Peace, Love, & Understanding

Intro (with music): Peace, love, and understanding.

Steve Dehner: Welcome to Peace, Love and Understanding. I'm this episode's main person, Steve Dehner.

This is Part Three of Sunday Morning at the Movies. Recall that we are asking whether our Sunday morning rituals and services are a faithful rendering of the church gatherings that we find in the New Testament. In the last episode, we looked primarily at the set and location: the building we call a church, and the room that we call a sanctuary.

Now, what about the cast and the lead role?
What about the Sunday morning story?
What about the script that everyone is working from?

When we go back to the book, what we find about ecclesia gatherings might be for some of us a little too little to work with. But in fact, it is enough to throw our Sunday morning traditions into sharp contrast with the practice of the New Testament disciples. In the last episode, we set a different scene: a fairly small number of people meeting in a home for a shared meal. Now let's fill that out a bit.

An important passage is First Corinthians 14:26. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says, “How is it then, brothers? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.”

Now, let's remind ourselves: who is First Corinthians addressed to? “To the ecclesia of God, which is at Corinth,” chapter one, verse two. Everyone, all the Christians at Corinth. So here's a list, not exhaustive, of the things they did at their house gatherings:

One, the Lord's Supper.
Two, any of the people there might contribute a psalm, a song, a teaching, a message in an unknown tongue, an interpretation (that is, a translation) of that message, an insight, or a revelation, or a prophecy. In verse 29, Paul says that when the prophecies are shared, the others listening should judge it, that is, weigh in on whether they consider what was shared to be from the Spirit, or from the person speaking. Prophecies and revelations were evidently not to be considered infallible or above questioning. In other words, unlike many groups since then, they were keeping it real.

Again, this passage is remarkable for what it says, AND for what it doesn't say and is absent from the rest of the New Testament.
First, everyone may contribute.
Second, they were doing things like speaking in tongues, interpretation, and prophecy, that not only are not done in most churches today, but are actually forbidden. Now, I'm not charismatic or Pentecostal myself, but I think it bears pointing out. And in fairness, churches who do purport to practice tongues and prophecy, do so in ways that show a flat disregard of what Paul teaches in the same chapter on how and for what purpose they should be done in groups.

As for what is absent?
Well, one, there is no order of service. Regular elements? Yes, but it is not scripted. Our movie, if it were following the book, would have no script. It would be improvised. With guidelines, sure, but improvised. There would be spontaneity, and a real lack of predictability -- things that are not tolerated in the least in most churches.

Two, nobody is in charge. No one is the main person. No one's words are privileged over another's or over the whole group. The group provides the guardrails if somebody is veering off the road. Presumably the elders may guide, but the Holy Spirit leads.

Three, the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in the gatherings is the obvious focus of attention. Not a speaker, not specially-appointed singers or musicians, not a ritualized version of the Lord's Supper, not a sermon, not a stage or altar or cross or other artwork or article.

The simplicity is obvious. The equality of all before God is obvious. The shared participation among the members, unlike almost every church service ever, actually depicts the reality of Christ's body in which each member has value, and function, and is, in fact, indispensable. Also obvious is that neither select individuals, nor ritual, nor one single message, is at the center of attention -- the presence of God by his Holy Spirit is, and by having a gathering that is one of authentic community, the people gathered can make their prime concern that which Jesus and the apostles taught: loving one another, sharing kindness, compassion, and grace, and seeing to each other's needs.

This, my friends, is church.

(Musical bridge)

Now, if I was speaking to a typical audience of churchgoers right now, I suspect about 95% of them would be thinking thoughts to render what I have presented irrelevant to the contemporary practice and ecclesiology of the American church.
If it's not wrong, the church is free to do it. In fact, if the church decides to do it, doesn't that pretty much mean that it's right? After all, we are God's people. If we decide to do something, then it's probably okay.
Why should we follow the example of the first Christians?
It's not commanded to do it this way.
It's not appropriate to modern society.
We need big churches.
We want big churches, and they have to be organized for scale.
We are more sophisticated, and we need higher organization in order to do more.
We would not tolerate spiritual spontaneity or unpredictability we fear it, it makes us uncomfortable, things will get out of hand.
Many people would not want that level of familiarity, or intimacy and a gathering. They want the back row and a low profile.
Why would you just strip away almost 2000 years of traditions?
Why would you do that when most people are satisfied with what their churches do on Sunday morning?

Well, here we go.
Just because the church does something, it must be right. Historically, I think the most common justification for making all of the changes, and introducing all of the innovations to the church, was simply the fact that if the church is God's people, and the church is indwelt by His Spirit, then whatever the church decides to do is correct, and right, and from God. Now, this is a very problematic way of thinking. It can be shown, I think rather easily, that just because the church, a church, or the church, or the government of a church, decides to do something in a certain way, does not make it right. Besides the obvious things like waging war, and forcing conversions, and the church made war on, and imprisoned, and tortured, and killed, and otherwise persecuted people it perceived as enemies, including ethnic groups, Christian dissidents, members of non Christian religions, people who were simply not a part of the church, and other people that it considered enemies. There is also the major, major lesson that would be learned from the Hebrew Scriptures -- the history of Israel. It's very clear from the history of Israel that, while they were God's people, and they were governed and directed by God, they many, many, many, many times went very wide astray. And one of the most common ways that they went astray, was believing that they had a better idea than God, and they didn't have a better idea than God. They had a much, much worse idea than God. Well, the same is true for the church. That is the thing about God's people: They are not always right. And they're not always good. And they don't always do what they're told. And they don't always follow the best examples available.
It's not commanded. Agreed. Most of the things I've talked about in this series are described in Scripture not prescribed. But we should pay close attention, I think to what happened in their meetings, and be very honest with ourselves in asking if those things are happening in our gatherings, and if not, why.
It's not appropriate to modern society. Well, in fact, it is. We have not outgrown meeting in each other's homes. We have not evolved beyond sitting in a circle, or around a table, or in a living room, and eating together. We have not developed past the need and desire for loving community and friendship.
We need big churches. We actually don't need big churches or even medium sized ones. If we want to scale up our projects and our work on the behalf of people inside or outside the church, we can, as we already do, by using para-church groups to do that.
Ah, but you want big churches. You want a nice fancy building with comfortable seating, and mood lighting, and cutting edge audio and video. You want a celebrity pastor who writes best sellers, gets all the likes and follows, and appears in the mass media. You want to sit and watch in serene anonymity. You want to pay a professional staff to do all that, you know, churchy work. To that I say, while still reserving the right to come back at a later time and say more: Have fun with that. You get what you pay for. You'll always have donors who will pay for the nice seats. And when a church teaches its members, above all, to be a paying audience, a certain number will keep coming. As long as there's something to watch.
We are more sophisticated, and only a big church with a building and staff can do what we want to have done. But my point is, the ecclesia is God's thing, not yours. It's a community of people, not an organization or an operation. And after all, if we were doing more of what Christ told us to do, would our churches be bleeding out people like they are?
We can't stand spontaneity and unpredictability. You know, the Spirit of God -- who actually makes the church by inhabiting his people and uniting them into one body -- actually is spontaneous and unpredictable. He is untamed, and he is not your pet. Which I think is as good a reason as any to not invite him to our church services in any sincere way. How do we do that? Well, we get to write the script, right? And we've got all the lines, and it's all planned out. He might as well stay home.
People don't want community, familial or intimate relationships. Yes, they do. Our whole society is starved for it. And Christians who do not have that in their churches are also starved for it. Are there folks who are not? Yes, they have been hurt, and are protecting themselves. To move toward it to have to brave the dangers of being hurt some more. What they need, though, is a community that is safe for them. And they can take that risk because the community is safe. It embraces everyone. It catches people when they fall, listens with understanding and grace, is not harsh or judgmental, and doesn't shoot the wounded, but loves and cares for them.
Would I strip away 2,000 years of revered and beloved traditions? No, I wouldn't strip away anything. People are not tearing churches down and neither am I. They're just leaving. What are they looking for? Where will they go? I don't know. But what I am suggesting is a movie that's a little closer to the book.

Jesus made this beautiful thing he called his assembly, his body, his bride, his people, his priesthood, his house, his friends, and his brothers and sisters. And just like Victor Frankenstein, things have only gone wrong when we thought we had a better idea than God.

Outro (with music): Peace, love, and understanding. If you like the show, please tap the Follow button to subscribe. If you love the show, please consider supporting us at Patreon, and help keep the show ad-free. Learn more about yours truly on our Transistor page: Peace dash love dash understanding dot Transistor dot FM, and stevedehner.com