Had a conversation with a friend recently who visited a worship service that had a fog machine during worship...
Got us talking about the bells and whistles of church and how that compares to what church is really about.
Devotion, Community, Discipleship, Mission.
(As an aside, excellence in showmanship is not necessarily antithetical to Jesus, there are times when they coincide, and when they do we should be appropriately grateful, but we should choose to pursue Jesus!)
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Got me thinking...
What do you do when people show up at your church from another church in town?
Do you know them?
Do you know their story?
When you find out that they are leaving community to come and participate in your community because of the bells and whistles, what do you do?
(Lets say they are coming to your church because their past church was 'too big,' or 'too small,' or 'the worship was too white, or too black, or too old, or too new,' or perhaps 'you preach the Word,' or their Sunday School didn't have enough kids in it... you get the point.)
Why would you leave your friends to have good music?
The answer is either a deeply perverted view of God, or little to no love for those so called friends, or both...
Why would you allow someone to leave another community behind and start spending time with yours? It obviously isn't because you care about them and want them to grow into mature Christian people...
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I come from a church where people were encouraged to work it out with their previous church, not simply to plug into ours; so I guess I have a hard time understanding the inclusion of people into a community who have left another one...
Love to hear your thoughts...
2 comments:
I hang with a vineyard crowd because they....
aren't into legalism....
are into food pantries, soup kitchens, feeding the poor, the widows, the orphaned, visiting the sick, the imprisoned, the sorrowful; releasing the captives; praying for and with the homeless...
you know, that stuff that Jesus told us to do. That stuff that God told the Old Testament Family to do.
While corporate worship can be nice with bells and whistles I tend to go to that stuff out of obedience (and sometimes I'm not that obedient). But if you let me help with your community outreach, I'm there.
Rob Bell talks about a lot of these issues in his new book.
On the back cover it says something like: A church near us just spent twenty million dollars in renovations. A local newspaper just published a poll saying that one in five people in our area lives in poverty. This is a book about those two numbers.
I think that's a good answer to the fog machine.
But you're right, we are committed as a community. We're not flipping channels when we switch churches. I am a believer in sticking with that community and voicing issues the way you would in a conflict with a friend. When the church or friend won't hear you anymore, I think we understand how we are to treat that in Matthew 18.
A friend once said that the minor issues are just that, and that overall, being part of a community is healing and much bigger than the small stuff. That's stuck with me ever since.
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