The Church at a Roundabout
The Following is the Script for this Video:
Cars come to roundabouts. What about the Church? Has it reached a roundabout? Roundabouts always face us with choices. Turn right, continue on as before, head off to the left, or do a complete 360. Has the Church come to such a place? New issues are forcing the Church to make brand-new choices. What path should the Church take?
Recent choices have often focused on the flavor or style of the weekly gathering. Shall it be: Traditional? Contemporary? Attractional? Missional? High church? Low church? But what if, at the roundabout, we were to circle all the way around—not to go back but to look back. To remind ourselves of how that world-changing, first-century church formatted its gatherings.
In Corinth, for example, Paul said everyone should have opportunity to contribute: “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.” (I Cor. 14:26)
This way of gathering put every Christian into workout mode. “From him [Christ] the whole body . . . grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” How does Christ’s body mature and thrive? That happens only “as each part does its work.” A church meeting, then, should provide freedom for each part of the body to contribute its part.
By contrast, in most contemporary church meetings—as in this one—a few professionals upfront do the heavy lifting. Meanwhile, the great many sit passively as they watch and listen. Think how the parts of our physical bodies would atrophy if we simply sat around and watched one arm work out. This need for the working together of multiple parts is obvious in many areas.
For example, suppose you wanted to reproduce with an inkjet printer this picture of a Monarch butterfly. These ink colors, working together, would yield a picture like this one. But let’s say something blocks the red, yellow, and blue nozzles. Then the picture would come out like this. It takes a full spectrum of colors to print a realistic butterfly. And it takes the input from the whole body of believers to nurture spiritual growth. But if the format of a church meeting blocks substantial participation, the resulting immaturity should come as no surprise.
Think of all the instruments it takes to play a symphony. Strings . . . brass . . . woodwinds . . . and percussion. Working together, they can produce beautifully harmonious music. But if all you hear is a trumpet playing a solo, you’d ask the venue to refund the price of your ticket. It takes an orchestra to play a symphony. Pastors can contribute to the growth of Christ’s body, but their solo part cannot replace the essential parts of others in the body.
Or think of all the water nozzles it takes in the showerhead to let you take an effective shower. If only one of the nozzles is working, you could take a drizzle but not a shower. Water comes out, but in a trickle, not a torrent. In a similar way, in a church meeting, the living water from Jesus cannot flow in abundance through just one member of the body. That water flows fully only through the many.
One major obstacle stands in the way of returning to the participatory church meetings seen in the New Testament: human traditions. Our practices are rooted in centuries of doing things the easy way rather than the way of those early Christians who changed the world.
Scottish theologian I. Howard Marshall wrote: “We are greatly hampered by the one-man ministry which is still so common. Somehow we need to give the individual members of the congregation the opportunity to exercise the gifts of the Spirit, to receive from one another, and to show love to one another. It is not 'leaders of worship' that we need but people who have gifts to share with one another.”
William Barclay, who wrote a series of biblical commentaries on the New Testament, says: “The really notable thing about an early Church service must have been that almost everyone came feeling that [they] had both the privilege and obligation of contributing something to it.”
Would doing so eliminate the need for pastors and teachers? Not at all. It would actually enrich their ministries. As Paul wrote, “Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.” Like coaches of athletic teams, pastors and teachers are to prepare Christians to go into body-life action.
We began with a question: Have we who make up the Church reached a roundabout—one with choices? These headlines, gathered in a quick online search, seem to say yes.
Dethrone Entertainment in Your Church
Has Church Become a Show?
Worship Service or Spectacle?
Keeping Church from Becoming a Show
Participant vs. Spectator
The Church Has Become a Religious Show
The Church is Not a TV Show
If you sense that your church is at this roundabout, how can it make the turn to a new direction? Here are a few suggestions:
Pray. Ask God to guide you as you aim to help your church on the way to greater participation.
Find someone who shares your concern for giving members of Christ’s body more opportunity to contribute. Together, approach the decision-makers in your church with one or more of the following suggestions:
1. Arrange for Christians to tell during the Sunday meeting stories of how they are seeing God at work in their families, neighborhoods, workplaces, or home groups.
2. Add question/answer sessions at the conclusion of sermons.
3. Do interview sermons in which the pastor interviews a church member—or vice-versa.
4. Invite Christians to choose songs for the congregation to sing and to tell publicly why they chose those songs.
All these changes will give members of Christ’s body a voice in the weekly gathering. Take an incremental approach. Baby steps in the right direction are far better than no steps at all. Change is difficult, and people move at various speeds.
Paul speaks of “the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” Fullness or abundance, then, must reside in and flow through the members of Christ’s body. In a similar way, the fullness of your life resides in the members of your body. Every part of your body is full of your life. To receive the fullness of the Christ-life, we need to hear from not just one or two but the many members of his body.
Yes, we have reached a roundabout. How will your church respond?
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
