Sunday Spectatoritis
The Following is the Script for this Video:
Spectatoritis. It sounds like a disease, but medical measures can’t cure it. No surprise if you’ve never heard the term. It’s not among the 3,000 most-often-heard English words. It didn’t even make the 10,000 most-used word list. Jay B. Nash coined the term back in 1938 to describe a trend he saw happening in America. He described it in his book: SPECTATORITIS.
To tease out its meaning, let’s examine this polysyllabic word piece by piece. The first section, SPECT-, means to see or watch or observe. We recognize SPECT in such words as spectacles . . . inspect, looking into . . . retrospect, looking back . . . and introspection, looking inside.
The mid-section of spectatoritis is -ATOR-, which refers to an agent that does something. So an orator is someone who gives an oral presentation. We also see -ATOR- in curator, someone in charge of a collection . . . and an administrator, one who runs an organization.
And the final part of spectatoritis is -ITIS-, which refers to inflammation or disease such as arthritis . . . bursitis . . . or appendicitis.
Together, those parts make up SPECTATORITIS, the name Jay B. Nash gave to the unhealthy dependence on watching others perform. The average person, he said, “turns out to be a spectator, a watcher of somebody else, merely because that is the easiest thing.”
Ernest Thomas Seton, founder of the Boy Scouts, described stadium events as “. . . the few overworked champions in the arena, and the great crowd, content to do nothing but sit on the benches and look on.
Those in concert audiences are spectators. And aside from what’s happening onstage . . . it’s hard to tell the difference between a concert audience and a typical church meeting. Has spectatoritis reached even the church?
If so, we should be ringing alarm bells. Why? Because Jesus calls us to one-anothering, a major theme that runs right through the New Testament. Jesus launched it when he said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” By these words, Jesus triggered the more than 50 one-another commands that follow it in the New Testament.
One-anothering love shaped the church gatherings Paul describes in I Corinthians 14: “When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. . . . For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged.”
Notice the phrases, “each of you” and “you can all.” This gathering of Christ-followers was not a spectator event. The format allowed everyone to speak up and contribute. They could do so because each of them was a channel for God’s Spirit. Paul had already assured them, “God's Spirit dwells in your midst.” In other words, from God they were able to draw a variety of giftings and life-giving words. He was working in them and through them.
God—the original contributor—was giving each of them something to pass along to the rest. As Paul had just urged them, “Try to excel in those [gifts] that build up the church.” Thankfully, as we have seen, the meeting was structured in such a way that they were free to share what they were receiving.
Each of them was able not only to contribute but also to receive from each other the words and gifts God had given for their benefit. “To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” The meeting was reciprocal, full of give and take among them all.
As a result of all this, they were able to return authentic praise and thanksgiving to the God who was making it all possible. “. . . so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.”
The two types of meeting formats—the one with body members sharing and the one with spectators in an audience—are dramatically different. Each has its place. The participative meeting taps into the richness of the gifts God has given for building up the church. We’ve already seen that I Cor. 14 describes meetings of this sort.
The audience format fits when the church needs to hear messages from someone serving the church at large. For example, Acts 20 tells of this kind of meeting. Paul was in Troas, but he was about to leave town. So he spoke to the church and “kept on talking until midnight.” This was the meeting in which Eutychus went sound asleep and fell out the window. This was a special-purpose meeting. The church did not hear messages from Paul week after week.
Instead, the week-in-week-out meeting formats of the church back then allowed and encouraged participation. Why? Because the church is not an audience but a body. Christians are not laypersons but priests. And they are not spectators but contributors to the building up of all God’s people.
Many Christians today are “dechurching,” prompting books like this one. Might one reason be that we sense God has made us to be more than passive spectators sitting in theater-like audiences?
Mere spectating is not among the reasons the writer of Hebrews gives in urging Christians to continue gathering. “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Spurring one another on. Encouraging one another. As Jesus said, it’s all about one-anothering.
CONTENTS:
Spectatoritis vs. One-Anothering
Meetings Shaped by Tradition
Making Disciples in Church as We Know It
The Case for One-Anothering as We Gather
One-Anothering Actions
One-Anothering Churches
Preparing the Congregation
