Choosing The Good Portion

The church needs to get deep in the Word and that happens when individuals get alone with the Word of God.

The church should be a bunch of people who spent time on that mountaintop alone with God and then we gather together to talk about it...

- Francis Chan

What is more crucial than sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning from Him and learning of Him? Check out this video from Francis Chan where he references Mary and Martha from Luke 10:38-42...

I love what he says around the four minute mark about the entire church getting into the Word so they could talk about it when they get together instead of being starved all week and needing to hear a word from just one guy.

I can see it being easy for some people to hear this and think Chan is talking about a bunch of Christians reading the Bible in isolation but I think that is the complete opposite of what he is talking about. What he is talking about is the entire local body being engaged in the study of the Word and then taking that shared engagement and reflecting on it as the Body of Christ. That is what I am talking about when I talk about a community hermeneutic. Instead of one or a few "experts" telling a largely disengaged group of observers what to think about a passage, the people of God open the Word of God together and work through it together. That is hard for people like me who have a tough time listening to others because we are really waiting for our turn to talk but it is so important. You can tell people what to think over and over and they usually won't ever get it deep into their being but if you teach them to think the power can be overwhelming. I don't think heresy is enabled when the Body works through Scripture together, I think it is far more likely when the Body doesn't know how to think, how to interpret and apply, how to discern and are easily led astray by one guy with screwy ideas because no one knows the difference between truth and error.

This is also where elders come into play, not by telling people what to think, but rather by being proven as reliable and mature brothers who can act as guides for others, helping to keep them on the path without telling them what to think. It is a lot easier to just tell people what to think but elders should be in the equipping business, not the lecturing business. Certainly if someone is teaching contrary to Scripture and refuses correction, the elders should step in but generally they should be helping people to study and learn rather than being subcontracted to do the studying and learning for the rest of the church.

Good stuff from Chan. 

That is not what the word participate means

I like to watch trends in social media to see what people are talking about. For example, some relatively recent trends have focused on the need for "membership" as a response to the mass exodus of religious attenders and also the backlash against the "radical" movement that purports to call religious folks out of their general apathetic position by extolling the virtues of just being run of the mill church attenders.

I have started to see appeals from church status quo defenders on the idea of participating. Now when they talk about "participation" it is not what you might expect. We aren't talking about meaningful, 1 Corinthians 14:26 sense. No, we are talking about "participation by being passive". For example, Tim Challies linked to an article by Joe Thorn, Making the Most of Sunday. Right out of the gate we have on display the Sunday-service-centric view where all week is apparently nothing but time to prep for Sunday morning and make some dough so you can drop a check in the plate. Joe breaks down how a good churchgoer can maximize their religious experience on Sunday by preparing, participating and reflecting. It boils down to "Get ready for a sermon, listen to the sermon, think about the sermon afterward". What is really exposed is the emphasis on "participation" while maintaining control and the focus on the clergy. For Joe "participation" means: showing up early so you are ready, listen eagerly and attentively to the sermon, sing the songs you are instructed to sing when you are told to and do so enthusiastically, pray along when the pastor is praying, be sure to focus on God while actually focusing on the various scheduled events occurring in the church and then leave.

What is notable about this list of how to participate is that you really aren't participating at all. While you might be considered to be "participating" in some of what Joe lists if done occasionally, if that is all you do when the church gathers you are being passive, not participatory, and those two are really mutually exclusive. I don't think that a gathering being participatory is the only factor or a cure-all for what ails the church. Participating in bad theology is just as bad as being passive, or perhaps even worse. But if we are going to make noise about participating and then describe something that is the complete opposite, something is wrong.

We don't know exactly what the meetings looked like in the early church. I don't even like calling them meetings because it sounds so formal, like something on my Outlook calendar. I prefer gatherings but regardless I believe that the Scriptures are intentionally vague on this point, giving us guiding principles without providing legalism-prone lists of "dos" and "don'ts". We do see some important principles and hints and one thing that they point to is that the brethren were tangibly involved when the church gathered. To summarize it was "one anothering", not "one and all the others". Participatory church can become an idol like anything else and it can also become a shtick to make money and gather influence for yourself but those potential errors shouldn't dissuade us from seeking ways to give the brethren the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to edifying and encouraging one another when the church is gathered. I don't think we have to do away with monologue teaching but I do think we need to a) place less emphasis on it and b) create ways for the church to engage in the teaching by allowing and encouraging many brothers to teach and the entire church to interact with what is being taught. A passive, spectator church is fertile ground for errors and cultists. To show that we really care about orthodoxy we need to encourage more of the brethren to teach and engage the Scriptures in the hermeneutical community.

If we are going to talk about participation, and we should, we ought to actually discuss ways for the church to participate, not just be more enthusiastic about being passive.

One/Few Voices Versus A Multiplicity Of Voices

Josh Gelatt is at it again, this time with a post Multiple Voices: The Bible's Guide to Organizing a Church Service. Josh is full-time pastor of a pretty decent sized church in West Liberty, Ohio, a fellowship my family and I were blessed to visit when Josh was installed as their pastor, but what he writes really resonates with me. Here is a snippet.
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Now compare this picture with our modern church services. One guy gives announcements. Maybe someone performs special music. Perhaps another prays over the offering. In some cases, another to read Scripture. Finally, the pastor ascends to the pulpit and delivers a sermon.

Don't misunderstand. If all of that is done to honor the Lord, I just described a faithful, God-honoring church service. But I do wonder if we are missing out on much of the vitality, connection, fellowship, and power that the New Testament churches experienced. Remember the first church that was birthed in Jerusalem? The believers there gathered to hear God's Word, share a meal, worship, and engage in prayers (Acts 2:42). Plural. Multiple people praying. Can you imagine how powerful that would have been?

I think one of the reasons modern believers don't feel a sense of connection and fellowship with their local churches is because we've taught them to be passive. Their job is to come, sing, put money in the plate, and maybe take some notes. Once the service is over, they get up and go about their day. No wonder people don't feel connected! They are not involved! I strongly believe we can only reclaim the sense of fellowship and ownership of ministry experienced by New Testament believers once we do church like New Testament believers.

The "Show up, shut up and pay up" model!

I might quibble with a point or two but you should read the entire post. The church service as we understand it is designed to keep people passive, whether intentionally or not. It is really easy to go to a mid-sized evangelical church with a couple hundred people who regularly attend, put on your Sunday best and your Sunday smile, attend and observe in passivity and anonymity and then go home having not been edified and not edifying anyone else. Repeat this pattern Sunday after Sunday for decades and multiply it across most of the church and you have the perfect recipe for an unhealthy, Biblically illiterate and completely passive Bride of Christ. When the brethren are engaged and involved, when the Holy Spirit is active and the Scriptures are honored and followed, you are far more likely to have a vibrant, healthy community. That is no surprise as that is exactly what we see modeled and commanded in Scripture in contrast to a ritualistic, passive gathering where only a few voices are heard.

A lot of pastors won't publicly ponder this stuff so I am glad to see Josh raising these issues but he better be careful. When you take the red pill you don't realize how far down the rabbit hole you might find yourself (how is that for mixing my metaphors?). Come to think of it, Josh does look a little like Keanu Reeves....

Serving by observing?

I was thinking more about my recent post, Not the center of attention, and how different a gathering of the church is when the sermon is not the focal point of the meeting. In thinking about this, I returned back to that old staple, 1 Corinthians 14. Why that chapter? In spite of all of the talk about being Bible-believing churches and the Regulative Principle of Worship, the Bible doesn’t provide a ton of “does” and “don’ts” for the church meeting but 1 Corinthians 14 is perhaps the most extensive and clear passage in Scripture regarding both how the early church met and how the church should meet.

The clear implication of 1 Corinthians 14 is that when the church comes together, all of the brothers are expected and welcome to participate. They certainly should do so in an orderly manner, not in a chaotic way, but Paul is not writing to silence the brothers. In other words when Paul says “all things should be done decently and in order”, that doesn’t mean sit down, shut up and listen to the preacher. He certainly seems to be saying that all of the brothers can and should participate in the meeting and he is not only OK with that but he is affirming of it in places like verse 26:

What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. (1 Cor 14:26)

Compare this to a recent post from 9 Marks regarding the ways that “ordinary church members” can contribute to the Sunday morning meeting, How Members Can Serve the Church on Sunday Morning. Here is the list:

Before the Service

•Read the passage in advance
•Pray for the gathering
•Greet newcomers (act like you are the host)
•Think strategically about who you should sit with
•Arrive Early

During the Service

•Sing with gusto (even if you can’t sing)
•Help with logistics (if there’s a problem, help fix it)
•Don’t be distracted
•Listen carefully
•Be aware of your facial expressions (you may affect others and discourage preachers)

After the Service

•Connect newcomers with others
•Get newcomers information
•Start a conversation about the sermon
•Ask someone how they became a Christian
•Stay late


I think it is interesting that the post is titled: How Members Can Serve the Church on Sunday Morning. How exactly are “ordinary” members serving? Serving by observing? Look at the whole list but the sum total is that “ordinary” Christians should plan on showing up early to the appointed meeting, being friendly and smiley, singing loudly (but only when given permission and told which song to sing by the “worship leader”), being prepared to listen to the sermon and paying rapt attention during said sermon and then sticking around to socialize for a few minutes after the service, perhaps getting contact information from a visitor so one of the leaders can visit them and chatting about the sermon you just listened to.

So prepare for the sermon, sing in preparation of the sermon, listen closely to the sermon and talk about the sermon afterward. When Paul described the early church meeting, none of what is being described here is present. Just the opposite. If Paul were making this list he would include things like: come prepared to edify as well as be edified, be prepared to share some spiritual gift, make sure to take your turn but be sure to take your turn, expect to be an active part of the gathering. Not to worry about where you are sitting and if it is "strategic"!

If all you are expected to do to be an active member of the local church is what you see above, how are you growing in maturity and being equipped for the work of ministry? I think the issue is three-fold.

First, the church is clearly sermon centered and that is unhealthy. Having a time of teaching is great but if it occurs in the way we normally see it, we have one guy (typically the same guy) teaching week after week, people are not being edified and most Christians are not serving. I spoke last weekend and I won’t be the speaker again this year. I will still be permitted and expected to share each meeting and I will be leading some Sunday school discussions but someone else will do the final teaching of the morning. That prevents the Sunday morning gathering from turning into American Idol with the most “talented” speaker doing all of the speaking. Some of the men who teach each week are less polished than others but that isn’t really the point, is it? It is the difference between a performance based ministry and an edification based ministry and the difference is enormous.

Second, there are just too many people packed into church buildings on Sunday morning for the church to really serve one another. If you have 100, 200 or more people all sitting together in a “sanctuary” in rows of pews facing the front, how are they going to participate and be involved? 1 Coronthians 14 doesn’t really work in a church gathering of 150 adults. That doesn’t mean we should discard 1 Corinthians 14 as impractical! It does mean that we should revisit how we gather as the church and ask the hard questions about the “bigger is better” mentality that infects the church and leads to megachurches and remote/satellite “campuses” that quash any semblance of participation and make a mockery of Biblical fellowship. When our practices clash with the Bible, it is our practices that need to change, not the Word of God.

Third, “ordinary” church members are not expected or permitted to speak on an average Sunday morning. Maybe during Sunday school to ask questions of the teacher but the main meeting time is restricted to a very limited few. It would not be unusual for an adult male to come to church every Sunday for a year (or years!) and never be involved in the main “worship service” outside of singing on cue, bowing his head when told and listening to the sermon without checking email on his smart phone. That is the expected norm and because of that no one is prepared, willing or expecting to do much more than attend and observe. We bemoan the theological ignorance of the church but we keep trying to do more of the same and expect different results. Instead of preparing to meet with the church by thinking about what God has been teaching you the prior week, we prepare for church by getting on a suit and making plans for lunch.

Paul describes the church gathering in 1 Corinthians 14 as a meeting where all the brothers are participating, where each has something tangible to bring, where we edify one another and not through the “one and all the others” tradition. The participatory model from Scripture is not how the church typically meets now and it hasn’t done so for over 1000 years except in rare divergences, divergences that often were met with persecution.

When the church gathers, it should be for the edification and building up of the entire Body and that means that the entire Body has to be involved in more than just being on time, smiling and paying attention. Observing is not serving.

In praise of being unprepared

Sermon preparation and to a lesser extent Sunday school preparation are hallmarks of a faithful ministry in evangelicalism. Not many people are going to fault brothers for spending too much time preparing a sermon or a lesson. There is also no doubt that things tend to run more smoothly and be more pleasing to the ear when they are prepared. Who is not pleased when a sermon is neatly laid out with an intro, three main points, a conclusion to wrap it all together (on time of course!) with a sprinkling of clever anecdotes and “Amen!” lines?

May I suggest that being “unprepared” in the sense of not coming with a preconceived sermon/talk/lesson can be valuable as well?

I have found that an unscripted, unprepared meeting where brothers open the Word, comment on Scripture, request songs that are not picked out and practiced ahead of time and pray spontaneously brings out the best in others and in me. It takes some getting used to. The silence can be deafening at times to ears that are you used to the constant hum of something always going on “in church”. Sometimes you are going to get a clumsy talk or someone may get up and then lose their train of thought. It may end early or it may go longer (almost always longer in my experience).

Where is the room for the Spirit in a highly planned out meeting? When everything is planned out based on a minute by minute schedule, the presence of the Spirit is relegated to a feeling instead of a leading. In far too many cases we are either full of what we perceive as the Spirit and utterly lacking in the Word, or we are steeped in the Word and the Spirit is locked away. It doesn’t have to be this way, it should not be this way.

I don’t think that many ministers outside of a few kooks on the fringe of the “Truly Reformed” extreme would disagree that there needs to be some sort of participatory component in the gathering of the church. The reality of it is somewhat different because typically there is little opportunity for the average Christian man to be involved with the gathering of the church because those gatherings are tightly compressed time-wise and subsequently rigidly scheduled.

One of the greatest preachers in the church was the English Baptist Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon is known for his lack of “sermon preparation”, famously not even starting to prepare until Saturday night for a Sunday morning sermon and not preparing his Sunday evening sermon until Sunday afternoon. That seems incomprehensible in the church when it is not uncommon for men to spend 10, 20 or more hours a week in deep study and preparation of their sermons. So how could Spurgeon pull off sermon after sermon with such minimal preparation? Well he was of course a rare intellect and had an amazing gift with words. It may be that he was more concerned about who he was preaching about than how he sounded to the audience. More importantly though he was deeply immersed in the Word. The Word seems to have come naturally to him because he spent a lot of time in it. Well, you may say, not everyone is Charles Spurgeon. I would agree that he was an extremely gifted man. That doesn’t mean that other men in the church can replicate what Spurgeon did by spending half of their week in their studies. It does mean that we need to spend more of our time in prayer and in the Word.

I think there is a place for a planned, prepared talk in the church. I appreciate systematic Bible studies and expository sermons. But if that is all we have, if the church gathers and 99% of the Body has no voice, how can they truly be a part of “worship”? The Holy Spirit isn’t obligated to abide by our schedule. God is a God of order but God is also a God of Spirit. An orderly service without the Spirit, if I may be so bold, is not a Christian worship service at all. A worship service where we watch is not a worship service because it gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling. Worship cannot be something I watch someone else doing, can it?

There is so much that the Body of Christ has to offer but it rarely gets a chance. So much power, so much service, so much love and so often wasted. Little wonder that a small segment of the Body is wounded and weary and the rest of the Body is atrophied and lazy. Participatory meetings are neither an anachronism that “doesn’t work” today nor a sign of new fangled emergent practices. It is an ancient path that has command and example in the Scripture and that is more than we can say about an awful lot of what passes as “Christian worship” in even the most conservative evangelical churches.

Preacher, take a chance. Let the Body worship as the Body. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Prepared sermon or a participatory meeting?

A post at The Assembling of the Church, Sermon Central, got me thinking about sermons, sermon preparation and participation.

In recent years, I have made something of an idol of the sermon. The longer, the better. The more prep time, the better. Of course the more Reformed, the better. A twenty minute sermon was mailing it in, 45 minutes was adequate and an hour was better. I often stated quite confidently that the entire gathering should be prepping for the sermon. The most qualified man should give the sermon and everyone else should listen. I have long been a fan of expositional preaching. Open the Bible and preach the Bible from the Bible. I still think this is a great way to get into the Word. What I am wondering though is two-fold: should that be the focal point of the local assembly? Should that be something that is a passive monologue, one man preaches every week and the rest sit silently?

This is a hard one for me. I know both from experience and from reading the New Testament that there is not much justification for a “one man show” style of teaching in the Bible. I always look for command and example, is there a command for something or is there an example of something? I don’t see either when it comes to monologue preaching to believers. To unbelievers, sure. But not to the church. Still, I like the predictability of it. You show up and you get a 40 minute sermon like clockwork every week. Nice and tidy. I absolutely am convinced that we need to get into the Bible a lot more than we do currently. At least with lengthy expository sermons people are getting the Word. I am less convinced that it is healthy and Biblical in spite of my own personal bias in favor of lengthy, in-depth expository monologue sermons. I have to wonder if it is healthy, healthy for one man to do all of the preaching and for the rest of the people to be passive observers. It is little wonder that so many Christians have become spiritually atrophied and so many pastors are burned out.

The other thing that I started thinking about was not just that the sermon is the focal part of the weekly service, but how much time and effort is invested into that sermon in the week leading up to the Sunday service. One of the most unquestionable features of the contemporary church is the professional, vocational paid pastor who spends a sizable chunk of their week in sermon preparation.

Ligon Duncan, in an article for 9 Marks, came to the number of eight hours per sermon in prep time being appropriate. If a “full-time” pastor preaches two unique sermons on Sunday, that would mean that adequate prep time is 16 hours per week. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was not and am not an eight hours of preparation per sermon kind of guy. I normally would read over the text several times during the week, jot down notes as they came to me and assemble the final product on Saturday night. I spent even less prep time on Sunday evening sermons, usually just a rough outline of the text. Oddly (or perhaps not) I think that the Sunday evening sermons were “better” than the Sunday morning sermons I spent more prep time on. I was working a full-time job when I was also a bi-vocational pastor, so I often jotted notes during the day and worked on ideas on my laptop at lunch. I often thought it would be wonderful to be like my “full-time” brothers who had so much more time available to prepare a sermon each week.

Again, at the risk of further alienating my fellow Reformed believers, is it the most appropriate use of funds to pay a pastor to spend 2 or more days a week sequestered in their office preparing for a 45 minute monologue sermon on Sunday morning? To be a pastor in many churches means having a seminary degree with classes on preaching, owning lots of commentaries, reading books on preaching, attending seminars on preaching. There is a ton of focus on sermons because sermons are the focus of the gathering of the church. It sounds great to the ears, a firm commitment to verse by verse expository preaching by a man with seminary training. I don’t think it is as faithful to the Scriptures unfortunately.

So what is the alternative? I fancy myself to be a pretty good teacher and one of the things I really strive to do is draw people into conversation when I teach. Make them think, encourage them to participate. The best Sunday school classes I have taught were the ones where I spoke the least, where my role was to draw people into the conversation. The least effective were the lectures where I did all of the talking. I liked the lessons where I spoke the most because the focus was on me, but I also know that people learned more when they participated more. In spite of that, I then turned around and gave a monologue sermon because that was just what I was supposed to do. Why? Just because that is what pastors do, they preach in the second half of the service. I daresay I am far more effective in teaching when I am leading a group that is all participating than standing up front and talking for 45 minutes.

Last Sunday, as we gathered for the Lord's Supper, we met in the room around the table of bread and wine as we do every week. No one has a liturgy or even a program. No one is leading. Every man in the room is welcome to share as he is led, whether in prayer, or requesting a hymn or opening up the Word. It is unscripted and open, just a room of redeemed sheep edifying, praying, uplifting one another. Sometimes there is silence for several minutes, quiet reflection and prayer. Gasp! It is uncomfortable for me, I want something to fill in the silence. I crave that order and predictability. Participatory meetings are not orderly in the sense we think of in the contemporary church structure. They are not disorderly per se, but when we think of “orderly” we are thinking programmed, scheduled, regimented, regulative, liturgical, “order of worship”. I think Paul’s concern was less that we had a bulletin to follow and more that meetings not be chaotic.

This is not to demean preaching. I love preaching, I love to listen to preaching and I love to preach! Preaching is eminently Biblical. Teaching is eminently Biblical. A monologue sermon preceded by days of preparation? Not so much. What is becoming clear to me is that often the brother who works a regular job, has no theological training and is just praying or opening the Word has far more meaningful things to say than the famous preacher who spends his week preparing for a sermon. Singing a song extemporaneously is more meaningful than singing a battery of songs selected beforehand or watching a choir performing on stage. Prayer from different men as they are led is often more meaningful than one guy praying on behalf of the rest of the room. We need to examine our church practices from Scripture and ask ourselves if they are truly fulfilling the spirit and letter of what we see in the Word or if they are merely manmade inventions designed to replace what Scripture commands and describes. As I try to do that, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of realizing that I have been wrong about the gathering of God’s people for a very long time.