A Call to Re-Examination

I feel I was set here on earth to describe church services, and there’s something intrinsically hilarious about them. Often I have almost died in church in the effort to keep from laughing out loud … What’s so funny? The gap between what we’re doing and what we’re trying to do. The relationship between the incongruity of who we are and who we’re trying to move with our prayers. It’s a sort of dancing bear act. -- Christian author Annie Dillard

We are … boringly predictable when it comes to church. No wonder the world doesn’t want what we have. I don’t want what we’ve got either. I am not dying for this! I want to die for something way better than what we’re currently experiencing. I’m enjoying my life with God, but I tell you, I could leave the church tomorrow. -- evangelist Graham Cooke

For churches in the United States (and perhaps elsewhere), the centerpiece of almost all their ministry activity is the weekly gathering of the congregation in the church building. Whether it is called a “Mass”, a “meeting”, a “service” or some other name, that event is the linchpin of the vast majority of the work of the church in this country. People are urged to come to the Sunday morning (or in the case of Adventists, Saturday morning) gathering more often, to come to extra events on nights or weekends, to bring friends or relatives. A great emphasis is placed on this weekly event, with the goal of building up the body of Christ, both in faith and in numbers.

And yet, after over twenty years as a Christian, after being a consistent, every-week attendee of seven different churches in five different denominations, I am no longer confident that the way Sunday (and other) services are performed is really how God wants us to do them.

Nor are these simply the frustrated spewings of a career pew-sitter. I have been involved heavily in every congregation I have been in, as a teacher (adults and children), preacher, worship leader, member of the worship team, or supervisor. My doctrine is in line with orthodox Christian teaching, with a strong lean toward Pentecostalism as befits my training in Assemblies of God coursework. I believe strongly in the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture, the virgin birth, atoning death and bodily resurrection of Jesus, and His eventual return in glory for His people. Tithing is a non-negotiable issue for me, my prayer life is active and fulfilling, and my wife and I spend regular times in Bible and devotional reading. And I believe that part of every Christian’s responsibility is to regularly meet with and encourage other believers in accordance with Hebrews 10:25.

I’m not arguing against any of those things – on the contrary, I support all of them. But it seems that the closer I draw to God and the more I fall in love with Jesus, the more I find church services to be actually counterproductive to my spiritual growth.

Think about an average evangelical or Pentecostal church’s Sunday morning service. (This is the type of congregational gathering with which I am most familiar, as well as the style usually considered to be “cutting-edge” in the American church.) Events start off with about a half-hour of music – first a few faster songs, then some slower ones. The point of the music is ostensibly to facilitate praise and worship of God; it’s even called “praise & worship.” And yet I have often found that to really give praise to God and treat him as worthy during a church meeting, the first thing I have to do is to “screen out” the music. Otherwise, I find myself paying attention to the songs – or if I have heard them many times before, reciting them without giving them any thought at all. Either way, I am not in a position to focus on God in order to give him worship or praise. My best choice in that situation is to pay no mind to the music, in order to give God my attention.

And sometimes even that is very difficult, as in many churches the music is being played at a volume that makes it almost impossible to ignore. This is usually defended by the musicians involved by invoking the Scriptural admonition to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” I agree with that verse, but I know of nowhere in the Bible where it says that the “joyful noise” should be deafening or painful. One personal problem I am having is that after several years in Pentecostal and evangelical churches, I have actually suffered some hearing damage from the level at which the music is played. I can’t imagine that God supports that; in fact, I could cite some Scriptures that would argue against it (3 John 2 coming immediately to mind). Suffice to say that I used to work five or six days a week at a truck scale, yet the loudest sounds I had to deal with on a regular basis were between 10:45 and 11:30 on Sunday mornings – and all when my hope was to set aside all distractions and focus on God!

(Nor is this solely a problem for more “modern” congregations. It is quite amazing the decibel levels a pipe organ can reach.)

Well, eventually the music ends, and some housekeeping is taken care of – a few announcements about upcoming events, then the ushers are called forward to begin taking the offering. Which seems all well and good … but what about Jesus’ admonition on the subject:

Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Matthew 6:1-4 (NIV)

If we are supposed to be giving in secret, why is there a public (non-secret) time of giving during the church service? Shouldn’t we be giving our tithes and offerings privately? My wife and I have done our best to follow what the above passage seems to say, to the point of paying our tithes to our local church in cash, anonymously, and when possible slipping them into the offering basket before the service begins. For us, it’s just a matter of trying to be obedient to God’s Word, and it seems strange to us that by and large the average Sunday church service does things in a manner that appears on the surface to be contrary to Scripture.

Once the offering has been taken, it’s time for the sermon. Let’s assume that the sermons at this typical church are of high quality, are well-delivered and promote the teachings of Scripture rather than someone’s personal tastes or political agenda. Much can be learned about the ways of God from a good sermon. But again, there is little chance for the person in the pew to interact with God, at least not without missing a portion of the sermon while he or she is doing so. (I speak from experience here; once again, I find myself having to ignore what is happening in the pulpit to talk to and listen to God.) There is usually no opportunity for questions of the preacher when something is confusing. And how much of what is taught is retained by the listeners when there is little or no chance to participate in the teaching? (Many educators say about 10%; my wife, a teacher’s aide herself, says that this percentage is wildly optimistic.)

Through all of these events runs another problem: so much activity is going on that there is almost no opportunity for people to interact with each other. You can’t do it during the music (since you can’t hear what people are saying, and vice-versa), and you can’t do it during the announcements or the sermon without being rude to the speaker. By the time a service is over, it is usually well after noon, people are hungry – especially those under the age of ten – and are often a bit tired from all that sitting and listening without participating. So unless a potluck is being held, after the service is often not a good time either. Some churches have resorted to setting aside a minute or two to let people greet each other (“passing the peace,” it was called during my Episcopalian upbringing; “the 90-second fire drill,” one of my more cynical Pentecostal pastors labeled it), but that hardly seems an adequate substitute for real interaction and life-sharing in the body of Christ. Considering that in Hebrews 10:25, the whole point of not “giv[ing] up meeting together” is to “encourage one another,” it seems to me that we are pushing aside something integral to the church’s reason for being.

The root question underlying all of these observations is: what is the church supposed to be about? I was taught that the point of the church was to draw into closer relationship with God first, then each other, and from that base to reach out with the love of Christ to the world. Yet the cornerstone event in the life of the average congregation during the average week leaves little room for relationship with God or other people. It’s so regimented that quite often God is given little chance to do anything extraordinary. No matter how much preachers say they want to see a move of God in their congregations, I see few who are willing to scrap their carefully made schedules to let Him create one. In my experience, evangelical and Pentecostal churches in the United States are as liturgical as those from Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian or even Roman Catholic traditions.

And without relationship with God or each other, what can we offer to the world that is any different from what they already have? How can we invite people to church with us to meet God (whom we don’t interact with during the meeting) and His people (whom we also don’t interact with during the meeting)? Maybe that’s why so many people don’t invite anyone – instinctively, they understand that attending these meetings is not something that will help the lost.

I can’t help but think that this is not what God intended.

This is not a condemnation of churches or church leadership; as someone who has both preached sermons and led the congregation in music, I see three fingers clearly pointing back at me. But I have been re-examining what I’ve done as an (occasional) church leader, and I find it wanting. As the congregation I used to attend sang the lyrics, “There must be more than this” (from the worship song “Consuming Fire”), I would find myself nodding. The mostly unchanging routine of a Sunday meeting can’t possibly be the best God has to offer His children. I don’t even attempt to speak for everyone, but I know I want more from Sunday morning than I get on my own on a Tuesday afternoon, praying while picking up my daughter from school. And instead I’m finding less. I can no longer support that status quo with a clear conscience -- not if God is offering something better, and we’re too busy doing the same ol’ same ol’ to receive it.

Bill James, who has written several books on baseball, had an interesting sociological insight on that sport that may also relate to the church. Talking about listening as a child to the announcers of his hometown ball team (the then-Kansas City Athletics), he stated that by the time he went off to college:

I had acquired the inevitable conviction that they had little idea of what they were talking about. I think, really, that this is one reason that so many intelligent people drift away from baseball at about that age: that if you care about it at all you have to realize, as soon as you acquire a taste for independent thought, that a great portion of the sport’s traditional knowledge is ridiculous hokum. When baseball’s explanations for things begin to look childish, the sport tends to get pushed back into childhood.

I have heard many times that a large percentage of young people who grew up in the church (the exact number varies from anecdote to anecdote) abandon their faith by the time they graduate from college. Usually this is referenced as part of a diatribe against anti-Christian, “secular humanist” education on college campuses. But what if there is another factor -- what if much of what goes on in the American church does not hold up to even a mild level of intelligent scrutiny? If we are training our children to perform tasks that give them no benefits, if our methods are actually counterproductive to our stated purposes of serving God and doing His will, we should not be surprised when the smartest of those students reject what they have been taught. And if they have been told repeatedly that the personal tastes and styles, the obvious refutations of Scripture, and the lack of relationship either “vertical” or “horizontal” that are demonstrated in their congregation’s weekly meetings are in fact “God’s best for us”, we shouldn’t be shocked if they reject God as well. No wonder James (not Bill James, but the epistle writer) said that “not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).

I could understand it if the style of the average evangelical or Pentecostal meeting was proven to be the most effective at reaching the lost and discipling the found. But it wasn’t particularly effective in 1987, when I gave my life over to Christ; it isn’t any more so now, and there’s no reason to think it will be twenty years from now. Too much of the world around us is only vaguely aware (if they are aware at all) that the church is doing anything, let alone anything that would be of benefit to them. And to be perfectly frank, too much of the church is in the same position.

What are we teaching people by the way we do church? I actually heard a preacher recently say (well, yell) from the pulpit that “nothing that happens outside that door matters” – referring to the back door of the church sanctuary. And yet Jesus taught, by His life and by His words, that everything that “happens outside that door” matters – and that often what goes on inside those doors is often the greatest obstacle to His will. He was far more free to minister, and seemed to be far more at home, out in the marketplace with the soldiers, tax-collectors and whores, than He was in the synagogues under the watchful eyes and accusing fingers of the congregational leaders. Like Annie Dillard, I can see “the gap between what we’re doing and what we’re trying to do”; unlike her, I’m not finding any humor in it.

With that in mind, is there any real reason to be locked into our current style of meeting? Is there any reason not to try something different, so long as it does not violate Scripture or trivialize the things of God? I know of none.

From my viewpoint, one of the things that must happen if the American church is to have any relevance to or impact upon the world at large is to completely rethink both the role and the structure of the weekly meeting. Instead of being the central event for the local congregation, I believe the meeting should be a “refueling station” for the members, who then go out to interact with the world and show them what God is all about. And instead of a strict liturgy that perpetuates little besides itself, what is needed is a setup that encourages the freedom of open relationship with each other and with God.

Jesus is the point – He is to be the reason we live and the reason we meet. Our mindset should be the same as that of Joseph Malula, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Congo) in the late 1970s. Before entering the conclave in Rome that would eventually elect Pope John Paul II, Malula told a reporter the following:

All the imperial paraphernalia, all that isolation of the pope, all that medieval remoteness and inheritance that make Europeans think that the church is only Western -- all the rightness makes them fail to understand that young countries like mine want something different. We want simplicity. We want Jesus Christ. All that, all that must change.

What the world needs – what we in the church need – is Jesus. And anything that does not draw attention to Him needs to be changed or removed. We have the choice – to continue the staid, inflexible, dying habit of our current church services, or open up the doors, toss out the systems of man, and let the wind of the Holy Spirit blow through unhindered. What will we do?

Ray Anselmo