Thinking of giving up?
Those who find themselves in compromised churches might consider discarding the idea of going to a church altogether. In this Reformation21 article, David Wells has some good advice, if you find yourself thinking along those lines:
This last year, there was a brief media buzz leading up to Christmas over the fact that many megachurches cancelled Christmas day worship services. (What sense could a Martian have made of the fact that in America, many Christians, on the one hand, were arguing for the freedom at Christmas time to place religious symbols in public places while, on the other hand, other Christians in the megachurches were closing the doors of their churches, on Christmas day no less, closing the doors on the most visible religious symbols in our society?!) The reasons given for this were that Christmas day is family time, that it was unnecessary to worship on Christmas day because many would have been to pre-Christmas services and, further, that it would be unnecessary because people were being supplied with videos for that day.
Skipping church on Christmas day is not the unforgiveable sin. Let us be clear about that. Nevertheless, this magachurch disposition was symptomatic of an attitude. It spoke to the fact that many people were not going to allow the church to inconvenience them on this day. Their decision also said something about their understanding of family - as if we have to choose between "family time" and worship! I thought that, from a biblical perspective, worship is what FAMILIES did together and so it is central to "family time," not something which interferes with it! And this matter of videos tells us that we are now in great danger of privatizing our faith in its entirety. If this becomes a habit, all Christians will have to do each week is to visit a (Christian) video store some time in the week to pick up their sermon for that weekend and then, in the privacy of their home, viewing it when the time is convenient. The local church would then become entirely unnecessary!
This attitude which diminishes the significance of being in church and which will not tolerate any inconvenience has had a strange incarnation overseas, if I can use that word. American missiologists like Ralph Winter have been strenuously advocating "churchless Christianity" as a new and exciting strategy. Their thought is that believers in other religious contexts need not separate themselves from those contexts but can remain in them as private believers, thereby preserving themselves from any kind of harm.
This, of course, is easier to do in a Hindu context in which one is allowed to choose one's own god from among the many that are worshipped. Christians, quietly and privately, are simply choosing to worship Jesus and ignoring the other gods and goddesses in the temple. They are never baptized, never make a public declaration of their faith, and never become part of a church. This arrangement is, of course, much harder to carry off in Islam. Nevertheless, Winter and others now estimate that there are millions of these "churchless" believers concealed in other religions. And is this not where American evangelicalism is headed? In fact, there are already millions of believers concealed in their own living rooms whose only "church" experience is what is had from one of the television preachers. Is it really a coincidence, then, that it is American evangelicals who are energetically arguing for the wisdom of a comparable strategy in the mission field in respect to their religious contexts? I think not!
Here we have an unholy alliance between raw pragmatism, a Christianity without doctrinal shape, one that in fact separates between having Christ as savior and Christ as Lord (an option that the N.T. never holds out to us!), and a lost understanding of the necessary role which the local church should have.
If we would but read our Bibles from the beginning, we would notice that from the beginning there was always an inescapable corporate dimension to believing. There were never "private" believers in Israel, nor should there be today. The reason is that there are vital aspects of the Christian experience which simply cannot be had alone, disconnected from the people of God.
Those who find themselves in compromised churches might consider discarding the idea of going to a church altogether. In this Reformation21 article, David Wells has some good advice, if you find yourself thinking along those lines:
This last year, there was a brief media buzz leading up to Christmas over the fact that many megachurches cancelled Christmas day worship services. (What sense could a Martian have made of the fact that in America, many Christians, on the one hand, were arguing for the freedom at Christmas time to place religious symbols in public places while, on the other hand, other Christians in the megachurches were closing the doors of their churches, on Christmas day no less, closing the doors on the most visible religious symbols in our society?!) The reasons given for this were that Christmas day is family time, that it was unnecessary to worship on Christmas day because many would have been to pre-Christmas services and, further, that it would be unnecessary because people were being supplied with videos for that day.
Skipping church on Christmas day is not the unforgiveable sin. Let us be clear about that. Nevertheless, this magachurch disposition was symptomatic of an attitude. It spoke to the fact that many people were not going to allow the church to inconvenience them on this day. Their decision also said something about their understanding of family - as if we have to choose between "family time" and worship! I thought that, from a biblical perspective, worship is what FAMILIES did together and so it is central to "family time," not something which interferes with it! And this matter of videos tells us that we are now in great danger of privatizing our faith in its entirety. If this becomes a habit, all Christians will have to do each week is to visit a (Christian) video store some time in the week to pick up their sermon for that weekend and then, in the privacy of their home, viewing it when the time is convenient. The local church would then become entirely unnecessary!
This attitude which diminishes the significance of being in church and which will not tolerate any inconvenience has had a strange incarnation overseas, if I can use that word. American missiologists like Ralph Winter have been strenuously advocating "churchless Christianity" as a new and exciting strategy. Their thought is that believers in other religious contexts need not separate themselves from those contexts but can remain in them as private believers, thereby preserving themselves from any kind of harm.
This, of course, is easier to do in a Hindu context in which one is allowed to choose one's own god from among the many that are worshipped. Christians, quietly and privately, are simply choosing to worship Jesus and ignoring the other gods and goddesses in the temple. They are never baptized, never make a public declaration of their faith, and never become part of a church. This arrangement is, of course, much harder to carry off in Islam. Nevertheless, Winter and others now estimate that there are millions of these "churchless" believers concealed in other religions. And is this not where American evangelicalism is headed? In fact, there are already millions of believers concealed in their own living rooms whose only "church" experience is what is had from one of the television preachers. Is it really a coincidence, then, that it is American evangelicals who are energetically arguing for the wisdom of a comparable strategy in the mission field in respect to their religious contexts? I think not!
Here we have an unholy alliance between raw pragmatism, a Christianity without doctrinal shape, one that in fact separates between having Christ as savior and Christ as Lord (an option that the N.T. never holds out to us!), and a lost understanding of the necessary role which the local church should have.
If we would but read our Bibles from the beginning, we would notice that from the beginning there was always an inescapable corporate dimension to believing. There were never "private" believers in Israel, nor should there be today. The reason is that there are vital aspects of the Christian experience which simply cannot be had alone, disconnected from the people of God.
posted by Jim Burton at 8:14 AM
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