By this time in my blog, I’ve made it pretty clear that I started this not to bash, tear down, or negatively criticize Christianity and the Church. Granted, I’ve had my moments perhaps of being overly critical, but I assure you the reader it’s out of a heart that loves the Church like crazy. It’s on my mind every day. Thinking about ways to be more like Christ, ways the Church can love the world, ways to disciple each other and to live more in the gospel than just a few times a week. Keep that in mind during this post. I’m not here claiming to have the corner on the only way to be the Church, I’m simply throwing my ideas and reasoning behind my ideas.
I’m going start off blunt and honest. I am bored to tears on Sunday mornings more times than not. I’ve been attending the Sunday service consistently for 20 years and rarely have I seen a church body do a Sunday service radically different then the normal. It’s boring, it’s drawn out, it’s static (the opposite of the God we serve), and it’s repetitive. I’m not trying to sound rude here, I’m just being honest about my view of it. The Sunday service is pretty much unchanged from Sunday to Sunday. Even “special” services hold to the same rigid format of a Sunday morning service.
Every week millions of people go to a building, sit in seats that face the front stage, listen to announcements, a couple worship songs, a reason why you should give the Church money, a sermon (usually around 3 points), a closing prayer and then a dismissal. This is how we do Sunday mornings (for the most part). Your local church might add or take away a few things, but this is the structure we participate in.
My question I’m asking myself is this: “Is this the only way?”. Now before I go further I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I’m not saying that the traditional way is bad, or evil, or wrong. I’m simply asking why can’t we be free to worship our living God in unique ways every Sunday? Why does it only seem like Church service counts if there is a sermon and worship songs? Why do we the Church feel almost trapped into doing Church the same way every Sunday?
In this post I want to focus on one aspect of the Church service in particular.
This thought I have been thinking through over the past few days. Specifically the sermon. I was in a Church service Sunday and the pastor was giving the sermon for the morning service. As I was listening my mind wandered (it does this all the time, the pastor is a great man, it was not because of him or his message) and I thought to myself “do we need to have a sermon preached for the Church meeting to be counted as an official church meeting?”. As I began to dive in to this I started thinking about other ways people can be taught the Word.
My point isn’t to say that preaching sermons or bad or we need to stop doing so. My point is to wake us up out of our trance! To be creative and imaginative in the way we preach the the Word of God. Sometimes practical examples are easier to communicate. Sometimes people need to practically experience what we are trying to teach them. Imagine this example with me.
I’ve heard many people preach/teach on the subject of community. What it looks like, how it works. The problem with this though, is that community must be experienced. It can not be just taught, community is not a concept, it’s a tangible expression of the Kingdom of God. Could you imagine if you walked in to your church building and instead of pews or chairs there were tables set up. Long ones, and every table was full of breakfast food. Bagels, eggs, coffee, the works! Then your pastor got up to the mic and addressed the congregation and said something like this; ” Today we worship God by celebrating His Son dying for us so we can live forever. As we eat and celebrate this together talk about what He has been doing in your life.” Can you imagine this? Imagine the celebration? Imagine the conversations that people would engage talking about the Lord, what He is doing in their lives. I know this works because I’ve been a part of things like this. I’ve sat down with 20,30,40 believers around tables of food and talked about how good God is, what He is doing in our lives. They have been some of the best church services I’ve ever been a part of because I was a part of the church meeting, not just a passive spectator sitting down watching a performance.
I want to close by saying this. I’m not saying to replace what we do with things like this. I’m saying to add on to what we do with things like this. We can not be afraid to change our Sunday morning meetings up a little bit. It’s ok to get out of our buildings on a Sunday morning and to serve the community by living out the Gospel of Christ. It’s ok to teach congregations in a different way then giving them three take home points. It’s also ok to use those three points when the times call for them, but it’s not the only way to teach people about the Kingdom. Jesus spoke in parables, Jesus also healed people, Jesus also preached. Jesus taught in many ways, not just one static format. We as a church should live in this freedom, using our creativity to teach sound doctrine to people who are starving for it.
