I love Church. I’ve been in it since before I was born. I’ve never not wanted to go – except for one particularly tough time when we were pastoring one of our churches, I was leading worship and did not want to be there! Not bad though – once in 57 years!
Our son, Chris has just released a podcast on Church history – it’s good! I learned a lot – here’s the link if you’re interested.
One of the questions that Ben (co-presenter) asked Chris was, ‘how do you know which church to go to?’ For over a thousand years, there was only one church – the Catholic church – Now there are hundreds of different denominations.
Chris said, you should go to a church that preaches the gospel (the only way to heaven is through Jesus) that is Bible based and that is led by the Spirit. He could have said more but I homed in on the ‘led by the Spirit’. This is the key.
What we’re seeing increasingly, in my opinion, are slick performances on Sundays. Lights, camera, action; Services that are timed to the minute, power pointed series – often taken (I don’t mean illegally) from other churches’ resources or sermons bought from websites – yes, they exist! 1-hour services. It just feels like we’re moving away from relying on the Holy Spirit or worse, not giving him a chance to step in and ‘mess things up’ because we only have an hour….
There isn’t anything wrong with any of the things I’ve mentioned above IF the Holy Spirit has told you to do it this way. God can do a lot in an hour, but I don’t think that that’s what’s happening.
Of course, resources are out there for all of us to use! I quote from books and websites. I also use power points particularly when I’m teaching rather than preaching so I’m not against that, I’m just speaking out loud against us becoming dependent on others to run our church services.
Why are we moving towards these kinds of services?
One of the things that could be happening is that we are training spiritually lazy pastors. The quiet time is going out of fashion. AI can write our sermons. There is no need to wait on God. We don’t have to.
I couldn’t disagree more – We must wait on God. I would feel inadequate to do any kind of ministry without my daily time with God. If the Holy Spirit isn’t ‘allowed’ into our process before church because we haven’t got time, or into our cooperate gatherings, we become nothing more than a social club. The world can do that.
John and I are about to launch Kingdom Life Ministries. Under this banner we will plant churches, train leaders and teach a variety of Kingdom Life courses. (If you’d like to keep up with all of that, click below and sign up for our mailer).
We are looking for a building in Porthcawl. One that we looked at was an old Welsh Chapel and we felt so drawn to it – why? Because it was a church – no stage, lights, smoke machines in sight. No state-of-the-art sound system. I’m not against those things, well actually I am against lights and smoke machines unless it’s for a panto!! (Kingdom Life Church, Newcastle sound guys knew my stance! No spotlights here!) Just lights! As an aside, if your church services are all stage and no lights for people to be able to see, how do they read their bibles? And I know what you’re going to say. People don’t bring Bibles to church anymore….. sigh…. it’s on the Ipad…. Yep, so is Facebook etc…
People lost their lives so we could have a Bible. So many people around the world would love to have one, let’s get back to bringing bibles to church and, do us a favour, keep the lights on.
Of course, there is equipment that we need – we’re going to need a sound system, a projector and screen (John thought I’d be happy with a sheet – but I draw the line there! We’ll buy a screen! I don’t want to go that simplistic!) I think we need stuff…
I don’t know if what I’m saying is coming through. On the one hand, I know it’s good to have good equipment, it’s good to do this excellently, anyone want an AV guy who is 5 minutes behind what everyone is supposed to be singing? Of course not! Some of you will remember the days of the acetate! Upside down and back to front! The stuff of nightmares!
What isn’t good though is that if those things push out the Holy Spirit and all we are left with are one-hour long ‘shows’.
Ask your people if they sense the Holy Spirit in your gatherings? Dare you ask that?
I believe God gave us four great instructions for believers who gather, and they are found in Acts 2:42:
42 “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
How simple does that sound? How often does your church break bread? Pray together? Hear teaching that makes you want to repent! I think we’re all pretty good at the fellowship bit.
God has given us a prescribed way….
There’s a story in the Old Testament found in 2 Samuel 6. The Israelites were moving the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem. They put the ark on a new cart – new, good! Cart, quicker, they would get further much faster. But then the cart started to go off the road, so a guy called Uzzah, who was only trying to help, put his hands on it and died! That seems pretty harsh, doesn’t it? It does until you go back to where God had given VERY clear instructions on how to carry the ark. He told them this:
The priests were instructed to carry the ark on their shoulders by poles passing through rings on the ark’s corners to keep them from touching it and if they touched it, they would die. God gave them a prescribed way to carry the holy things.
I believe He has given us a prescribed way to do church. (Acts 2:42; Matthew 28:19 & 20; John 13:35) But if we choose to put our services ‘on a cart’ rather than ‘poles over our shoulders’ (which sounds like much harder work), we might just ‘die’
Until next time
D x
debbullock 