Earlier this week I got involved in a discussion on
Facebook. The discussion was started by an honest question asked by an
innovative church planter serving a very traditional part of the nation. The
question was whether he should hold his worship service on Sunday morning, or
some other day of the week.
While I want to be very careful not to be judgmental of
those who participated in the online discussion, it was obvious which ones were
“traditional” in their thinking and which ones were “evangelistic” in their thinking.
Though I would like to think that a person can be both, in that particular
discussion, there were no such examples.
It is not the point of this article to promote the best time
for a new church to hold a worship service. The point of this post is to
address how self-centered many of the responses in that particular conversation
were and how common that is in the Christian community. I have a growing
concern, both about my own spiritual walk with the Lord, and regarding the walk
of other Christian leaders I observe, who seem to think that our personal
preferences are the same as God’s preferences. Let me give some examples from
that specific discussion.
One person said they attended a church for a while that had
a Saturday night service, but for a variety of reasons, it was just not
convenient for them, therefore, it was better to have church on Sunday morning.
The reasons they listed for why a Saturday night service was not convenient
were exactly the same reasons people who do not attend church on Sunday morning
often give. So the argument had nothing to do with spirituality, but became a
discussion about what was convenient. The person wrongly concluded that what
was convenient for her was the also the best way for everyone else.
Another person felt empowered to speak for non-believers, saying
that they preferred a particular thing. However, in supporting the supposed
views of non-believers, he only offered his own preference as a committed believer.
I had a bit of trouble following his logic, but it almost seemed like he was
saying, “If non-believers want to come, they need to get with the program and
not expect us to make it easy for them.” That is extremely close to the
attitude of the Pharisees in the New Testament, and Jesus did not speak highly
of it.
Perhaps my favorite response was the older lady who tried to
appeal to the Bible to prove her personal preference. She listed several verses
that said the apostles worshipped on Sunday, and therefore we should too. I know
I probably should not have taken the bait, but I just could not resist chiming
into the conversation to remind her that the Bible says that the early
Christians worshipped EVERY DAY of the week and that Paul directly addressed
the issue of how some people held up one day as special, while others looked to
a different day as being special, and that the important thing was to hold
every day as holy unto the Lord. She never responded. Apparently only the
verses in the Bible that support her position are important and we can conveniently
forget the rest.
Though my readers may think I am promoting worship on
alternative days of the week, remember, that is not the point I want to make.
The point I want to make is how easy it is those of us who have grown up in a
traditional Christian environment to substitute their own preferences for
God’s. It is also easy for us to make selective use of a scripture or two in
the effort to prove our viewpoint is right without looking at the whole canon
of scripture. I believe this is why so many older established churches are
stymied in their growth. Without realizing it, they have fallen into a rut of
self-absorption and called it spirituality. Though they claim the Bible is the
basis for why they do what they do, in actuality, their actions have a lot more
to do with their personal preferences.
If we expect to reach America for Christ, we are going to
have to give up our personal preferences and stop assuming that our opinion is
God’s opinion. While our preferences may indeed work for us, they may not work
for others. Though we must hold firmly to scripture, we must read those
scriptures in context and apply them the way the Spirit wanted them applied,
and not through the lens of our own private interpretation. If lost people
think that Sunday morning at 11 AM is the time to meet God, then hold church at
that time. But since increasing numbers of lost people are not showing up at
that time, perhaps we should consider a different time. It may be inconvenient
for those of us who have built that into our weekly schedule, but whoever said
serving Jesus was supposed to be convenient?
Though this particular conversation may revolve around the
best time to hold a worship service, it applies to anything a church does. When
is the “best” time to hold small group Bible studies? What is the “best” way to
support missions? What is the role of deacons (or elders)? How should the
church budget be allocated? What kind of building should the church meet in? What
kind of music should we use in our church? What version of the Bible should we
preach from? The lists of questions go on and on. The answers are not always
easy to discover. But if we are to see America reached with the Gospel, our
answers must not be based on our personal preferences with a thinly veiled facade
of spirituality over it. These questions must be answered by a complete study
of God’s Word, with a commitment to leave our personal preferences out of the
conversation. If we can do that (and it will not be easy), we may find many
lost people responding to the Gospel because the Gospel itself is not the
problem. It has always been the solution. Our self-centeredness is the problem
and I think it is time we start admitting it.
You may enjoy this post on a similar subject, entitled,
Tradition Idolatry, which can be found at: http://thoughtsfromdrt.blogspot.com/2012/10/tradition-idolatry.html
