from European men have become the norm for Christianity and though I greatly respect their contributions to Christianity I have come to the conclusion that they have totally missed the ball on what Church life is supposed to look like and how Christians are to interact. I think there was a group who were on the right path but were mostly snuffed out and have been misrepresented by the dominant voice. Did they miss some things? Sure they did, but they seem to be closer and more committed to the text of scripture not their own writings.

So whose sheep are you? I would hope you say Jesus and if you are a leader, whose sheep are you serving, I would hope you would say, they are not mine! The sheep belong to Jesus, He died for them, was raised for them, purchased them, secures them, intercedes for them, and is coming back for them. Leaders have to be preparing and equipping people to listen to and follow their Shepherd. They have to trust that the Great Shepherd has them and will not lose them and that they will not follow another.

Jesus is not a religion, He is a living person, the analogy is sheep and a shepherd, so whose sheep are you?

Alan Knox said this to a response:

There are only two options (the way we treat other Christians): 1) I treat someone as a brother or sister, or 2) I treat someone as if they are not a brother or sister. Unfortunately, denominationalism tends to teach a “middle ground” where we accept that someone is a child of God, but we don’t have to treat that person (or group) as a brother or sister.

I have went back and forth with Alan about this very question and it always hinges upon “truth”. So the question is this. Is truth a reason to checkout?

Alan gave me a really good response some time ago. He says there are only a few reasons in scripture that will allow us to separate from other Christians. 1. Gross negligible false doctrine, 2. Gross unrepentant sin, 3. A refusal to work.

Gross negligible false doctrine can ONLY be those things that redefine the Gospel. That would seem to be the rejection of anything in 1 Corinthians 15 and an attempt to bring Christians only some law for their justification/Salvation which would have to be real similar to Galatians 1. Other than that there is NO other doctrinal differences that would cause us to separate.

Gross unrepentant sin would have to look something like 1 Corinthians 5, where a man had begun to have a relationship with his dad’s wife. Even the pagans thought this was wrong. There may be some other things, but again it would have to be gross and unrepentant. But again this has nothing to do with doctrinal, even the nonbelievers felt this was wrong.

The failure to work has something to do with the false teaching of end times events. None of us believe this so it may not even be a problem worth dealing with in this post; however, the guys in Thessalonians felt that Jesus was coming soon and that they need not work anymore, even after Paul wrote them about this they continued to do it and so Paul tells them to separate from them so that they can know to work.

Now lets get reall honest here. We need to quite playing games. I hear “well I don’t have to go to church with them, but I can still love them”. HOGWASH!!! The reason you don’t want to meet with them is because you don’t want to love them and if you did want to love them you would meet with them. Here is a very practical example. How many of us, stopped meeting with a group of Christians and still stay in contact and serve those group of Christians? However, we will call them our brothers and sisters, we just don’t want to meet with them. This is phony bologna and we shouldn’t play pious games like that. Truth be told, we don’t want to be bothered because we disagree and so I am going to go and love a group of Christians who do agree with me.

Food for thought.