Last week my old friend Bonnie commented on my post about worship. While she herself didn't go quite this far, the objections and issues she raises are ones that I hear all the time: why do I need church or "organized religion" to worship God? Can't I do that anywhere? In fact, I often do meet God better elsewhere (in nature, for example). I get these questions most often from post-churched people--folks who have spent some time in church, most often growing up, but have stopped attending for a variety of reasons.
What I want to do in the next couple of days is lay out my argument for why I think the gathering together of people in intentional community (i.e. "organized religion") is essential. I'll be talking first to those post-churched among you, hoping that you might find these reasons at least worth considering, and secondly to the churched ones as well, because most of us have no clue why we we're there on Sunday mornings.
And since most of you, whether you're post-churched or currently churched, know what the Bible has to say about the issue (that you should go to church, dangit, see Hebrews 10:25), I'll press beyond the "because the Bible says so" argument and lay out why I think the Bible says so.
Everyone worships something. To be alive is to find something or some combination of things supremely valuable and worthy of your affection and life-orientation: the American dream, money, success, your own reflection in the mirror, family, good health, sex, nature, escapism, whatever. John Calvin said that our hearts are idol factories, and that is because to be alive is to worship.
We do not choose to worship (that happens apart from our choosing) but we do route our worship. Our hearts and minds are worship-routers. There is a current of worship that flows through our souls and it will be aimed at something.
The Christian story is ultimately about routing all that worship that's flowing 24/7 out of all the billions of people's lives on this planet around the Father, Son, Holy Spirit God. That's the work of the Holy Spirit in conjunction with His people.
The problem is that even for the Christian, our worship is at best mixed. We find ourselves all the time straying from the worship of God to the worship of all these other things. The word for this is syncretism, that is, the mixing of our worship of God alongside other gods that vie for our worship.
And so the weekly corporate worship gathering is all about the re-routing our worship. Each week we come together and as a community confess that our worship has been mis-directed. Each week we gather together to worship the True God and to have our false worship exposed. We gather to repent of false worship and to be called to true worship of the God Who Comes to Get Us. The entire service, not just the singing, is a worship service. In our singing as well as our receiving of the teaching as well as our giving our our moneys as well as in the experience of community together--in all of this, worship is being re-routed, pruned, cleansed, re-directed to the One Place where our deepest worship longings meets the only Resource large enough to fill us.
To be sure, gathering together in weekly corporate worship does not guarantee that syncretism will no longer happen. Some churches and communities do this worship re-directing work more faithfully than others. But without this weekly work, you are almost assuredly guaranteed to be worshipping at many of the wrong places.
3 comments:
Hey Alex ! I'm so excited ! I have been checking back every day to see if you've posted anything yet and this morning I checked and you HAD !!
Let me first say that I agree with you that the gathering together of people in intentional community is essential. I had a look at Hebrews 10:25 which says "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another - and all the more as you see the Day approaching." Great verse, but I cross referenced it with two other verses. The first one being Hebrews 3:13 which says " But encourage one another DAILY, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." And the second being Acts 2:42 - 47 which says "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. EVERY DAY they continuted to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."
So I wonder, when did we ( the church ) decide that we should meet once a week ? And why ? If, as you say, our weekly corporate worship gathering is all about the re-routing of our worship, would it not be more effective to do that daily ?
My concern is that people come to church once a week ... 're-route' their worship and then that is it for another week. I've never heard the word syncretism beore but based on your defenition, I think that this weekly re-routing ( if there is no individual worship or response to God outside of church ) could possibly contribute to syncretism. I think if we do not know how to worship outside of the corporate setting, and the corporate setting only happens once a week then we will, no doubt, worship other 'gods'. Like you said, we do not chose to worship ... it just happens.
Excellent thoughts, Bonnie! I would most certainly agree that any church that is not making disciples who are living out lives of worship beyond the church experience each week is clearly not doing it's job! In my context I think about my students and summers or life after graduation: if my students leave the IV fellowship and completely disintegrate spiritually, then all we've done is create people who are co-dependent on a specific community to maintain a healthy and vital spirituality. But if we've equipped students to leave the community and continue to thrive--including and especially finding another community in which they can continue to serve and undergo that continual 're-routing' process--then we've done our job.
Hey Bonnie,
Hope you (and Alex) don't mind me popping up now and then with grumpy responses. But I wanted to give at least my take on your question:
So I wonder, when did we ( the church ) decide that we should meet once a week ? And why ? If, as you say, our weekly corporate worship gathering is all about the re-routing of our worship, would it not be more effective to do that daily ?
The historical answer to this I think is that the once a week thing began in the context of the people of God built around the story of creation. In Genesis, God sets aside the seventh day as sacred, and we are to use it as such. The early Christians made a practice of meeting on the first day of the week (their "Monday" in a sense) because it was the day of Christ's resurrection (and, by implication, the first day of God's new creation). So this tradition was started during the time of the Apostles.
As far as why weekly and not daily, I can't help but think of a theme from the Incredibles - saying that everyone is special is the same as saying that no one is. Why celebrate Christmas? We could do it all year. But the simple fact is that that doesn't work - and we wouldn't want it to. God made a world with its changing seasons and our creation story is one of a seven day week.
What I'm saying is that setting aside one day a week as special helps us reorient ourselves in a way that saying "every day is special" would not. The celebration of Christmas really does help me enter into the mystery of the incarnation in a way that saying "just think about it all the time" does not. Setting aside specific individuals to be called for leadership in churches helps me to aspire to godly leadership in my home in a way that being in a community where "everyone is a leader" would not. Does that make sense?
Post a Comment