Dig in Deep

In my previous post, I described true worship as submission, sacrifice, and obedience.

As a worship leader, this is problematic. What is the purpose of a modern-day “worship service” (or as we now call them at Faith, “worship gathering”), in light of these definitions?

First, though, I want to start with a clean slate. Many people treat a lot of elements of how we do “church” as sacred, untouchable, and unchangeable. Sunday morning services. Bulletins. Singing songs. Taking an offering. Having an offertory. Choirs. Having a sermon. Using a pulpit. Having a response song. Et cetera.

But I believe that there are only a handful of things that are sacred, in terms of what rituals and activities we choose to use in worship. In fact, there are only three rituals – baptism, washing feet, and communion. These are rituals that Jesus directly participated in, but even more important, commanded his disciples to continue to do. Worship activities that could be considered sacred would include reading scripture, singing songs, prayers, and sharing messages from God, all having solid Biblical examples and foundations for their use.

Nothing else is sacred. Other things we treat as sacred might just be baggage we need to get rid of.

Once we have embraced this truth, it’s easy to not be tied down, on any level, to church tradition, personal preferences, or cultural norms regarding worship. If we are challenged on a particular item (that is not listed above), we only have to remind ourselves, as well as those challenging us, that those things are not sacred and are just based on someone’s personal preference. We shouldn’t forsake anything just because it is someone’s personal preference, but neither should we feel an obligation to hold onto something that has outlived its usefulness simply because someone prefers that we keep it.

I’ll give an example outside of worship, one that I’ve been thinking about for a while. I personally feel that Sunday school is a product of an older time, and has outlived its usefulness. It should be completely rethought, and probably abandoned. The mere mention of that might draw gasps from some, but the reality is that Sunday school was only first developed in the 1800’s, but almost exclusively for children, and was used extensively in the 1900’s as an outreach tool as it was expanded into adult ministry as well. But the success of Sunday school has waned, as society has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades and the church has failed to adapt.

The question I would ask is: what purpose does Sunday school serve? Are there a better times and places to serve that purpose? Are there more important things we could be doing with that time slot? What would be the positive and negative effects of dropping the Sunday school program? The thought that “some of the old people would get upset that we’re not doing a Sunday school program” doesn’t count as a negative effect. Someone being upset over the loss of a program should not be a reason to keep it.

If we moved the idea of a Sunday school program to a different time, it might be more effective, and we might have more impact in other arenas. For instance, not having Sunday school would allow volunteers to focus more energy on the 11:00 hour – which would mean better nursery care, better children’s church programs, etc.

I’m primarily using this example because I think we should constantly be evaluating everything we do in such a light. Is Sunday morning the right time to have weekly worship gatherings? Is singing songs something we need to do to be effective? Are there better ways to raise funds than taking an offering during worship gatherings? But most importantly, can we objectively evaluate these things, from a perspective of being effective in reaching our community, without feeling rejected when we talk about the usefulness of a program or worship element that we’re fond of?

I hope we can. Keep in mind that when I make a specific proposal, I truly believe that there is very little that is sacred. You don’t really mess with baptism, communion, foot washing, etc., but everything else is fair game. And nothing I propose is sacred, either. They are just things I think we need to do to be more effective to reach our community at this time. And those things will change, and anything we introduce now will eventually need to be tweaked (or possibly even abandoned). I hope we have the courage to do that now, and I also hope our successors will have the courage to do that in the future.

So where do we start? I believe we start with discussing the purpose of a weekly worship gathering. What is the goal? Why do we put energy into it? If we don’t know the answers to those questions, we can’t evaluate elements and determine how effectively they help us reach the goal.

Stay tuned.