Are We Doing Church Wrong? - Part 1
What if we are doing church wrong?
The concept of a large Sunday morning worship service with an amazing speaker/preacher, fantastic, emotional music, and a passive audience is mostly a Western thing.
That’s how we roll here in the U.S. That’s what “church” means to us. I live in a small, East Texas town, and we have a church building on every corner it seems (sometimes two). In fact, we have over 80 church buildings just in our town.
On a simple run to the grocery store, about a mile away from my house, I pass at least three churches no matter which direction I go. My point is, we do church buildings really well. Our area isn’t pressed for space, and we take full advantage of that. Many of our churches resemble college campuses. We have buildings for worship service and fellowship halls. There are entire youth complexes, coffee shops, bookstores, classrooms, offices, and who knows what else. I can’t imagine the amount of money poured into these sites.
The church I attend is pretty small in comparison to the goliaths around town. Even so, we have a pretty nice multi-purpose building and a portable for our youth. We also have a good deal of land should we ever feel the need to expand.
For a long time, this picture is what I associated with “church.” It is a place you go to pray, worship, and fellowship with other believers. Sure, you need to “be Jesus’” to others out in the “world,” but come Sunday, you’d better be back in your building because that’s where the action is. That’s where people get saved or come so the preacher can give them the chance. It makes sense, with this line of thinking, that we would need such a focus on buildings.
Two encounters have been working to change my way of thinking, though. I’m going to just share the first with you today (don’t worry; I’ll share the second next time).
A month or so ago, I had a conversation with an acquaintance of mine. We’ll call her Sam. Sam was between churches and shared that she and her family were currently “church shopping.” They had left their former church because of some undisclosed dissatisfaction and were on the hunt for a place to be on Sunday morning that “fed” them. Then, Sam shared that she’d visited several church buildings that didn’t “fulfill” her and her family in one way or another. The preacher wasn’t intellectual enough for them in one. In another, the youth group wasn’t strong. Yet another didn’t have enough activities during the week. There were comments on the music and style of service peppered in with each of these. Some of the places she’d visited checked a box or two, but none had “fed” her spiritually as she felt she needed to be fed.
I confess to you that I had all kinds of judgement going on in my little brain as I listened to her. At least, I did until the Holy Spirit reminded me of something I was conveniently overlooking.
Friends, I have said some of these very things before. I have thought some of these misguided thoughts. Then and there, I was convicted of my own consumerist approach to “church.” Though I hadn’t felt or said those things in a while, I became acutely aware of the wrongness of my earlier thinking about church as an entity existing to serve me.
Although it is certainly nice to get something from going to a church service on Sunday morning, church isn’t about us or our needs.
Jesus gave us the great commission in Matthew 28:19-20. We are not commanded (as his followers) to sit and listen to really inspiring music and get “fed” by a good preacher. No, we are called to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
Furthermore, we know Jesus was not all about selfishness, and we aren’t supposed to be either. He washes his disciples' feet in John 13 (the epitome of servitude) and tells his disciples to do likewise. In Mark 10:44-45, Jesus tells them “whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many.”
It seems kind of petty now to think about some of my complaints about “church” over the years in light of this. Jesus served others relentlessly and drastically. What if we tried that? What if “going to church” isn’t about us? What if it is about serving others? What if we go to these buildings and participate in the service not for some feeling of absolution or spiritual euphoria, but so we can encourage others or learn to be obedient to God’s word and actually do the things he is teaching us? What if it is here that we learn of needs we can help with? What if we sacrifice our musical preference so another can hear and be called to follow Jesus? What if we become comfortable with a little physical discomfort so someone else might feel God’s spiritual comfort? What if we cared about the needs of others over our own? Then we might start looking a bit more like the real church Christ talks about.
Because here’s the thing: Church was never, ever, meant to be a building. The church Jesus talks about is people. Jesus’ followers are called the bride of Christ. In Ephesians 5, Paul says “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” Jesus certainly didn’t give his life for a building. He wasn’t concerned about cleaning up some metal and wood structure, even if it does have a pretty cool stage and light show. I don’t think he had in mind that new youth building or basketball court when he pictured his bride.
Buildings don’t matter. Obediently serving Jesus matters. Putting aside our selfish desires matters. Giving, rather than taking, matters.
James 1: 22 says we are not to “merely listen to the word, and so deceive [ourselves].” We are to “do what it says.” So, my question to you is, are you doing that?
If we are going to go to corporate worship services on Sunday mornings, are we going for the show, or are we going to equip ourselves to follow the great commission? Are you going to present yourself as a servant to Christ, or are you there to get an emotional boost for the week?
It seems to me that we can judge how effective we are ‘doing church’ by asking ourselves these two questions:
How good are you at obeying God’s word?
Whom are you discipling to obey God’s word?
If we don’t like the answers to these questions (I don’t), it could be that we are doing “church” wrong. I would say most of us need to improve in these areas, and then we can move from doing “church” to actually being the church.
For more, see Part 2.
