Where and how do we worship

Grace In Bloom: Growing in the Grace and Knowledge of Jesus Christ: Free Church of Scotland Continuing

A very thought provoking post appeared on Bethany's blog as she and her husband are seeking out a new church. Bethany's husband is looking for, based on what I have read, a very traditional, formal, conservative Presbyterian church. Bethany has a somewhat different notion of how church should look. What to do?

Trying to find the perfect church is going to be eternally frustrating. I think that we are all spending too much time and effort on the mode of worship, where we meet, what order we worship in, what hymnal we are using. These divisions, ever parsing ourselves into smaller and smaller and more exclusive subsets is not healthy and frankly have no Biblical support except the support we try to force on them. As a family we are trying to find a middle ground. The church we went to the last few weeks is kind of programmatic, but there are lots of sincere believers meeting there and even another young woman covering her head. It is by no means an ideal church even though it is strongly Reformed and Baptistic. But believers are gathered there, we are worshipping and sitting under the proclamation of the Word of God. We are observing the Lord’s Supper and it is my desire that we build relationships with other believers in this setting and as a result spend more time with them outside of “church”.

On the other hand, the church is about worship and fellowship, but it is also about truth and about teaching (Acts 2:42) and about doctrine. There are some truths that are clear and that we cannot compromise on: justification by faith, the inerrancy of the Word, the Trinity. There are other truths that we can disagree with but that does not negate Christian fellowship. But when it comes to weekly worship in a formal setting, with preaching and teaching? There are several excellent paedo churches near us, but I simply am unable to submit to teaching that I think is wrong and un-Scriptural. I am going to a conference at one of those churches in a week and I expect to have a wonderful time of Christian fellowship and teaching when we are there. But would we worship there on a regular basis? Probably not, nor would they let me teach or preach there because I have issues with some substantive doctrinal issues that they hold. So from a practical standpoint, there are barriers to formal worshipping together even though I would welcome a paedo brother in my home or in other settings. Should we have barriers to fellowshipping with every other believer? Probably not. But realistically there are differences in doctrines that necessitate that we don’t worship as freely as we should. I am not saying it has Biblical mandate, but what else are we to do? Just ignore major doctrinal issues? In eternity, the Calvinist will lie down with the Arminian and the credobaptist will put his hand over the paedobaptist nest and not be stung. But this side of the new heavens and earth, that is not what is happening.

That may indicate that there is a problem with how we define worship and fellowship in the first place…