Lately on Sunday mornings, I've been feeling like I'm trying to squeez the universe into a thimble. I want all of the transforming power and redeeming grace of God to be realized and avaliable during one hour of corporate worship. I want people to catupult into a life of faith that will leave them changed forever. I want to make disciples that will be agents of transformation in the world. This needs to happen between 11:00am and 12 noon on Sunday. "I may not have another chance! This is it! Most people who come will not have another time during their week (or month, or year) to spend an hour intentionally focused on Christ and their faith in Him. If it doesn't happen now, it won't happen." So my mind thinks as I come to worship each week.
But does God want me to feel this way about Sunday morning worship? Sure, I know that corporate worship is a holy time that holds great power for all who attend. I know lives can be changed in a moment and that coming together as a community is biblical. But I have a sense that I shouldn't be putting so much emphasis (and presure) on what turns out to be only one aspect of the Christian life. And it dawns on me, maybe the reason the extent of many people's Christian life is Sunday morning is because they've learned, like I have, that this is the moment of the week when "God Happens". What if the pressure to change lives and make disciples wasn't put so overwhelmingly on Sunday worship? What if that burden was shared properly among the other aspects of the life of faith that scripture and tradition charges us with? What if we made it clear each week during worship that it wasn't the most important part of being a Christian and that it wasn't the only (and primary) way to relate to Christ's Church. What if Christian leaders spent the time they spent on planning worship on gathering people into missional activity in their communty. What if the pinnical of our week wasn't Sunday but the days when we are building small groups and fostering one-on-one discipleship? What if we allowed Christian worship to be Christian worship and didn't try to make it evangelistic preaching or apostolic teaching? What if we didn't try to represent every element of community in that one hour? Would people look for more? Would they start asking for other ways to get involved if we stopped giving them the reader's digest version of everything? More likely, we have work to do. Work to emphasize disciple making and world-transforming rather than worship spaces, professional muscisians and excellent preaching. Maybe our work as Christian leaders is not to get more people to have a cursory encounter with God in a large group but to guide them, one by one, into meaningful and life-altering relationships with Christ through other people. Maybe we give up having the best show in town and instead work on making the best disciples and the most living church.
I like how everybody has been saying, "Are you expecting to encounter the living God today?" I've heard it a couple times over the last months on Sundays. If we come with an attitude of, oh this is Church where we dress up and say hello, and act politely, and sing some worship songs and listen to a sermon, then we can only receive so much. If we make a concious effort to EXPECT to encounter the living God then I truly believe we will - I have come with an attitude of expecting and I leave feeling covered with the precense and love of our God. On my way to Church this morning, I thought, "Am I expecting to encounter the living God today?" And it dawned on me that, yes while I was expecting to encounter the living God on this day, Sunday, that I hadn't pondered the question on any other day of the week. I was limiting this very powerful question to only Sundays. To try and make more sense of what I am trying to get it is this - Just as you have said (and I am so guilty of it)that we put some much emphasis on changing lives and feeling closest to God during Sundays, I can change this thinking - I can start by asking this simple question every day when I wake up. "Am I expecting to encounter the living God?" Just because Im at work or the grocery store or at school doesn't mean I cant...and now that I really think about it, I realize how much more amazing and authentic my encounter with Him would be outside of the Church walls (only because I think Church is one place where I feel its so simple and easy to encounter Him) And by having an open and willing heart to expect every day all day, there are no limits...we are changing our own lives daily and hopefully in return changing others.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Lindsay. I do the same thing. God is always real, but I somehow expect Him to be more real during worship. I think worship is special in many ways and for many reasons, but not because God is more real, powerful, or present in that time. We are a people who prefer "events" over the daily walk. We would rather have mountain top experience once a week than walk the long and rewarding journey. Its an issue of our need for instant gratification, our laziness, and our compartmentalization of faith in our lives. I'm guilty too! Lord have mercy!
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ReplyDeleteexcellent post. I like what one of our pastors says - worship with a lowercase w is the 'praise and worship' event on Sunday morning or whatever other corporate time; Worship with a capital W is the way we we live our lives - giving God praise and glory all week, in everything we do
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